by Trevor Cole
At Fran’s door she sighed and put her thumb to the buzzer, resigned to an awkward few hours before she would be able to make some excuse and leave. Her dramas with Natalie and with Milt had left her feeling rather fragile. It was that fragility, she decided later, that underlay what happened over the next couple of hours and, since she could never blame Natalie, that meant, more or less directly, that it was Milt’s fault.
What happened was that Jean found herself drinking Fran and Jim’s wine, and not really minding sitting in their formal living room, and enjoying, frankly, being a little pampered for once. Jim had a nice, manly presence about him, an aura of power deferred, and Fran just seemed so pleased that she had come, nothing was too much trouble for her. Another glass of wine? More nuts? Different nuts? How did she like her chicken cooked? Was chicken all right? Maybe they should have done fish. They could do fish. It went like that. Fran ordered Jim around so much, to get nuts and wine and check on the chicken and the potatoes, the potatoes, Jean briefly feared for his health. He was a large man, he had a torso like a loaf of bread, and he was sweating …
But it was all right. And eventually the three of them sat down to dinner. Fran had set a lovely table, using heavy silverware and, as she put it, her “historic” china, which featured a delicate blue-and-gold forget-me-not pattern around the rim, and which she seemed to want to make a topic of conversation because of Jean’s work in ceramics. Nothing about the china interested Jean, but she didn’t say that, and she tried not to show it, because for once she didn’t mind Fran talking. From the way Fran behaved all night, it was as if Jean was something of a star in her eyes. Perhaps that had always been true, but somehow it had never been apparent to Jean before. Fran spoke about how much she admired and envied Jean’s artistic ability and, not only that, her courage in offering her work for sale. She admitted that she could never do that. “Isn’t she brave, Jim?” Fran asked her husband. “And so talented.” And Jim, who seemed to defer to his wife in everything, at least everything of a household nature, agreed.
The only awkward moment that occurred during the first part of the evening, and it was only slightly awkward, came when Fran bustled around the table to point out to Jean something about the china pattern – a flecking in the gilt that she considered significant for some reason – and then paused. After a second Jean realized that Fran was staring at something, and it was something in her hair.
“What is it, Fran?” she asked.
Fran frowned as she peered closer. “It looks like a spot of dried blood … with a piece of skin in it.”
Jean reached up, feeling for the spot, and found it, and so wished at that moment that she had taken the time for a proper shower. She dragged it crumbling out of her hair and looked at what remained on her fingers.
“It’s glaze,” said Jean, wiping her fingers in her napkin. “And a bit of clay.”
“The glaze is red, though. Dark red. You almost never use red.”
Jean merely smiled at Fran. “I’m working on something new.”
Things proceeded very amiably after that. The chicken Jim brought out was done in a nice oyster mushroom sauce that was obviously made from scratch, and it was accompanied with fiddlehead greens, which Jean loved, and buttered carrots and roasted new potatoes. Jean mentioned that she had once done a ceramic of fiddleheads sprouting from the fingertips of a half-submerged ceramic hand – Fiddlehead Resurrection she’d called it – which delighted Fran but left Jim looking rather mystified. Jim wasn’t an art appreciator, that much was obvious. Or a conversationalist. He seemed perfectly content to let his wife run the show, just as Fran seemed quite content to run it. They appeared, all in all, to be a very happy couple.
And then, at a certain point during dinner, Fran got a little agitated. Somehow they had gotten onto the topic of friendships. Fran referred to Jean’s recent loss of Dorothy and how hard that must have been, and then she turned the conversation to herself. She admitted that since retiring and moving to Kotemee from the city, she and Jim had found it hard to make new friends. “People in small towns aren’t what I expected,” said Fran, fussing with her linen napkin. “I thought we’d be part of a community. I had some silly idea we’d be welcomed. But it hasn’t been that way. Everybody here is just as insular as they are anywhere, except for you.” She touched the napkin to her nose as Jim leaned over and put his big paw on her arm, and Jean became aware of a sudden weight pressing on her, which was obligation, and the need to assure Fran that friendships didn’t always come easily to her, either.
