Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  I mentally rehearsed my story. I am a friend of Janet’s family, and I called her folks and asked if I could do anything for them and here I am. From there I figured to guide Suzanne into a few questions, like, Tell me, where was Janet working just before she died? This had to be handled with sensitivity, of course, but if I was going to infiltrate Janet’s professional sphere, I had first to find out where that sphere had been.

  The door opened.

  At first all I could see were her eyes. Gray, like smoke. They searched deep inside me.

  I blinked, looked again. Suzanne’s eyes were still looking at mine, but no longer into them. With their intensity diminished, I could notice that they were surrounded by lavish dark lashes and framed by a straight, level brow and slanting cheekbones. Her lips were full and she was blessed with a tumult of sandy blond hair that fell in waves past her shoulders. Which were broad and muscular, yet soft. Her body was swathed in a soft tunic and stretchy leggings the color of ripe fruit. Her feet were bare.

  I remember thinking, This woman would have been burned as a witch in Salem. Tallying the sheen of gray in the hair and the spray of crow’s-feet that curved around cheeks no longer softened by the kiss of youth, I gauged her to be forty or at most forty-five.

  She spoke in a deep lioness purr: “You’re Emily Hansen?” The tone was cordial, but lacked the inviting challenge of that first glance.

  “In person.”

  She turned—a fluid, integrated motion that swept through her body—and led me into her abode.

  Which enfolded me in the softness of exotic fabrics and spiced air, the richness of space occupied by treasured objects. Prisms hanging on satin ribbons in the windows sprayed sunlight in its elemental wavelengths around the room. Inviting cushions decked the sofa and spilled across the floor in decadent splendor. Photographs in homemade frames drew my eyes about the walls, and on a low table, the bleached vertebra of what must have been a whale was lovingly displayed among bowls of smooth pebbles, flower petals, orange skins, and sage.

  I was fascinated, and yet disappointed. This decor had to be Suzanne’s effort, not the practical surroundings of a geologist who rode an unpainted bicycle.

  “Janet’s room is through there,” Suzanne was saying, pointing down a short hallway. “Everything’s in there, except the things the police took.”

  I wasn’t fully listening to her words. I was too distracted by the matter-of-factness of her manner. I had expected the heaviness of sadness, maybe. A woman swept up in the tragedy of her roommate’s death. Or a stoic, perhaps, austere and tough, but certainly not this. I hadn’t needed an appointment: I could have knocked on the door and said, “Hi, I’m from the Salvation Army, I’m here for Janet’s stuff,” and Suzanne would probably have said, “Fine, it’s down the hall and to the left.” I marched down that hall thinking, Okay, so the rest of the apartment is Suzanne, this room is going to tell me something about Janet.

  But hope sank like a failed soufflé. Janet Pinchon’s bedroom was tidy and faceless, as if someone had moved systematically through the room, cleaning away any suggestion of personality. Her bedding was folded on top of her bed, her floor swept, her few toiletries grouped on the top of her dresser, where Suzanne must have placed them after removing them from the bathroom. The walls were devoid of decoration, the few posters and photographs laid neatly on top of the stack of blankets. I unrolled one poster. SAVE THE WETLANDS, it proclaimed.

  I heard breathing right behind me and spun around. Suzanne was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her stomach, watching me. “Lock the door behind you when you leave, and don’t let the cat out,” she said, turned, and left.

  “You’re going out?”

  “That’s correct,” she called from the middle of the living room. I heard car keys jingling, and the rustle of jacket greeting shoulders.

  “But I need to pack Janet’s stuff,” I shouted after her.

  “Take your time.” I heard the front door open.

  I hurried back into the living room, catching Suzanne halfway out the door. “But I need to talk to you!”

  Those gray eyes narrowed in a different kind of challenge. “About what?”

  “About Janet.”

  “Janet’s dead.”

  I opened my mouth. “Yes, and—”

  “That was sad.”

  Was sad? Was sad? My mouth sagged open. It must be that some of the things I’d heard about California were true, and I was staring eye to eye with a grand practitioner of the religion of This Minute and Now.

