by Joy Fielding
What might have happened that night had Jerrod Sugar not been in her bed?
“Guess we’ll never know,” she says again, fumbling inside her purse for the key to her mother’s house. Why did she let Ben talk her into staying here? Yes, it was silly to spend money on a hotel when her mother’s house sat empty, and, yes, it would give her another opportunity to search through her mother’s things at a more leisurely pace. After all, their previous search had been rather perfunctory, and in light of everything they’d discovered in the last twenty-four hours, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to go through the house again more carefully. You never know. You might find something else, Ben had said before putting her in the taxi and telling her he’d speak to her later.
Call me later?
Absolutely.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Amanda mutters as she unlocks the front door, pushes it open, and teeters over the threshold, as if she were standing on the edge of a dangerous precipice.
Well, what are you waiting for? she hears her mother shout from upstairs. Either come in or stay out. Don’t stand there letting all the cold air inside.
The cold air was always inside, Amanda thinks, carrying her overnight bag into the front hall, and kicking the door closed with the heel of her boot.
Suddenly her father is walking toward her, his index finger held tight against his lips, urging her to keep her voice down. What are you doing? he whispers. You know your mother is resting.
“She’s always resting,” Amanda says now, as she protested then, her eyes following the memory of her father as he turns his back on her, leaving her to tend to her mother. “That is, when she isn’t killing people.” Amanda laughs, the giddy sound spiraling through the empty house, bringing another shout from her mother, another plea from her dad.
She kicks off her boots and hangs her new parka in the hall closet, then walks into the living room, absently running her hands across the yellow-and-gray-print sofa that occupies much of the small room. Tiny little dots inside tiny little triangles inside tiny little squares, the pattern repeated again in the trim of the two yellow chairs on either side of the fireplace. A fireplace that was rarely used, Amanda remembers, admiring the towering plant in the far corner of the living room, recalling Corinne Nash’s admonition that someone should probably water the plants.
She plops down in one of the chairs, stares through the delicate white sheers drawn across the front windows to the street beyond. As a child, she was never permitted to sit in this room, let alone play in it. No, if she wanted to play, she was supposed to go down to the basement, where any noise she might make wouldn’t disturb her mother. Amanda never liked the basement. It was cold and damp and dreary, even with all the lights on. And sometimes there were shadows that scared her, even though her father told her there was nothing to be afraid of.
Once, when she was down there, she’d found a bunch of old hand puppets. Someone had tossed them in a box behind the furnace, and their faces and clothes were so dusty they made Amanda sneeze when she fitted them over her hands. So she brought them upstairs and washed them carefully in the sink. But that made the sink filthy, and she knew her mother would get angry when she saw the mess, and it was important not to make Mommy angry or upset her in any way—wasn’t Daddy always telling her that? But Daddy was at work, and Mommy was sleeping, and the puppets looked so much prettier now that they were all cleaned up, surely her mother would see that. Although their hair was still a mess, it could use a good cutting. And she knew where her mother kept her scissors, although she couldn’t trim their hair here, not in the kitchen, where her mother might hear her moving around, and it was too dingy in the basement to do the job properly. But the living room was just right. There was carpeting to muffle her footsteps, and the light from the windows so that she could see, and besides, she wouldn’t be very long. And maybe when she showed her mother how nicely she’d cleaned up the old puppets, her mother would stop being so sad, and maybe she’d smile and be happy, and then Amanda might even put on a show for her with the puppets, and her mother would laugh the way Amanda remembered she used to laugh. Yes, there was a time when her mother used to laugh, she reminded herself as she carried the puppets into the living room and set up a little impromptu hairdressing salon, and proceeded to cut the dolls’ hair, watching the yellow threads scatter across the gray carpet, like flecks of gold dust. And now she’d make her mother laugh again.
