"I saw someone right after we got here," she told Marietta. "But I was tired from the drive, and I kept dozing off. I might have been dreaming. Why? Is Skillute dangerous? It seems pretty quiet around here."
"It's always good to be cautious," Marietta said. "This is a nice little house. The property once belonged to Beverly's in-laws, the Dempseys. They moved off the land a long time ago. They didn't have enough money to keep it. They might have thought Beverly would leave it to her husband's family. I wouldn't know."
Marietta paused for a sip of iced coffee and then continued:
"The Dempseys don't own much, so they don't like to let go."
"We have all the legal papers."
"Oh, there's no legal question," Marietta said. "Leaving this house to somebody from out of town, that's just the kind of thing Beverly would do. She'd like to know the Dempseys were in an uproar over something she did."
"Maybe we should sell it to the Dempseys," Lydia suggested.
"The rich ones moved away years ago. I doubt any of the family that's left could afford it. Also, they might not feel like paying for it. They might consider it to be in the family already."
"So, do we need to keep a shotgun by the front door?" Lydia joked. She lost her humor when she saw the serious expression on her guest's face.
"Nothing to worry about," Marietta told her. "I'd be cautious, but not worried, if I were you. As long as you plan to sell soon and move back to Seattle, I wouldn't worry about it."
Two hours later Lydia sat on the back steps smoking and worrying about it. Who were these backward, backwoods cousins, and what the hell did they want? She thought of a children's picture book she once owned: rodents in a hut full of rags and twigs, feasting on cheese stolen from a neighbor's trash, working at it with their mole hands and sharp teeth. It was weird to hear Marietta refer to a bunch of hillbillies skulking in tents and trailers, practically in her back yard. They sounded like a feral clan from a horror movie. They were probably old hippies. It was probably nothing but a ploy to get Lydia and Greg to lower the price of the house. Pastor Colquitt would stop by with an offer any day now.
Marietta talked about Beverly, the woman who was very likely her mother. She had a sense that Marietta knew this but never alluded to it, and she wondered why. She could have asked point blank, but she didn't know how much she wanted to learn. While clearing out the cupboards and shelves of the house she had discovered a few photos and numerous ornate frames, but no pictures of Beverly. Not even a wedding photo. She wondered if Marietta had helped herself to whatever she wanted before the attorneys sent an appraiser.
What was it about Marietta that appealed to her, despite the odd manner? When she finally realized what it was, she had to laugh: Marietta was the first woman she had met who didn't show the slightest interest in her pregnancy. All the time they were together talking, and despite the peculiar turn the conversation had taken, Lydia had felt like herself, her old self, instead of a woman carrying a baby until it was ready to be born.
Clouds gathered swiftly in the afternoon sky, and the temperature began to drop. The shade descended along tree trunks and swallowed the bright green bristles of the yew shrubs that grew between the back steps and the woods. When the last glimmers of warmth and sunlight were extinguished Lydia heard a faint, tuneless whistling out on the road, at the far end of the house. She decided it was time to go inside.
Never mind the rest of the yard sale. Whatever was left tomorrow, Greg could clean it up. Or he could leave all of it on the lawn and let it rot, for all she cared. She picked up the crumpled cigarette butt and went inside to lie down.
Marietta
Marietta had offered as much warning as she dared. If she came right out and told Lydia what she suspected, and what she and Beverly had done, what good would it do?
She sat in the deepening dark of the late afternoon watching the meadow from her spot at the living room window. This was the center of the world she had made for herself in her son's house. Floorboards creaked overhead. Henry would be pacing, practicing his next sermon. He had mentioned it at supper: Something about forgiving hearts and the release of envy, something about not coveting. She had forgotten the gist of it.
Alicia was such a good person. Marietta was glad she'd found Henry. Who else would have taken her son, with his need to save the world? Where did all of that come from? It wasn't from her. Maybe she had been wrong to let Bonnie sit with Henry all those times when he was growing up. Or maybe there was a strain of insanity in John Colquitt's family. She would never know.
