I watch only a second before swimming as hard as I can to shore, towing the raft. Max and Hershel still have not seen what I have seen. Maya is standing on the shore looking stunned.
I get the boys to shore and shout for Ginny, who has just woken and turns reluctantly to view me dripping in the shallows and then leaps to her feet.
I scan the ocean but there is nothing. “We have to get the sheriff,” I yell to her, explaining and panting as she runs to me.
I stay with the children and Ginny goes to town.
After a bit the sheriff’s car appears with Ginny and my mother, who they picked up at Mrs. Parks’s. My mother puts her arms around me immediately. I am shaking and crying and I tell them what I saw. Ginny has already told the sheriff, who has called out the coast guard. He says there is nothing else to be done and for us to go home, he will let us know when he hears something.
We all go back to our house and sit on the steps and my mother keeps asking me if I am sure I saw a man in a boat. If I am sure it was the clothes hanger man. I tell her how he cried “Max” right before the boat went under and my mother drops her face into her hands and says nothing.
There are helicopters and boats but later the sheriff comes over and tells us they have found no traces of anything. Not a boat or a man or a whale. Was I sure I saw those things? Maya saw the whale but she doesn’t remember the boat. “How could you not see the boat?” I ask her over and over. The sheriff repeats, a little more skeptically, that they found nothing. But the sea is so large it can swallow anything: your stories, your dreams, your past, your father.
Ginny is shivering and we walk her home. My mother tells Ginny’s mother what has happened and Ginny’s mother rolls her eyes. She definitely doesn’t believe us. She sees the pile of old clothes in the front hall and her lips become very tight but she just tells Ginny to quickly run a bath, she’s getting sand on the carpet.
We go home and make dinner and go to bed, same as always. We say nothing to Max or Hershel, who are very pleased with themselves and their big adventure. Maya is not bothered by any of it. She takes her feathers and beads to bed.
In the middle of the night I wake up to hear a strange noise. At first it is nose blowing as if someone has a terrible cold, and then I realize it is the sound of my mother crying. It goes on and on and I hear my mother’s feet pacing, as if she is scurrying down a trail into the night, and I wonder who my mother is looking for there, H.K. or Ned or the clothes hanger man.
There is a long time now as summer drifts on. No one has said anything else about the clothes hanger man. My mother is afraid, I think, to believe I was right and she will not simply believe I was wrong, but she can believe I may have been mistaken. The sheriff cannot trace him because he was a vagrant. If that was his car we saw, there doesn’t seem to be a registration in his name. I don’t think the sheriff believes me anyhow, he is just doing his job. I wonder what kind of life the clothes hanger man has had that he can disappear so easily from the earth. There is something about the freedom of this that I like as well. As if he lived his life like a dandelion seed floating in the wind. That for all the fuss and funerals, the truth is we all slip in and out exactly this way.
If he was my father, I alone saw him die. If he was Maya’s or Hershel’s or Max’s, I witnessed this for them, but they will probably never believe me either. I cannot do anything about this and I did not know him well enough to mourn.
I bring Willie Mae to Nellie for faith healing even though I am doubtful about the outcome. Surely, though, if Nellie can heal, this will solve everything. But knowing exactly what Nellie does, it seems a little wrong to give her a baby to practice on. Suppose she cannot, after all, do what she says? Suppose Dr. Callahan was right and there never was a thrombosis?
I ask Nellie if she is sure she can heal people and she says I have to have faith and I think I do, but not necessarily in Nellie. Nellie sees me hestitating and grabs the baby carrier. Willie Mae’s purple bruise and bump have long since disappeared but Nellie moves her hands around over him. After a bit she says she can feel the part of the brain that was damaged and she has healed it.
Maybe she has and maybe she hasn’t. We have no proof. I want to tell Mrs. Gourd that there will be no long-term effects of the injury, that Nellie averted any problems in this area. Maybe I just want so desperately to find proof of something that I will believe anything at all.
