by Julia Keller
“Hey, Eddie.”
“Reverend.” Eddie wiped his wet hands on the front of his work pants before shaking Paul’s hand. Paul often strolled down to the basement to chat with Eddie. Eddie had not heard his approach, but that wasn’t unusual; when he started thinking about Marla Kay, his mind went to another place and he wasn’t attentive anymore. Things got past him.
“So I guess there was a bit of a fuss over at Lymon’s today,” Paul said.
Small towns, Eddie thought. Damn. He had grown up in this area, but still had trouble reconciling himself to the fact that in a town like this, your life was always on display. Privacy did not exist. Sometimes he felt as if he was still back in an Army barracks, where you couldn’t take a dump without everybody knowing about it and likely commenting on the shape and color.
Before he could answer, Paul spoke again. “Don’t mean to embarrass you, Eddie. Or call you out. It’s your business. But one of my parishioners saw you arguing with Raylene outside the store. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“She’s doing it again.” Eddie tried to keep his voice calm. Paul would be looking for signs that he was ready to blow. “Just like that time before. She’s out begging for money. Telling people that Marla Kay’s sick. It’s disgusting.”
“It’s also against the law,” Paul said.
“Yeah, but—you know.”
They had discussed this, the two of them, last spring when Raylene first tried her little scheme. Yes, it was fraud. And yes, Eddie could go to the authorities. He could tell them that when Raylene ran short of cash, she picked a spot and put up a sign claiming that Marla Kay was dying of cancer. She collected enough to pay the rent or buy a new pair of shoes and then shut down the operation until the next time her checkbook gave her the bad news. When Eddie had threatened to turn her in, she threatened him right back: If he did that, he would never see Marla Kay again. Eddie had signed away all parental rights on the day the little girl was born. He was still in a fog back then, still fighting the effects of his brain injury, barely able to speak or walk properly, or dress or feed himself. He was better now. But the only way he was able to see Marla Kay was if Raylene decided to let him. He could not take a chance on pissing her off.
He knew what people said behind his back. Maybe the kid’s not even yours. Don’t be a fool. Raylene had a reputation. She was an attractive woman, and it was the kind of attractiveness that never stayed still but was always active, always on the prowl, just like the raw materials for any other scam. She and Eddie had only been intimate once. They had met at the church. For a time, Raylene was employed there, too, as a housekeeper. She handled the dusting and the sweeping in the rectory, while Eddie took care of things like lawn care and the furnace. Once Raylene got pregnant, Jenny Wolford told her to find other employment. Raylene didn’t mind. The job was too hard, anyway, and Jenny was “a real bitch,” she told Eddie. “Nothing I do is ever good enough for her.”
Raylene’s pregnancy had been a surprise—but for Eddie, it was a good surprise. He wanted to take care of Marla Kay. I got my benefits, he told Raylene eagerly. I’ll help raise her. Do whatever you want me to do. She made it clear, however, that the only help she wanted was his money. They were not a couple. They would never be a couple.
“How are you feeling these days, Eddie?” Paul asked.
Eddie shrugged. He never knew how to answer that question. The headaches were still terrible, and he had no stamina; if he didn’t get at least ten or eleven hours of sleep each night, he couldn’t function the next day. His memory was shot. His limp was getting worse, not better, no matter how diligent he was about doing the exercises recommended to him by the physical therapist. But then again, he had that little girl in his life.
“I’m okay.”
“You ever need to talk—you find me, all right? My office door’s always open.”
“I know.” He liked Paul, but sometimes the reverend asked too many questions about his feelings. It wasn’t that Eddie had anything to hide. He just didn’t know how to answer the questions. Paul reminded him of some of the people at the VA. They meant well, but they did not seem to understand that sometimes their relentlessly positive natures and their constant pushing—You can do this, you’ll be fine, life’s going to work out—were oppressive and hard to deal with. Paul wanted to make everything go right. But his care felt like a burden, an expectation. When Eddie failed, he had the double whammy: He had to deal with the fact of his failure and with the fact that he had let Paul down. It was too much.
“The situation’s not ideal,” Paul said. “I know you’d like to see a lot more of Marla Kay. But the good news is—one day she’ll be old enough to do as she pleases. And she can come and see you on her own. Raylene won’t have a thing to say about it.” He looked around the basement. The low ceiling made the place feel like a cave. Cobwebs swung from the sweating walls. Junk was stacked up every few feet: broken pews, old bookcases, half-filled buckets of paint, a chair with a busted seat. “You sure you don’t mind all this? You’ve been here for a few years now. Maybe it’s time for a change. We can find somewhere else if you’d like. An apartment, maybe. We can help with the rent. Or maybe—”
“It’s great.” Eddie spoke hurriedly. “Really great. I don’t want to…” He paused, trying to regain his equilibrium. “I don’t want to be anywhere else, Paul. This suits me fine. I’m not real good with people. I can do my work and then come down here and be comfortable.” His words had slowed down in the middle, but they speeded up again as the anxiety rose in him.
“Hey, hey—settle down. No problem. I just don’t want you to ever feel stuck here. Okay, buddy?”
“Okay.”
