Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  She was a junior then and terrified about the SATs. She had to do well in order to get into college, to get a scholarship. She was sure William would help her; maybe he’d sit with her after class and go over those tricky analogies. She imagined the two of them, their heads tipped together. She could bring in a thermos of cocoa. Or coffee—that would be more adult.

  But when she went to ask him, he just gave her a mild smile. “Why do you want help with analogies?”

  “Well, not just analogies. I want to learn more vocabulary, too. And I think my writing could use some work.”

  “You get your vocabulary from reading. Just read more. You want to learn to write great essays? Read them.”

  “But I could use some help. Analogies are hard.”

  “That’s the trouble with our educational system. When are you ever going to need to know how to do an analogy in life? Do you think anyone is ever going to come up to you and say, Book is to school as needle is to what?”

  “The SAT will,” she said, and he scoffed. “So that’s it,” he said. “The SAT. I don’t believe in the SAT, Charlotte. How does that tell how smart a student is? How well he or she will do in the world? I’m surprised at you.”

  Because it does matter, she thought, because how can I make it in the world if I can’t get into college? But he was fired up now, waving his hands as he talked, and while she used to love that, now it made her feel as if she were standing on the edge of the building, two stories up, with no railing, and he was about to give her a push. She said nothing, but she was angry and more than a little disappointed. He didn’t seem so cute to her anymore, and her desire began to fade.

  She ended up buying a vocabulary book, What You Need to Know for the SATs, and began studying nights on her own. When she realized how much of it he wasn’t teaching, she studied harder, assigning herself five pages a night, and then six, staying up until she was bleary-eyed.

  She still sat in the front row of William’s class, but he didn’t look at her anymore. One day, when they were talking about the changes that went on when books became films, Charlotte raised her hand because she wanted to talk about how disappointed she had been in the film of Jane Eyre. He looked past her. She turned around to see what he was looking at, who he would call on ahead of her. No one else had their hand up except for her, and he was ignoring her. She stretched her hand up higher. The other kids in the class stared at her.

  She left his class unsettled, but when it happened the next day, she went to the office and requested a transfer into the other accelerated English class, because this one wasn’t rigorous enough for her. Because she was an honors student, they made the change. The first day she was in her new class, when they had to pull out their vocabulary books, she was the only one who didn’t groan. She looked at the list of all those words in her Manter Hall book as if she were a starving person reading an all-you-can-eat menu.

  A week after she left the class, she saw William standing in the hallway. She had never told him she was leaving, she had just vanished one day, and she figured he would get the paperwork. He barely looked at her. She walked right past him without saying a word.

  A year later, Lucy was in one of his classes, but Lucy never talked about him. But then, she never talked about anything to Charlotte anymore. Still, how was it possible Charlotte didn’t know that William and Lucy were together? How did Charlotte know so little about her sister? When had they stopped telling each other everything? Was Lucy having sex already? She must be—William was an adult. But had Charlotte known, she would have told Iris, the principal, the police. And Lucy would have known that she would have. Charlotte exhaled. Of course, that’s why Lucy stopped confiding in her.

  CHARLOTTE STOPPED AT a pay phone to check in on Iris. She wouldn’t tell her about going to get Lucy, not until she knew how things were going to play out.

  Iris talked about the tuna casserole for lunch, about the two women who didn’t think she knew Yiddish and called her a shiksa until Iris said in Yiddish that she wasn’t.

  “So you became friends then?” Charlotte said hopefully.

  “Not this time,” Iris said.

  “It will get better,” Charlotte said. “Maybe you can go to one of the activities today. Or maybe someone new and unexpected will show up. Sooner than you think, too.”

  “Well, that would be so nice,” Iris said.

  Charlotte hung up the phone, shaking her head. Wait until Iris saw Lucy. Charlotte felt her eyes pooling with tears. She’d missed her, her crazy diamond of a baby sister. Lucy was an irresponsible pain in the ass, but her absence could still make Charlotte ache like nothing else.

