Pearl pushes the platter between them. “Okay, have some.” He feels like weeping. She guides a wad of nachos to her mouth. “Mom’s kind of crabby these days. She’s not gonna want to see you.” Her lips close around the food, forming a tiny mauve flower.
“What about you?”
Pearl frowns, chewing. “Whabbout me?”
“Do you want to see me?”
She swallows warily. “Depends.”
Jumping to his feet, he yanks his zipper down. “I want to see you,” he says. His rod unbends, prongs out. “Maybe you can tell.” His eyes are a beggar’s.
Leftover rain drips in the silence. Outside, Pook scratches at the door. There is a dizzy sense of transition in the atmosphere, something departing, and another something arriving.
Pearl clears her throat, her voice husky with confusion. “You must be desperate.” He wishes she could see his heart. “Bitch, don’t you know you’re beautiful?”
Rolling her eyes, she reaches for more food. “Yeah, right. I’m a sacred cow.” Through her mouthful: “Go fug yourself.”
Seth is stymied, his jeans halfway down his thighs and his member standing in a draft. Then he gets an inspiration. “I’ve got money.”
Dotting the grease from her lips with a paper towel, Pearl considers. “How much?”
“I’ve only got twenty on me. But I can get more.”
She cleans out the inner pockets of her cheeks with her tongue, not answering.
He presses on: “A lot more. A hundred dollars.”
“Is that what you think I’m worth?” Her look is plaintive; suddenly he feels her vulnerability. She’s a virgin, he realizes.
“Two hundred,” he says.
WHEN THE SKY goes inky and the rain begins, Marly switches on her low beams, turning her battered Cavalier onto Route 404. If she can’t get help with her problem from the church, she’ll just cheer herself up at O’Malley’s Mare. Russ will be behind the bar, Chuck and Oly playing pool, Gil Reynard watching baseball. Waiting for her.
Suddenly she swerves, narrowly missing some kid in a purple anorak walking beside the road. Marly can’t see anything through this downpour; she switches her wipers to high speed. That’s all she needs, another accident.
Checking her rearview mirror, she sees the girl receding down the road. Her headlights had only briefly illuminated the lower half of the girl’s face before Marly swerved, not enough to tell.
Was it the same girl? That would be too perfect.
The storm gushes and flares. Good: now people will stop bellyaching about the drought. The men at the bar will talk about the Red Sox line-up, grub prevention, foreign wars, dyke actresses, the price of tires. Never about love. It’s up to Marly Walczak to lay them down one by one, the males of Graynier, stroking their hearts to awaken vigorous love. That’s what she’s here for.
Running through the rain from her parked car, she swings through O’Malley’s door. The same grins greet her, the same voices shouting come-ons above the honky-tonk.
Suddenly she’s rocked by a repulsion she has never experienced. Here are the same drunk assholes; the same meaty hands all over her tits; the same beer tasting like carbonated armpit. All at once she sees herself nailed into her mattress by a procession of contemptuous men, her hands flung wide and bleeding from the fingertips. Waking countless mornings with the horrid crust of semen on her thighs. Used goods, marked down and degraded.
Negative thoughts—banish them! Things could be worse! She gropes, by habit, for things to be grateful for.
What, for her leaky trailer, demeaning job, slave wages? Her lumbering foul-mouthed sourpuss illegitimate daughter?
The repulsion will not be quelled; she feels like she’s drowning in it. In a heartbeat she’s back outside, panting for air.
The rain abruptly stops. In ten minutes it will have evaporated. There will be no relief from the drought.
AS PEARL AND SETH lock themselves in her bedroom, Pook wanders along the fence in the rain. Looking up suddenly, he searches the void with milky eyes, confused by an unfamiliar smell.
He hears a voice, a gentle command: Lie down. He obeys, rolling onto his side. A point of light grows in his vision, like a star, joined by others, pricking through the dark.
The dog pees with excitement, imagining his sight is returning. Instead, all the senses fade: the odors of weather, home, and intruder; the sensation of ribs pressing into the wet earth with each breath; the sound of that breath diminishing; the taste of minerals as his tongue lolls onto the dirt. The points of light cluster and revolve. Pook gradually relaxes; all is as it should be.