  “She’s your roommate, and you—”

  “I hardly knew her.”

  “But you lived with her. Can we get together later on?”

  “Sure. I’ll call you.” As in don’t call me.

  “But you don’t have my number.”

  “Write it on a piece of paper and put it by the phone.”

  “No, that won’t work,” I said. “I don’t have a place yet.”

  “So you call me, then.” With that, Suzanne Cousins strode out the door, climbed into an ancient Jeep Cherokee, cranked the engine, and bolted away from the curb.

  * * *

  IT TOOK ME until early evening to scout enough cardboard boxes from liquor stores to pack Janet’s things. I dawdled, hoping Suzanne would return.

  And I took time (as I carefully placed each item into whiskey boxes printed with poinsettia and holly and big red bows for the Yuletide season) to look for anything that would suggest why someone would want to kill Janet. Nothing popped out at me. I even leafed through a few of her books (as I stacked them in vodka boxes printed with joyous reindeer), but no startling slips of paper fell out of them. I felt like I was Christmas-wrapping a funeral.

  I began to justify the empty feeling of the room, speculating that Janet had been a woman who lived within the undoubtedly vast and special universe of her mind. Or maybe she had had an allergic reaction to her roommate’s sensuality. The books in particular helped me feel better about her. They were a rich little cache, the carefully chosen favorites of an educated mind: classics like Anna Karenina; texts and field guides on geology, ecology, astronomy, botany, and ornithology; a few choice science fiction paperbacks that had been lovingly read and reread until the covers flopped open as if on tiny hinges; an eclectic survey of nonfiction trade paperbacks delving into ecopolitics, emerging nations, philosophy, spiritual experience, and religion. Clearly this was a library born of many years’ devoted browsing through obscure bookstores, a treasury of favorites winnowed from whatever broader sources a well-educated woman might encounter. No casual fiction, no frivolous cookbooks, no People magazine—type effluvia. I packed Janet’s books with care.

  By the time I’d carried all the boxes to the truck, my back was aching. The bed called me. The quiet simplicity of the room had begun to grow on me. I began to long for it like a hermit crab must long for a more comfortable shell. I wondered briefly if Suzanne would let me stay for a while. It wasn’t yet the end of the month; might not Janet’s rent still be good? I could win Suzanne’s confidence, interview her at leisure, get tidbits of insight that would, of course, prove earth-shattering. But as the minutes and hours ticked by, it became clear that Suzanne Cousins would not be returning until I was safely gone.

  There were, altogether, ten boxes of books, one box of toiletries and things like pens and pencils and miscellaneous geologist’s gear, and one box of shoes. The clothing I folded politely and stowed in three boxes and a couple of suitcases I found underneath the bed. There was not a single piece fancy enough to require more tender handling. I stuffed the bedding into a big paper-towel box scrounged from a nearby supermarket, and was able to fit all remaining bits of stuff into one twelve-bottle whiskey carton. I left the furniture, figuring that as it matched the dresser and bookcase in Suzanne’s room (Suzanne had a queen-sized futon on the floor—no single-bed monasticism for her), it probably went with the apartment.

  I took one last look around the room, glancing into
the closet and under the bed to make sure I’d gotten everything. Underneath the bed, up against the baseboard, I saw a slip of paper that turned out to be a business card. HRC ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS, it read, and gave a local address and telephone number. Janet’s name was below and to the right, with “Staff Geologist” printed just beneath it.

  This card I slipped into the back pocket of my jeans. I smiled, at last sure of at least one essential bit of information.

  Thus, with the residue of Janet’s worldly goods stowed in the back of the truck, I set out in search of a motel, certain I had missed something obvious.

  5

  There are a few inanimate objects in this life that truly give me the creeps. Among them are motel rooms. A person of taste would say that this is because motel rooms, like Janet Pinchon’s apartment bedroom, are so terribly, awfully bland. A paranoiac who watches too much TV would say it’s because motel rooms are lonely places where people get killed. A Californian with New Age leanings would tell you it’s because people with bad energy have slept there before you.