Nellie has been twice to the lake to find the transporting poodle without luck. Also, not as many people have come to her for miraculous healing as she thought would. I tell her not to worry, that word will spread and they will come. I am trying to be supportive. She talks all the time now about who is evolved and who is not and where she thinks they are in terms of some kind of hierarchy of goodness. It makes me nervous. It seems to me that she doesn’t think it takes much to slip up.
Church seems sad and empty and hatless. Mrs. Nasters is on a slow decline again and back in the hospital. I ask Nellie about this and she says healing doesn’t come with a warranty. Sometimes it only lasts so long.
Ginny says she has hidden the dresses from her mother. Her mother thinks they are filthy things and wanted Ginny to throw them away so Ginny told her she had and hid them under her bed. Her mother never vacuums there, she says; they are safe.
We do not hear from Ned. H.K. comes over now and then. I think my mother may be thinking romantically of him after all. They take walks. She is not happy around him as she was around Ned. There is no party atmosphere. But Ned is gone.
Most importantly, my mother never finds out what I have done. Mrs. Gourd has kept her word as we have kept ours and no one knows how I have almost ruined a life. So for now the house is still ours. But there is no joy. The house is no longer a sanctuary. It may not always be a member of our family. It may be taken from us as no family member could be, so what is it, then? Just a house. I cannot afford to love it anymore.
Summer is sliding to an end. There are only a few weeks left. The blackberries are really ripening now, the bushes heavy with them. It is hard to tell with blackberries which are truly ripe. They can appear dark and plump but when you pop one in your mouth, you feel the little buds’ resistance and a sourness shocks your tongue. Another equally dark berry can instead burst into a sweet, mysterious, complicated flavor. It is better to wait until you are sure they are all ripe or past ripeness but we cannot wait. We pick them. My mother makes a pie and some jam but there is not enough for a lot of jam yet. It is the last shelf of summer to fill. The strawberry, raspberry and blueberry shelves are replete. Their time is done.
I begin to worry how I will babysit when school starts and what will happen if I cannot. Will Mrs. Gourd go to my mother after all? Will all this loss of summer’s freedom be for nothing? I wake up in the middle of the night now and watch the moon and twist in my bed with worry. Maya breathes deeply, warmly, in the bed on the opposite wall. In her innocence she glides into dreams. She has not asked for adventures. She has not had the chance to ruin her life. Or ours. I do not know if I envy her her state. It would be good to be without this knowledge of what I have done. But to give up the adventures for it? To not have driven into the night with Mrs. Parks and a heart buzzing with excitement?
On Saturday I meet Ginny on the steps of Russel’s drugstore. Her grandmother has sent her a hundred dollars as she does from time to time. Ginny is supposed to put it in the bank for her college education but sometimes she spends part of it. We buy a bottle of bubbles, two bottles of pop and some string licorice. We sit on the steps and blow bubbles until a man tells us to move along, we are blocking his passage, and then we go to the grocery store’s steps. They are much wider. People can easily go around us. We watch people walk by and notice a dog that is tied to a mailbox. I would like to have a dog, I say to Ginny. She says she likes dogs but her mother will never allow it. Too messy.
I tell Ginny everything I have thought about in the night. She is silent and blows bubbles.
“If your mot
her marries H.K. then she doesn’t have to worry about losing the house. If Mrs. Gourd sues, H.K. can pay her off,” says Ginny finally.
“My mother cannot marry H.K.,” I say. “It would be too terrible. He would never live at the beach house.”
“Why not? Everyone wants a house on the beach if they can afford it.”
“I don’t think he likes sand and besides, what about Caroline?”
“He should ditch Caroline. Or better yet, he should put her in a proper mental institution. Everyone knows she’s completely crazy. She has been making H.K.’s life a trial for years. I’m sure if your mother were to marry H.K., the first thing they would do is put Caroline in a mental institution.”
“My mother would never tell H.K. to do that.”
“Well, you should. You should sit him down and tell him that if he wants a chance with your mother he will have to get rid of Caroline first.”
“I couldn’t,” I say. I don’t want to even entertain the idea that things have gone that far, let alone encourage them.
