The only person who disapproved of Eliza’s body was Iso, who modeled herself on, well, models. Specifically, the wannabe models on a dreadful television show, an American one that had been inexplicably popular in England. Iso’s sole complaint about the relocation to the States was that the show was a year ahead here and therefore a season had been “spoiled” for her. “They give away the winner in the opening credits!” she wailed. Yet she watched the reruns, which appeared to be on virtually every day, indifferent to the fact that she knew the outcome. She was watching an episode now while Albie stealthily tried to close the distance between them, advancing inch by inch along the carpet.
“Stop breathing so loud,” Iso said.
“Loudly,” Eliza corrected.
The afternoon stretched before them, inert yet somehow demanding, like a guest who had shown up with a suitcase full of dirty laundry. Eliza felt they should do something constructive, but Iso refused the offer of shopping for school clothes, and Peter had asked that they hold off the annual trip to Staples until this weekend. Peter loved shopping for school supplies, if only because it allowed him to perform his own version of the commercial, the one in which the parent danced ecstatically to “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” (Peter could get away with things that Iso would never permit Eliza to do.) The Benedicts didn’t belong to the local pool, which had a cap on memberships, and it was too hot to do anything else outdoors. Eliza got out drawing supplies and asked the children to sketch ideas for their rooms, promising that they could paint the walls whatever colors they desired, pick out new furniture at Ikea. Iso pretended to be bored but eventually began using the computer to research various beds, and Eliza was impressed by her daughter’s taste, which ran toward simple things. Albie produced a gorgeous jungle forest of a room, filled with dinosaurs, his current passion. Probably not reproducible, at Ikea or any other store, but it was a striking feat of the imagination. She praised them both, gave them Popsicles, indulged in a cherry one herself. Perhaps they should save the sticks for some future project? Even before Peter had taken a job at an environmentally conscious investment firm, the Benedicts had been dutiful recyclers.
Mail clattered through the slot, a jolt of excitement on this long, stifling afternoon. “I’ll get it!” Albie screamed, not that he had any competition. A mere six months ago, his sister had scrapped with him over an endless list of privileges, invoking primogeniture. Fetching the mail, having first choice of muffin at breakfast, answering the phone, pushing elevator buttons. She was beyond all that now.
Albie sorted the mail on the kitchen counter. “Daddy, bill, junk, catalog. Daddy, junk. Junk. Junk. Daddy. Mommy! A real letter.”
A real letter? Who would write her a real letter? Who wrote anyone real letters? Her sister, Vonnie, was given to revisiting old grudges, but those missives usually went to their parents via e-mail. Eliza studied the plain white envelope, from a PO box in Baltimore. Did she even know anyone in Baltimore anymore? The handwriting, in purple ink, was meticulous enough to be machine-created. Probably junk mail masquerading as a real letter, a sleazy trick.
But, no, this one was quite authentic, a sheaf of loose-leaf paper and a cutting from a glossy magazine, a photo of Peter and Elizabeth at a party for Peter’s work earlier this summer. The handwriting was fussy and feminine, unknown to her, yet the tone was immediately, insistently intimate.
Dear Elizabeth,
I’m sure this is a shock, although that’s not my intention, to shock you. Up until a few weeks ago, I never thought I would have any communication with you at all and accepted that as fair. That’s how it’s been for more than twenty years now. But it’s hard to ignore signs when they are right there in front of your face, and there was your photo, in Washingtonian magazine, not the usual thing I read, but you’d be surprised by my choice of reading material these days. Of course, you are older, a woman now. You’ve been a woman for a while, obviously. Still, I’d know you anywhere.
“Who’s it from, Mommy?” Albie asked, and even Iso seemed mildly interested in this oddity, a letter to her mother, a person whose name appeared mostly on catalogs and reminders from the dentist. Could they see her hands shaking, notice the cold sweat on her brow? Eliza wanted to crumple the letter in her fist, heave it away from her, but that would only excite their curiosity.
“Someone I knew when I was growing up.”
It looks as if they’ll finally get around to completing my sentence soon. I’m not trying to avoid saying the big words—death, execution, what have you—just being very specific. It is my sentence, after all. I was sentenced to die and I am at peace with that.
I thought I was at peace across the board, but then I saw your photo. And, odd as it might seem to some, I feel it’s you that I owe the greatest apology, that you’re the person I never made amends to, the crime I was never called into account for. I’m sure others feel differently, but they’ll see me dead soon enough and then they will be happy, or so they think. I also accept that you might not be that interested in hearing from me and, in fact, I have engaged in a little subterfuge to get this letter to you, via a sympathetic third party, a person I absolutely trust. This is her handwriting, not mine, in case you care, and by sending it via her, I have avoided the problem of prying eyes, as much for your protection as for mine. But I can’t help being curious about your life, which must be pretty nice, if your husband has the kind of job that leads to being photographed at the kind of parties that end up in Washingtonian, with him in a tux and you in an evening dress. You look very different, yet the same, if that makes any sense. I’m proud of you, Elizabeth, and would love to hear from you. Sooner rather than later, ha-ha!