  SHE DROVE FOR HOURS. The city gave way to country. The light to dusk. She stopped at a rest area and slept in the car. Just for an hour, she told herself, but when she woke up it was already dawn. Well, Lucy was probably sleeping, too.

  Tioga. What a name for a town, she thought, and what a place, so deep in the woods she felt like looking over her shoulder. Still, she was surprised how pretty it was. The trees were lush, the grass was this vivid green. You could hear birds, and she even saw a deer leaping across the road. She had written out directions to the town, but she had no real idea how to get to Lucy’s, so she stopped at a gas station to ask, scribbling it all down on a piece of paper.

  Every once in a while, she would see a farmhouse. A couple sitting on the porch. Children riding their bikes. It all made her think of how she had felt Iris’s house was home, how some days she couldn’t wait to run through the door and see Iris. Charlotte hadn’t thought she would care when the house was sold, but the day she had moved Iris out, she had stood on the edge of the lawn, biting back tears.

  Maybe Lucy would move in with her when they got back. How strange and wonderful that would be. She’d be the big sister again, helping Lucy get back into school. And thank God she had that little sublet, and some money and a job. Maybe she could work something out so she could rent something bigger during the next year. Maybe Lucy could get a part-time job to keep herself out of trouble. Maybe Lucy could help Iris out, do some of her shopping. Or they could do it together.

  Charlotte turned down a dirt road. There were no houses here, no people. How could Lucy be living here? She wondered whether Lucy would look different. God, she’d better not see William. Just thinking about him made her want to throttle him, to see him behind bars. The only reason she hadn’t called the cops yet was that she wanted to come get Lucy herself.

  There it was. A little brown clapboard that needed a paint job, surrounded by trees. There were chickens running around a pen, scratching at the dirt, a big red rooster strutting around them. Imagine. Lucy had chickens? The grass wasn’t really cut, and there were dandelions dotting the lawn, an overgrown hydrangea bush by the front steps.

  She glanced at her watch. Six in the morning. A little early, but Lucy had wanted her to come as soon as she could, and here she was. No one answered the bell, so she knocked loudly. “Lucy!” she called, but there was no answer. Charlotte felt a ripple of irritation. She tried the door, and to her surprise it opened.

  “Lucy,” she called, “I’m here.” She glanced at her watch. It was a long drive back. Maybe they could stop for dinner. “Lucy.” The house smelled funny. Not mustiness, but something else. She rounded the corner from the foyer, and then she saw her.

  Lucy was sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor, her face turned to the side. There was a dime-size hole in her temple, a bigger chunk punched out from the back of her head. Her skin was blueish and blotchy on her face, her bare arms, as if she were bruised, and it grew paler farther away from the floor. Her eyes were open, but the whites were gray, glazed over, and her shirt was riding up. There was a ring of what looked like soot burned onto one of her hands.

  A lamp was shattered on the floor. A cup and plate were overturned and the cup had rolled to a corner. The upper wall behind her was spattered with blood, darker in color, almost brown, leading to the high ceiling, where it fanned out.


  Charlotte started screaming.

  HANDS SHAKING, SHE called the operator. She was sobbing so hard the woman on the line had to ask her to repeat herself, but how could Charlotte say again that Lucy was dead? She stammered out the address and, trembling, went outside to wait. The world felt like shards of glass.

  Can you come get me? That’s what Lucy had said. I’m leaving him. Come get me. Come get me. Lucy had been in trouble and Charlotte hadn’t gotten there fast enough to save her sister. Charlotte jerked to her knees, vomiting onto the ground. She fell back against the porch, dizzy, wiping her mouth. Had William done this? And where was he? And what if he hadn’t done this? What if he didn’t even know? And if he hadn’t done this, who had? And why?

