Body of a Girl

by Leah Stewart

  “I’m going at three,” I say. I look at my watch. It’s quarter to twelve.

  “What are you doing now?” Evan says. “I was going to go for a drive. Want to come?”

  Evan likes to take these tours of the city, because, he says, it reminds him where he is. In his car we pull out of the parking lot onto Beale, driving past low-income housing and into the commercial area. Slowly we cruise past the bars. Without the crowds milling about and the darkness to make their neon signs bright, they lose their garish charm. It’s so much quieter here in the day, the whole street just waiting for night to begin.

  We drive down the bluff and stop at Wolf River Harbor. This is where the riverboats dock, and the tourists board for their slow trips down the Mississippi. From here down to the water the street is made of uneven cobblestones. Evan turns off the car, and the heat rushes in. I roll down my window, though it doesn’t help. Evan’s brought me here before. He likes to sit and watch the river go by.

  Out on the water in front of us are the boats, a floating restaurant, and Mud Island, where David lives. To the south is the Arkansas-Tennessee bridge, which I last remember crossing two months ago, when that ten-year-old got killed, though I must have been over it since. To the north is the Hernando DeSoto bridge, which is big and new and shaped like an M. At night they light it with a multitude of tiny white bulbs. Their reflections shimmer in the moving water below.

  When the river’s high these cobblestones, and the south end of Mud Island, are underwater, and then the river rushes along so fast and hard whole trees uproot and go with it. Even now if you look at the water you can see how quickly the current’s moving, fast enough to suck a body under before you could blink. We sit and watch what look like little whirlpools forming, the water whipping itself into circles. An enormous branch floats by. “Look at it go,” Evan says softly. “Fast as you please.”

  Then he shifts in his seat like he’s coming out of some kind of trance and says in a louder voice, “When we canoed in there—I told you about that, right?—I looked up and there was a tree coming right at us. We were both going along with the current. It was just going a lot faster than we were.”

  “What did you do?” I watch the branch spin slowly to the right, then back again.

  Evan laughs. “We got out of the way quick.” He turns his gaze back to the river. “Whoosh,” he says.

  I look past him and out his window to the left. Going that way on Riverside you come to Tom Lee Park, where Allison died.

  “You hungry?” Evan asks. He reaches in the backseat for a paper bag and pulls out two cheese sandwiches and a little carton of chocolate milk. He pops the milk open ceremoniously and hands it to me. I laugh. “I love you, Evan,” I say.

  “I know,” he says, unwrapping the sandwiches. “But you can never have me.”

  Evan is gay, but I am one of the few people who knows that. It’s not easy to be a gay man in Memphis, Tennessee, and even harder in small-town South Carolina, where Evan is from. His parents are starting to wonder when he’s going to meet that nice girl they’re hoping for, but homosexuality is so far from their realm of experience that it never crosses their mind that Evan is gay. I think that his sister Kate suspects. She came up to visit and when he was out of the room she said, “Evan certainly is outgoing, isn’t he.”

  Sometimes I think about Evan’s parents, how they must believe they know exactly who he is, and all the time they have no idea what really happens in his life.

  “Don’t hog that milk,” Evan says, handing me a sandwich.

  I ring the Averys’ doorbell promptly at three. There’s a long silence. I listen for footsteps and hear nothing. Then I lean forward to ring the bell again and Cynthia Avery opens the door. I jump like a startled cat. She is taller than I am, wearing a sleeveless white shirt tucked into black linen pants. Her hair is the shade of bleached blond I particularly associate with upper-class southern women. She squints into the sunlight, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere above my head. “Come in,” she says, and then she turns and walks slowly down the hall.

  I follow, closing the door with great care behind me. This is a woman who would turn and frown—a slow half turn, a quizzical frown—if I let the door bang shut. I step as quietly as I can on the tile floor. The living room is all done in white—thick white carpet, white couch with some sort of shiny pattern barely visible in it. I stand until she tells me to have a seat, and then I perch on the edge of an embroidered white armchair. There’s a kind of insanity to this room, so single-minded, all of these white things so clean. Cynthia Avery eases down onto the couch and lets her head fall back like she’s getting her hair washed at the salon. Over the fireplace are two enormous framed photos of Peter and Allison. Allison is wearing white.