Except that her mother wasn’t laughing. She was crying, and yelling, and hurling the dolls across the room with such fury that the plastic head of one of the puppets was completely severed, its freshly cut hair spraying out in all directions. What have you done? her mother was sobbing, over and over and over again. What have you done? What have you done?
I just wanted to make them pretty, the child Amanda whimpered in response, grabbing her stomach and turning away from her mother, doubling over at the waist, as if she’d been punched.
What have you done? came her mother’s only response. What have you done?
“What have I done?” Amanda asks now, jumping to her feet. “What have I done? Goddamn it, I was six years old. I was a child.”
Not for long, she thinks, deciding she can’t stay here after all. She marches back into the foyer and pulls on her boots, then retrieves her coat from the closet, the back of her hand brushing up against something cold and hard. Pushing aside several of her mother’s coats and jackets, she finds a brand-new shovel with a bright red handle, the price tag still dangling from its thin, wooden neck. Never been used, Amanda thinks, pulling it out of the closet and examining it. No—her mother was too busy shooting people to have time to shovel snow off her front steps.
“What the hell? Might as well do something useful with my time.” Amanda removes the price tag—$19.95 from Home Hardware—and steps onto the front porch, leaving the door open behind her as she slides the shovel under the snow and drags it across the concrete, before tossing the snow toward the front lawn. She works steadily, one shovelful of snow quickly replaced by another. Within minutes the landing is clear, and she moves on to the stairs, scraping the shovel along each step until they are free of snow. The walkway is more difficult, the snow more compact, and several times she almost slips on the ice. By the time she reaches the sidewalk, her face is wet with perspiration and her back is filling with unpleasant twinges. What she needs is a hot bath, she decides, remembering Ben’s earlier admonition: Take a hot bath, order room service, and get some sleep. Sure thing. “What the hell am I doing here?”
“Excuse me,” a voice calls from across the street.
Amanda looks toward the sound. What Amanda sees: a young woman in a raccoon coat and black, fur-trimmed hat standing in the middle of the sidewalk on the other side of the street, looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry? Did you say something?”
The woman looks both ways before crossing the street. Amanda estimates that they’re about the same age, although it’s impossible to make out exactly what the woman looks like beyond her full cheeks and small, turned-up nose, the tip of which is glowing bright red, like Rudolph’s. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my grandmother saw you from across the street and got very agitated. She insisted I come over here to find out ‘who’s the woman shoveling Gwen Price’s snow?’ ” She nods toward the house behind her.
Amanda looks at the house across the street, then back at the young woman standing in front of her, watching the years fall away from the woman’s face, until she disappears into a slightly pudgy, apple-cheeked little girl with big brown eyes and an eager smile. “Sally?”
Wariness replaces curiosity. “Do I know you?”
“It’s Amanda. Amanda Tra—Amanda Price.” The name feels foreign on her lips, as if it belongs to someone else.
“Amanda! Amanda, oh my God. Amanda. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I mean, considering … I assume you’ve heard about my mother …”
“Yes. I can’t believe it. How is she?”
“Holding up o
kay,” Amanda says. Better than okay, she thinks. “How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“And your grandmother?”
“Not so great.”
“What’s wrong?”
“What isn’t?”
Amanda pictures old Mrs. MacGiver, with her gray hair and blue-veined hands. She always seemed ancient, even when Amanda was a child. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, what can you do? She’s eighty-six.”
“Does she still bake?” Amanda remembers the lemon cake Mrs. MacGiver brought over after her father’s death.
“Not so much anymore. Mostly she just sits in her room and watches TV. But will she consider selling the house and moving into an assisted-living community, which would make life easier on everybody?” The question hangs in the air without completion, the ensuing silence all the answer necessary.
“Do you live with her?”
“Oh, no. I just stopped by to see if she needs anything. Then she saw you, and she insisted I come over immediately.”
“I’m glad. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Nice to see you too. And I’m really sorry about your mother. Did she have some kind of breakdown or something?”
