by Jess Lourey
I turn the knob. The door opens with a click. Soft snoring, the stale smell of sleeping bodies. I step into it.
The moonlight is weak, secondhand, on this side of the house, but I make out two forms in the bed, a wheelchair next to the larger. My heart sits in my throat, thick and wide, throbbing, and I’m not thinking about Libby at all, or Ursula or my mom or Lilydale. I’m seeing only the jewelry box on the dresser.
In the second before I open it, it occurs to me that it might be a music box.
But it’s too late.
I open it. Silence, except that one of the bodies in the bed turns and sighs, dropping me into a full-body ice bath. I dare not turn, do not have the muscles or eyes for anything except that white enamel lily locket, the shape and color of the Fathers and Mothers pin, surely holding a photo of Stanley.
It burns in my hand, burns deliciously, when I clasp it, and I taste something like relief. I can’t control anything in Lilydale, not who comes to my house for dinner, not whether I can drink in public, not anything except this. I have Dorothy Lily’s necklace, and when she comes over for dinner with the rest of the Fathers and Mothers, I will know something none of them do. I will have some power.
The snoring has taken on a different tenor—is it one, rather than both people snoring?—but I don’t look. I keep my face to myself, clutch the locket to my chest, and slip out of the room like a ghost, an exultant ghost.
I am calm when I step outdoors, the air cool, the moonlight shining golden across my skin.
My walk is confident across the driveway. I do not waver as I stride to my own house, not even when I spot the man in the alley, watching me from the shadows, unaware that I can see him, too.
CHAPTER 35
I tape the necklace to the back of the main-floor toilet tank, rinse my feet in the tub, put the man in the alley (Clan, sneaking home late?) out of my head, and sleep like a baby. I don’t even hear Deck leave the next morning.
True to his word, he returns at eleven thirty to take me crib shopping. I lay my head on his shoulder as he drives. It’s a short trip, only one town over, but I soak up this time with him, hanging on his every word. He’s clearly so happy to be back living in Lilydale. He’s pleasantly boyish, gushing about his new clients and the memories that keep rushing back. Football games. An awkward first kiss. His freshman-year job stocking shelves at Wally’s.
I smile and listen. I don’t tell him about Grover or visiting the Lily house last night. I just enjoy him. Deck’s been so busy at the insurance agency that I’ve missed him. We’ve grown apart, but I can feel our hearts knitting back together.
When he pulls up in front of Oleson Furniture and rushes around to open my door for me, I grin and burst out, surprising him with a big, passionate kiss.
“Well now, what was that for?”
“For being the best boyfriend a girl could ask for.”
He smiles. “You’re angling for the largest crib, aren’t you?”
I giggle. I’m smiling up at him, about to make a weak joke (we only need a small one, silly, it’s for a baby), when the color drains out of his face like someone’s pulled the plug in his stomach. I whirl to see what he’s seen.
When I spot her, I gasp, my hand flying protectively to my stomach.
A rapidly breathing woman is hunched beneath a tree just on the edge of the parking lot. She isn’t here to shop, I don’t think. In fact, it looks as if she’s run here, barefoot, her hair tangled with twigs and leaves. She’s glowering at Deck, whether intentionally or because that’s her natural expression, I can’t be sure.
When she steps out of the shadows, I moan.
Her face isn’t right.
Her head is impossibly narrow at the top, eyes melting into cheeks, her nose an unformed lump of clay floating between. Her chin juts out enough to balance a coffee cup on, pulling her bottom jaw so far that I can see every one of her bottom teeth. She looks feral, her chest rising and falling with the breath of effort or a deformity of her heart, I can’t be sure. Her body appears normal beneath her shapeless dress.
I avert my eyes. It’s cruel to stare, would be even crueler to run, but that’s what I want to do, to get my baby far away from here, to protect him from whatever caused that.
“Do you know her?” I whisper to Deck.
“We’re leaving.” Deck pulls me back toward the car.
“But we haven’t even looked at cribs!”
I steal a peep over my shoulder. The heaving woman hasn’t moved, but now she’s grinning, a horrible jack-o-lantern smile that eats the bottom half of her face. And then she darts behind the store, her movements as quick and unsettling as a silverfish.
I shudder, letting Deck guide me to the car. Once inside, I lock the doors, but I hope the woman doesn’t see. I don’t want her to feel bad. I can’t help wondering if it’s contagious, though, whatever did that to her, and if my baby is safe.
I weep on the drive home, but softly, so Deck won’t be alarmed.
CHAPTER 36
The dinner party is that night. Dorothy and Barbara are in my kitchen, as proper as ever, helping me prepare. I am only able to hold myself together by thinking of that enamel locket taped to the back of the toilet tank.