And that was how she got talking about long-lost Cheryl Nunley, and her apparent trouble, and Jean’s deep regret over losing that friendship, and her frustration at not being able to visit Cheryl. And that was what led Fran to exclaim, with an almost phosphoric burst of certainty and fervour, that she would drive Jean herself. She would drive her tomorrow. She would insist!
And Jean, realizing too late that her fragility from the day’s events had lulled her, indirectly but inexorably, into a trap, said … “Sure.”
It was her cellphone that finally brought Jean relief from Céline Dion. She heard the ringing in her purse as if it were calling to her from another room, reaching her through the wall of voice. She dug out her phone and waved it to get Fran’s attention, then pantomimed placing it to her ear.
“Sorry!” said Fran. She leaned forward to kill the stereo. “I just get so caught up sometimes.”
Jean could tell that it was Welland calling, from the picture she’d assigned to his number. It was her favourite picture of him, looking very handsome in his uniform, but also smiling in a brothery way and not like a police officer. “Hello, Welland.”
“Jean?” said Welland. “Where are you?”
There was something decidedly off about the tone of Welland’s voice. It was more police officery than his picture, and it made her back stiffen. “Why are you asking?” she said.
“Remember I told you yesterday the city detectives might want to ask you some questions? About Adele Farbridge? Well, now they’re trying to reach you. Nobody said anything to me, I only know because I’m on the system.”
The system, the system. Jean was starting to regret ever getting him onto it. “All right, Welland,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”
“So where are you? I called your home number and Milt said you’ve been staying at Natalie Skilbeck’s house, but there’s no answer there.”
An image appeared in Jean’s mind of Natalie, dragged out of view behind the kitchen island and shoved up against one of the low cupboards, which was all Jean could manage to do with her because she was so heavy. And the blood had been almost impossible to get out of the grout between the tiles. “Don’t go bothering Natalie, Welland,” she said. “I’m not there any more.” She looked over at Fran, who was happily driving in the fast lane of the highway even though she was not going very fast at all. Her whole life Jean had complained about cars that did that, and now she was in one.
“Right,” said Welland. “So tell me where you are.”
“Welland, don’t be bossy.” He was starting to sound not only like a police officer but also like Andrew Jr., which was even more off-putting. “At the moment I’m enjoying a nice drive and I don’t want you to spoil it.”
She hoped that would be the end of things, but it wasn’t. Welland just kept pushing for her to tell him where she was, and whether she was with anyone, and where she intended to go. And if it was far away from Kotemee, Welland said, then that might be a problem for the detectives. They might consider that “suspicious,” he said. Even listening through her little phone, sitting in Fran’s slow-moving Cadillac SUV, Jean knew the code of Welland’s voice well enough to hear what he could not actually say. That he was afraid for her, but didn’t know why. That he was not even sure that he had a reason to be afraid, and was almost frightened to find out. That he loved her and wanted to be a good brother to her, but that he was also a little excited, because he was finally on the inside of
a real police investigation. It was quite remarkable, thought Jean, the messages a voice conveyed.
And she understood too – although Welland’s voice didn’t tell her this, it was her own common sense – that she was rapidly running out of time. The detectives from the city wanted to talk to her, and once that ball started rolling you couldn’t stop it. Soon they would want to talk to people who knew her and had spent time with her recently. People like Jeff Birdy. People like Milt. People like Natalie.
But that was all right. Because there was only one person left in the world whom she cared for enough to call a friend, and she was going to see her soon.
“Fran,” said Jean, when she finally hung up on Welland, “I’m fairly certain this Cadillac can go faster.”
They were heading along the interstate to Owasco Lake, and according to the little clock on the dash it was about five o’clock.
“Nearly suppertime,” said Fran. “Why don’t we pull off for a bite?”
