“They were at the high school prom, Carol was in a blue satin dress; it fit her like a glove—she had a beautiful body. Nothing like mine.. . .” Moira looked down at her own pear-shaped torso, a little extra flesh around the belly; she waved away Ruth’s murmured protest. “She was so excited, he’d sent a corsage—a gardenia, it was like back in the fifties. Carol was on the prom committee. It was her idea to have a fifties ball, she was an old-fashioned kind of girl. Believed in people, their inherent goodness. He was late, but she understood. He had a job, earning money to go to college, he told her. He was an hour late, I felt sorry for Carol, all dressed up; the scent of gardenia filled the house. Then he arrived and it was like the world opened up, she was full of smiles, practically afloat. He’d rented a tux; he was a handsome fellow. Wore his hair a little too long for me, but Carol liked it. I thought I smelled more than gardenias as they left, I thought I smelled pot or alcohol on his breath, though he took care to stand away from me. Carol was so happy, so excited, I couldn’t complain. What could I say: Let me smell your breath, young man?”
“Of course not,” Ruth murmured, and sipped her coffee.
“So they left in his car. It was an old car—I’ve nothing against old cars, the young can’t afford anything better, but it sounded like a tank, needing a muffler, perhaps. What could I do? The high school wasn’t far, only a few miles. They got to the dance all right. She was made queen! We have the pictures. Here, I’ll show you.”
Moira pulled a framed photo from a buffet. The girl was lovely: lustrous dark hair framing a heart-shaped face, large luminous hazel eyes. Moira was right: Compassion shone from her face. What would she have made of all this mischief in the orchard?
“I still have the green gown she’d made for the ball, folded away. She never wore it! At the last minute she spilled grape juice on it, couldn’t get out the stain; changed into the blue satin she’d worn the year before.” She jumped up. “Look, Ruth, Emily is the same height. Do you think perhaps she’d like it? I had it dry-cleaned and the stain came out. It does no good in the drawer. We can’t live in the past. Things should have a use. ...”
Before Ruth could object, Moira was dragging out the dress, smoothing it in her hands, thrusting it at Ruth. Branbury High didn’t have a ball like this, Ruth doubted Emily would ever wear it. But what could she say? She couldn’t refuse it. She had a thought. “Why don’t you give it to Emily yourself? I’m sure she’d be so pleased.”
“I don’t think I could explain. No, you give it to her. Please?” So Ruth took it. It felt fragile in her hands, as though it might disintegrate if anyone wore it.
But the story wasn’t finished.
“They left the school at midnight. There were designated drivers, of course, but the boy seemed all right, according to Carol’s best friend, Jen. He must have been drinking afterward because it didn’t happen—the accident—until two in the morning. We were frantic by then. Stan was ready to call the police, but I realized the dance went on till one; they’d have gone to someone’s house. It was such a big night! Graduation coming up and all.... And then, it must have been two-thirty, we heard a car, a knocking at the door. Stan went down in his nightshirt, I was at the top of the stairs. I remembered how dry my throat was, I couldn’t swallow.”
Moira dropped her head in her hands and Ruth said, “Don’t, don’t, Moira.”
But Moira had to finish the story. “It was the police. There’d been an accident, the car had missed the turn onto a bridge, hit a tree, spun off down the bank, into the river. The boy got out a window. He couldn’t get Carol out, he said, she was wedged in from the impact with the tree. He was crying, the police said—but what good did that do Carol? The ambulance came. But Carol was gone. She’d . .. drowned.”
Ruth thought of Vic, in that stolen car two years before— those fellows had been drinking. For a moment Carol was her loss, too. She pulled her chair closer to Moira’s, put a hand on her friend’s arm. Moira blew her nose, said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get into all this! So self-indulgent of me. I don’t know what launched me into it....” She took a bite of an apple, tried to smile through its white flesh.
Ruth wanted to put an arm around her, but Moira seemed, somehow, separate, sitting there with her half-eaten Macoun apple.
It was almost a relief to see Opal coming down the stairs in jeans and T-shirt—had she been listening? Ruth stood up, called to the girl. “Have you got a minute, Opal? I’m helping out your aunt here, need your help. Could we talk? Out on the porch, maybe?” She still had the green ball gown in her hands; she laid it carefully on the table.