  She heard sirens, and two police cruisers pulled up. She waited for the cops to get out, three of them, older, puffy faced. She saw how they had their hands on their holsters, how they were watching her. “I’m Charlotte—I called—” she blurted out. “My sister was shot!”

  “Let’s slow down here. Who are you?”

  “I called, I told you. I’m her sister—Charlotte Gold.” She looked toward the house.

  “And she is?”

  “Lucy Gold—”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the living room—”

  “Is there anyone else inside?” one cop asked, nodding at the house.

  “I don’t think so—but her boyfriend also lives here—”

  “Go sit in the cruiser. Ed will stay with you.”

  One of the cops drew his gun and went inside. The other headed for the back of the house, his hand on his holster. She sat in the front seat beside Ed, who smelled like cigar smoke and gum. “Who is she?” Ed asked. He wanted to know Lucy’s full name and their relationship, he asked Lucy’s age, and when Charlotte said seventeen, he stopped writing. “Seventeen? What was she doing here?” he asked. She told him how Lucy had run away from Boston but no one knew where or why or with whom, since she’d left only a vague note. How they had filed a missing persons bulletin on her. How Lucy had sent only one postcard, but it was from a vast rural area and made it hard to trace her. And then Lucy had finally called and asked Charlotte to come get her.

  “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”

  “William Lallo. He was her high school teacher.”

  He paused and studied her. “Where does he work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another car pulled up, followed by an ambulance, which made her flinch. Two plainclothes detectives got out and glanced her way before walking into the house.

  “When’s the last time you saw Lallo?” Ed asked. He kept asking her questions, all of them simple, but he didn’t seem happy with any of her answers. He kept frowning or shaking his head, and then after a while the door opened again, and one of the detectives came out and walked over to her. “You her sister?” he said, and when she nodded, he said, “Detective Harry Mosser. Could you step out of the car, please?” She got out.

  “What did you see?” he asked. He made her describe it. She heard the scratch of his pen on the paper, but she couldn’t see what he was writing.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I called you.”

  He asked the same questions Ed had. He wanted to know when the call from Lucy had come and what time Charlotte had gotten here. Where had she been before, and could she prove it?

  Charlotte looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language she didn’t understand. Her mouth felt full of metal. She looked at the house, and it felt as if her eyes were covered by thorns. “I had to work,” she said. “Call Fur Friends in Waltham. They have Saturday hours. My boss will tell you.”

  He raised one brow at the name, but he wrote it down. She heard a noise, and two paramedics came out carrying Lucy’s body, wrapped in a white cloth, paper bags over her hands and feet. Charlotte looked down at her own hands, her fingers knotted so tightly they were white. She wrapped her arms around her body to stop herself from shaking.

  “Did you bump into anything in the room?” he asked. She thought of the smashed lamp, the cup rolled into a corner. She shook her head.

  “Did you see or hear any cars when you got here?” he asked.

  “No cars. No people.”

  “What do you know about the box of shells?”

  “What shells?” she said.

  “There’s a box in the bedroom, in one of the drawers.”

  “I didn’t go in the bedroom.”

  “Did you see a gun in the house?”

  The room flashed in her mind. The cup on its side. The bloody walls. Her sister.

  “There was no gun. Maybe he took it with him—”

  “What was their relationship like?” the detective asked. “Had she seemed unhappy?”

  “I didn’t even know they were together. I hadn’t talked to Lucy for over a year—since they ran off.”

  He wanted to know more about William, whether he was violent, whether he ever hit Lucy or raised his voice. “I don’t know anything. But she wanted to leave in a hurry,” Charlotte said.

  “Did he have any friends around here? Did your sister? Did she work?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “To all of it. I don’t know.”

  “What time did she call?”

  Charlotte remembered how she had felt, called to the phone at work. “I came as soon as I could.” But was that really true? She hadn’t even tried to ask Dr. Bronstein whether she could leave early.