Over the preceding several hours, Jean had come to understand a few things about Fran, apart from her Céline Dion obsession. One was that Fran was rather expert at reading maps. The Cadillac had a computer capable of providing directions, but Fran never used it. Instead she folded the state map into precise and easily accessible quadrants and had Jean hold it for her. She had learned that, she said, while travelling with Jim through southeastern Turkey, where “one wrong turn could have meant our heads.” Indeed, it sometimes seemed as though Fran felt the same way travelling through New York State; without warning she would snatch the map from Jean’s hands and check a coordinate before handing it back. After the second hour Jean was no longer startled by this, although she was not yet fully inured.
Another thing that Jean had learned was that Fran did not like driving for very long without stopping. Already there had been two pull-offs for a bite, and one fairly recent bathroom break. Fran had caught a glimpse of an Applebee’s beyond the veil of trees and wondered aloud whether Jean needed to “go to the loo.” Jean had assured Fran that she didn’t, but found herself leaning hard to the left anyway as Fran swung onto the exit ramp. She thought there might be something wrong with Fran’s bladder, but Fran explained that it was precautionary. Taking regular breaks, she said, allowed you to stay alert behind the wheel, and staying alert meant staying safe. She had learned that driving with Jim through Bolivia.
But this time, Jean thought she would take a polite stand. “Wouldn’t you rather keep going?” she said. “I think we’re almost there.”
Fran snatched the map out of Jean’s hand, gave it a once-over, and handed it back. “We’re still an hour away,” she said. “Also, as you said yourself, we don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there. And if we’re just showing up at your friend’s door, we can hardly expect her to feed us.”
“I suppose,” said Jean.
Fran glanced over. “I guess you’re getting anxious.”
Jean stared through the windshield at the highway that ribboned away from them into the distance, and at the licence plates and taillights of the cars zooming by in the slow lane. “I am a bit.”
“It must be so wonderful,” said Fran. “For Cheryl, I mean. To have a friend who cares about you so much that she’d drive hundreds of miles just to see you in your hour of need. I’ve never had anybody who cared about me that much.”
Jean gave Fran the best smile she could manage. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, no, it is true.” Fran repeatedly checked her side and rear-view mirrors as she spoke. She’d been doing this the whole trip, because for the driver talking was as bad for alertness as eating and you had to work extra hard to stay focused. Jean was no longer disconcerted. “When I was little,” said Fran, “my dad took work wherever he could find it, and so we moved around all the time and I never had a chance to form a really close friendship with anyone.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have one sister,” said Fran, her eyes on the right-hand mirror. “But she’s six years older. And anyway, siblings aren’t quite the same thing as friends.”
“That’s very true,” said Jean.
Fran went quiet, and for a while there was only the hum of the tires against the road. “Well,” she said finally, “I can hardly wait to see what real friendship looks like. I envy you so much. And Cheryl. Especially Cheryl, because she has you for a friend.”
Jean felt her face get hot and she knew that she was blushing. She had the sort of skin that blushed bright pink, although since high school it hadn’t often been a problem. She turned away from Fran as if something beyond the passenger window had caught her attention. “That’s very sweet,” she said. She noticed an exit fly past and realized it was the second Fran had missed since talking about getting a bite. “Didn’t you want to stop, Fran?” she said.
“Oh, well, I thought it would be okay to keep going, just this once.”
Jean glanced over and she could see that Fran was blinking away tears. “Thank you, Fran.”
“No, it’s fine,” said Fran, with a small sniffle. “It’s just so exciting.”
The Finger Lakes landscape undulated around them like mounds and folds in a moss duvet, and here and there lay the chenille patches of vineyards. Whenever the road rose and the Cadillac crested the peak of a hill, Jean could see on the horizon strips of water that glinted pale gold in the early-evening light. Like a glass of Chardonnay, she thought. And she could read, in the highway signs they passed, place names by the dozens, so many of them “Hills” and “Mills” and “Corners” and “Springs.” This wasn’t wine country, it was small town country. She thought now that she knew why Cheryl had come here. It was a land with a hundred Kotemees … a hundred versions of home.
