“What’s going on?”
The voice came from her husband. Behind him were her sons, who were trying to get a look at her, as if she were a sideshow. She lit a cigarette and stood with her feet planted wide apart to show she didn’t give a shit about any of them.
“Look,” he said, “are you sick or something?”
“When have I been right?” She spoke through smoke. She glimpsed her eldest. “When have I? Can you tell me, Gustav?”
“Leave the boys out of it.”
Her shoes were too small, tight at the toes, cruel at the heels, and she kicked them off with agonized effort, one almost hitting him. “I want to be young again, do you mind?”
“Do what you want.”
“Do what I want? Maybe you won’t like that.”
He turned to the boys. “You go on,” he said and shooed them off. Then he stepped in and shut the door behind him. “You dropped an ash.”
“My prerogative.”
“You got something to say, Beverly, say it.”
“I met the man who killed our daughter.”
She didn’t know what she had expected, but she received nothing other than an oppressive stare that was shrewd and calculating, playing for time. The silence was forceful. It thrust itself upon her and anchored her to her sore feet.
“Do you know what you just said?”
“Oh, yes.”
“The police chief’s mixed up in this, am I right?”
His sudden smile shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. He was a genius, as his father had been, and his mind moved ten times faster than hers.
“You spilled another ash,” he said.
“So I did.”
At college, Victorian literature, she had read that in the best of worlds men are muscles of iron and women etherealities, their decisions never their own. Their own restraints see to that.
“So he had you meet this man. A vagrant, right?”
“His name is Dudley,” she said.
“Then this man and you, you’re both crazy. Certifiable.” His smile increased. “Do you know what I mean, Beverly?”
She did and had, for now, nothing more to say. Her look slammed a door on him.
11
MONDAY MIDDAY, THEY CAME BACK. REGINA SMITH HEARD THE slam of car doors and peeped through the drapes. Patricia’s black hair was molten in the sun, and her bicycle pants were a bright second skin. Anthony’s shirt hung loose, his ballooning trousers tapering to his sandaled feet. Everything wonderful about youth clung to them. They were too absurdly beautiful for their own good, which gave her an unwanted sense of her own accelerating years. She took time to get her face straight and then positioned herself. The front door opened. Her dark eyes swept in the two of them.
“Did you enjoy yourselves?” Her voice was pruned, pointed at Patricia, who stood up to it.
“Weather was great. That’s why we stayed longer than expected.”
“How nice for you.” She aimed her eyes solely at Anthony, who showed less stamina, his energy, she imagined, consumed in copulation. “And how about you? Was it lots of fun?”
Patricia stepped forward. “Be careful, Tony. I think my mother has a hair across.”
“That’s enough, Patricia!”
She let them go. She watched them ascend the stairs to their rooms, nothing more to be said for the moment. In the corner bathroom she picked up a tube and did her lips. She brushed her hair, which wasn’t as glossy as her daughter’s but was still vibrant and would grow lush if she let it, which was the way Patricia’s father had liked it. The week before they divorced, he had turned forty and had furry dice hanging from the rearview of his Corvette. The last time she had seen him, a theater in New York, he had worn a young new wife on his arm, large smiles on their faces, as if they’d just gotten it off. How sweet!
She mounted the stairs.
She entered Anthony’s room without knocking, a presumptive right now that he had betrayed the family. He stood clean as a knife in skin-biting Jockey briefs, the pouch too explicit to ignore.
“Put some pants on,” she said.
“I was just getting ready to take a shower.” He was flustered, grabbing his voluminous slacks. He got them on quickly. “You should’ve knocked.”
“You forget, this is my house.”
“My father’s too.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t include you.” Her gaze ground into him. “You, my friend, have taken advantage. You’ve made fools of your father and me.”
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t do that. I respect you and Dad. I especially respect you.”
She smiled at him with derision, confident that in his imaginings she was ladylike in loving his father, knees only slightly lifted, eyes appropriately closed, decorum in her climaxes. Along with lies waiting to be told, she saw on his face the flush of naivete, a babe in the woods.
“I warned you, didn’t I, Anthony? I told you to keep your hands off Patricia, but you did what you wanted.”
“No.”
“You, my friend, are a liar.” Her voice, though low and contained, struck with as much force as if she’d reached in and squeezed his testicles. His recoil was immediate and painful. “My real concern for Patricia is disease. You have heard of AIDS, haven’t you?”
“I don’t have that,” he said. “And there’s no possible way I could.”
“But I don’t know that. I have no idea what you do in school. Sexual ambiguity is not uncommon with boys your age. And I’m not comfortable with all your teachers. What’s that fellow Pitkin like?”
“I swear to God,” he said, beet red, tears in his eyes.
That was what she wanted. She wanted him on his knees, groveling. She was keyed up. Her blood raced, her body sang. “You are rather disgusting, Anthony, but we’ll let it rest for now,” she said and moved to the door.
“Regina.”
She turned sharply and gave a scornful twist to her lips. He had never called her that before. He had never called her anything. “Yes, what?”
“You’re a bitch,” he said.