The girl glanced at the gown, pursed her lips—perhaps she would have wanted the dress for herself, although she was shorter, thinner than Emily—it would be a poor fit. “I don’t know anything. Anything about anything. My father is dying, did you know that? They won’t tell me, my mother won’t tell me. But I know. He’s dying, and I’m up here picking apples. They don’t want me down there. Mama wants Daddy to herself. She doesn’t care about me. Nobody cares about me!” Throwing back her head, she ran to the door and slammed it hard.
Moira looked distraught. “It’s not true about the parents. Her mother calls every other night. Annie May may be a kook, but she loves her child, I’m sure of that. There’s something else that’s bothering Opal. I don’t know what it is. I’ve tried to find out, but she won’t talk. To me, anyhow.”
“Keep trying,” Ruth said, and prepared to leave. “I have to get back to my spooked cows. When Emily comes off work this afternoon, tell her to come right home. I need her.” Moira’s story had made her paranoid. She suddenly wanted to see Emily, touch her, warn her. About what? Men?
“The dress! You forgot the dress,” Moira called out, and Ruth went back for it; then out to the pickup. She saw Opal coming out of the barn with an apple pail. She was small, but sinewy, she could have knifed those cows, couldn’t she?
Ruth shook her head to dismiss the thought.
Chapter Forty-four
It was easier, Colm discovered, to interview the praying women in pairs. One woman would goad the other, sometimes to the point of wasted time, sometimes to an interesting discovery. For example, this morning, Saturday, he’d refereed a talking contest between one Evelyn Petcock and one Thelma Boggs, who had first tried to convert him to the Messengers, then, seeing it hopeless, had accused the other of being disloyal, sympathetic to Samuels.
“That Aaron Samuels,” Thelma said, “is a pervert, a scourge on society.”
“That’s what I said, Thelma.”
“Oh no, you didn’t, Evelyn, you said you thought the boy seduced him. You said that, Evelyn.”
“I did not! I said it was probably his mother’s fault, the way he was brought up. And that teacher made it worse.”
“Those teachers,” Thelma argued, “going home at three o’clock, nothing to do till eight the next morning. And the outrageous salaries they get! Paid by us, the taxpayers. It’s not right.”
“And then they go and seduce young boys,” said Evelyn, as if to prove her loyalty to the Messengers.
Colm, who had been a teacher for two years and worked at it day and night before he discovered it wasn’t his calling, ignored the comments. “Why did you go to pray on his porch?” he’d asked Evelyn.
“Oh, we had to, didn’t we?” She looked at Thelma, who was glaring into her lap, still upset by the “outrageous” salaries. “I mean, our pastor said we had to. And Cassandra, poor thing—she backed him up. Of course, they didn’t always get along.”
“How so?” Colm asked.
“We shouldn’t talk about the dead,” said Thelma, looking fiercely at Evelyn, and Evelyn said, “Well, anyway, we went. We prayed. And that very night Aaron Samuels went and shot himself.” She shuddered, hugged her chest; then suddenly remembered a doctor’s appointment she was late for, and the interview ended.
But Colm determined to pursue the question with the next group—a threesome this time. He did t
he paperwork on a house he’d just sold to a young couple from Poughkeepsie, New York, who wanted to get “back to nature,” had a quick shot of Guckenheimer and cider, then drove to the home of Gertrude Bliss, where he found the three women drinking herb tea.
Gertrude’s home was childproof, animalproof, and guestproof: The two upholstered chairs and sofa were covered with plastic, the shelves and fireplace mantel practically bare except for a dozen photographs, all of the same glum-looking adolescent girl. He saw no evidence of children or pets; Gertrude herself was probably in her late fifties. Something stuck to his cheek as he entered; his hand discovered a hanging fly catcher, fall of dead flies. He tried to look blasé. Gertrude offered him a seat on a plastic-lined rocking chair; it made a wheezing sound as he sat. The other two women—Gertrude’s sister Minerva Bliss, and Alma Herringbone—wheezed down together on the sofa and regarded him suspiciously. Of the three, only Minerva appeared to be under fifty—but barely.
