Big City Eyes

by Delia Ephron

  “Stop, Mom, okay?” He was begging.

  I raised my head to smile so he wouldn’t worry. His eyes, inches from mine, blinked rapidly. I saw kindness there, but also fear.

  “Bernadette’s kind of crazy, Mom.” His grin came out crooked.

  “I guess.”

  I rested my head on my legs and wished for oblivion. After a while, Sam removed his arm. Deidre began amusing herself by putting leaves on her thigh and flicking them off. I knew because I peeked to see what the clicking noise was, in case it was the behavior of a large predator bug.

  My nose was dripping, and no amount of sniffling could stop it. I had cried more in this safe village in two months than I had in Manhattan during the last ten years. Enough. I pelted myself with insults like ridiculous and ludicrous. The tears ran right through them. I sat up and banged my head against a branch. This brought another enraging onslaught of self-pity. “Come on, kids”—it seemed important to identify the adult—“we should go home and have dinner.”

  I began to plan my recovery, the knockdown doll bouncing back, this boomerang tendency of mine an uncontrollable tic. After dinner, I’d take a hot bath. I’d lace the water with salts and oils, and luxuriate. Then I’d snuggle into bed. There might be a good movie on Bravo. I didn’t need to go anywhere tonight at nine. It wasn’t necessary to meet to break up. Meeting to break up could make life only sadder and worse.

  The Sakonnet Times, November 5

  * * *

  Big City Eyes

  BY LILY DAVIS

  I WAS RETURNING from the movies last Saturday, when police cars wailed by. I was alone and, being a newcomer to Sakonnet Bay, feeling adrift, a state that can make a person lose sight of good common sense. My dashboard clock read 10:15, still prime time but approaching the heart of night. The moon was full, a phase thought to stimulate passion and wildness, and the sky was lit so brightly that misty clouds could be seen to pass across it. I followed the cars, which was how I happened to get into trouble. Mine or hers, I wasn’t sure. As I said, the moon was full.

  Her bare feet protruded from under an inkberry thicket at the edge of a bird sanctuary on Neetles Lane. Each toenail was painted a different antisocial shade of polish. Neither black nor dark green, to name two of the colors, is sold locally, at either Bright’s or Deborah’s Hair and Nails.

  One officer, taping the crime scene with yellow to secure it, suggested that the victim had a niece or little sister who liked to play at giving manicures. But he should not draw conclusions until the evidence is in. A policeman should not do that. I don’t know this cop—not really. I can only hope he’s as sensitive as he seemed. He should pay close attention, read not only the words but between the lines.

  I think she was from Manhattan. Like me. City women are more shocking in their choice of nail polish and more reckless in their choice of men.

  I had been certain that the cause of death was rowdiness. Out-of-control partying, perhaps at one of the few summer houses visited in the off-season. Recreational drugs, overdose, subsequent panic, the half-clothed body hastily buried. She was not, as one rumor has it, decapitated, but some of her face, shoulder, and left breast had been gnawed by animals, possibly raccoons that dug up the body. I was wrong in imagining that party/drug scenario. I was wrong that evening, and impetuous. I got carried away.

  The autopsy revealed a puncture wound in the lower back of this 105-pound, blond-haired, blue-eyed female. Estimated age, 20 to 24 years. Suspected weapon: a deer dart shot from a blowgun. She died of asphyxiation brought on by a lethal combination of ketamine (an animal tranquilizer) and Valium.

  Police Chief Ben Blocker refused to speculate on who might have had access to deer darts. It cannot have escaped his notice that at the recent town meeting, Coral Williams rushed the stage and knocked over a display of immunization and tranquilizer darts. Every person present, or any friend of someone who attended, had access to the darts. Furthermore, according to the autopsy results, the blond woman had been dead four to six days. The town meeting took place five days before the body was discovered, a bull’s-eye in the estimated time of death.

  What brought the young woman to this peaceful cove that turned out to be her undoing? Did she think it was safer here, but away from familiar things, did she find herself more vulnerable? Maybe she had a crazy boyfriend or fell for a married man. Maybe she was killed by a distraught wife, unhinged by the loss of her husband. Maybe she realized she had to end a relationship and was foolish enough to meet her lover to break up. A mistake.

