“Well?” I demand, still contemplating the mirror. “Do I need a face-lift?”
Instead of answering, Maysie leans forward toward the mirror, too, trying the two-finger jowl-lift demo on her own actually-35 face. Today she’s back in her trademark black jeans. And I still can’t tell she’s pregnant. I smile at the memory. They hadn’t been trying. Apparently, the impending new kid was just as much a surprise to her and Matthew as it was to me.
“I think I look better, you know? Fixed?” Maysie’s voice now has the fake face-lift lisp. “I’d do it in a heartbeat, too. After little whoever is born. Maybe get a tummy tuck, while I’m at it. Bye-bye baby fat. And I’ve got to be on TV soon, after all. My days of hiding behind radio have come to an end.” She focuses on her reflection, first tugging at the corners of her eyes, then pulling up her eyebrows. “Can’t hurt.”
“Margaret Isobel Derosiers Green.” I turn to her, my own face forgotten. “You wouldn’t. Would you?”
“You wear contacts, right? Had braces? And might I ask, in my role as your best friend forever, whether you know the true color of your hair? As my preteen queen Molly so often puts it when she’s angling for pierced ears, ‘What’s the diff, dude?’”
Maysie’s now checking for loose skin under her neck. I check my own. Suddenly I’m envisioning a rhinoceros. Maybe Mom was right.
I tear my eyes away from the mirror and boost myself onto the counter, leaning my back against the wall, knees drawn up, feet on the counter. My mind flashes to Penny in just this position in our booth at dinner. “So like I said,” I say, changing the subject. “Penny acted as if I were invisible. She’s devoted to Josh, and he dotes on her. I felt like such an outsider. I mean, I am an outsider.”
I stare at the toes of my little black suede flats, unseeing. Franklin and I are heading back to Swampscott in a minute. We decided to make it a casual day. The power reporter look can work in the corporate world, but high heels and Armani are sometimes too daunting when you’re trying to extract info from cautious—and potentially suspicious—neighbors. But first I needed to talk to Maysie. And not just about my face.
“So you didn’t study to be a mom, did you? Seems like Molly arrived and you somehow knew what to do next. Sleep, diapers, crying. You just—”
“There was no sleep,” Maysie says with a smile. “For about two years. Then Max arrived. And there was even less sleep.”
“You know what I mean,” I say, waving away her digression. “Do I have a heart-to-heart with Penny? Am I her friend? Do I tell her what she can and can’t do? Do I always have to agree with Josh? What’s my attitude about Victoria? What if Penny, I don’t know, hates me?” I twist my gold-linked bracelet, a three-month anniversary present from Josh, around my wrist. “I hate surprises,” I say. “I’m better at things I can control.”
“You want a real answer?” Maysie asks. She sits across from me in her black director’s chair, leaning toward me, her face earnest. “I didn’t plan on little number three here. Talk about surprises. But I love her. Him. Already. Love is not about control, that’s one of the joys of it.”
She stops, and it seems as though she’s considering her own words. “You’ll never know unless you have your own child.”
My eyes turn teary, emotion unexpectedly washing over me. Of course I’ll never have my own child. Those days are gone.
Maysie jumps up, throws her arms around me. “Ah, my hormones, I’m so sorry,” she says. She steps back and holds her arms out, apologizing. “I sound like one of those Chicken Soup books, I know, and I didn’t mean…”
“Oh, honey, you know I’ve crossed that bridge,” I say, reassuring her. “Years ago.” At least I hope I’ve crossed it. I swing my legs down from the counter and brush the wrinkles out of my black slacks. “But that’s Victoria’s connection to Penny, you know? And Penny’s to Victoria. And I don’t want to change that. Couldn’t. I just hoped I could be Penny’s best friend, confidante, role model, or something. And maybe stepmom. But if last night proves anything, it ain’t gonna happen.”
From inside my tote bag, my cell phone begins a muffled rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Franklin’s and my theme song. He must be ready to leave for Swampscott.
“I’ve gotta disagree with Mick Jagger this time,” Maysie says, giving me a quick hug. “Sometimes you can get what you want. Just let yourself love her. And she’ll eventually love you back.”
