She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  Maybe Mom didn’t want her marrying anybody. Maybe she didn’t want her to leave Bear Falls. The thought hurt Jenny more than their late-night talk.

  When she opened the door to her room, where she’d pulled the curtains across the windows to block out all that new light, the room was dark. She reached down for the chain to her old bedside lamp. It wasn’t there, where she was used to grabbing it and pulling on the light before going into the room.

  She pushed the door wider and saw a bouquet of asters on her dressing table. They were new colors: greens and yellows and bright magentas. Everything was new. She turned slowly to take in her quarters. Bright and grown-up.

  The bear sheets and comforter were gone, replaced by very adult striped cream sheets and a thick flowered quilt. Bon Jovi was nowhere to be seen. Instead a framed photograph hung above the bed—a photograph of all of them: Mom, Dad, Lisa, and her. It was a photo taken on that last anniversary, the day Dad made the Little Library for Mom. They stood around the box grinning for the camera, Lisa hamming it up, pretending to stick her head in the box. Other photos hung on the other walls—all of them together as a family, and then of Jenny’s graduation from high school, then from the University of Michigan. She’d just caught her cap after throwing it into the air. Her mouth was open. She was laughing. Her eyes were bright. She looked like a young woman ready to take on the world.

  She heard Dora close the back door and, muttering to herself, walk across the kitchen floor. Jenny hesitated a minute, trying to come up with the right words to tell her mother how much she loved her.

  Jenny didn’t have to say a word when she went into the kitchen; Dora opened her arms and Jenny walked into them.

  “I didn’t say those things to trap you here, Jenny,” Dora whispered to her daughter, holding her close. “I said them to set you free. You’re a grown woman, not my child.”

  “I’ll always be your child, Mom. And thank you so much for my big girl room.”

  “I wanted to give you something that would tell you—in my clumsy way—how proud I am of the woman you’ve become.”

  “I get it, Mom.” Jenny looked into her mother’s aging face. “You’re teaching me what love is. You don’t have to. I know. I think I really know this time.”

  “It isn’t sex,” Dora warned.

  “Come on, Mom. That’s a part of it, or men and women would never get together.”

  Dora blushed and thought before she nodded. “Well. I guess so.” She thought a while longer, then broke into a smile. “Maybe the most fun part,” she added, looking up merrily from the corner of her eyes. “But not the all of it, you know. No ma’am, not the all of it.”

  Chapter 26

  When the knocking on her front door began, Emily waited before answering. That couldn’t be Zoe Zola. She’d called to say she’d be by in an hour with the shopping. She always took Zoe’s calls and found the little woman amusing: her rough voice, her frowns, then smiles. Really, a gentle creature, and one who served the purpose Emily had set for her.

  The knocking came again. Louder. She looked down the hall from where she stood. It was that odious man. That detective who kept leaving his card stuck in her door. She’d outlasted him before and would again.

  He knocked on one of the front windows and then was back to the front door.

  This time he yelled something she couldn’t hear but was certainly an order of some sort. As if the bothersome man could presume to tell her what to do in her own house.

  He’d go away. They always did—eventually.

  She tipped her head to listen to a sound coming from upstairs. Emily froze. Of all times to start things that shouldn’t be set free. If she made her way back into the living room and across to the stairs to stop the noise, she took the chance that the man might be looking in and see her.

  What might he do then? Break the glass and enter her home?

  She had no idea if he could do that.

  But if he heard a noise, or caught a glimpse of her, he would never leave.

  She stuck her head out only far enough to see. There was a shadow on the porch but it looked as though his back was to her.

  This was her chance. She hugged the wall and scurried toward the living room. As fast as the wind, she tiptoed around the chairs to the far wall, where she held still again. He didn’t knock. She thought she heard his footsteps going down the front steps. Next she heard the motor of a car.

  The noise from upstairs stopped.

  For the next hour, Emily sat as straight and still as a human being could sit. She considered the implications of that policeman coming back again later. But it wouldn’t be tonight. That wasn’t his pattern. In a day or so, he would come back and knock at her door again.

  She had to think. With her chest heaving, thinking wasn’t easy. Maybe if she called and complained to Abigail Cane, she could stop the man from coming to her door. Certainly the woman was the most influential in town—Emily had seen it that day at the mansion. Women did her bidding. Followed her lead.

  Emily felt her breathing slow. It seemed she had power, too, now. She could call Chief Warner, the policeman in town. Yes, she would call him and insist that her stalker be called off.

  She had to be left in peace, at least until after her return to the world of literature. Then she would leave this place. She would go far away and begin a life filled with accolades and cheers. Filled with many swains, who would adore her and pledge to protect her from policemen like this Detective Minty.

  Let the house fall into ruin. The thought made her laugh. Let the swamp take it, for all she cared. Maybe one day—a long time from now—she would return to see trees growing through the roof and branches hanging from the windows. Slime would crawl up the walls and snakes would slither across the water-covered floors.

  The pictures in her head brought her peace.