  Meeting to break up is either an invitation to continue or an opportunity for more sorrow and pain. What are telephones for? Once I even avoided ending a relationship by phone. I stood the man up and never called to tell him why, never spoke to him again, because the sound of his voice would have been enough to wither my resolve and send me tumbling back into the briers. Did he understand that my ruthlessness was only self-protection? I don’t know. I hope he forgave me.

  LePater’s has sold twice as many doughnuts this week. A dead body is good for business, the gossip mill churns. I would like to quash two egregious rumors. First, my son was not questioned by the police for this crime, and he is not a member of Aryan Nation. Second, when I screamed before entering my house late last Saturday night, I was not escaping from a kidnapper, a person in a black SUV, who sped away from my corner. The police are not hunting for this person. They do not believe I was the intended second victim of a serial murderer. If I were not such a patsy, emotionally speaking … if I had not let an overwrought hysteric move into my house, neither of these rumors would have started.

  There is an illness known as moon blindness, an eye ailment affecting horses. It results in loss of sight. While it has nothing to do with lunar effects, as far as I know—I came across the term in a dictionary only by accident—I like to think that it does. I like to believe that there is such a thing as an inability to see caused by the delirium of romance: an incapacity to perceive danger and, most especially, the consequences of one’s own acts. Perhaps that young woman had moon blindness. Oh, how I sympathize.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE FRIDAY morning that my column on the dead woman landed on Sakonnet Bay doorsteps, I arrived at the office early. All the paper’s employees had keys in case they wanted to write at odd hours. I struggled with the rusty lock, jiggling and twisting the key, hoping that my difficulty in accomplishing something this simple would not be emblematic of the day. When I pulled the doorknob toward me, the key turned easily and I entered. I dropped my purse inside so I could use both hands to haul in a stack of papers, tied in twine. They had been left by the printer around dawn. My column was on the front page, boxed in by a double black rule.

  With a quick glance around the reception area and the advertising department to the left, I could see that the shabby offices were strewn with the hysteria of Thursday’s closing—the weekly late-night process of putting the paper to bed. There were sheaves of edited copy, marked-up proofs of ad pages, and sitting open on Peg’s desk, a pizza box with one slice left. Cold pizza is so depressing—the sight of melted mozzarella now the consistency of hardened glue. I carried the box to the kitchen and dumped it, washed the coffeepot and a few dirty mugs. I started the electric coffeemaker brewing again and went upstairs to my office with a copy of the paper.

  I swept the old proofs off my desk, crushing the pages together and stuffing them and some of my own rage and frustration into my wastebasket. My desk was empty now, except for my computer. Rob had two framed pictures—one of a small sailboat, the other of his fiancée in a bikini on the boat’s deck—to keep him company while he worked. Bernadette collected pigs: a tiny ceramic pig angel, a dancing pig wind-up toy, pig salt and pepper shakers. These knickknacks behind her computer were all knocked over, as if they were the casualties of a pig war. Bracelets of tightly woven string hung like ornaments off the arm of her Luxo lamp. I had yet to stake a personal claim to my space.

  Out the window I had a vi
ew of the parking lot and the back of several stores on Barton Road. I could see the very location where Tom and I had last hooked up. “Meet me in the parking lot behind Bright’s.” I could recite all our casual yet charged exchanges. They were stuck in memory the way childhood poems and nursery rhymes got stuck: useless but nevertheless there for life. A busy spot in plain sight is the least suspicious. Was I the inspiration for this cleverness, or was I the beneficiary of expertise from previous infidelities?

  Ever since Jane had shamed me back to reality four days ago, and I had not kept my evening date with Tom, details of our flirtation had begun to nag at me. He had arranged our rendezvous so shrewdly, sneaking a coded message into our conversation about the autopsy. Nine o’clock. Oh, sure, of course, I get it. And then he was even more brash to assume that if he gave me the time, I’d deduce the place.