Butterflies hovered over the wild flowers. Marietta smiled. The world would just go on when the human part died off, someday. It would be like we never existed, and that would be a blessing. People were greedy and selfish. They lied best about things they loved and wanted to own. Even an innocent desire could lead to something terrible. Good intentions, like Henry's, mostly failed. The weak prayed for mercy, and they were wasting their breath. The strong preyed on the weak as often as they could get away with it. That would never change until all the people on earth were gone.
The meadow and sky and trees wouldn't miss anybody. She wondered, when all the people were gone, would this thing that had killed Beverly die off? Or would it still be here? Did it know what it was? Maybe it was trying so hard to live, it didn't realize it wasn't supposed to.
Beverly was dead. Ethel was gone. Marietta had decided not to tell Lydia what she knew. She had told Beverly too much, and the knowledge didn't protect her. This thing had killed her. Now it would try to kill those young people and their baby.
Anyway, Marietta thought, the more she said, the less they would believe. Beverly had loved the conspiracy, the sneaking around to lay a trap. But maybe she didn't believe what she was told, not entirely. She thought the girl was dangerous and evil, but by that she meant crazy. Once Beverly had an idea she wouldn't let it go. They were setting a trap for a little serial killer in the making. Beverly didn't realize the danger she was in. Even after she had heard the story of Harriet and Flora she wasn't as careful as she should have been.
Aside from all of these speculations Marietta had confirmed during her conversation with Lydia that the young woman was Beverly's daughter. She could tell that Lydia knew too, but didn't want to talk about it. She was curious about the woman who had left her a house to sell, but something held her back.
Being in the same room with her was disconcerting. The way she rolled her eyes when they talked about her hillbilly neighbors, the way she touched her forehead with the back of her hand to dab away the beads of perspiration, something in the timbre of her voice, was pure Beverly.
Lydia
She must have dozed off. Greg had dragged himself to bed in the middle of the night. Now he was snoring away in his loud, happy animal slumber. A single bead of saliva clung to the corner of his lips. She thought of slapping the back of his head. It served him right. Then she sat still for a minute thinking about smothering him with her pillow. No. It was too good for him. What an asshole. Maybe she should poison him. She made a mental note to look up local herbal poisons online. Then she laughed at the high drama of her mood.
She was wound up and brittle with pain and worry. Her joints creaked when she moved. So she moved as little as possible, and yet she still ached all over.
The baby had been growing relentlessly for weeks, gaining momentum. There was no way out. No jumping ship at this point. In the early days she had kept track by the calendar on her computer, silently noting the passage of the safety zone, finally admitting that she wasn't going to lose it, and that she was actually having a real baby.
With the meticulous methodology of an editor Lydia had read half a dozen current books on parenting. The word made it sound like a game or a sport! Who were these half-wit authors who didn't realize it was a relentless responsibility that she had finally accepted? She wanted some goddamn credit for what she was committing her mind and body to. She was eating well and she wanted to sleep well. She
didn't know if she wanted a child, but she couldn't condemn a baby to sickness by being negative or stubborn and not taking care of her health.
That had been her mother's gift: an ability to inspire illness in her children and to blame them for keeping her stuck at home during her "good years." She never tired of saying (sometimes to strangers at airports, and often to hair stylists) that she had given up a modeling career for stretch marks and a series of inadequate patios. The truth was, two of her three children were adopted and the modeling career was limited to one underwear catalog. Lydia laughed again.
"What a loon," she said to the empty living room. "Maybe she lied. Maybe she said I was adopted, when she really was my mother. I definitely inherited her attitude. Thanks, Mom."
She laughed at the sound of her voice contained within the rectangular room. She was sitting on the sofa, staring at the fireplace at two a.m., thinking she could feel the mad thing in her womb growing.