  When she went to the kitchen to make her lunch, she turned on the radio: Chopin. He matched her mood. Her heart beat normally again. She was in control. There was Zoe Zola’s return to look forward to, with the makeup she’d put on her list, and the hair dye: the brightest Zoe could find. There was her red scarf to wind around her throat and hang among the many sea-blue scarves of the dress she would prepare. Scarves connecting her to her past and to her future. Something old and something new.

  She was waiting behind a curtain when Zoe Zola’s car pulled in to the curb. Emily pulled back a little to watch.

  * * *

  C o n s t a n c e P r o u s t.

  As Zoe parked in front of Emily’s house, letters bounced in her head, forming nothing but a huge, empty circle. What she wished for, as she went around to the back of her car, was a brain that snapped things together and held on to them. A Dickinson brain that worked everything into a pattern much faster than hers did. If she understood the pattern of what was happening, she could go to everyone involved and say, “See, this is why a woman’s dead, why another woman’s disappeared, why an uncle doesn’t call his niece . . .” and on and on.

  A puzzle such as Emily Dickinson would take and shake and solve in one cryptic poem.

  Four bags to carry. All with handles, since Zoe had purchased eco-friendly shopping bags at Drapers. But still—too much for one trip. She started toward the house with two bags, opening the gate with difficulty and having it bounce into her rear end when she went through.

  A curtain in the living room twitched. Emily was in there or a mouse was trying to escape. Zoe didn’t know which possibility she preferred. She bristled at the idea of that able-bodied woman watching her lug groceries to the porch and not coming out to help.

  At least she knew Emily wasn’t in the swamp. She hoped Emily would get busy trying out the makeup she’d ordered: foundation, lipstick, powder, blush, eyeliner, mascara. Hair dye—the hottest Zoe could find. She wondered what might be the real color of that head of wild hair.

  Zoe thought of her plan. Everything depended on Emily keeping busy with the groceries and then the makeup. There was th
e hair dye, but maybe not right now. Emily might wait until the day of the event, to get the full effect of the red dye.

  Zoe figured she had at least a half hour to take care of what she had to take care of—to sneak around the back to the garage and settle the question once and for all: Red car, or no red car? If the car wasn’t red, she would call Alex in Ann Arbor and confirm for her that the shed was another dead end.

  The idea of what she was about to do made her queasy. She would leave and drive over from the other direction, leaving her car as far from the house as she could without wasting time. Then she would have to slip behind the rotting sheds, slide her flattened body over to the garage window, find something to stand on, reach the windowsill, and look inside.

  She set the first two bags on the porch and went back for the last two.

  Faint music came from inside the house. Zoe knew that Emily lurked on the other side of the door, laughing, waiting for Zoe to go so she could dive into the makeup.

  Zoe looked toward the swamp not ten yards away. She leaned against a shaky railing to watch a single leaf shiver, though there was no wind to move it. She watched light and dark and tiny shafts of broken sunlight. She felt a chill pass through her but chased it away.

  * * *

  Inside the house, Emily saw the little person get out and go around to the back of her car. She pulled four bags, one at a time, from the trunk. She set the bags on the ground behind the car and picked up two. Emily watched as Zoe came through the gate, then snickered behind her hand when the gate hit Zoe and she turned to glare at it before continuing up the walk. On the porch, she dropped the two bags and went back to the car for the others.

  When the small woman made her way a second time down the steps, hanging on tightly to the sagging railing, Emily waited.

  She’d come to look forward to these days, when she got exactly the things she ordered, and had the fun of putting all of it away. Even the yogurt, which she never ate. And the cheddar cheese, which she couldn’t tolerate. There was milk and a new type of cereal with chocolate in it. There were oranges and lettuce and tomatoes big enough to dwarf her hand when she held one up to examine it from all sides. The bounty of it made her mouth water. More than she could ever eat. Pure luxury, to throw food away. Wouldn’t her mother be annoyed!

  * * *

  Zoe thought of the woman inside the house and hoped she was doing the right thing, betraying another writer, a poet who was not completely human, not completely animal, not completely sane, but born to create poetry, write poems no one else could write—lines of words with different shapes and meanings, put together as no one else could.

  Zoe felt a twinge of jealousy, then shame, that maybe she had let her fear of the “other” turn into little angers and little disgusts, acting the way some people did toward her.

  Zoe moved back carefully. She looked over the banister. She went down the steps to her car a last time.

  In a way, Emily had made the choice for her. They were on opposite sides of whatever was happening. Zoe put her pity for the woman aside.

  Proust. They had to find that nurse. Her head was filled with what the woman might know. She got in her car, pulled away, and turned in the direction of home.

  * * *

  Emily watched as the little woman climbed into her car and drove away without looking back. Emily rejoiced that she was gone and opened the door and pulled in her loot, her mind swimming in light. There was only joy inside her, the excitement of the new. She did a pirouette as, bag by bag, she carried her day’s bounty to the kitchen.

  It was best, she decided as she examined the four bags on the table, to delay delight by first putting away the butter, milk, yogurt, and meat.

  Butter to the butter holder. Milk on the top shelf. Meat into a crisper, where her mother had always kept the meat—though there’d been little of it when that old woman was alive.

  Then mixed greens and the tomatoes—how banal the world could get.