Alma was the spokesperson, it seemed, and an interrogator. Before Colm could open his mouth, she was leaning forward, staring him down, hurling questions at him. Why was he here? What had they done wrong? Was he afraid of prayer? “Are you aware,” she said sternly, “of the power of prayer? How many folks prayer has cured of life-threatening diseases? Terminal cancer, oh yes. My own uncle, in the hospital with prostate cancer, a tumor as big as a—a—” Her hands made swooping circles in the air.
“A pomegranate,” Minerva offered, and Alma said, “Bigger. Bigger than a pomegranate. And every day we prayed, we had groups praying across the country. And he’s still alive today!” she finished triumphantly.
“How long ago was that?” Colm asked, and she replied, “A year, a whole year. A whole long, long year.”
Colm asked if he’d had radiation therapy, and she said, “Well, I don’t know. But it wasn’t what cured him. It was God. God, through us. God cured him.” The other women nodded, marveled at the wonder of it.
“Was your minister a part of this prayer?” he asked, seeking a lead-in to Turnbull.
Alma looked at him as though he were a dullard. “He’s our spiritual leader,” she said. “What would you think?”
“He led you in prayer.” Colm recalled the phrase from some long-ago Sunday school class.
“He did.”
“Did Cassandra Wickham pray under his, um, leadership? I understand they had a falling-out.”
There was a silence. He heard the women breathe. Gertrude’s was a rasping, asthmatic sound, as though she might be in need of a prayer herself.
Finally Minerva said, “Cassandra was different.” Alma gave a slight nod.
“She wanted to be in charge, that’s what it was,” Alma said.
“It wasn’t that,” Gertrude rasped. “It was personal. Something in their past. I heard them arguing once. They came here from the same town, you know.”
“What town was that?” Colm asked. His back was itching, right in the center. He wiggled against the plastic rocker and a spoke snapped loose, stuck into his back. Gertrude glared at him.
Minerva started to answer and was shushed. “You’ll have to ask him,” said Alma. “We can’t speak for him. But I can tell you he’s a good person, a holy person, oh yes. I don’t blame him for criticizing Cassandra. She had a—a sharp way about her, she could be pushy. We didn’t all hold with her going after the school board like that. We believed in prayer to get our way.”
“But Christ—but our minister wanted her to, he sent around petitions when she was running for the board,” Minerva said, waving away a cluster fly.
“Are any of you familiar with the Earthrowl apple orchard?” he questioned. “Was there anything Cassandra might have had against it? Or your minister?”
“We prayed there, didn’t we?” said Minerva, sucking on the end of a little finger. She closely examined a seeming imperfection in the petal-pink nail.
“I used to pick apples there,” Alma said. “Before it sold to those new people. Now they don’t let us go in and pick. They just use those black men. I haven’t been there in three years.”
“Except to pray,” Colm said with a smile.
The women nodded. They didn’t get his irony. The conversation switched to Saint Dorothea then, and he excused himself, making a wide path around the fly sticker. He didn’t want to get into theology. But there was obviously something amiss between the reverend and Cassandra. He’d have to dig into that. He’d have to talk to Turnbull. First, of course, he’d have to do his homework. He’d see what Roy Fallon had dug up. He might even try the Internet, though he wasn’t good at it, he kept running into dead ends, clicking on banner ads. But he’d persevere, for Ruth’s sake.
Gertrude followed him to the door. “The millennium,” she hissed as he groped for his coat. “It’s here. It’s on our doorstep. You have to keep praying.”
“Why, what will happen?” he asked politely.
She gave him a pitying look. “You’ll see,” she said. “Oh, believe me, oh, you’ll see.”
Colm coughed and hurried out.
Chapter Forty-five
Emily was searching through her bureau drawers for something to wear to the Valley Fair. With schoolwork and apple picking, she had to think ahead. She wanted to think ahead. It was as though there were nothing beyond that weekend: two long magical days with Adam Golding.
