Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  “You go in,” he said to me. “I’ll watch you.” So I did, swimming out, so that he was a dot in the distance, and I couldn’t help it, I kept thinking, All I have to do is keep swimming and he won’t be able to come after me. He won’t be able to find me. I made my strokes longer. I covered ground. I don’t know why I came back. Maybe because of the way he was standing, pacing on the grass. For a minute he looked like the old William. Like he needed me to save him. Like I was really worth something. I could have kept swimming. I could have swum all the way to another town, found a job and a new life, but instead I felt that tug of love, like a rope around my ankles as if I was a fish, caught on his line. I swam back. I took his arm and I could see he was trembling. “Come on, honey, let’s go home,” I said. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.” I told myself, and then him, that I’d never ask him to take me to water again. I’d never do that to him.

  “Well, now that’s a relief,” he said.

  And sometimes, too, I told myself: I know his weak spot now. Besides me, I mean.

  Charlotte felt something prickling along her spine. William was afraid of water. If he was so terrified, how could he have jumped into the river even if he wanted to die? Why hadn’t he just killed himself with the gun after he murdered Lucy?

  She went back to the journal, feeling sicker and sicker. Lucy was biking the roads now, trying to find rescue. Charlotte turned to the last page. I am so lost. She closed the journal and held it to her chest.

  There was still so much night left. She needed to get back to the motel. The house was now dark, except for the lamp she had turned on to read, and she began to feel frightened.

  She packaged everything up—the rags, the brushes, the mop—and put it into bags. She went into the bathroom and ran the shower as hot as she could and scrubbed her hands, her face. She bent so the water ran over her hair. Then she changed into the clothes she had bought and threw her old ones into another bag. She brought all the bags outside, setting them by the side of the house.

  She came back inside. One last time. She left the lamp on, as if her sister might need it. Then she left the house, all the while thinking, Oh, Lucy. I’m so lost, too.

  Chapter 19

  Earlier that day, Patrick was working the register, thinking about Lucy and hoping she had made it to the bus and gone back to Waltham okay. He thought she might call him, but then again, she had taken money from him, and he had fucked up by overreacting. She was just a kid. She was scared. He had yelled at her when all she did was take the petty cash he would have willingly given her if she had asked.

  But what if she hadn’t made the bus? Then he needed to find her, to get her away from William. Patrick could help Lucy get back to her family. He would put her on a train or drive her home himself. It was the right thing to do, maybe the only thing. He imagined her writing him letters from Boston as if he were a mentor, telling him about her day, about her studies, and he’d write back like a wise old sage. It made him feel good to think there was something right that he could do. But first he had to find her. He had to hope she’d come back here to the farm stand, the way she always did, because he didn’t have a clue where she and that jerk lived. He didn’t even know his last name.

  That night, he went into his house, turning on the TV for company while he ate his supper. There, flashing on the screen, was a photo of Lucy. Underneath was the legend: LUCY GOLD, 17-YEAR-OLD MURDER VICTIM.

  She had been shot, her body found by her sister the morning before.

  Patrick stumbled down onto a chair, his heart pounding. Then a newscaster came on, a man standing out on a bridge by the highway, the wind whipping the sleeves of his jacket. His face was blank. “We’re standing here at the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, where late last night, William Lallo, thirty-one, a teacher recently fired from the Spirit Free School in Tioga, allegedly jumped to his death after the murder of his girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Lucy Gold.”

  Patrick began crying, so that the TV screen began to blur.

  “Our story begins two days ago, at two a.m., when a couple reported seeing a man jump into the Delaware River from the Ben Franklin Bridge near Philadelphia. Police went to investigate and found Lallo’s abandoned car parked nearby.”

  The camera flashed to two young kids, both with long bangs like sheepdogs, being interviewed by another reporter. “We just wanted to look at the water,” the girl said. “It’s a romantic spot when no one else is around.” She looked anxiously at her boyfriend. “We saw him jump,” she said. “We heard a splash.”

  The reporter mentioned a sister, who had gotten a call and come out, only to find Lucy dead. Patrick shut off the set.

  He should have put Lucy on a bus himself, never mind going to the cops. If he had, she’d be alive now.

  He thought of Vera’s mother, asking him over and over, “Why didn’t you do something?”

  There was something he could do now. He got in his car to go to the police. He knew about William a little, things Lucy had told him. They might be helpful.

  When he got to the station and said he had been friends with Lucy Gold, a detective squinted at him. He asked Patrick where he’d been the day before and whether he could prove it, and when Patrick told him and said he could, the cop lost interest.

  “I just thought—maybe some information I have—I’d like to give it to you,” Patrick said.

  The detective considered him. “Okay,” he said. He led Patrick into a back room, taking along a yellow pad. Patrick told him everything. How Lucy had shown up, how he had given her a job, the awkward time at the grocery store when he had run into both of them, and then her coming to him with a black eye. None of it seemed helpful, and halfway through he began to feel the way he had at confession when he was little, the priest always seeming not to believe him or even like him. Patrick looked up. The cop wasn’t even writing anything down. Instead, he was tapping the pen against the table, scraping it along its side.