“Well, I could and I think I just might,” says Ginny in her reckless way, and then a lemon falls on her head.
We look up and gasp. Towering silently behind us, two paper bags loaded with groceries in her arms, is crazy Caroline. We do not know how long she has been standing there. Long enough, apparently. Her breath is coming in short, sharp bursts, like a bull’s. Her eyes are huge and full of hatred. She seems hardly aware of the groceries, she is so upset, and things spill from the bags and down the steps.
Ginny doesn’t even think, she gets up, drops and spills the bubbles all over the pavement and races for the beach. I follow. We have left the drinks and licorice behind. We run until our legs give out and we fall in the sand. When we turn we are relieved to see that Caroline has not pursued us.
“Oh my God,” says Ginny, panting. “Did you see her face? Oh my God.”
We are so flustered we do not even go back for the drinks and licorice or to clean up the bubbles. We walk rapidly to my house and close both doors because Caroline knows where I live. Then we sit and watch my mother making jam. Stirring berries. Singing to herself. She wants to know why we closed the outside door. It hasn’t been closed all summer. We say we don’t know.
After that we go with her to the marsh, where we spot birds and breathe in the mucky smell and feel our feet sink deeply into the welcoming, warm mud.
At dinnertime Ginny goes home.
The next morning we are getting out of church when Mrs. Cavenaugh comes racing up to us on the church steps.
“Where is she?” she says to me. She is panting even though she has driven over.
“Who?” I ask.
“Ginny. Where is she? Did she go to church with you?”
“No,” I say.
My mother frowns and pulls Mrs. Cavenaugh and me away from everyone else. Maya is hanging on her hand. “What has happened?” my mother asks Mrs. Cavenaugh. “Can’t you find Ginny?”
“No, I can’t,” says Mrs. Cavenaugh. “She never came out of her room this morning. I thought she was tired. I thought she was sleeping so I didn’t even look in on her. Then when she wasn’t up by eleven I got worried so I poked my head in the door and her bed was made and she wasn’t there. I hadn’t even heard her come downstairs and I was up by eight. What would she be doing leaving the house so early in the morning if she wasn’t going to see you? I was SURE she was with you.”
“We haven’t seen her at all,” says my mother.
“I suppose you think I’m making a big fuss over nothing,” says Mrs. Cavenaugh in fury.
“Oh no,” says my mother. “If I woke up and Jane was missing, I would be beside myself with worry. I would be frantic.”
“I must tell Mr. Cavenaugh you don’t know where Ginny is. We must, we must call the police!” says Mrs. Cavenaugh. “Where else could she be? She’s a completely reliable, sensible child. She wouldn’t just run off. She may have been kidnapped! We must call the sheriff immediately!”
My mother’s eyes grow big at this. Kidnapping has never occurred to either of us. My mother turns to me solemnly.
“Did Ginny say anything to you yesterday? Anything about going anyplace? Was she upset about anything?” she asks me. “Were there any strange skulking characters hanging out around the two of you when you were out together? THINK, JANE!”
When she says “strange skulking characters” the first thought that pops into my mind is the cigarette man. That’s how crazy and upset I am, because that turned out to be Ned, of course. We can eliminate him. And he’s the only strange person I have seen in town. What am I saying? I was thinking of strange people we don’t know but there is someone else. Someone strange we do know. I look toward the church and goose bumps rise on my skin.
“Where was H.K. today?” I say. “Where was Caroline?”
“What does she mean?” Mrs. Cavenaugh asks my mother, gripping her forearm so hard she leaves nail marks.
“The poet H. K. Thomson has been missing church lately but he wouldn’t kidnap anyone,” says my mother.
“Not H.K.,” I shout, but no one says to calm down, “Caroline!” And I relate what happened on the steps of the grocery store, leaving out the part about H.K. and my mother getting married and only telling about how Ginny wanted to go to H.K. and suggest he put Caroline away. “And Caroline wasn’t in church either!”