The first time this had happened, back home in Seattle, she had called 911. She still flushed with embarrassment at the memory of lying on the bathroom tiles in their apartment, hyperventilating. The building manager, Paul, let the paramedics in and begged Lydia to go to the hospital. Someone checked her pulse and temperature. By that time she was breathing normally. The crowd of paramedics recognized her at once as a non-emergency, a woman who had freaked herself out just by thinking about the child growing inside her. The word "hypochondriac" was written on every face. They had started taking other calls on pagers and cell phones almost as soon as they arrived.
"You'll be fine, miss," the ginger-haired, chubby paramedic had said. His grin faded when he answered his pager and prepared to face a real emergency at the next stop.
She felt like an idiot. At the same time, even now, thinking too much about the whole, live body that nested inside her could make her feel dizzy and sick. She needed constant distraction.
Sitting there on the sofa she wondered: What did the Dempsey family look like? Would she know a Dempsey if she saw one?
"Dempseys. Dempseys."
She said it so many times it sounded like the name for a fantastic creature with dollops of flesh for arms, rolling past the house at the speed of a runny marshmallow. Should she invite the Dempseys down the hill for a barbecue? She could host a barbecue with pulled pork sandwiches and chardonnay. She could get gardening and weeding tips from the Dempsey clan, and offer to baby-sit. Maybe the Dempsey women had a knitting circle.
This was how people lost their minds in the country. Her friends had warned her: Outside the city it's solid dark at night and there's no traffic so you can hear every tiny, insignificant noise. Crickets yawning. Owls farting. Madness dawning.
She heard a scratching noise. She turned from the fireplace to the window and froze. Only fifty feet away a child stood watching her through the window, a slender girl with a tangle of blond hair.
The front door opened smoothly for Lydia, but the glass and aluminum security door shimmied with a metallic sound. Then it stuck on the welcome mat. She had to pull it loose.
She shook the door into place and looked out at the spot where the girl had stood. No one was there. The air was mild against her face, and it carried a hint of cedar. The fragrance reminded Lydia of something, the hope chest her grandmother kept in a closet, filled with little treasures and souvenirs, reminders of the most entrancing days and nights of her life. A fleeting acknowledgment: her mother and grandmother weren't connected to her by blood, and this woman with awful taste in furniture was. Lydia shivered and then laughed.
She went to the kitchen and found a flashlight. Then from the front door she scanned the yard. All she could hear was the chirping of crickets in the grass. Yet she kept sweeping the light back and forth, doing her duty as a responsible adult, rehearsing the good mom she must impersonate in all the years to come. Finally she gave up searching for the child, locked the door, and went back to bed.
Greg
Coffee. The scent of coffee quickly mingled with the aroma of bacon and toast. He kept his eyes shut to savor the dream reeling him back to the kitchen of his childhood. He ate Pop Tarts and cereal before school, but his mother cooked a huge breakfast on weekends, waffles and bacon, while he watched cartoons.
He stuck his nose out of the bedding and gave an exploratory sniff. The scent of bacon was real. The clock next to the bed told him he was still running late. It was almost one o'clock in the afternoon.
He couldn't remember the last leg of his drive home. He only became aware of the house, the driveway, the evening sky, Lydia's face relaxed for the first time in weeks, framed by the sheet she unconsciously gathered up at night, the heavy quiet of the night coming on. He must have taken a wrong turn on the way back. He must have been lost. How else could the time have passed? How else could he arrive home after dark?
He remembered drinking beer when he got home. Two bottles. Then he had tumbled into bed next to his wife, whose peaceful sleep was a blessing.
He followed the bacon scent along the hallway, into the kitchen, where Lydia sat reading. Without the discarded dinette set they had to sit on folding chairs and eat off of plastic crates. Greg opted to stand at the counter and Lydia poured coffee, half a cup for herself, a hearty mug for Greg. He helped himself to breakfast.
"Real bacon. You went shopping again."
"I thought we could use a change," Lydia said. "A little more protein."