At about six-thirty Fran pulled off the highway, and they began to follow a two-lane blacktop that took them rivering between hills and fields, through acres lavish with fruit. After a while Fran plucked up the map and studied it, as Jean watched row after row of tall vines troop past her window, and when Fran announced that they were getting close, Jean felt a surge of exhilaration in her chest and had to take a deep breath. She tried to picture the look on Cheryl’s face when she appeared at her front door. Would she smile? Jean wondered. Would she be joyful to see her? Or, in the middle-aged face standing before her, would Cheryl see thirty-seven years suddenly gone, and hate her for it?
Fran discarded the map because it was no longer detailed enough for her liking. Moments later they rounded a curve and Jean spotted, thirty yards ahead at the mouth of an even narrower road, a battered white sign announcing the village of Bier Ridge. The blue border that surrounded the sign seemed to have broken off in places, and the painted bunch of purple grapes that accented so many of the signs in this part of the state seemed to be missing its top half. Jean also noticed that the sign was held up, at a slight tilt, by two unpainted wooden legs, as if the whole assemblage had been clapped together in haste or frustration. But it was the sign they were looking for.
“There!” said Jean.
“I see it,” said Fran, and she wheeled hard to the right. “Okay, what number am I looking for?”
Jean pulled the sheet with Cheryl’s miserable picture out of her purse and checked the address the police had entered. “Three twenty-seven East Lake Road.” She looked up through the windshield. “How are we going to find East Lake Road?”
“We’re on it,” said Fran. She was leaning over the wheel, scanning the road ahead as if she were on safari, scouting for lions gorging on water buffalo.
“But I didn’t notice a street sign.”
“There’s only a couple of roads around here, and we’re on the east side of the lake.”
“Oh.”
With nothing to do or contribute, Jean folded the paper away and stayed calm by watching the scenery scroll past. Some of the homes here were lovely: bright clapboard houses with pretty gin-gerbreading and accenting shutters; handsome stone edifices with wide, groomed
lawns and carriage houses in the rear. There was love in these homes, she thought, or at the very least money. More money than most people in Kotemee had, except of course for Fran and Jim. Yes, Fran would certainly be in her element here, Jean thought. And she had a flash of worry. She wondered whether money might be at the root of Cheryl’s current trouble. Perhaps her friend had aspired to some sort of life here that was out of her reach. Perhaps Cheryl was a nobody here, just a grocery store clerk with a farmhand for a husband. She wondered if Fran, unwittingly, was driving them in her shiny, late-model Cadillac SUV toward some sort of shack, a broken-down hovel scorned by other Bier Ridge residents as a local embarrassment. She hoped the best for Cheryl but, with that picture to consider, the worst was not beyond the realm of possibility. And as a girl she had never had the best of taste.
They passed through a brief density of buildings, a little clutch of shops and official-looking structures bunched against the road like aphids on a twig, and then the buildings again became more sporadic.
“And that was Bier Ridge,” said Fran. She sat back in her driver’s seat and looked over at Jean. “Maybe we should stop and ask someone.”
“Maybe it isn’t the right road. Where’s the map?”
Jean checked the floor and between the seats, then craned around and saw the map tucked into the crevice of the back seat where Fran had tossed it. She reached for it, feeling herself tip slightly as the Cadillac took the incline of a hill, hearing the engine surge as Fran pressed on the gas. The map was a foot beyond the tips of her fingers.
“There was a little grocer’s in the village,” said Fran. “Why don’t we turn around and ask there?”
“No, no,” said Jean. “I’ll get it.” The last thing she wanted was for her reunion with troubled Cheryl to happen in the checkout line of some awful food mart.
“You know what Jim and I have learned?” said Fran. “Once you’re in the neighbourhood of where you want to go, it’s more efficient to ask for directions than to keep driving.”