Good dog, says the voice.
Pook floats into the meadow of stars. Good dog.
This is where Jane finds him: a small still-warm shape stretched on the grass inside the white plastic fence. Stilling the bell carefully with one hand, she pushes the gate open and crouches beside the dog. Her purple anorak drips rain onto his body.
Lifting Pook, she carries him to the screen door and peers inside. Hearing no voices, she steps inside quietly, as she has learned to do when entering strangers’ houses.
She lays him on the kitchenette table next to a plate of half-eaten nachos, murmuring, “Poor little fellow.” Then she opens the refrigerator to find what she came for.
THE BELL ON the gate tinkles.
In the bedroom, Seth lifts his mouth from Pearl’s nipple. “What’s that?”
“Must be Mom’s home.”
He pulls out of her, feeling a sweet estrangement. He sits back on his heels; holding her thighs apart, he gazes, stunned, into her manifold mystery.
Pearl has never bagged a boy’s heart before; for the first time she knows the thrill of ownership. Sliding the window screen aside, she helps Seth slip out, watching him stumble off into the night.
A high, heartbroken wail echoes through the trailer.
Pearl quickly throws on a wrapper and hurries to the kitchen. Her mother stands bent over Pook lying across the table.
“My baby,” Marly whimpers. She can’t bear to touch him, already knowing his fat little tummy will have no spring; his pink ribbon of tongue is hard as wire. Rainwater has pooled around his body on the formica tabletop.
Muddy sneaker prints lead to and from the screen door.
Marly turns on Pearl, her voice thick with rage. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know, I was asleep.”
“Somebody killed him! Someone was here! Look!” Marly points to the counter beside the refrigerator. “They ate my yogurt! They drank my root beer! They killed my dog! Whoever did it, I’ll shoot the fucking sonofabitch!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The stabbing pain in Hoyt’s neck wakes him early. He stumbles into the bathroom to take some Tylenol and put on the foam collar he bought in the pharmacy. The day is already sweltering.
Padding naked to the kitchen, he helps himself to a breakfast of toast and gin.
Outside, a car door slams. Peering out the window, he sees Marly get out of her banged-up Cavalier and march up the path to the bungalow. What is the sorry bitch doing here? She looks strange. Hoyt is more used to seeing her in drugstore makeup, tight denim cat suit, and fuck-me-shoes—or naked. Today she’s wearing dingy sweatpants and thongs and looks thinner than ever, distracted, disheveled, her complexion grayish. Her usual moronic smile is gone.
He slips into some boxers and opens the door.
“Hi, Marly. Gettin’ any lately?”
She brushes past him into the house.
“Come in, why don’t you?” He closes the door, answering himself, “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”
She shifts from one foot to the other, eyes darting around the room. “Could you loan me a gun?”
“No.” It’s what he always says, no matter what Marly asks for.
“I know you got a bunch. You could spare one.” She spots his revolver, still on the coffee table after the intruder incident. “That one.”
“No. Go buy your own.”
“My credit card’s maxed. Hoyt, please. Somebody broke into my house a couple nights ago.”
That gets his interest. “Really? How did he get in?”
“Pearl left the door open. And it was a woman.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She ate my yogurt. What guy would do that?”
Hoyt frowns, scratching the stubble on his chin. “That’s odd. A few days ago, I left the door unlocked while I was out. Someone came in, had a bite in the kitchen, and left.”
“Then I didn’t imagine it.” She runs shaky fingers through her hair. “‘Cause I’ve been hallucinating stuff lately. Scary stuff. I think it’s from the accident we had. Something must’ve happened in my head. I can’t sleep anymore, I get these nightmares—” She eyes his cervical collar. “Guess you’re not having no picnic neither.”
Hoyt thinks of the lock of hair slithering out of the garbage can, coiling in his hand. Maybe Marly’s right, maybe their collision caused some sort of neurological damage to both of them—scrambled the visual cortex.
The agony in his neck is gathering again, ready to pierce the scrim of pills and booze. He is impatient to get rid of her. “You don’t need a gun. Just lock your door.”