He didn’t feel stuck. He was profoundly grateful to Paul and Jenny. On a winter night seven years ago they had found him huddled in the church doorway, babbling and shaking. He had soiled himself. He hadn’t eaten in a week. They took him in, cleaned him up, fed him, got him medical help from the VA; in addition to the physical problems from his brain injury, it turned out that he suffered from undiagnosed PTSD from his Army days in Afghanistan and had been self-medicating with alcohol. His unit had come under fire as they cleared a village, house by house, and Eddie took shrapnel in his head. The brain injury caused seizures and a variety of other problems. The medicine he took for the seizures made his thoughts feel slow and heavy, but it was a trade-off Eddie could live with. That was the key word: “live.” Paul and Jenny Wolford had enabled him to live again. It wasn’t perfect, but he was better than what he had had before. He wasn’t homeless. He had a bed and a place to wash up.
And he had Marla Kay.
Paul moved a few steps toward the furnace, so that he could thump its side the way you might gruffly greet a beloved old farm animal, the kind that has no useful purpose anymore but that you keep around out of sentimentality. The furnace was large and round and dirty, and the ducts rising out of the upper portion of its sides looked like striated gray limbs lifted in supplication.
“How’s this old thing doing?” Paul said.
“She’ll make it through another winter. After that, I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’m not sure about any of us, Eddie, truth be told.” Paul laughed. “But it’s good to know you can nurse her a while longer. Cupboard’s pretty bare, budget-wise.”
Eddie had something else on his mind. He cupped a hand around the back of his neck. “Paul, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You and Jenny—you never had any kids, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Sometimes I think that would’ve been better for me, too. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know about Marla Kay. Because I miss her so much. I see her with Raylene and I get so mad at what I see. How she’s raising her—it ain’t right. But all I can do is wish she was here. Wish I was with her more often. It hurts, you know? And so I think, ‘If I didn’t have a kid, I would be better off.’”
This was possibly the longest speec
h Eddie had ever made in Paul’s presence, and Eddie’s growing awareness of that fact was making him feel even more awkward than usual.
“It’s always a risk,” Paul said, gentleness in his tone. “Loving somebody, I mean. Like you do Marla Kay. Biggest risk you can take. Because things happen to people. Good things, bad things. And when we love—we’re vulnerable. There’s nowhere to go to get away from the pain.” Paul glanced at his wristwatch. He frowned. “Afternoon Bible study starts at two. Gotta run, buddy. You need to talk later—you let me know. I’m around.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Paul hesitated. Eddie could sense his concern. Something in Eddie’s demeanor was worrying him. “You’re okay, right?”
“I’m okay.”
“Because if you’re not, I can—”
“I’m okay. Really.”
“Dinner’s at six. Jenny’s making hamburgers.”
“Sounds good.”
As soon as Paul was gone, Eddie walked over to a dusty, broken-down cabinet in the corner. He kept some of his stuff in here, in the one drawer that still worked. He pulled it open. He lifted off the red wool blanket that he had carefully arranged so that anyone doing a cursory search might not find what was stowed beneath it.
With great care he drew out the rifle, and then he closed the drawer.
Bell
2:17 P.M.
“Why?”
Bell heard the word but she could not see the speaker. The room was too dark. The blinds had been shut tight, the curtains pulled together and tied. A darkened room in the middle of the afternoon told its own story. It was never a happy one.
The word came again. It sounded like the aural embodiment of pain:
“Why?”
Thirty seconds ago Dot’s brother, Sammy Burdette, had opened the front door of his sister’s house for Bell. Then he stood to one side. “She’s in there,” Sammy said, tilting his big bald head toward the closed pocket doors separating the front hall from the living room. He didn’t say anything else.
The first “Why?” came when Bell slid open the pocket doors. She closed them behind her, because that was how she had found them, and it wasn’t her place to change things. Once the room was dark again, she had to watch her step. She had only been here twice before. She did not remember the layout of the room—the location of couch or chair or ottoman—and she had to move slowly, so as not to bump into solid objects, or trip over them.
A third time:
“Why?”
A dark shape resolved itself into something familiar, and Bell saw the woman who was repeating the word. Dot Burdette slumped forward in an armchair, holding her head in her hands.
“Hey, Dot,” Bell said softly. “I got a call from Sammy. He asked me to come by.”
That was not true. What Sammy had actually said was: I’ve never seen her this way. I think she might do harm to herself. I’m scared for her. For God’s sake, Bell—she needs you. She needs somebody.
And so here Bell was, using up time she didn’t have, on a day that was turning out to be worse than anyone could have imagined, with no end in sight. She had no idea what to say to Dot. They weren’t close friends. In high school, Dot had been at the exact center of the most popular group, the girls who had the right clothes and the right hair and the perfect boyfriends. Belfa Dolan was at the extreme other end of the social spectrum. She was the outcast, the kid in foster care whose sister was serving a prison term for killing their father. Her clothes were all wrong. Her facial expression never varied beyond a scowl. Bell did not recall a single conversation with Dot Burdette during their high school years. Not one. Dot’s laughter had an arch, haughty sound to it, and you could hear it every morning when Dot and her friends hung out in front of their lockers, gossiping, whispering about who had done what with whom the night before, making fun of other people. Bell remembered walking by that group a time or two, and feeling a deep humiliation when the trailing comments reached her ears, studded with words such as loser and freak.