* * *
You can tell it’s summer at Swampscott High School even with your eyes closed. No footsteps from packs of students giggling down the halls. No bells insistently clang for classes. No muffled unintelligible public-address voices proclaim the day’s schedule over the teenage din.
Not only is the reception desk at SHS deserted, the halls are empty. Some lockers flap open. Hand-lettered “Good luck to the Big Blue graduates” and “Go Seagulls 4-Evah” posters are beginning to untape themselves from the institutional beige walls.
On the counter in front of us, the Swampscott Chronicle’s headlines blare what’s fast becoming the biggest story in Massachusetts. Oz Tops Pols Polls. Franklin picks up the paper, reading the story out loud as we wait for someone to answer the hotel-desk bell on the counter we pinged, hoping for attention.
“This law-and-order thing seems to be resonating,” Franklin says, picking up the newspaper and flapping it open. “Listen to this. ‘Oscar Ortega, now an unprecedented seventeen points ahead in the polls, says his history of convictions is unmatched across the country.’ And, he told a crowd of cheering supporters, quote, ‘An Ortega administration means parents can be—’”
“Let me guess. Safe in their homes and safe in the streets,” I finish the sentence. “You’d think he’d get a new stump speech. Although this one seems to be doing the trick with voters.”
I peer across the counter and around the corner, checking for open doors in the line of offices that’s tucked on the other side. I ping the bell again. Its tinny jingle resounds hollowly through the room. No answer. “He’s not going to be happy when he hears we’re looking into Dorinda. What Oliver Rankin said at the elevator is an understatement. Bad publicity is death on the campaign trail, so Oz will certainly try to stop us. Though there’s nothing he can do, I suppose.”
Franklin puts the paper back. “Time, as they say, will tell.” He takes a few steps into the long hallway. “You know, there’s got to be someone here. Someplace. I mean, we just walked into the building. It was open.”
“How about this,” I say. “Franklin, you take the car, and hit the Swampscott paper. See if they have archives, a reporter who covered the case, old photos they didn’t use. I’ll check around here. Maybe someone’s in the library. Or the gym. Even if no one’s there, I bet there’ll be yearbooks. Names, pictures, all kinds of stuff. If someone asks what I’m doing here, I’ll…” I pause. “I’ll think of something.”
“Good luck with that,” Franklin says. “You’re probably guilty of trespassing, if someone decides to be a hard-liner about it.”
I look at my watch, ignoring him. “Call my cell in two hours,” I say. “We’ll compare notes over clam rolls at the Red Rock.”
* * *
I still have nightmares that I didn’t study for some exam, or I’m not ready for a test, or I can’t find my classroom. Those dreams have nothing to do with high school, I’m told, and everything to do with my struggle for perfection. Still, I’m probably in for some heavy sleep drama tonight. The smell of leftover pencil sharpenings and notebook paper and industrial-strength floor wax inside the Swampscott High School library time-travels me back to Anthony Wayne High in suburban Chicago, home of the Fighting Red Devils and my four misfit years of high grades and low self-esteem. High school—get through it, then forget it. For me at least.
The glass and metal door of the library opens without a sound and closes behind me. The fluorescent lights buzz and hum as I scan the long, narrow room. This place is deserted, too. A dark wood librarian’s de
sk, looming and massive, protects one end. In its sights, long pine tables with stocky chairs are lined up with geometric precision. A forest of pale wooden shelves stands in well-ordered lines, each displaying a brass and paper bracket, block lettered to show the range of Dewey Decimal numbers it contains. I’m on the prowl for yearbooks. And since there’s no one here to stop me, I’m going to find them. I head for the stacks and search until I see a line of tall, narrow, identical dark blue books. The gilt-lettered year is on the spine of each.
I grab the wooden ladder, and slide it closer, doing the math in my head. Dorinda Sweeney. Class of 19—she’s forty-three years old, so that would mean—82. I climb up, spot the book and pull it from the shelf. The Seagull. Almost ceiling-high on the ladder, I prop my open book against the row of closed ones. No index. Rats. But I can start with the senior class, that’s always alphabetical.