Or something, Amanda thinks, spotting a stooped figure in a long, white flannelette nightgown and a pair of fuzzy blue slippers rapidly descending the steps of the house across the street. “Oh, my God. Sally, your grandmother … Mrs. MacGiver, wait. There are cars—”
An approaching driver blasts his horn as old Mrs. MacGiver steps off the curb without looking, her slippers disappearing under the snow. “What the hell!” the driver yells out the window.
“Oh, hold your horses,” Mrs. MacGiver shouts in return, thumping on the car’s front fender and swatting away her granddaughter’s restraining arms, squinting through the cold sun at Amanda. “Who are you?”
“Grandma, for God’s sake. You have to get back in the house. You’ll freeze to death out here.”
“I know you,” Mrs. MacGiver says, her watery blue eyes focusing solely on Amanda.
“Grandma, you have to get back inside.” Sally tries to surround her with her arms, but her grandmother wriggles away from her.
“I’m Amanda Price,” Amanda tells her, the name sounding no less strange for having repeated it. “Gwen’s daughter.”
Sally quickly removes her coat, throws it across her grandmother’s shoulders. “At least put this on.”
“I hate raccoon coats,” the woman grouses.
“Please, Grandma, raccoons are hardly an endangered species.”
“Hah! As far as I’m concerned, they aren’t nearly endangered enough. I hate the damn things.”
Amanda bursts out laughing, wondering whether life could possibly get any more absurd. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. MacGiver, but I think Sally’s right. It’s way too cold to be out here in just a nightgown and slippers.”
“I’m freezing,” Sally concurs, her teeth already chattering.
Mrs. MacGiver takes several tiny steps forward, her spindly fingers reaching for Amanda’s cheek. “Puppet?” she asks.
Amanda takes a sharp intake of breath, feels the air freeze in her lungs as Mrs. MacGiver’s fingers brush across her face.
“Puppet,” Mrs. MacGiver repeats, now wiggling her fingers in the air, as if operating the strings of a marionette. “Puppet,” she says with a giggle. “Puppet, puppet. Who’s my little puppet?”
“Okay, that’s enough. You’re kind of freaking me out here, Grandma,” Sally tells her, spinning the old woman around. “She drifts in and out,” she offers by way of a parting explanation, leading her grandmother back across the street toward her house. “Nice to see you again, Amanda,” Sally says with a wave, before gently pushing her grandmother inside the house and closing the front door behind her.
Amanda tries not to replay the scene in her mind. But even after the two women have disappeared, and even after Amanda has returned to her mother’s house, closing first the front door and then the door to her old bedroom, where she takes refuge under the covers, she can still hear the words echoing in the stillness. Puppet, the walls whisper as she presses the frilly, pink comforter against her ears.
Puppet. Puppet. Who’s my little puppet?
TWENTY-TWO
AMAZINGLY, Amanda falls asleep, not waking up until almost eight o’clock that night. “This can’t be right,” she marvels, pushing herself out of bed and squinting through the darkness at her watch, tapping impatiently on its round face before lifting it to her ear to hear it tick. “Something’s obviously screwy. This can’t be right.” She flips on the delicate white-and-pink-flowered lamp beside the bed and checks the time again. “No, this isn’t right.” Except that it’s dark outside the window, and the moon is a high, luminous crescent amidst a smattering of bright stars. Can it really be eight o’clock? At night? Can she really have slept away an entire afternoon?
Amanda makes her way down the stairs to the kitchen, flipping on the lights as she goes, and compares the big, white clock on the wall beside the stove to the stainless-steel watch on her wrist, noting a discrepancy of only three minutes. “I can’t believe it,” she tells the empty room, hearing her stomach growl to announce its lack of recent nourishment. She opens the fridge and peers inside, sees a large carton of orange juice and a smaller container of skim milk, as well as some eggs, a couple of Granny Smith apples, and an old, withered lettuce that she quickly discards in the garbage bin underneath the sink. “Nothing to eat. Why am I not surprised?”