Dorothy is wearing a button-down shirt over drainpipe slacks. This is her work outfit. She’ll be in a smart suit for tonight’s party, I’d bank on it. Her hand keeps going to her bare neck so often that Barbara, who’s also there to help, finally asks her about it.
“Minna’s necklace,” Dorothy says. “I seem to have misplaced it.”
I cough to cover the unexpected burst of pleasure. I stole more power than I thought. “The necklace belonged to Minna Lily?” I ask. “Wife of Johann Lily?”
Dorothy tries to smile, but her lips are too pinched. “That’s right, dear. She brought it over from Germany. It’s a locket, actually, containing dirt from our ancestral homestead.”
I fall against the countertop. It isn’t personal that I’ve taken her necklace. She’s never been anything but nice to me. I realize I’ve gone too far.
Dorothy takes it for sympathy. “You’re too kind, darling, but don’t worry. It’ll turn up.”
She’s mixing a Cool Whip and mandarin orange salad with maraschino cherries. Both she and Barbara were visibly shocked by my hair when they showed up, but they’ve bitten their tongues.
“Barbara, I think you can put the ham in to warm now,” Dorothy says, dismissing talk of the locket with such alacrity that I wonder whether I’ve met my equal in focusing on only the positive.
The thought leaves me strangely cold.
But Dorothy and Barbara are buzzing around my kitchen, so confident, so at home, both of them cooing over my pregnancy and the town happenings and their excitement for the party, that I decide to go with the flow. It’s so cozy, almost like being mothered.
Between them, they’ve brought serving platters and a large ham, already cooked. It only needs to be warmed. Same with the scalloped potatoes. Dorothy even brought a nut-covered cheeseball, Ritz crackers, and sliced olives for appetizers. That leaves me to boil vegetables, set Jell-O salads, and warm bread. It’s pleasant, mindless kitchen work. Our conversation stays on the surface, avoiding all but the easy things.
When the first people begin showing up, the house smells wonderful. The china and sterling flatware Barbara and Ronald left in the built-ins are laid out, a feast served family-style. My own mother would be proud. I feel a sharp ache as I realize I’ve missed the one-year anniversary of her death.
“Joan, come over here,” Ronald calls to me from the front door, where he’s standing next to Amory Bauer. Ronald has been manning the door as if this were still his house. (And unlike his wife, he didn’t keep his opinions of my hair to himself. When he first saw it, his face went tomato red, and he sputtered, “And isn’t long hair a woman’s pride and joy? For it has been given to her as a covering,” before Deck led him away.) “You haven’t spoken to Amory about Paulie Aandeg yet.”
/> It no longer bothers me that Ronald knows that, that he probably knows everyone I’ve spoken with since I moved to Lilydale. I separate myself from the pack of women I’ve been chatting with. Mousy Mildred, stern-faced Catherine, beneficent Barbara, Birdie Rue, Saint Dorothy.
“I’m so glad Ronald told me it was you,” Amory says, his eyes glittering dangerously as I approach. “With that hair, I’d have taken you for a new boy in town. What is it you want to know about the Paulie Aandeg case?”
I try to force the smile to reach my eyes, but it gets hung up at my mouth. Whether your son had anything to do with his disappearance, I want to say. “Thank you for coming. I guess I want to know if there is anything that didn’t make it into the newspapers.”
“You know newspapers,” he says. “They get half the story and make up the rest.” Though he’s grinning, it’s not kind. He wants me to feel bad.
I mirror his smile. “If you give me the whole story, I won’t have to make up a thing.”
His eyes narrow. “Not much to tell. The boy disappeared, and then his mother went missing the same night her house burned down. What do you make of that?”
He wants me to say that it sounds like Mrs. Aandeg had something to hide. “Your son, Aramis, was in Paulie’s class.”
Amory’s smile slides toward ugly. “Who told you that?”
Ronald puts his hand on Amory’s shoulder. “I told you she spoke to Becky Swanson. The boys’ teacher the day Paulie disappeared.”
It’s interesting to see the effect Ronald’s touch has on Amory. It deflates him. I had assumed the police chief rather than the mayor had the power in the relationship, but that’s clearly not the case.
“Aramis is overseas,” Amory tells me, his eyes burning into me. “We’re lucky to get a phone call every few months. You won’t be able to get ahold of him, but if you did, he wouldn’t have anything to tell you. He was a child.”
“Same with Quill Brody?” I ask.
“Same with Quill Brody,” Amory says, copying my words exactly.
I don’t want to give up, not without at least a single piece of new information. “You met Kris Jefferson, the man who claims to be Paulie Aandeg?”
“Interviewed him when he first came to town. Not much to learn there.”
I won’t let this go. “Do you think he’s Paulie?”
Amory claps me on the back. “We’ll find out tonight!”