• • •
In prime pasture land Tish Hopkins buried a dead cow with the help of a hired hand, Vernon, who said, “I betcha gonna miss that animal.”
Tish wore a man’s flat cap and rubber boots and had tears in her eyes. When her husband was alive, they had had two dozen cows and a henhouse, but after Mr. Hopkins died she sold off the cows except the one and added more henhouses.
Vernon, whose hair was like the gray from a soft pencil, had large drastic eyes, veiny arms, and socks that wrinkled into his shoes. He tossed the last shovelfuls over the grave and said, “Almost like we oughta say a prayer.”
“Something dies, there’s always sadness. That’s because we’re mortal. Mortal means we’re temporary. Temporary means we ought to be good to each other because some of us won’t be here tomorrow.”
“You’re good to me, Mrs. Hopkins. You pay me more than you oughta.”
“You’re only part-time, Vernon. You were full-time, I’d only pay you what you’re worth, which might not satisfy you.”
Vernon deliberately planted his shovel in the ground and said, “Somebody’s watchin’ us.”
Some thirty yards away near a section of unmended fence was the figure of a man that looked like a scarecrow, breathlessly still in the heat. Tish mopped her face with the sleeve of her elbow. She couldn’t see close up without glasses, but she could still see for distance without them.
“I know him,” she said. “Fellow I fed.”
“He the one the chief locked up? I’d be careful I was you.”
“He’s no more harm than a butterfly,” she scoffed.
“They say the chief doesn’t know what to do with him and lets him run free.”
“Who says that?”
“Guys at the Blue Bonnet. They say his name is Dudley but nothing else. Just that.”
“You go on back, Vernon, take the shovels with you. Looks like he’s afraid of y
ou.”
“I ain’t hurt nobody since fourth grade, Malcolm Crandall, and he deserved it.”
“You’re smart not to mess with him anymore. You go on back like I told you.”
She waited, gestured to Dudley, and looked up at the sky. A magnificent fair-weather cloud loitered in the distance. Birds in flight were a pebbled path. Then she splashed through clover toward Dudley because he wouldn’t come to her. Something about him pulled at her heart. The sun beating at him, he looked like boyhood burnt out.
“Who did you put under?” he asked.
“Nobody. Just a cow, but I loved her.”
“I could tell.”
“I suppose you want something to eat.”
“Better not, if he’s here.”
“He’s goin', soon as he puts the shovels away.”
“Then best we wait awhile.” He put a hand to his face. “I don’t suppose you have a razor.”
“I had a husband, I guess I still got the razor.”
“Do you have any clean clothes?”
She sized him up and saw her husband’s bones. “Well, I can dress you better than you are. I can even give you a fine pair of shoes worn only on Sundays. What size do you wear?”
“Eight and a half.”
“Close enough. My husband was a nine.”
They began the trek to the house. Halfway there, he said, “Afterward, can I use your phone?”
• • •
One of the brothers, Herman, dozed off with a computer science book in his lap and many minutes later woke with a scare from a bad dream, which meant his brain had been misbehaving. He went to the doorway of his brother’s room. Gustav was sitting Indian fashion on a cushion near an oxeye window and gazing at a wall papered with Playboy centerfolds. Herman said, “Can I come in?”
“Ask right.”
“May I come in?”
“Just don’t stay too long.”
Herman closed the door behind him, and they viewed each other through a grainy filter of sunlight, their porky faces nearly identical, though Herman’s had the tendency to overbulge from emotional disturbances. Down deep, they had an honest liking for each other, but Gustav would never show it and Herman didn’t know how.
“What’s the matter with Mama?” Herman asked. He wanted his world always the same. Thanksgiving was turkey, Christmas was goose, and Mama was Mama ready to serve, ready to do.
“Papa says it’s the time of life women go through,” Gustav said. “Makes them crazy.”
“Something’s wrong between her and Papa.”
“Mama’s a ballbreaker.”
“No, she isn’t. We break hers.”
“Women don’t have balls.”
Herman turned his gaze to the wall, from one centerfold to another, and said, “That bottom one looks like Mama. I mean, if Mama was young.”
Gustav looked at him with extreme impatience. “If that was Mama, I wouldn’t look at it. Besides, Mama was never young.”
“She’s got a picture of Fay in her bag,” Herman said abruptly. “I’ve seen it.”
“So what?”
“She loved Fay more than us.”
“But Papa loves us more.”
“I’d rather she did.”
“Papa’s a genius. She’s not.”
Overstrung, Herman felt a tightening in his chest, which he tried to ignore. “Do you miss Fay?” he asked.
“No, I don’t miss her. She was a cretin.”
“I know, but don’t you miss her at all?”
“Maybe a little, but now we don’t have to explain her.”
He was thinking too many thoughts, fanning emotions he wanted to share. “Do you ever dream of her, Gustav?”
“Sure, that’s normal.”
“Good dreams or bad?” he asked. In his dream she had reached out, but he had stepped beyond her touch. He wished he hadn’t. “Good dreams or bad, Gustav?”
“None of your business.”
“She was afraid of you, but she wasn’t of me. I used to pet her head, tie her shoes.”