“I need protection! She murdered my dog!”
“It’s probably the pissed-off wife of some guy you’re pleasuring. If she comes around again, invite her in and eat her pussy.”
Marly glares at him, then makes a sudden dive for the gun. Hoyt pushes her away.
“Motherfucker!”
“Not quite. I will concede that I’m a dickhead.”
She clenches her fists as if she’s going to haul off and punch him. “I used to think you were a good person underneath. I accept that you don’t give a rat’s ass about me. But how you can ignore Pearl, your own child—”
“If you were so sure she’s mine, you would’ve told her by now,” he interrupts. “She’s not, and you know it. And, as you rightly surmised, I don’t give a shit.” He heads to the bedroom. “See yourself out. I have to get dressed.”
But she pursues him, hissing, “I can file a paternity suit. I should’ve done it long ago. I could force you to give a DNA sample.”
Turning in the bedroom doorway, he reaches into his shorts and extracts a pubic hair. “Here. Knock yourself out.” He hands the hair to her and shuts the door in her face.
As he throws on a T-shirt and jeans, he hears her car drive away.
Her transformation disturbs him. Marly was one of the few remaining people he hasn’t completely alienated. Whenever he showed up at the trailer, in the days when his sap ran too fast for the liquor to quash, she allowed him in her bed, docilely enduring his insults. He never enjoyed exploiting her; he’d done so out of an inexplicable sense of assignment, as if they had a contract: he to hurt, her to receive hurt.
There’s no woman left who can stand him now. It’s not just that he’s drunk and nasty; he is also a loser, blowing every job he has ever undertaken, from attorney to real estate agent to house painter to exterminator, racing downhill with a deliberation for all to see.
Returning to the living room, he knows the gun won’t be on the table, and it isn’t. He wanted Marly to have it: he just didn’t want to appear to care. Give a woman an inch, and it morphs to a mile; and pretty soon you’re Mama’s little soldier, handing over your gun.
BRETT PAGES THROUGH the musty record books in the Graynier courthouse’s registry of deeds. Jane pulls her chair alongside his, tilting her head close so she can read with him. She smells of lavender and, faintly, of onions: lavender from the French soap he bought her at the mall, onions from the Western omelet he made her for breakfast.
The pretty ribboned straw hat he gave her, to protect her fair skin from the sun, rests by her elbow on the reading table. He aches to give her more. Maybe a book of romantic poetry. She could tilt her head against his, as she’s doing now—even lay her head in his lap while he reads Byron or somebody.
She likes his presents, but they don’t bind her to Brett as he would like. Instead she spends more and more time away from the house. Out on her walks, she searches every day for an imaginary wall, as he waits, his frustration and anger building as the hours pass. Last night she returned well after dark, wet from the rain. Seeing her weary and dejected, he abruptly filled with tenderness, wanting to smoothe her tangled hair and kiss the tiny veins at her temples. He keeps holding back, both the anger and the caresses. There is a gentility about Jane; he feels there’s some kind of etiquette he must obey.
The clerk sets down more volumes, indexes of land transactions tracing ownership of 53 Sycamore Street backwards from the present.
1977: grantee Petrelli bought the house and .4 acre lot from grantor O’Connell. 1961: Grantee O’Connell bought from grantor Nielson, who owned the house for more than half a century after purchasing it from Pease in 1903.
Brett photocopies each record of transfer.
“We have nothing earlier than 1826, when the town was incorporated.” The clerk arrives with the final pile of heavy tomes, each dustier and dingier than the last. Brett’s sinuses fill in protest.
Pease purchased from Sperry, 1877. Sperry from Upham, 1866. Here Brett succumbs to a volley of sneezes, ejecting a flood of mucous into a tissue proffered by the clerk. Upham bought from Jarley, who bought the house and lot in 1854 from the Estate of Benjamin Pettigrew. Pettigrew bought the empty lot in 1829 from the P. Graynier Holding Corporation.
“Pettigrew bought the lot without a house,” Brett explains to Jane. “That means he built the house sometime after 1829. His estate sold the lot with the house in 1854, which meant he still owned it when he died.”