  Speaking to the ceiling, their mother says, “Peter told me you talked to him at the funeral. And then I saw in the paper that you didn’t quote him or say anything about it. So that’s why I’m talking to you. Because if this has to be done I want it done in the best possible way.”

  “I understand.”

  Abruptly, she stands. Without a glance in my direction she glides from the room. I wait. I’m not sure where to turn my eyes. I feel as though I should let my gaze linger respectfully on the floor, as if she were in the room, trying not to let me see her cry. When she comes back, there is no trace of tears on her face, and she says nothing about her sudden departure. She walks right up to me, so that I have to turn my face up to hers like a child. She reaches down to lift my hand from my lap, pressing it between both of hers. “This is your story,” she says. “I’m not going to talk to anyone from television. When they ask, I’ll tell them I’m only talking to you.”

  I nod.

  “I wouldn’t even talk to you, but they tell me keeping it in the papers means public interest, means pressure on the police. It may help ensure that my daughter’s killer is caught.”

  I nod again. This is usually my speech. She’s stealing my lines.

  “That’s your responsibility, as a journalist. It’s my responsibility to help you.” Her face looms even larger as she says, “Together, we’ll make sure no one gives up on this.”

  Her grip on my hand tightens, her eyes fixed on mine, until I say, “Yes, we will.” My voice comes out smaller than I meant it to. Finally she drops my hand and goes back to her own chair. I sit up straight, swallowing. I feel as though I’ve pledged allegiance to the memory of Allison Avery, as though her mother and I have signed a pact. It makes me wonder why she thinks we need one.

  “I’m going to turn on the tape recorder now,” I say. “This is so I can be sure and get what you say right.”

  Dr. Avery waves her hand in assent.

  “I’d like to know more about Allison,” I say. “What was she like?”

  “She was . . .” She pauses, and then suddenly lifts her head and looks me in the face. I hold her gaze, and we sit staring at one another. Everything about this woman is careful, the hair-sprayed perfection of her blond chin-length hair, the muted blush applied precisely to the apples of her cheeks, the way her gold locket nestles into the hollow of her throat, circled with the faintest lines of age. She is the type of person who puts layers between what she means and what she says, the way she puts layers of makeup between her face and the world.

  I blink first. She lays one slender hand over the other in her lap. “She was perfect,” she says. She presses her lips together. When I don’t say anything, she raises her eyebrows to prompt me.

  “Perfect?” I say.

  “Look at her,” she says. I turn my head obediently toward the photo of the dead girl. She looks about seventeen, her cheeks soft and lightly powdered. Wearing a short-sleeved white dress with lace across the bodice, she sits with her body at an angle, her face turned back over her shoulder to look at the camera, her eyes lifted up, one hand curved over the other in her lap. Her nails are painted a pale pink, her dark hair curled into loose ringlets over her shoulders. Her pink shiny lips curve in a faint
smile. When I look at her, the perfect stillness of her face, her hands, the line of her body, I know she could have held that pose for hours, like a mannequin. “Look at that sweet face,” her mother says dreamily. “Look at that sweet smile.”

  To me, that smile is sly, those eyes hide a laugh bubbling up inside. Her mother says, “I couldn’t have asked for a better girl.”

  “I’m told she was a gifted singer,” I say.

  She lifts a hand to push her hair behind an ear and then responds as though I’d asked another question. “I remember when we took her to her first movie—Dumbo, I think it was. She cried and cried when Dumbo was taken from his mother. She was always like that—she really felt for people. She used to get teary-eyed at those UNICEF commercials. Or the ones, you know, where the son has been away and he comes home unexpectedly, and the mother is so happy to see him, and then they make coffee together.” She plucks at her pants with one hand and flicks her fingers, ridding herself of lint. “I used to laugh at her,” she says quietly. “But once, I remember, we were watching the news, and the pope was visiting America and a very large crowd had come to see him. He got all choked up, and then so did I, and Allison looked like she was about to cry, too, and then we just burst out laughing, that we were both sitting there with tears in our eyes. We’re not even Catholic.” She turns her head toward the picture again. “She had a sensitive soul.”