  At least we had not made love on a pallet where a dead body had lain. “Deceased four to six days,” the autopsy had stated. We’d spied that woman in the summer house almost a month before. She’d been either sleeping or passed out, as Tom had suspected; and this news, while a relief, was disconcerting. I had been so sure. Her arm had dangled so peculiarly. I hated to be wrong.

  Three SUVs pulled into the lot. Most villagers could glance out a window, as I was doing now, and figure out who the drivers were, because of a bumper sticker or a dent in the door. Jane could reel off the assets and personal history of all potential home buyers and sellers. Everyone here kept tabs on everyone else. Maybe that’s why Tom hadn’t worried about what Billy knew—because it was inevitable he’d find out … or because Tom would tell him. Perhaps the brothers exchanged tales of sexual conquest.

  In retrospect, my conversation with Tom on the bleachers especially bugged me. I was in danger from him? Danger? How self-important was that? Tom was bold, flirting even when calling off a flirtation, so confident of his own seductive gifts. “We’re not even going to be friends.” What an adorably tragic line. Tom was sly enough to live in the city. I hadn’t been sophisticated enough to detect country wiles. Not really country, though. That’s what Mrs. Woffert had pointed out. I had mistaken a place with a farmstand and a doughnut machine for country. This was just countrified suburbia. Shallow. Not innocent at all.

  Had I surrendered a lifetime of cynicism and reserve to an insincere man? That notion was almost unbearable.

  I opened the metal cabinet to replenish my desk supplies. Some new black pens. New pens with fine points were always refreshing. “I am fine,” I reminded myself, sitting down in my chair and opening the paper to enjoy my column in print. “I am fine.” Wouldn’t it amuse Tom to know that “fine” had become my mantra.

  I heard Rob taking the stairs two at a time. “Hi,” he said, strolling in. His handsome preppy face was annoyingly unlined. Not a visible worry. He lay a small paper bag on my desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “A doughnut.”

  “How sweet, thank you.” I looked inside. “Cinnamon, my favorite.”

  “I liked your column,” he said.

  Peg pretended to knock at the open door. She carried potted yellow mums. “Cheer-you-up flowers, honey.”

  “My goodness, those are beautiful.” How did she know I needed cheering?

  Peg fussed at my desk, turning the crock this way and that to give me the best view of the flowers. “You’ve hardly been here long enough for love trouble.”

  “I’ll say,” said Rob.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We read between the lines. There, that’s perfect.” Peg stood back to appreciate her gift.

  “Not to get too personal.” Rob sat on my desk and ate a doughnut of his own. “But were you dumped?”

  “No, I wasn’t. How could I have been dumped if I wrote that I had stood someone up?”

  “I thought you implied.”

  “Implied what?”

  “Forget it. Don’t get mad at me. You’re the one who wrote, ‘read between the lines.’”

  “I said I was going to break up with the guy. Me. I was going to break up. And it was ages ago, anyway.”

  “Sure,” Rob agreed much too quickly and threw Peg a look.

  She leaned down and patted my cheek. “If you need a shoulder, honey, I’m available.”

  In that leafy den with Sam and Deidre, I had sworn not to shed another tear. I owed it to Sam. When I’m upset, he’s frightened. But having made that pledge, I may have contrived circumstances that would render it nearly impossible to keep. An office of sympathizers, a cheek-patter. Peg and Rob regarded me with tenderness reserved for puppies.

  Bernadette flounced in, thank God. The evil princess here to break the mood. “Bad morning,” she announced. Rob hung up my coat and his on the door. “What about mine?” Bernadette asked, wriggling out of a down parka.

  He held out his hands, and she tossed it over. “Bad morning,” she repeated, glaring at me.

  “Be kind, Bernadette,” said Peg.

  “I am, sort of, it’s just that—” She squeezed out her bid for compassion, that helpless squeak in the voice. “If anyone cares, I’m trying hard to do a good job.”

  “And you are,” said Art, stopping in on the way to his office.

  “My article looks really nice, doesn’t it?” Bernadette waved the front page in our faces.