The pink mohair sweater had a spot on it: a spray of milk or manure or something. Oh, that miserable barn! Well, the blue cardigan would do, and the pale pink shirt. The jeans needed washing, they smelled of barn. She fingered a brooch, a gold pin she’d found in the pasture—someone had dropped it there; she’d asked Wilder’s mother, who rented out land, but it wasn’t hers. Sometimes, of course, local kids walked through—her mother didn’t mind, just so they didn’t spook the cows. So Emily had kept it. But it was too fancy for the blue cardigan. What if they went out dancing—to a dance club? What then? Except for that green ball gown from the Earthrowls that was lovely but wholly inappropriate, she had only one dress, and it was too tight; she’d grown bustier in the past year. She yanked it off the hanger, held it up to her in front of the mirror. It wasn’t even the right color! It was a pale yellow print; with her brown hair she needed something with warmth. She looked best in red. She needed a red dress: a swingy, sexy red dress that would make Adam feast his eyes on her. Where would she get the money for a dress like that? Where would she even find such a dress in Branbury, where the one store that sold women’s clothing had just failed and folded? Anyway, there were no dance clubs in Branbury, Vermont.
She sank back onto the bed, the print dress crumpled in her arms. She was a small-town farm girl, she had to face it. You couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear—she’d heard her mother say that over and over, speaking of her father. Her mother, so sure her father would fail down in the city, unable to keep up with that actress. But it had been over three years now and her father was still with that woman. Still in the city—well, pretty much, although he was back in Branbury for the time being, some business thing. She stretched her arms up over her head, wiggled her fingers. Her father had made it. If he could, she could. Feeling restless, she sprang up, stared fiercely at her image in the mirror. Oh God, she had a zit on the side of her nose! But she could be called pretty, and she had a decent figure: robust, but not too robust. She could do it. She could do anything she wanted. “You can, Emily,” she told herself. “You can do anything you want.”
“I’ve always told you that,” said her mother, appearing embarrassingly, in the doorway. “So what is it you want to do?”
Emily spun about, her neck flushed a deep pink. Why had she left her door open? “Nothing,” she sputtered. “I was just thinking about... a test I have in chemistry. You know I’m not very good in chemistry. I want to pass it.”
“Of course you will.” Her mother sat down on the bed, looked at the crumpled print dress, the pink and blue sweaters. “Trying on your gorgeous wardrobe?”
“
What gorgeous wardrobe?” Emily leaned against the bureau. “I was just thinking—I need some new clothes.”
“Well, you’re a working girl. Buy something with your orchard money.”
“Mother, I need that just to live. To pay for books, snacks, movies. It isn’t that much anyway.”
“Go see your father, then. He’s back at the inn. If he has money for a fancy room, he can give you money for clothes.”
Emily didn’t answer. Her mother didn’t leave. “Mom, I have to get over to the orchard. I start picking at nine. I have to be there.”
“It’s only twenty of. I’ll drive you. I need to ask a few questions. About the orchard. You know I’m trying to help out Moira Earthrowl. Find out what’s going on.”
“Mom, I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t seen or heard a thing. Except, well, Opal. Something I promised not to tell. But I don’t think she has anything to do with the really bad stuff.”
“What about Rufus, the manager? How does he strike you?” Her mother was making herself comfortable now on the bed, puffing up a pillow, sitting back against it. Frustration crawled up Emily’s spine. Rufus was Rufus, that was all. She didn’t have much to do with him. “He tells us where to pick, he does his job. He thinks Adam and me and the Butternelds are just kids, he resents us, maybe. Once he called Adam a ‘rich city slicker’— Adam didn’t like it, I could tell. Besides, Adam’s not rich at all, he doesn’t own anything except his beat-up Volvo.”
“Rufus’s grandfather used to own that orchard, did you know that? Do you think he might want it back?”
Emily didn’t know. “He likes his work, that’s all I can tell you. Though sometimes he acts like he owns the place.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One time I heard him tell Rolly Butterfield to stay away from a certain tree that was still too young to pick. ‘I don’t want my tree spoiled,’ Rufus said. I don’t think he really meant, though, it was his tree. I mean, I’ve heard Tim call Esmeralda’s calf his baby.”
Poison Apples Page 17