She checks the freezer, rifling through several bags of frozen peas and corn, before finding a package of Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese behind a large bag of frozen bagels. “Thank you, God,” she says out loud, hearing her stomach rumble its appreciation, as she pops the package into the microwave oven. Minutes later, she stands in front of the oven, gobbling the creamy, cheese-covered noodles straight from the container, shoveling one forkful after another of the steaming macaroni into her mouth, and scraping the bottom of the small package until not a speck of sauce remains. “All gone,” she says proudly, washing dinner down with a glass of water, then deciding now was as good a time as any to water the plants. Nothing more depressing than a houseful of dead plants, she tells herself, finding a pitcher and filling it with lukewarm water, then balancing on a chair to sprinkle the row of leafy plants that line the tops of the counters. She moves on dutifully to the dining and living rooms and does the same with the plants there.
It’s funny, she is thinking as she returns to the kitchen to refill the pitcher. She wouldn’t have thought her mother had such a green thumb. But the plants are all doing miraculously well, their branches full of lush, green leaves, uniformly shiny and healthy, so perfect as to be almost fake. They are fake, Amanda realizes minutes later, watching the water she’s pouring spill over the side of a dark blue china pot on the mantel over the fireplace. “My God, they’re all fake. I don’t believe this.” She runs back to the kitchen and grabs some paper toweling, quickly wiping up the spill from the mantel before it has time to leave a stain, then retraces her steps, checking the leaves of all the counterfeit plants she’s already watered, and careful to clean up any mess she might have made. She repeatedly looks over her shoulder as she wipes away unsightly spills, as if afraid her mother might descend the stairs at any moment to berate her for her carelessness and stupidity.
Her task completed, Amanda lowers herself to the living room floor and sits cross-legged on the gray carpet, wondering when she stopped being able to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Truth is stranger than fiction—isn’t that what they say? But when did it get so hard to differentiate between the two?
Probably around the same time her mother started shooting total strangers in hotel lobbies.
Although the man calling himself John Mallins was no stranger to her mother. Amanda is certain of that.
She looks toward the tiny front hall, deciding she should probably call
Ben. He’s undoubtedly wondering what happened to her. Didn’t she promise to call him as soon as she settled in? She sidles over to where her purse is propped up against her overnight bag in the middle of the foyer floor where she dropped them more than eight hours earlier and retrieves her cell phone, staring at it for several long seconds before finally tossing it back inside her purse. Hell, he knows her number. Let him call if he wants to speak to her. Which he obviously doesn’t, she decides, pulling out her phone again to check for messages, finding none.
So what now?
She’s already slept away an entire afternoon, eaten her frozen dinner, and watered the fake plants. What’s left? “How about an after-dinner drink?” she asks, crawling toward the liquor cabinet in the dining room, finding nothing inside it but a dozen old crystal glasses and a couple of large fruit platters. “You didn’t even keep any liqueurs?” she demands of the empty house, returning to the kitchen and searching through the cupboards there. When had her mother stopped drinking anyway? And couldn’t she have kept a little something around in case company dropped in? What’s with all this herbal tea crap she keeps finding? “Oh, well, why not?” She’s probably been drinking a little too much herself lately, she decides, filling the electric kettle with water, then plugging it in, and waiting for the water to boil.
She sips the surprisingly good, peach-and-raspberry tea while rifling through the various kitchen drawers, finding a desultory collection of old newspaper recipes, now yellowed with age, and stained with grease, in the first drawer she opens. There’s a recipe for a cold cream of avocado soup that makes her mouth water, and another one for a cranberry-and-orange soufflé that sounds divine, as well as a whole stack of other recipes for creative things to do with chicken. Amanda reads through all of them, trying to connect these obviously much-used recipes to her mother, a woman who rarely cooked anything other than frozen dinners, and whose idea of dessert was to open a can of fruit cocktail, if she remembered dessert at all.