  “Yes,” we all chimed, but she turned sullen anyway. “Lily didn’t have to insult me in her column and reveal my whereabouts.”

  “I didn’t identify you, so I couldn’t have revealed your whereabouts. Besides, you’re not there anymore.” This was true. After absconding with Billy, she had not returned, and I had deposited a shopping bag of her belongings on her desk the next morning.

  My phone rang, and I tensed. “Calm down, it’s just the telephone,” said Bernadette. I had been nervous about the phone all week, wondering if Tom would call, but he hadn’t. He would never call me now, now that he had read my column. “Hello. Lily Davis here.”

  “Lily, it’s Coral. Coral Williams.”

  “Hello, Coral.”

  “That McKee is not worth it.”

  “What?” I sat up so quickly that the seat slipped out from behind me. I hit the floor, still with the receiver to my ear. “What are you talking about?”

  No response. “Hello? Hello?”

  “You yanked the cord out,” Rob said, plugging the wire back in as Peg helped me up.

  “Coral?”

  “I’m here,” she chirped. “I don’t think he’s reliable. He seems sweet, and I guess that’s what you fancied, but”—her voice lowered ominously—“don’t repeat this, you swear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, once he put his fist through a plaster wall. Besides, if you ask me, he’s in love with his wife.”

  “He is?”

  “Yes. I’m glad you stood him up.”

  The office crowd was riveted. No one made any pretense of doing anything other than stare at me. “I hate to think of you having a broken heart,” moaned Coral.

  I forced my eyes wide open to prevent my willful tear ducts from kicking in.

  “That man was sulking, twisting his hulk around every three seconds to look at the clock. I finally had to boot him out. It was five o’clock and we were closing.”

  “You were closing?”

  “‘Meeting to break up.’ I loved your column. I love how you expressed that.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Coral. I heard a whack and clinking coins. She must have been at the cash register, cracking open a roll of quarters.

  “Do you think I was involved with Billy McKee?”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Coral.

  “So that explains it,” whooped Bernadette.

  “Explains what?” asked Art.

  “How she happened to see him on Saturday night and horn in on my story.”

  “I am not involved with Billy McKee,” I told Coral, while scowling at Bernadette. “I wa
s going to interview him at the café and forgot all about it.” How could anyone think I was involved with that inarticulate baby? “I hope you haven’t told people that he was my boyfriend.”

  “Not a soul.”

  That was a lie. “I have never been involved with anyone from Sakonnet Bay. I hope you’ll convey that to everybody who comes into the Comfort Café.”

  As I disconnected, Bernadette was complaining about my devious behavior. Art shooed her toward her desk. “Come into my office, Lily.”

  In the hall, he stopped for water, offering me a cup first. I declined. He straightened the thin cushion on the chair near his desk before inviting me to sit.

  “Good grief, I hope you don’t pity me, too. All I did was write one pathetic line, really, how I sympathized with the dead girl’s plight. Her imagined plight,” I amended.

  “The whole column is sad,” said Art. “It reeks. Alone, adrift, however you put it. And that stuff about your son will probably make folks feel terrible for gossiping about him. Besides, you are a bit of a match girl.”

  “A match girl?”

  “You seem like somebody who needs a winter coat.”

  “I don’t. I have two, and one is filled with down.”

  “That doesn’t help, either. Comments like that are so”—he fell silent as he reviewed a calendar of upcoming events, and made puffing sounds with his cheeks. “Yeah, you’re plucky. Have you been to the dispatch office?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  It had been a stressful experience.

  The dispatch office was outfitted with a closed-circuit TV, its screen divided into four equal parts so that Sally could view simultaneously the entrance to the building, the two jail cells, the central hallway, and the small interrogation room. This television was a fancy piece of equipment. Blocker had shown it off proudly at our first meeting. I had avoided looking at the screen as well as the wall chart that indicated who was on duty. Tom’s presence on either might freak me out. I raced through the log, alert to the tread of any approaching footsteps—they could be his—while Sally chatted on the phone with her mother about plans for Timmy’s third birthday, and whether he was too young for a baseball mitt.