“Let’s not leap to conclusions,” says my mother. “But we must certainly get the sheriff and go to Caroline’s house to be sure.”
Mrs. Cavenaugh is already on her feet and running to her car.
“Don’t go to the house alone. Wait for the sheriff!” my mother calls, but it is useless, Mrs. Cavenaugh is already pointed in that direction. My mother lets go of Maya’s hand and starts running for the sheriff’s office, calling over her shoulder, “Stay with Maya and Max and Hershel, Jane!”
I go to the side of the church, where Hershel and Max are drawing with twigs in the sand, and I bring them over to Nellie, who is still blessing people.
“I can’t deliver Bibles, Nellie,” I begin, but she interrupts.
“I’m busy here. Go wait by the Sunday-school room. I have a special route for us picked out.”
“I can’t. This is an emergency. Ginny is missing. She may have been kidnapped!”
Everyone is staring at me now. Maya begins to cry. Hershel puts a thumb in his mouth. “Please just watch Maya and Hershel and Max for me. Please take them home with you. You can park them in front of the television. They won’t be any trouble. I’ll come for them later.”
“Nonsense, child. There’s nothing you can do about that girl. Come with me and let the grown-ups handle it.”
“Please watch Maya and Hershel and Max,” I say. “I’ll be back in an hour!”
I am so sure that Nellie is just thinking too slowly for the moment and will understand any second, that I simply leave Maya and Max and Hershel with her and run after my mother to the sheriff’s office.
When I get there my mother is climbing into his car.
“Quick!” she calls to me, and I hop in the back. “Who is watching the children?”
“Nellie,” I say, panting, and she nods.
As we drive over to Caroline and H.K.’s house, the sheriff makes me tell him the whole story about what happened on the steps of the grocery store. But again I leave out the part where Ginny and I talked about my mother and H.K. getting married and moving to the beach house without Caroline so that he says finally, “It seems kind of thin to me. Why would Caroline think H.K. would listen to a couple of girls?”
“I don’t know. It’s just what happened,” I say, and mention her crazy, angry eyes.
“Aren’t you the same girls who claim you saw a man in a boat disappear just a couple of weeks ago?”
“That was me, not Ginny,” I say in a low voice.
“And no body was ever found. And no boat remnants and no whale seen either. You girls aren’t trying to scare up a little summer exci
tement for yourselves, are you? I’m not going to find Ginny hiding somewhere while we get the whole town stirred up, am I? Or off with some boy?”
My mother, who is riding in the front seat next to the sheriff, turns around and gives me a sympathetic look.
I burst into tears.
“Well, it’s probably nothing,” says the sheriff in a nicer tone. “Girls apt to go off and do silly things at your age, no offense, Jane. And as for H.K. and Caroline not coming to church, you-all don’t have a phone down there on the beach so there’s no way for them to let you know if they changed their plans. Simplest explanation is usually the right one. Ockham’s razor.”
I am not consoled by this because to me the simplest explanation is that Caroline has killed everyone with an axe.
When we get to Caroline’s house, Ginny’s mom is pounding on the door and shrieking for Caroline, H.K. and Ginny like a madwoman. But no one is answering. The sheriff looks into the open garage. H.K.’s car is gone.
“Looks like they went somewhere,” he says.
Then we hear a crash inside the house.
“Someone’s in there!” shouts Mrs. Cavenaugh. “GINNY! GINNY! I’m going in!” She puts a rock through the living room window.
“Whoa! Whoa! For God’s sake, try the door first, Katrina!” says the sheriff, grabbing Mrs. Cavenaugh’s arm and pulling her back away from the house. “I guess we’ve got exigent circumstances. Now you let me. Let’s go see if the back door is open.”
We run around the back and sure enough the door opens when he turns the handle.
He calls, “Caroline!” and when no one answers, he frowns and tells us to stay outside, but Mrs. Cavenaugh ignores him. We wait, and then hear Mrs. Cavenaugh scream. My mother tells me to stay where I am and runs into the house.
My One Hundred Adventures Page 13