  Allison Avery, Perfect Doll. I let a moment pass before I ask, “And her singing?”

  “She had a lovely voice. She sang in the church choir,” her mother says. “But she didn’t want to sing professionally. She wanted to follow in my footsteps.”

  I know this isn’t true. I’m not sure if she knows it. “Is that why Allison worked in health care?”

  She nods. “I wanted her to go to medical school right away, but she wanted a break from school first. She said she had a lot of time ahead of her.” As she says this, her voice breaks for the first time, and she presses a finger against the bottom of her eye.

  When she recovers, we talk about Allison’s friends. She tells me Carl is a sweet boy who had been a good friend to Allison. She hesitates when I ask her about Angela, just enough to let her displeasure show, and then she says that Angela is a nice enough girl but perhaps not the best influence on her daughter. She won’t elaborate. When I press her, she just waves her hand to indicate the usual teenage highjinks, things I should already know.

  I flip through my notes, then remember to ask about Russell Freeland. “Russell Freeland,” she says slowly. “Yes, I think he and my daughter were friends in college. I met him only once or twice.” She leans forward. Her eyes narrow, her mouth tightens, and then she seems to think better of whatever she was going to say. She smiles. “Why do you ask?” she says pleasantly. “Have you spoken with him?”

  “I met him. He mentioned that he knew your daughter.”

  She nods slowly. “Why do you ask about him?”

  “I’m interested in all your daughter’s friends.”

  “But why him, in particular?” Irritation sharpens her voice. “He must have said something to you that made him worth asking about. What was it?”

  I frown, pretending to think. She’s the one making me think he’s important.

  “What did he say to you?” She stretches over the coffee table to lay her cool hand on my arm. “Tell me dear. Is he the one who . . .”

  “Is he the one who what, ma’am?”

  She shakes her head, drawing herself up tall. “What did he say to you?”

  “I don’t really recall,” I say. I can keep secrets, too, small as mine are. We sit for a moment in brittle silence. I’m formulating another question when she says, “I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I want whoever did it to die. When they catch them, I want them to die. Do you know what they did to her?”

  “Yes,” I say. I know exactly what they did.

  “I wish I didn’t know,” she says. “I can’t stop . . .” She shakes her head. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Will you feel any better once they catch them?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I hope so. It’s terrible to feel like I do now. I don’t know what could be worse. It just doesn’t . . .” She shakes her head again, and reaches forward to pluck a white tissue from the white box on the coffee table and wipe her eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense, what they did to her. There’s no reason, there’s no . . . my God. There’s just no reason.”

  Against my will my own eyes are filling. I start blinking furiously. “How is Peter doing?” I ask her.

  “Peter?” she says. “I hear him crying at night sometimes. I stand outside his door. I don’t know whether to go in or not. Last night I went in, and he cried in my lap, like he hasn’t since he was a baby. He cried until he wasn’t even making tears anymore.” She stops, and looks at me sharply, like she’s just remembered who she’s talking to. It’s a look I’m familiar with. “Please don’t put that in the paper.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It’s paralyzing,” she says. “All this sadness.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. I write it down: all this sadness.

  Typing up my notes in the newsroom, I think that Cynthia Avery told me only what she meant to tell me, that she knew what she was going to reveal before I even walked in the door. I see her again, the way she smiled sadly and pressed my hand when she said good-bye, the way she thanked me for being so circumspect and said I was different, I wasn’t like most reporters, and that that was why she had chosen me. It makes me angry to remember that I was gratified.