Then Bell had gone away and changed her life. She had graduated from a prestigious law school, retuned to Acker’s Gap, won the election for prosecutor. Dot was named vice president of the bank her father ran. They were professional women in a town where the majority of people spent the workday saying, “Do you want fries with that?” Wordlessly, a truce was struck between Belfa Elkins and Dorothy Burdette; they would pretend that they were old friends. Bell went along with the charade. But she never forgot the words that had been used about her. And she never forgot the sound of Dot’s laughter in the halls of Acker’s Gap High School, a sound that carried in its wake privilege and exclusion, as well as pettiness and snobbery.
None of that mattered now.
“Mind if I turn on a light?” Bell asked.
No reply.
“Okay, well—I’m going to do that,” Bell said. “If it bothers you, let me know.” She had spotted an object on a round table next to Dot’s chair that looked like a lamp. Groping, Bell found the base, and then the switch.
Dot seemed to shrink back from the sudden light. Her body recoiled, but she still did not lift her head out of the nest of her intertwined fingers. Only the top of her head was visible. Bell had yet to see her face. Dot was wearing an old shirt, trousers, and tennis shoes. The kind of clothes you wear when you aren’t paying attention to what you are wearing. Bell had rarely seen her in casual clothes.
The room was a masterpiece of quiet elegance. The Burdettes had money, they had always had money, and there was something about family money that gave a house an extra measure of dignity. The furniture, the carpets, the wainscoting on the walls—everything spoke of an assumption that the people who lived here were worth all of this luxury. Whereas with new money, the accouterments always seemed to be trying too hard, eager to prove that it wasn’t just a fluke, a mistake.
None of that mattered now.
Dot was in mourning. Her grief made her indifferent to everything but her own suffering. There were many people, Bell was sure, ready to point out to Dot that she had lost her niece a long time ago, that in effect the young woman had disappeared years before, when she became an addict. But the gulf between a metaphorical death and an actual one was profound. Dot had tumbled into that crevasse. She was still tumbling.
“Why?” Dot repeated. “Why did this happen?”
“I don’t know.” Bell sat down across from her on a mauve love seat. It was just as uncomfortable as it looked, in the way of expensive furniture that could be admired but never loved.
“She was a good girl,” Dot murmured. She raised her face. It was swollen and red. Her eyes were wet. Snot had dried between her nose and her upper lip, and crusted on her chin. She looked terrible.
None of that mattered now.
“I know,” Bell said.
Dot laughed. It wasn’t the cold, merry laugh of her youth; it was as hard as the bark of a seal, a sharp, ugly sound. “No, she wasn’t,” Dot corrected herself. “She wasn’t a good girl at all. She was selfish and spoiled and she took everything I gave her and she threw it back in my face. She called me a bitch. I called her a whore. You hear that, Bell? I called my own niece a whore. I did. That’s the last thing I ever said to her. It was a couple of weeks ago. I found her in here. She’d moved out a long time ago and I didn’t know where she was living or what she was doing—and I came home for lunch one day and here she was, right in this very room, wadding stuff in a pillowcase, stuff she was going to steal from me and then go out and sell. I was so mad I was shaking, Bell. I was—I was…” Dot caught her breath. “I called her a whore. I said, ‘Get out of here, you ungrateful whore.’ I don’t talk like that. But I did. That day, I did. I was so disappointed in her. I thought I was way past disappointment—but I wasn’t.”
“You lost your temper. It happens.”
“Why? Why the drugs, Bell? Why?”
Bell did not answer.
“Your girl,” Dot went on, leaning forward in her chair, hands cup
ping her elbows. “Carla, right? That’s your daughter’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So how did you do it? How did you keep her away from it? What did you do?” Desperation haunted Dot’s voice.
“Every child is different. What happened to Sally Ann is not a reflection of what you did or didn’t do for her. You can’t look at it that way. You’ll just drive yourself crazy. All kids make mistakes. Some of them push on through, anyway, in spite of those mistakes. Others don’t. But you loved her, Dot. I know you did.”
“I did. I did love her.” She seemed to become aware, all at once, of who she was talking to, and her voice ratcheted up in intensity. It was the same tone of voice she had used on the phone earlier, a tone of accusation. “You’re the prosecutor. So it’s your job, right? Catching the bastards who sell this shit? So why aren’t you doing your job? Why are you just sitting here? Do your job. Go do your freaking job.”
Lashing out was a good way to deflect grief. Bell understood that. Dot would bounce between sorrow and anger a thousand times today, and every day for the next several weeks or months. Maybe for the rest of her life. And she would aim her anger at the very people who tried to help her, such as Sammy, such as Bell, because they were close by. It wasn’t fair, but this wasn’t about fairness. It was about survival. Dot would become impossible. Old friends would gradually stop coming around, stop making the effort. They would not want to risk being insulted and screamed at. They would not want to feel Dot’s eyes on them as she asked that impossible question: “Why?”