If I find something, though, that’s a dilemma. I stop, mid-search, and lean against the shelf. There’s no one here, so there’s no way to check out a book. I’d have to steal it, and although tempting, that’s not the best plan. I’ll just use my cell phone camera again.
I flip through pages of lip-glossed girls with overpermed hair and unfortunate leg warmers. Power chicks with Dynasty shoulder pads. Boys with surfboards, cars, guitars. At the beach, in the bleachers, in the back of a white convertible. I hurry to the K’s. And there’s Dorinda Keeler.
“Might I inquire,” says a prim and birdy voice from three feet beneath me, “who you are and what you possibly think you are doing?” It sounds like “enquiah” who you “ah,” but there’s no need to translate her intent. She’s in charge, I’m the interloper. I hope she’s not packing pepper spray or something.
Still holding the Seagull in one hand, I twist myself around on the ladder. Now I’m looking down at a polka-dot headband, a gray bob and brown sensible-looking shoes. Someone who, with one shake of this already unsteady ladder, might be able to dump me onto the scuffed linoleum. Headband tilts her face up to look at me, inquisitorial.
“Would you like to get down and leave quietly?” she asks. “Or shall I call security?”
Tucking the book under one arm, I begin my descent, talking the whole time in the most reassuring tone I can muster. I’m grateful I wore those flats. “I’m Charlie McNally, Channel 3 News?” I take a step more, trying to look right at her and not my feet, so she can see how unthreatening I am. “The building was open, and the library, too. I looked everywhere for someone, I’m so sorry, and when there was no answer, I just—” I wind up with one arm hooked over a ladder rung and one foot on the ground, face of a grown-up but feeling like a teenager nabbed in some after-hours mischief.
I pause, entreating the journalism gods to play ball. “Do you remember Dorinda Keeler?”
* * *
A pack of laughing teenagers, reef sandals and baggy cutoffs, sweeps into the Red Rock clam shack, their boisterous laughter filling the circular glass-walled restaurant. It smells of fried everything—clams, potatoes, onion rings—plus ketchup and tartar sauce. Out the window, the Atlantic Ocean touches Swampscott Beach on one shore and the white cliffs of Dover on the other. June sun glints on the water, its glare darkening figures walking on the sand into flickering silhouettes. Franklin and I have commandeered a table for six so we can spread out his loot—old newspaper articles and photographs. He even managed to snag Dorinda and Ray’s photo from the wedding section. Her childlike white-gowned figure, veiled and tiny, is tucked under her tuxedoed husband’s shoulder. He’s holding a glass of champagne. She has only a bouquet of white rosebuds. He’s beaming. Her face is obscured by the frothy veil.
“Here’s one for the psych books,” Franklin says, covering the newlyweds with another page from his black leather folder. He turns the photo toward me, pointing. “This was spray painted on the sidewalk in front of All Saints Church.”
“Where Dorie was—”
“Married, right,” Franklin continues. “And it was on her wedding day. Some newspaper photog got a shot of it before the city power-washed it away. See? It says ‘Dorie and CC 4-Evah.’ Spelled like that, ‘evah.’ The archives guy, a real walking history book, remembers that Dorinda dumped her devoted boyfriend CC Hardesty for Ray. He figured this paint job was CC’s last cry of unrequited love, like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate yelling ‘Elaine,’ pounding the glass. But Dorie ‘chose the Sweeney money and power,’ so says Mr. Archives. And apparently that was the end of Dorie and CC.”
A miniskirted waitress, polo shirt with collar flipped, annoyingly long tanned legs and bouncing hair, arrives at our table. She’s carrying two waxed-paper-lined red plastic baskets, and hesitates as she dubiously eyes the documents strewn across the plastic tabletop. Franklin sweeps his copies together, tamping the edges to make them straight before he inserts them into his folder. “I like the boyfriend,” Franklin says, snapping the folder shut. “He’s—”
“You like the boyfriend?” I raise my eyebrows and pretend to be shocked. “What would your adorable Stephen say—”
“Clam rolls?” the waitress interrupts, eyeing Franklin first. “Extra tartar, extra lettuce, extra onion rings? Coke?”
Franklin nods. She hands me the light mayo, no fries and Diet Coke. Damn Franklin and his cooperative metabolism.