  The detective leaned forward. “What was your relationship with this girl again?”

  Patrick swallowed. “We were friends.”

  The detective stood up. “Terrible thing,” he said, and then he led Patrick to the door. Patrick had no idea what to do, no idea where to go. He didn’t know whether Lucy had other friends or where her sister might be right now so he could talk to her. He got into his car and put his head on the wheel, his ears roaring.

  Chapter 20

  It took Charlotte until the end of July to look at the newspapers, to stop sobbing long enough to see Lucy’s story splashed on the front page, a photo of her (where had they gotten it?) in a floral minidress, her hair wild, a daisy poking out behind one ear. VIXEN FLOWER CHILD AND TEACHER-LOVER IN GRISLY MURDER SUICIDE. Her hands were shaking so much that she couldn’t see the print at first. They were blaming Lucy as if she were a seductress who had done William wrong. They called Lucy a high school dropout, which was what she was, but the way they said it made it sound so much worse, as if she had been stupid, one of those kids hanging around, looking for trouble, making nothing more of their lives than working as a cashier at Woolworth’s candy counter. There was a photo of William, too, the one they used in the yearbook for all the teachers. He was sitting at his desk, writing something, his pen tipped between his fingers, wearing a jacket and a shirt and tie. You couldn’t see his eyes. Underneath was the caption: FAVORITE TEACHER A SUICIDE.

  Whose favorite teacher? He let kids do whatever they wanted, pretending it was relevant, acting as if he were one of them, and that was why they liked him. He taught them nothing, and he couldn’t be trusted at all. She scanned the pages, but there was no quote from the Waltham school, nothing about how they had fired him. Instead, on the next page, there was a story about William’s mother, Diana. How had Diana been able to talk to these vultures without screaming? Why would she do this? “I’ll never believe my son is guilty,” Diana insisted. She knew he was in Pennsylvania, but it was for a job, and he had gone there alone, as fa
r as she knew. She had never visited him because she didn’t drive, and how would she get there? You couldn’t expect someone her age to take the train or, God forbid, the bus. “He called me every Sunday,” she said. He came to visit her in Waltham one month, just for two days, and they had lunch together and caught up, and he never mentioned a girl.

  Even though there was no body, Diana had bought him a plot and a gravestone, etched with his name, and the newspaper ran a photo of her standing in front of it, her face haunted. Charlotte wished she knew where that grave of William’s was so she could go chisel murderer! into the stone.

  She finished the paper and shoved it into the trash. How long before a reporter found her or Iris?

  WORK WAS CHARLOTTE’S salvation. She got to the office early, left as late as she could, and kept busy. Dr. Bronstein never asked her about Lucy, but he brought her a cup of coffee some days and she felt him watching her, his gaze deep with concern. He kept telling her to take time off if she needed, but she liked being among the animals. It helped her—holding cats in her arms, taking away a dog’s pain with a shot or a pill. The pet owners thanked her, sometimes spontaneously hugging her, so for a moment she felt human contact.

  It didn’t seem real. Lucy dead. She had called the police to tell them about the journal entry, about how William was afraid of the water. But they hadn’t seemed interested. “A bunch of stories don’t prove anything,” an officer told her. “It’s not hard evidence. Plus we have witnesses to his jumping. We have a description.”

  Defeated, she had collected Lucy’s ashes from the funeral home and returned to Waltham. She brought the urn to Iris, who cried and then put it by the window. “She always loved the sun,” Iris said. It hurt Charlotte to see Iris’s sad face, the slow shuffle of her steps. Charlotte called her every day. She visited almost as often. But how much grief could an old person take?

  One day, Charlotte came home from work, and as soon as she got in her apartment, her watch fell off her wrist. She had gotten so skinny because she couldn’t manage to eat very much. She had to wear a belt to keep her jeans up. She swam in her shirts. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She’d never had her hair this long, almost to her clavicle. She’d never not had bangs. Her color was paler than usual, and when she rummaged in her purse for a bit of blush and brushed it on, it looked startlingly unreal, and she rubbed it off. She thought she looked sick, but what did it matter? She felt hopeless. She got the phone book and leafed through it. There it was. Diana Lallo. William’s mother. 1401 Lincoln Street. Belmont. That wasn’t far from here. She could go see her and then swing by and see Iris in the evening.

  She got in the car and drove to William’s mother’s house, a little white ranch surrounded by a picket fence, right by the bus stop. There were daisies sprouting by the walkway, blue curtains in the windows, even a big tabby cat prowling in the yard, probably looking for birds or a patch of sun, but Charlotte couldn’t get out of the car. What was she doing here? Why did she think this was a good idea? It had taken her only ten minutes to drive here, but she sat in front of the house in silence for half an hour, her heart knocking in her chest.

  Finally she made her way up the walk and pressed her finger against the doorbell.

  She could hear footsteps. The door opened and there was a woman, maybe in her fifties. She was buttoning the top of a green dress that looked one size too small, smoothing her hair, which was dyed a bright shade of yellow. She looked at Charlotte, her face welcoming until Charlotte said her name, and then she stiffened. “What do you mean coming here?” she said. “What do you want from me?”