  Room 132 at the Wagon Trail Motel was no exception. It languished beside Santa Rosa Avenue south of the city limits in a neighborhood of trailer courts, discount emporiums, and auto repair shops. The Wagon Trail was no longer in its salad days, but the rates fit within the limit of my already stressed credit card.

  A Mexican woman of about my age made an impression of that poor overused piece of plastic, pointed to number 132 on a map of the complex, and said, “Nice room. Very private. It’s on the corner around back.” She smelled of garlic and cumin. She had a short, rounded body grown rounder from childbearing and a head of shining black hair that was to die for. She observed me with the gaze of the ancients, that sober, dignified watchfulness of the indígena that quietly maps your bones.

  I drove the little truck around to the back, parked it outside of my room, and stepped inside, wondering just how awful my new home was going to be.

  On an awfulness scale of one to ten, it was about seven. Cinderblock modern architecture, circa 1960. Velvet painting of lateen-rigged ship at dock done in ten tired brushstrokes. Drapes that wouldn’t quite close. Worn peacock-blue shag carpeting. Stained bedspread. And the steady rumble of trucks and whooshing of passenger cars ripping past on Highway 101, which bordered the back of the motel, was mind-numbing.

  I fiddled with the curtains for a while, trying to close the four-inch gap. Despairing, I opened them wide, which gave me a panoramic view of a chain-link fence and the highway beyond, the back of a liquor store, its inelegant Dumpster, and its weak security light, which only made the evening gloom beyond more eerie. I settled for leaving the curtains not quite closed.

  Now that I’d officially made my nest, my first order of business was to bring Janet’s boxes in from the truck so they wouldn’t be stolen. I smiled wryly at the self-image I was cultivating: Em Hansen, itinerant monk, now transporting the bones of a little-known martyr to a distant shrine.

  My second order of business was to make some instant coffee in the little plug-in pot supplied by the motel. The result tasted enough like mud that I poured it into the toilet.

  Which in turn made me feel so sorry for myself that I indulged in my third order of business, which was to phone Elyria, just to let her know I was okay.

  She wasn’t home.

  Loneliness engulfed me so suddenly and deeply that I left an uncharacteristically long and detailed message on her machine. I gave the name of the motel, the city, the area code, the number, the room extension, and a stiff-upper-beak version of how I actually felt. I was sure I sounded on the edge of hysteria, the timbre of my voice rising throughout. I hung up in disgust.

  And slid into a funk, about how Elyria was probably going to marry this guy Joe Finney, with whom she was no doubt right at this moment having a nice, companionable dinner, and how that meant that when I got back to Denver, I was going to have to look for another place to live. Gak. And with what money?

  Right, money. I had something over two hundred dollars left in my checking account. My credit card had been very nearly redlined before I left Denver, and now it was further burdened by a plane ticket, which, being a last-minute affair, had cost a bunch. Meals on the road would not be cheap, and this room was going to throw another brick on the load every day I stayed. It occurred to me also that I’d need gas for the truck, and there would be phone calls and maps and photographs and who knew what else. I checked my wallet. I had that one Visa card, a Chevron card, an automatic teller card to my checking account in Denver, and twenty-four dollars in cash. Berating myself for not thinking to ask for a retainer before starting the job, I made a note to bring it up when I phoned the Senator in the morning, got back into the truck, and wandered off in search of dinner.

  What South. Santa Rosa Avenue offered by way of cuisine looked questionable, so I drove all the way into downtown Santa Rosa, where I found a nice brew pub called the Third Street Aleworks. After dining heartily on barbecue beer shrimp and wheat beer, I handed the waiter my credit card to conserve my cash, but a minute later he returned and ever so discreetly handed it back to me. “Excuse me, ma’am, but this card is beyond its limit,” he whispered sweetly, as if the cute little slip of plastic had had one too many. My face averted against embarrassment, I promptly paid cash.

  That left me with only fifteen dollars and change, which would hardly get me through the next day. I set out in search of a bank with an automatic teller machine, figuring about a hundred dollars would tide me over until I got my advance.