“Benjamin Pettigrew,” Jane writes careful notes in her elegant, looping script. “Then it was he who bought the seraphine!”
“Not necessarily. Anyone could’ve bought it at any time, like, at an antiques store.” He’s anxious to leave; his throat is constricting and his chest hurts.
Disagreeing, she shakes her head stubbornly. “You said harmoniums were more in fashion by mid-century.” Then she mused, “I wonder if Benjamin Pettigrew lived alone, or if he had family.”
The clerk advises them to check the census records at the Historical Society. “The census lists the occupants of every house by name. But you’ll have to deal with Elsa Graynier. She’s shy a few screws.”
THE LAST LIVING member of the Graynier family, Elsa Lucille Grayner is something of a local legend. Most people in town consider her an eccentric nut, though generous and com munity-minded. She lives in a white-shingled 1873 Queen Anne house on Graynier Avenue, in a set of rooms above the Graynier Historical Society, which she established and has curated since the death of her beloved father, J. P. Graynier, twelve years before. The archive contains every last Graynier document and artifact—most of them untouched by anyone but Elsa, though sometimes a teacher drags in a gang of recalcitrant schoolchildren.
Because the history of Graynier is indistinguishable from the history of Elsa’s ancestors, she guards the museum with primal intensity, as if fending off extinction. Every day she wanders the museum talking to her father, whom she sometimes glimpses winding the Ormulu clock in the corner. Evenings she listens to Tristan and Isolde. Never married, childless, she will live out her family’s doom to its end: the twilight of the Grayniers.
Entering the foyer, Brett and Jane step on a mat that sets off a ding-dong inside the museum. Frosted glass sconces, and a ceiling fixture with a hobnail glass bowl, flood the hallway with light.
Jane points out the museum door’s etched daisy panel. “Look. It’s the same glass as our front door.” Since she got up this morning, she has been jumping out of her skin, rushing Brett out of the house. He glances at her determined profile, her shoulders tensed as if her soul’s salvation hangs on this errand.
A shadow moves behind the glass, and then a tiny, plump woman in her seventies throws the door open. Perspiration tinted with beige makeup sta
ins the neck of her blouse.
“Hello! Come in! Welcome!” She motions them inside eagerly.
Glass fixtures blaze from every wall of the torrid, airless room. Five immense glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling; reading lamps with frosted glass shades line the tables.
Glass-front cabinets are filled with goblets, plates, decanters, and bottles, clear or rendered in jewel tones of ruby, turquoise, canary, magenta, emerald. Artificial light bounces off every surface, lending an infernal glare to the massive oil portraits that hang between the lanterns and sconces.
“All made at the Graynier Glass factory,” the woman chirps, sweating like a stevedore. “I’m Elsa Graynier. Would you like a tour?” She gestures toward a sign over a doorway: “THE HISTORY OF GRAYNIER GLASS.”
“Thanks, maybe next time,” says Brett.
“I’ll take that as a promise!” Elsa wags a finger at him.
“Could you point us to the census records?”
“Certainly. May I ask for what purpose?”
“We’re interested in the history of a specific house. We’d like to find out all the people who lived there from the time it was built.”
Elsa lowers her voice confidentially. “Have you got a ghost?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’m relieved! I thought you might be researching one of those awful haunted house guides.” Elsa leads Brett to a shelf of oversize volumes bound in red cloth. “Now, then! Where is the house and when was it built?”
He shows her the photocopied page from the Grantor’s Index. As she studies it, he looks around for Jane.
She’s standing beneath a 19th century oil painting, seemingly riveted by the portrait of a middle-aged couple in formal dress.
“It says Benjamin Pettigrew purchased the lot from Graynier Holding.” Elsa looks up from the page. “One would expect that. The company owned all the property when the factory was constructed. Then it rented or sold lots to the employees. Pettigrew was probably one of them. I’ll check the factory payroll records. You see if you can find Pettigrew in the 1850 county census.” She passes Brett one of the red volumes. Its pages are suffused in dust; his nose starts flowing again.
Jane Was Here Page 8