“She should’ve learned to do that herself.”
Her face took possession of Herman’s mind, and an especially poignant memory pressed tightly against his heart. “She shouldn’t have drowned. She could be here now, and Mama would be okay.”
Gustav was growing cross, nervous, as if Herman’s feelings had become too much of a burden. He looked at the wall, at his favorite centerfold, a nurse wearing only a cap and a single garter. “Get out of here,” he said. “I want to jerk off.”
Herman nodded. He understood. “That’s what I do when I’ve got things on my mind.”
“You don’t do it right. You don’t know how to make it last.”
• • •
May Hutchins was rinsing a pan at the sink. Her husband, who had come home at the noon hour, was seated at the table, at the edge of her attention. She didn’t want him underfoot, in her way, in her light. Peering through the window over the sink, she said, “I suppose you want something to eat.”
Roland shook his head. “I’m not all that hungry.”
“Then why’d you come home?”
“I was worried about him being here.”
“The book’s still in the gazebo, but I don’t think he’s coming back for it. I don’t think he’s coming back, period.“ Stepping away from the sink, she sighed. “I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I bet not.”
“Why would you want to?”
“When I figure that out I’ll tell you. Or maybe I won’t.” She ripped off a paper towel, the last sheet on the cylinder, and dried her hands. Her face was pulled tight, lips pinched in. She was having a bad moment, which had come upon her without warning.
“May.”
She turned. She was indifferent to both his presence and his absence. Either one, it made no difference. She was looking through him.
“May.”
“Yes, what?”
His face was pink and nearly a perfect roundness. “Remember when we were first married, how I’d sneak home at noon for a little of this and that?”
She remembered his short arms could make it around her, which was not the case now. She remembered the quick sex, his delight, her lethargy afterward, Peggy Lee’s song, “Is That All There Is?” She said, “My ankles were pretty then.”
“They’re still pretty, May. They’re the best.”
“I was fifteen pounds lighter.” Twenty-five was more like it. She was aware more than ever that her present self stumbled along while her younger ones thrived in memory, sometimes adding to themselves, other times subtracting, never holding still.
Suddenly he was blushing. “May, what d’you say?”
“Don’t be silly.”
His eyes brimmed with hope. “May, why not?”
She owed him. Christ, she owed him. And yes, why not? Maybe he’d surprise her, though she doubted it. They climbed the stairs together, and at the top he playfully banged his hip against hers. She smiled, not with her whole face. She felt she was being generous enough.
Thirty minutes later he was gone. He had, she knew, an afternoon job in Stoneham, work that would take him into the evening. She was relieved. In one way she felt used and in another untouched, simply breathed upon.
She washed, she dressed, and, her bra loosened to give her breasts a measure of independence, she sauntered out for the mail, but there was none, not even a flyer, which offended her, as if the world wanted nothing to do with her — worse, had forgotten her.
Coffee freshly made, a cup poured, she sat at the kitchen table and thumbed through her high school yearbook, in which the best moments of her life were preserved. She had been popular, perhaps not the most popular but popular all the same. She played girls’ basketball, worked for the school paper, sang in mixed chorus, had a role in the senior play. Eyes filled, she closed the book as if on herself.
In the bathroom mirror she gave herself a new mouth, and over the sink she clipped her nails. She raised an arm
. Nap in the socket resembled a preserved rose. With a razor she plucked the petals and washed them down the drain. Looking again in the mirror, she sucked in her lower lip, then let it protrude. With adolescent intensity she continued work with the razor, the scissors too.
Later, perhaps twenty minutes later, after giving herself a long, thoughtful look, she phoned the town hall, Veterans Affairs office, and disguised her voice. “Is Mr. Fossey there?”
Fred Fossey said, “May, it’s me.”
• • •
The shirt was white, though yellowed from lying so long in a drawer. The trousers were a trifle short but a good fit around the waist. The shoes, dusted, had a shine, and Dudley, shaved, fed, ready for the world, had a smile. “I knew I was saving those things for something,” Tish Hopkins said, looking at him with satisfaction. “You’re a proper man now.”
She sensed something resilient and sly floating through him but was not deterred from investing him with a value perhaps he didn’t deserve but suited her fancy. Though he was too old to have been one of hers, she said, “My husband and I never had children, just animals. Chickens and cows.”
“Could I use your phone now?” he said in a tone that immediately distanced them, which saddened her only a little. Their relationship had a beat but no melody.
She took him to the telephone, a boxy black thing set on a side table in the parlor, and left him alone. Puttering in the kitchen, she tried not to listen, which wasn’t difficult. His singsong voice was in a low key. Then he called to her.
“A taxi will come for me, but I need to give directions.”
She went to him. “Let me have it,” she said and took the receiver from him. “Who is this?”
“Please,” said a woman’s voice. “The directions.”
Tish recited route numbers and street names, mixing in landmarks comprehensible only to the locals. “You got that? … You sure? … At the green you get onto Summer Street … What? … Right, Fieldstone Road.” When she replaced the receiver, she looked at the clean line of Dudley’s face. “She sounded awfully worried. She your wife?”
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