He nibbles a few onion rings, meticulously peeling the batter-dipped strips away from one another and dipping each in a puddle of ketchup. “So,” he says. “You scored at the library?”
My clam roll is oozing mayonnaise. So much for “light.” I try to tuck escaping clam shards back into the buttered, toasted hot dog bun while relating my encounter with Marybeth Gallagher, Swampscott High’s enduring librarian and uncompromising guardian of her well-ordered domain.
“She was not happy to see me,” I say, holding the clam roll in one hand and my napkin in the other. I’m alternating taking bites and dabbing bready morsels from my lipstick. “Told me in no uncertain terms I was trespassing and it was only because she had seen me on TV that she didn’t call security. I explained we were trying to help Dorinda Keeler. Sweeney. I could tell she was curious, you know? But even then, no way she was going to let me stick around. She actually took me by the elbow, propelled me to the door, and then she—kind of begrudgingly—let on that she did remember Dorinda. And her ‘beau,’ as she called him, the star of the senior play, Colby Carl Hardesty.”
I sit up straighter and flutter my eyelashes, mimicking the librarian’s dramatic intonation and Down East accent. “‘CC, just like Romeo, was every girl’s dream and every mother’s nightmare.’” I smile, myself again. “Muthah’s nightmayeh, I love it. Then she tossed me from the place faster than you could say no comment.”
“She loaned you the yearbook, though?” Franklin asks. His clam roll, extra tartar sauce and all, is not dripping. Somehow his clams are staying nicely inside their boundaries. Even Franklin’s food is neat. “Bring it out, girl.”
I wipe my hands on my pile of paper napkins and draw the Seagull from my tote bag. By now I know exactly what picture to show him. “‘Up Where We Belong’ was the prom theme, can you believe it?”
Holding the yearbook with both hands, I turn it so Franklin can see, then point to each picture. “That’s Dorinda. That’s the CC person, her ‘beau.’ Look at that updo. And the tiara? I like her better with the sweatshirt look. The one in my phone snapshot.”
Frowning briefly, I stare at the hauntingly dated photograph, feeling the wrinkle between my eyebrows nestle itself in a little more permanently. My toe starts to tap. I slowly push my plate of congealing clam roll remains out of the way.
“You know,” I say, “she has that prommy dress, and the tiara and those banana curls. And no one looks like themselves at the prom, but—”
“Yeah, I’ve seen your prom picture, in the Farrah-wannabe getup,” Franklin says. “You looked like you had two heads. That clump of fake curls.” He smiles. “How much did that thing weigh? And your dress—was that a color found in n
ature?”
“It was 1978,” I say, my voice muffled because I’m digging into my purse. I need my cell phone. “It was cool.” There’s a beep as my phone powers up. More beeps as I click to my photos. I scroll down to the one I snapped of Dorinda. I was right.
“Check it out,” I say, holding my phone up next to the yearbook shot. “This picture of Dorinda I took? From the photo in the drawer? It’s not Dorinda.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Franklin and I look back and forth between the two pictures, my fuzzy out-of-focus phone snapshot and the elaborately unrealistic prom photo. They look similar, but they’re clearly two different teenagers. Either one could have grown up to be the person in the nursing home surveillance tape. Or neither.
“Maybe Dorinda had plastic surgery? For some reason? And that’s why she looks different on the tape? It drives me crazy that all we have are pictures—the yearbook, my phone, that video. What can you tell from a picture? We have got to talk to Dorinda in person.”
“Could be a friend of hers.” Franklin takes the yearbook and begins flipping the pages. “We could compare your phone photo with all the faces in the yearbook. See if we get a match.” He reaches for my phone. “Let’s see it.”
I stare at the cell phone’s tiny screen, then I flip it closed, shaking my head to get my thoughts in order. “Wait. Why do we have to know who’s in the picture? Let’s not lose sight of our goal here. I just found it in the drawer—it doesn’t have to be some big clue. We need to advance the story. Find out what happened to Ray Sweeney. Why Dorinda was convicted.”
Franklin hands me back the yearbook, then scoops up the last bit of ketchup with a shred of onion ring. Only he would eat onion rings with a fork. “She confessed,” he says, examining his final bite. “That’s why.”
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