  Charlotte swallowed. “No one will talk to me. Not the cops, not the detectives. The only people who want to talk are reporters, and I hang up on them.”

  Diana’s jaw softened. “You and me both,” she said. “I gave one interview and now they keep wanting more. They’re like sand flies.”

  “Please. I just want to talk. Maybe we can help each other make sense of this.”

  Diana studied her for a moment, then opened the door wider, peering at her. “You’re so young,” she said, and she let Charlotte in.

  She led Charlotte into the living room, its deep blue walls covered in photos, including a picture of a little boy holding a ball. The boy had William’s smile, his blue eyes. Charlotte had an urge to knock the picture from the wall, but instead she followed Diana toward a plaid couch and sat.

  “Do you want tea?” she said, and Charlotte shook her head. From here, she could see out the window, her car parked in the road.

  “Every time the phone rings, I think it’s going to be him,” Diana said. “When the mail comes, I’m sure it’s from him, too. He liked to send me postcards.”

  “Lucy wrote to us, too.” Once, she thought.

  Diana straightened in her chair. “I didn’t know anything about her,” she said. “When he lived here, William had lots of girlfriends. But grown women. Professionals. He’d bring them over to dinner and some of them seemed serious and I never knew why they fizzled apart. They just did and I didn’t think I should pry about it. All I knew was what William told me, which was that he was unhappy here in his job and then he got a great opportunity in Pennsylvania. He loved that new job. He loved Pennsylvania. He never mentioned your sister.” She picked up one of the cushions and hugged it. “Maybe none of us will ever know the true story,” Diana said.

  “He was afraid of the water,” Charlotte said.

  Diana frowned. “What? William?”

  “William was afraid of the water. I read it in my sister’s journal. She said William told her that his father threw him in the water when he was little, nearly drowned him, that someone else had to save his life. After that, he never went in the water. If he was so terrified, well, maybe he didn’t jump into that river.”

  “You think I don’t wish that were true?” Diana said. She got up and pulled out an album from one of the end tables and opened it up. She pointed to a page. A young boy was in the ocean beside his father, laughing. She pointed to another shot of William, soaking wet, slick as a seal, a beach towel wrapped around him. “I admit his father was nasty. He had a temper, but he was never abusive toward William. Never hit him. And William loved the water. We couldn’t keep him out of it. As soon as summer started, he’d beg us to go to the beach.” She shut the album, tracing one hand over the cover.

  Diana studied Charlotte for a moment. “Why did you come here? You lost your sister, but I lost my son. Even though we don’t know their story—and we never will know—we’re both going to have to find a way to live with that.” Diana headed for the front door.

  In the light, Charlotte saw the fine lines mapping Diana’s face, the gray hair poking out among the brassy strands of blond. Diana pulled open the door. “Please don’t come back here,” she said. “Not ever again.”

  When Charlotte stepped outside, the light was so bright she shielded her eyes with the flat of her palm. The trees seemed to be shimmering. Down the street, two girls were jumping rope, singing, Fire, fire, false alarm. Rosie fell in the fireman’s arms. She and Lucy used to sing that when they were little, playing on the patio in the back, Iris watching them from a lawn chair. Charlotte heard the door shut. She imagined Diana inside, taking out the album again, looking at the photos of her son, tracing his face. She got into the car and drove and tried to think about what she would do next.

  She reread the journal. She wouldn’t stop asking questions. She’d find the truth about her sister’s life—and her death.

  CHARLOTTE DROVE OVER to see Iris. She was surprised to see that Iris’s color was better, that she was eating a sandwich at her table. “Password is on,” Iris said. “We can pretend it’s educational.” She turned on the set. “Come and watch with me.” Charlotte couldn’t really concentrate. She kept getting up to bring things for Iris.

  “You don’t have to babysit me,” Iris said. “I need to get up, to exercise.”

  “I’m just trying to help you. I worry abou
t you.”

  Iris stood up. “It isn’t healthy, your being here all the time. You need to have a life that isn’t just me.” She took Charlotte’s hand. “Don’t you think I worry about you, too?”

  “Is it any better here for you?” Charlotte asked.

  Iris shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m getting used to it.”

  Liar, Charlotte thought. She could see how lonely Iris seemed, and sometimes it scared her, the way Iris would ask her what things of hers Charlotte might want, as if this were the last stop and Iris were preparing for the end of her life. She yearned to tell Iris about Diana, about what she had learned, but why make Iris more unhappy?

  “You can go on home, honey,” Iris said. “I’m getting really tired.” She lifted her arms, stretching them into her yawn.

  THE MORE CHARLOTTE came over, the more other women from the complex approached her. Charlotte always said hello and made small talk, but she was surprised just how much the other women knew about Iris. One woman could rattle off Iris’s medications and when she should take them and how those medications differed from the ones they were taking. Another stopped Charlotte to ask how Iris had liked the roast beef sandwich she had brought over. And when Charlotte was leaving, one woman in a floral pantsuit took her arm.