"A little!"
"You don't have to eat it," she told him. "Throw it away."
"No! It's great. Thanks, honey, you didn't have to do this," he said.
"No," she said.
"Sorry I got back so late yesterday."
"What qualifies as late in Skillute, America?"
"Sorry."
"I didn't notice. Time flew where I was. It flew right out the fucking door."
"Really screwed up. I don't even know how I got back so late. I was driving and it was light outside. Then, I guess I got lost, because by the time I pulled into the road the sun had gone down."
"Say it."
"What?" He asked, but he knew.
"Stop calling it 'the road.' It sounds so weird."
"I'll come up with a better name."
"Why don't you call it by its name?"
He didn't want to, and this bugged him. So he forced himself:
"Connie Sara Way."
Lydia said:
"I'm having the landline hooked up on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Don't worry about it, I'll take care of everything."
"Great. Do I still get my allowance?" He was kidding, but she didn't smile.
She stomped off to the bathroom to shower. He ate his breakfast because he suddenly felt ravenous. It was better than anything they had ever eaten.
Late on Sunday afternoon Greg answered the doorbell and found Henry standing outside wearing a sheepish grin. He was holding another one of his accordion-folded color brochures. Greg blinked.
"Afternoon," Henry said. "I met your wife last week? And I think you know my mother. Marietta Colquitt? My name is Henry."
"Oh! Sure," said Greg. "My wife knows Marietta. I mean, she said they had coffee. Would you like to come in?"
They shook hands. Greg thought he detected hesitation before Henry crossed the threshold and entered the olive and beige living room that Lydia railed about every day. That seemed a bit snooty. Greg couldn't see any problem with the decor. It looked all right, better than their old apartment, better than the office where he used to work, with its computer boxes piled up in corridors and reference books propping up desk corners.
Lydia wouldn't know about that. She had the luxury of working from home, on the rare occasions when she still took a freelance assignment, which she hadn't even considered since she developed migraines. She obviously considered being pregnant a full-time job, and Greg didn't know how to argue with her. It would have to wait.
"Honey!" Greg called over his shoulder. There was no answer. He grinned at his visitor. It seemed s
illy, in such a small house, to admit that he had lost track of his wife.
"I brought some literature about us," Henry said, and held out the brochure. "I gave your wife, Lydia, one of the old ones, and I said I'd stop by with something more up-to-date. These just came in on Friday."
Greg knew it was another church come-on, but he accepted the brochure and even managed to flip through it casually, smiling. He was wondering how a preacher had time to visit his neighbors on a Sunday afternoon. Then he realized he hadn't been to church in so many years, he had no idea what time services took place. He closed the brochure and smiled at Henry.
"We're not really believers, you know."
"Oh," said Henry. "No pressure. I mean that. Just in case you ever need anything, we're nearby."
"Sure," said Greg. "Thanks. Sorry! That's great. Would you like to sit down?"
"Thank you," said Henry. He made himself at home on the sofa and looked at the coffee table. He glanced around at the rest of the room with apparent discomfort.
"Lydia!" Greg called.
There was no sound from the bedroom or the kitchen. He excused himself and took a quick survey of the house: bedroom, storage room, bathroom, kitchen, and back to the living room. No sign of Lydia, which was odd. He'd spent the last two hours on the sofa, reading a tattered copy of House Selling for Dummies, and he didn't hear her leave the house.
"Ha!" Greg shook his head. "I guess she went for a walk. Would you like a beer? Oh. No. Coffee?"
"A beer would be great, actually," Henry said.
Greg went to fetch two bottles of ale from the fridge. He was still wondering when Lydia had slipped out and where she might have gone in a neighborhood she hated.
Lydia
The weather was mild. There might even be a sprinkling of rain later. It was one of those unexpectedly dark days of Northwestern summer. The season seemed to pause. Then came terrible humidity, the shifting barometric pressure that caused headaches, the sudden storm that ruined outdoor parties.
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