  He wrote something down. Someone came out of the house. Another car arrived, and a man jumped out with a camera. She heard one of the officers say to him, “Look, I’ll give you something later. I can’t talk to you now. We’ll get to you when we get to you.”

  “Is that a reporter?”

  Harry shrugged. “Small town. There’s always someone whose job is just to sit listening to the police radio. You might want to get out of here before they realize who you are.”

  Charlotte felt her legs turning to water, her air siphoning from her. As she fell, she grabbed onto the jacket of the detective. A button popped loose in her hand, and her fingers curled around it. He scooped her up by her elbows. “I’ve got you,” he said, and for the first time his voice was sympathetic.

  “We’ll call the vet’s office, corroborate your story,” he said. “We’ll look for this guy. Stick around town until we tell you otherwise. You have a place to stay?”

  She shook her head, and he mentioned a hotel, and then he nodded toward the guy with the camera, the flash of his camera. “Do us all a favor and don’t talk to the press.”

  THAT NIGHT, CHARLOTTE got a cheap room in the hotel. She knew she had to tell Iris now. She had wanted to surprise her with news of Lucy’s return. Instead, all she could tell her was this. How would she even find the words? She glanced at her watch. Ten at night. Iris might be asleep. But Charlotte couldn’t put this off. She reached for the phone, took a breath, and dialed.

  “Hello?” Iris’s voice was full of sleep, and Charlotte began crying again.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Iris said.

  Charlotte wished that she could rest her head against Iris’s. She wished Iris would hold her and rock her the way she sometimes had when Charlotte was little. She wanted Iris to stroke her hair, to tell her everything was going to be all right. She drew herself up.

  “Lucy—” Her voice cracked. “Lucy—” She swallowed. “I’m in Pennsylvania.”

  “What about Lucy? And you’re in Pennsylvania? Why?”

  She tried to keep it as spare as possible, but she felt as if she were standing outside herself, listening to this other person explaining something so horrific that it couldn’t possibly be true. As soon as she said that Lucy was dead, Iris began to scream. Charlotte held the receiver away from her. “Lucy! My Lucy!” Iris cried. “What kind of person would do this? What kind of monster?” Charlotte shuddered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me she had called? Why didn’t you tell me you w
ere going down there? Did you know she was with that man?” Iris shouted.

  Charlotte looked out her window, across the parking lot. There wasn’t a person in sight. The road was silent and empty. “I was going to bring her home today,” she said.

  “Why didn’t she call me?” Iris wept. “Why didn’t she let me know she was all right?”

  “She did call you. At the Waltham house, but that line was disconnected.”

  “Thank God she found you!”

  Charlotte explained that the police wanted her to stay in town, that she’d call Iris in the morning. She’d tell her what the police said, what new information there was. “My poor baby,” Iris said. “My poor Lucy.”

  “I love you,” Charlotte said, but Iris was sobbing so hard Charlotte couldn’t tell whether Iris had heard her.

  “I’m coming down there,” Iris said. “I need to be there with you, with Lucy—I’ll figure out a way to come.”

  “No, no, please—stay where you are. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “I promise.” She hung up the phone and stared out at the sky and thought of all the ways she would never be all right.

  IN THE MORNING, Charlotte called her boss and told him what had happened, digging her fingers into her thigh so she wouldn’t sob. She heard the silence on the line, and then he cleared his throat.

  “You take as long as you need,” he said, and Charlotte started to cry.

  She called Iris to tell her that she’d call her later that evening. “I’ll be here,” Iris told her. When Charlotte hung up, she drove to the police station. She hadn’t slept and she was in the same clothes, her T-shirt and jeans. The world seemed to have changed, the air felt rough against her skin. Colors seemed bleached. She didn’t see many people, but the ones she spotted, driving, walking, seemed to be sleepwalking, staring into space, their movements robotic.

  She walked into the station and saw Harry talking to two officers. She could tell by the way he was looking at her, his head tilted as if he was listening for something, waiting for her, that something had happened.