  I write the story the way she wanted it, the tale of a tenderhearted young woman brutally killed, leaving her mother to drown in grief, praying for the police to do their job. Lucky for me it’s a slow news day. Peggy’s not too thrilled about it, but the story runs.

  After work, I go to the Four Corners for dinner. Peter’s not there. I sit alone at a table by the window and order banana pudding from a slim, rosy-cheeked blonde. When she brings it over, I ask her if she knows Peter.

  She nods, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Isn’t it awful about his sister?” she says. “Poor Pete. He’s a sweetie.”

  “Did you know his sister?”

  She shakes her head, then leans in and lowers her voice. “From the way Pete talks it sounds like she was a wild one,” she says. She straightens up, and speaks at a normal volume. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It is terrible.”

  She nods, looking down at her hands. Then she lifts her head and smiles. “Can I get you anything else right now?” When I shake my head she says, “Enjoy your dinner,” and walks away, swinging her arms.

  I stare at the plate, my appetite gone. I see Allison Avery in her mother’s picture again, her perfect smile, her gently clasped hands. I see her hands the way I first saw them, rigid and bloody, grasping at the air.

  9

  Saturday morning I wake up slow, sweating and heavy as a dead thing in my bed. My arm is so numb from lying on it all night that in the first groggy moments I think that limb beneath me isn’t mine. I reach a hand out for David and find only bedsheet, damp to the touch. I open my eyes. The first thing I see is the dead girl’s face, grinning at me from the bedside table, where I must have propped it last night. I swipe at it with my hand and it flutters to the top of a pile of papers and notebooks on the floor. It lands faceup, still grinning. Sitting up, I rub my numb arm until sensation returns with a painful tingling. “Hannah?” I call. “Are you up?”

  She appears at the doorway to my room in shorts and a jogging bra, her hair held back with a barrette, her face red and shiny. “Am I up?” she repeats. “I just ran five miles.” She flops down across the bottom of my bed and pulls her knee toward her forehead, stretching. “I tried to wake you,” she says. “You mumbled something and rolled over.”

  “What did I say?”

  She lets one leg drop to the bed and grabs the other one. “
I think it was nada,” she says. “Nada, nada, nada.”

  For some reason, I’m relieved. “Bishop wrote that in my notebook.”

  “Still seeing words in your dreams?” she says. “That’s so weird.”

  I put on my glasses. “Did you bring in the paper?”

  “In the kitchen.” Suddenly she jumps up and stands, legs apart, her hands in loose fists at her sides. “I’ll race you.”

  I fling back the covers and she dashes out of the room and ahead of me down the hall, her laughter trailing behind her.

  In the kitchen I make coffee while she reads the arts section. “That guy Carl,” she says, rustling the pages. “He works for Black Horse Theater, right? They’ve got an ad in here. They’re doing Macbeth.”

  “Let me see that.” She hands me the page.

  “There’s a performance this afternoon,” I say. “Let’s go.” She raises her eyebrows. “Seriously, let’s go.”

  “Why not,” she says.

  The Black Horse Theater Company is located on top of a pizza place. To get to it, we climb metal fire-escape stairs up the side of the building. The stairs tremble beneath us and I cling to the railing. Inside it’s dark and the smell of fresh dough mingles with dust and disinfectant. A cheerful girl wearing stage makeup sells us our tickets, hand-printed on white paper. “Can I ask how you heard about us?” she says, handing us programs.

  “We know Carl Fitzner.” I watch her face for reaction. Her lips shade an “oh.” “You’re in luck,” she says. “Carl’s in the play today. Bob’s out with the flu.”

  “Was Carl his understudy?” I ask.

  “Not exactly,” she says. “Carl just always knows everyone’s lines, even mine.” She laughs. “I think if I were sick he’d put on a dress and go on for me.”

  “Shakespeare plays started that way, after all,” Hannah says. The girl looks at her blankly. “With men in drag,” Hannah says. The girl nods as though she still doesn’t understand, turning away toward an older couple behind us. “What are we doing here again?” Hannah asks me as we make our way to our seats.