Yours, Walter
And then—just in case she didn’t remember the full name of the man who had kidnapped her the summer she was fifteen and held her hostage for almost six weeks, just in case she might have another acquaintance on death row, just in case she had forgotten the man who had killed at least two other girls and was suspected of killing many others, yet let her live, just in case all of this might have slipped her mind—he added helpfully:
(Walter Bowman)
2
1984
WALTER BOWMAN WAS GOOD—LOOKING. Anyone who said otherwise was contrary, or not to be trusted. He had dark hair and green eyes and skin that took a tan well, although it was a farmer’s tan. He wasn’t a farmer, actually, but a mechanic, working in his father’s garage. Still, the result was the same, as far as his tan went. He would have liked to work with his shirt off on warm days, but his father wouldn’t hear of it.
He was good-looking enough that his family teased him about it, as if to make sure he wouldn’t get conceited. Yes, he was a little on the short side, but so were most movie stars. Claude, at the barbershop, had explained this to him. Not that Claude compared Walter to a movie star—Claude, like his family, like everyone else in town, seemed intent on keeping Walter in his place. But Claude mentioned one day that he had seen Chuck Norris at a casino in Las Vegas.
“He’s an itty-bitty fella. But, then, all movie stars are little,” Claude said, finishing up. Walter loved the feel of the brush on the back of his neck. “They have big heads, but small bodies.”
“How little?” Walter had asked.
“The size of my thumb,” Claude said.
“No, seriously.”
“Five seven, five eight. ’Bout your size.”
That was what Walter wanted to hear. If Chuck Norris was about his size, well, that was almost the same as Walter being like Chuck Norris. Still, he needed to make one small clarification for the record.
“I’m five nine. That’s average height for a man, did you know that? Five nine for a man, five four for a woman.”
“Is that the average,” Claude asked, “or the median? There’s a difference, you know.”
Walter didn’t know the difference. He might have asked, but he suspected Claude didn’t really know either, and all he would get was Claude making fun of his
ignorance.
“Average,” he said.
“Well someone has to be average,” said Claude, who was tall, but skinny and kind of pink all over—splotchy skin, pale, pale red hair, watery eyes that were permanently narrowed from years of staring at the hair that lay across his barber scissors. Everyone was always trying to put Walter in his place, keep him down, stop him from being what he might be. Even women, girls, seemed to be part of the conspiracy. Because, despite Walter’s good looks, he could not find a woman who wanted to go with him, not even on a single date. He couldn’t figure it out. Things would start out okay, he could get a conversation going. He read things, he knew things, he kept an interesting store of facts at his disposal. Claude’s Chuck Norris story, for example, became one of his anecdotes, although he added his own flourish, holding his thumb and forefinger out to show just how itty-bitty Chuck Norris was. That usually got a laugh, or at least a smile.
But then something would happen, he could never put his finger on what, and the girl’s face would close to him. It was a small town, and it soon seemed there wasn’t a girl in it who would consider going out with Walter Bowman. And on the rare occasion when a new family moved in, one with daughters, someone must have told them something, because they didn’t want to go with him either.
Then, one day, on an errand for his father, he saw a girl walking down the road just outside Martinsburg. It was hot, and she wore shorts over a lavender bathing suit, a one-piece. He liked that she wore a one-piece. Modest. He offered her a ride.
She hesitated.
“Wherever you’re going,” Walter added. “Door-to-door service. Truck’s air-conditioning is so cold, you’ll need a sweater.”
It was cold. He saw what it did to her breasts when she got in. They were large for such a short girl, not that he let his eyes linger. He looked only once.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“The Rite Aid,” she said. “I want to buy some makeup, but my mother says I can’t. It’s my money, isn’t it?”
“You don’t need makeup.” He meant it as a compliment, yet she flushed, balled up her fists as if to fight him. “I mean, you’re lucky, you look good without it, but you’re right. It’s your money, you should be able to do with it what you want.” He couldn’t quite stop himself. Maybe that was the problem, that he just couldn’t stop talking soon enough. “Although you shouldn’t buy anything illegal with it, drugs or whatever. Just say no.”
She rolled her eyes. She was a girl, not as old as he had thought when he first picked her up. Maybe no more than fifteen, but she clearly considered herself more sophisticated than Walter. Was that it? Was that why girls like this were forever eeling away from him? There were some girls—plain, slow witted—who didn’t mind his company, but Walter couldn’t get interested in just anybody. He was good-looking. He should be with someone as good-looking or better-looking. Everyone knew that was how it worked. A beautiful woman could go with the ugliest man on the planet, but a man had to date above himself, or be shamed. He deserved someone special.
“I smoke pot,” this girl announced.
He didn’t believe her. “You like it?”
The question seemed to catch her off guard, as if that wasn’t the point, liking it or not liking it. “Yeah,” she said, as if it were a guess. She probably didn’t know the difference between average or median either, although Walter did now. He had looked it up. He always looked things up when he didn’t know them. No one had to be stupid. Stupid was a choice. He was forever learning things. He knew all the US state capitals and he was working on world capitals.