  I found a Bank of America at the first corner. The automatic teller machine looked across Third Street onto a central square featuring a big evergreen decked out in colored lights for the holidays. Littler trees all around it were ablaze with miniature white lights, and the light staffs were rigged with Christmas gewgaws. Ho, ho, ho.

  I checked to make sure the B of A would accept my card, stuffed it in, and stood poised to type in my Personal Identification Number. When the screen lights came on, I began to type, but no, it seemed the machine didn’t want my PIN first, like any self-respecting ATM in the Rockies, it wanted to know whether I intended to do my transaction in English or Spanish. I punched English and then my PIN. Or thought I had. The machine asked me to enter it again.

  Beginning to feel pretty exposed on the late evening sidewalk downtown, I glanced around. There was very little traffic moving along the street, and no one abroad on the sidewalk. Except one man. A big, tough-looking man. Who was moving straight toward me. His face harsh and haggard under the streetlights. He stopped five feet behind me. There was a second machine, damn it; why didn’t he use it?

  I typed faster, managing to punch my PIN in wrong a second time. I typed again. Wrong again. The man moved up closer behind me. I tried a fourth time, and a fifth, now forgetting my correct PIN entirely. The machine spat my card back at me.

  I pressed my card back into the slot of the other machine. It promptly came back out. Only then did I notice that the screen display read, Out of Service.

  Now stuffing his own card into the first machine, the man said, “I hate these things. It did that to me last week. You type in the wrong number a couple times and the machine thinks you’re a crook or something, freezes your card access to your account. Now you’ve got to come during business hours to get your account cleared again.” He shook his head. “Pain in the butt.”

  I drove back to the motel in a daze, wondering just when I had begun to get so paranoid.

  * * *

  BACK IN MY room, there was a light flashing on my phone. Knowing that Elyria was the only person who had my number, I dialed her back without even tagging the motel desk for the message. “Hi,” I said, when she answered.

  “Em? Hello, I was about to return your call.”

  “You hadn’t called yet?” Huh?

  “No. I just came in a few minutes ago,” she said, her diction growing more formal, which meant she was nervous about something. “Er, your mother call
ed just now. When I mentioned that you were in California, she said you must look up your aunt Frida. She gave her number.”

  “You told her where I am?”

  “No. But such a coincidence: the number she gave for your aunt is your same area code. Have I met Frida?”

  “Damn it, Elyria, you didn’t give her my number, did you?”

  “Do you have a pen and paper?”

  “Elyria!” I was shrieking.

  There was silence from the other end of the line. For a moment, I thought she’d hung up. When she did speak, it was softly, and with a note of resignation: “No, I didn’t give her your number or tell her where you are, just that you are in California. That’s a very large place, as I recall. I’m not so insensitive that I’d presume to push a reconciliation on you. I think she gave your aunt’s number out of social reflex. Heaven help me I should suggest the woman was concerned about you—I don’t know her, don’t know her limitations, don’t know half of what she’s done or not done for you. All I know is how you feel about her.”

  As Elyria’s voice flowed through my ear, my mind slipped. I am five years old, hiding in the closet in my room. At home. In Wyoming. My mother is calling me, her voice soft and concerned. She says it’s okay for me to come out now. No, I think, that can’t be her voice!

  Elyria’s voice said, “Em, when are you going to answer her calls?”

  The memory vanishes, locked back in my head, replaced by a vast emptiness. Into the telephone I whispered, “I’ve got to go now. Sorry. Call you another time,” and put it back on its cradle.

  6

  In the middle of the night, I woke up freezing cold and dug through Janet’s boxes until I found her blankets. Cocooning myself in their warmth, I stared at the light that seeped in through the gap in the curtains, weirdly illuminating the unfamiliar shapes and masses in the room. When the first gray of daylight finally mingled with the harsh yellow of the security lights, I showered and put on a good tweed suit that dated from my petro-baroness days and left early for breakfast and my first assault on Janet Pinchon’s former employer.