  Cans of soup. A box of noodles.

  Cheeses. Many cheeses because she loved to melt it, pour it over potatoes and noodles and vegetables and cereal because her mother had never allowed cheese in the house. Something against cheese, in the old woman’s head. Not pure enough. They were to drink milk alone for dairy. And that only one time a day.

  A box of crackers.

  A magic life drawn in ordinary images like crackers. A cosmic joke—that her body had to be fed as ordinary bodies were fed.

  And then, at last, the makeup. She pulled out each small box, taking time to enjoy the moment. To feel the heft of every one, the joy of pretty colors. There was something called “blush.” She opened it and removed the small brush. She ran the soft bristles across her inner wrist, then ran the brush across the soft pink of the “blush,” running it across the back of her hand until her skin bloomed.

  There was mascara for her eyelashes. She saw the eyelashes on the package and imagined hers as long and lush. There was a bright-red lipstick and a dainty case of something gray and luminous. And needles and pins and thread.

  She closed her eyes, picked up her treasures, and held them to her breast. She saw Emily Sutton on stage in the perfect outfit she’d created. Saw her painted the way an artist would paint her, so that when she turned one way in the light, she looked very young. But when she turned another way, she looked ancient. Enigma, came to mind. Ineffable. Sacred. Her name lost among the most powerful words of the ages.

  She danced in circles, singing the words of a hymn she remembered. She dragged the words behind her like a silken train to the bathroom, where new words formed. She set her makeup on the vanity and ran back to the kitchen to find a pad of paper, then wrote as fast as her hand could go: “No pensive soul requires adornment / Or color past a perfect white / No poet needs to wear a mask / That doesn’t suit her right.”

  Emily tore off the poem and held the sheet of paper up above her head as if to offer it to her gods. She was pleased at the monumental work she was turning out. Only a week before the huge event. The thought amazed her.

  * * *

  After she drove down the street toward her house for a ways, Zoe turned up a side street and headed back to Thimbleberry using the other route to get to Emily’s house, by going through town.

  She parked a block away, got out, and followed the road, where bushes grew to the edge of the swamp. She was half hidden where she finally stood, taking in the backs of the sheds and old garage. She couldn’t see the house—the sheds stood between her and it. She stayed among the bushes, close to the edge of the swamp, until she made a dash to the sheds, then, crouching, she scuttled as best she could until her hands leaned on the back wall of one. There were three sheds—or maybe one was a chicken coop—between her and the garage.

  She pushed flat against the wall behind her, then stuck her head out, looking up at the back of the house, waiting for a voice to scream at her and for Emily to come running.

  Sunlight came from behind thick clouds and moved across the blackened back wall of the still house. On the wall, as if leading to nothing, there was a door with an X of wood nailed across it. No steps led up to the door. Across the back of the house, blackened timbers leaned where they had fallen. An old ladder stood among the timbers, as if someone had attempted to get their mother out.

  That was where their mother died, in a fire started by one of her daughters. Zoe didn’t know what to feel. As she stared at the wall, a curtain in an upstairs window moved to one side. A face looked out at Zoe, who scurried to hide behind the next shed, then held very still, breathing hard. She listened for Emily’s voice, and when it didn’t come, Zoe imagined she was on the phone with the police chief right then.

  She had to be fast. There was no leaving without knowing.

  She moved behind the next shed and then over to the old garage. The unpainted doors of the building hung crookedly, held closed by a large padlock. Zoe shook the lock. She shook the doors but they held fast. The small windows across the front were
covered with cardboard.

  Looking down, avoiding a mud puddle, Zoe noticed that the weeds here were beaten into two rows. Tire tracks. The beaten weeds were green, as if tires had passed over them not long ago.

  Still keeping her eyes on the house, Zoe scurried around to the hidden side of the garage where there was another window. This one was cracked, but not covered. She wasn’t tall enough to see in. She searched around her for a box, a crate, a log—anything she could stand on—and found a metal bucket, rusted and without a handle, but still sound.

  She rolled the bucket over to the window and climbed on it, holding on as hard as she could to the side of the building.

  * * *

  From the corner of her eye Emily saw a shadow move across the back of the yard. She ran to see what was out there now, remembering that nosy girl she’d caught before. It could be a deer. Once a bear had come out of the swamp and got in their garbage can.

  The figure moved into sunshine for a minute, then was lost, hidden behind a shed.

  The figure had been small. It ran awkwardly. There was no question who was back there.

  Zoe Zola hadn’t left at all. She was snooping. Heading toward the garage, where that other awful girl had snooped.

  It was time, Emily told herself, and pulled back from the window to think. It had to stop, once and for all. There was a new world ahead of her. Nothing else mattered. She put two fingers to her forehead and let her thoughts go deeper than she usually let them go.

  A sound, a knocking, came from upstairs, disturbing her intense train of thought.

  “Not now,” she shouted, hands covering her eyes. “Not now. For Christ’s sakes, can’t you see I’m busy?”

  * * *

  Looking in the window, Zoe had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the gloom before she could make out a large gray shape. Certainly a car, just as Alex said, with a tarp spread over it.