“What’s it like?” he asked.
“You don’t know?”
“No, it’s not something I’ve gotten around to.”
“You wanna find out? I got some in my purse.”
He didn’t, actually, but he wanted to stay in this girl’s company a while longer.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kelly. With a y, but I’m thinking of changing it to an i. There are three Kellys in my class at school. What’s your name?”
“Walt.” He had never called himself that, but why not try it out, change his luck. Within the hour, they were in a little cove off the river, and she was trying to show him how to smoke pot. She said he was doing it wrong, but he was doing it wrong on purpose, wanting to keep his wits about him. He didn’t believe in drugs or alcohol, but if he needed to pretend in order to spend time with this girl, Kelly, Kelli, whatever, he would. He found himself wishing she wore a two-piece. A one-piece, that wasn’t going to come off easily, it wasn’t something you could slip a girl out of, bit by bit. He knew he had to take it slow, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. She was lying on her stomach, on a long flat rock. He blew on her neck, thinking of Claude’s brush. She wrinkled her nose, as if a bug had landed on her. He tried to give her a back rub, but she shrugged his hand off. “No,” she said. His hand returned, not to her shoulder blades this time, but between her legs. “Hey,” she said. “Don’t.” But she wasn’t quite as bossy and superior now. He tried to be sweet, kiss her neck, stroke her hair. He knew from magazines that foreplay was important to girls. But things just didn’t go the way they were supposed to. It was only later, when she was crying, that his mind began to catalog the possible outcomes—she would be his girlfriend, she would tell her parents, she would tell other girls, she might even tell the police, she was never going to stop crying—that he realized he had only one option.
“HOW’D YOU GET SCRATCHED UP, Walter?” his father asked at dinner that night.
“Stopped to relieve myself on the side of the road, walked right into one of those prickly bushes along the highway,” he said. If someone had seen his truck parked out on Route 118, that would explain it.
“Sure took you a long time to find that fan belt.”
“Like I said, I had to go all the way to Hagerstown, and they didn’t have one either. I ordered it.”
“Coulda sworn Pep Boys in Martinsburg said they had what I wanted in stock.”
“Nope, wrong size. People in those places, they’re just ignorant. No work ethic, no interest in customer service.”
That was all his father needed, and he was off to the races about the death of the small businessman.
By the weekend, the local news was full of stories about the missing girl, Kelly Pratt. She’d never get a chance to change her name now, Walter realized. A week went by, a month, a season, a year. He thought of her as Kelly Brat. He had showed her who was boss. It could have been nice, she shouldn’t have taken him down to the river to smoke pot, the pot was what screwed him up, he probably wouldn’t have been her first, and her just fourteen, according to the news stories. Slut. Druggie. The very fact that they never found her, that he didn’t get caught, that the police never came to speak to him, that no one came forward to say that they had seen Walter Bowman’s pickup parked on the hill above the river that day, that they never even searched near that part of the river—all those things proved he had been right to do what he did.
He found himself taking long drives on his days off, looking for other girls who might need a ride.
3
“HA—HA,” PETER MARVELED. “He actually wrote ‘ha-ha.’
“If it were an e-mail, if he had access to a computer, he probably would have put an emoticon there, the one that uses a semicolon to wink at you.”
Peter held the letter at arm’s length, although he was not the least bit farsighted, not yet. He was actually a year younger than she was. He inspected the letter as if it were a painting, an abstract portrait of Walter Bowman, or one of those 3-D prints that had been popular for a time. Examined up close, it was words, in that furious, fastidious purple ink. At a distance, it melted into a lavender jumble, an impressionistic sketch of heather-colored hills.
Peter had arrived home at seven-thirty that evening, early for him these days, but Eliza had waited until the children went upstairs to tell him about the letter. She might
have been able to reference it covertly, using a familiar code: the summer I was fifteen. Over the years, this had been used to explain any number of things. Her need to leave a film that had taken an unexpected plot turn, her disinclination to wear her hair short, although the style suited her better than this not-long, not-short, not-anything haircut. Come to think of it, they hadn’t used the code for some time, not since Peter returned to the States earlier this year and began house hunting on weekends.
“The Victorian that you like, it’s near—well, one county over—from where Point of Rocks is,” he had told her via Skype. “It’s about an hour out of the city, but on the commuter line and it’s really pretty up there. Lots of people do it. But I thought—”
“You thought it would bother me. Because of the summer I was fifteen.” They were meeting each other’s eyes, yet not meeting each other’s eyes. She could never quite master that part of Skype.
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure it would, but if you’re willing to commute, what about Roaring Springs, where I grew up?”
“The trains on that line don’t run late enough, hon. And we’d have to have two cars, because I’d have to drive to the station.”
“Oh.” She still wasn’t sure why Point of Rocks was in contention but Roaring Springs was not. Wouldn’t he need to drive to the train station out there, too? “Well, I’d rather you had less of a commute, so if we can afford something closer in, something near a Metro line, that would be my choice.”
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