He pushes past me. For a moment I wonder if he’s too big for my house, like a giant who’s wandered into the land of humans. But that’s silly. He fits in just fine. These are his people, and he’s only a man, not even as large as Clan.
I’m about to close the screen door when I spot the couple strolling up my walk. Everyone who Deck invited is here except Dennis from the newspaper, who couldn’t make it because he had to cover the baseball game.
That leaves the two people I invited: Regina and Kris.
Kris is empty-handed. Regina is carrying a jug of Mountain Red.
She hands it to me. “Hope your group will like it!”
She’s going for funny, but she’s clearly nervous. She’s wearing a miniskirt that this crowd will think is too short and a blouse that is scandalously low cut. Kris, earthy and gorgeous as ever, is wearing patched jeans and an India print shirt. He’ll also stand out like a sore thumb, but his languid body posture informs the world that he couldn’t care less if he tried.
I kiss Regina on the cheek. “If they don’t like Mountain Red, they’re assholes,” I whisper.
“I dig your hair, and something smells delicious,” Kris says perfunctorily, stepping past me to strut into the house. “Let’s get this done and over with.”
I wonder what he knows that I don’t. There isn’t much time for speculation, though. The food is growing cold. Deck and Ronald set up three card tables next to the dining room table so we can all eat in the same room. It makes four separate conversations, but I catch bits. Amory joking that the whole city council is in my dining room, plus the draft board. The Jacksons, who own Little John’s, speaking to Regina about a belligerent customer they had to kick out the night before. Clan, Deck, and Ronald talking insurance and, when Clan mentions how it’s time for a crow hunt to let off some steam, the men laughing. Mildred Schramel is trying to keep my attention, telling me she is sure she’ll get used to my hair and that she hopes I have a boy, because it’s so much work having girls.
It’s surprisingly all right. I begin to relax.
There is a lull in Mildred’s questioning. That’s when, without forethought, I let the words tumble out of my mouth. “I thought I saw someone in the alley last night,” I say to her, “between our house and the Lilys’.”
The head table, where I’m seated, goes church quiet. It takes the smaller tables a few seconds to catch up, but soon the entire room sits in the spotlight of silence.
“Impossible,” Amory says. “There’s no safer town.”
“It must have been a trick of the light, then,” I say, wishing I could swallow my words. I know better than to speak out in this crowd.
“When was this?” Deck asks.
I knead the napkin in my lap. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I went out for fresh air.”
“You said you saw somebody in the alley?” Regina asks from across the room.
“Like I said, impossible,” Amory barks.
“It isn’t impossible for someone to walk in an alley at night,” Regina argues.
“Really?” Amory asks. “Would you like to tell me more?”
The ugly in his voice is unmistakable.
“I don’t know about Lilydale,” Kris says from the other end of the main table. “But where I come from, people walk by houses that aren’t theirs all the time.”
“Tell us where you hail from,” Ronald says.
“Besides Lilydale,” Mildred says, tittering nervously.
“The last place I called home was Siesta Key, Florida,” he says, staring at me.
I look away. He shouldn’t flirt in front of these people. Not with me.
“That’s where I discovered that I was Paulie.”
“How did you find out?” Ronald asks. “I think we’re all curious about that.”
I understand this is why we’re all here, in my house. It’s not for my article. It’s so the Fathers and Mothers can put on a show of force, get their questions answered, find out exactly what Kris has revealed to me so far.
Kris seems fine with it. He repeats the story he told me in the café, about the hypnotherapist stirring up old memories of the town, and his mom, the sailor suit.
“You say the man who raised you was military?”
Kris nods. “He probably took the train through Lilydale on his way back from the war. Saw a kid, knew he could get a bigger pension with a tyke, and brought me back with him to San Diego. It’s the only explanation that lines up.”
“That’s horrible,” Regina says.
“People do terrible things,” Ronald says. He’s looking at me.
Deck covers my hand with his. “Dessert time!” he says. “We’ll get out of the way so the ladies can clean up. Gentlemen, who wants to enjoy cigars in the backyard?”
I excuse myself to use the bathroom upstairs. I rinse off my face and wash my hands, taking deep breaths. I fumble the Valium bottle out of the medicine cabinet and swallow one. I can’t hide here for much longer or I’ll be missed. A soft knock on the door gets my attention. I open it, hoping Regina is on the other side.
It’s Kris.
I jump back so quickly that I bash my elbow on the sink. “What are you doing here?”
Kris is smiling, but it’s a lopsided grin. He’s ingested more than wine tonight. He reaches behind him and pulls a postcard out of his back jeans pocket. It features a palm tree against the most glorious sunset I’ve ever seen, tangerines and lemons fading to lavender, a larger version of the matchbook he used at Tuck’s Cafe. “Siesta Key, Florida,” is written across the top.
“Leave
with me,” he’s saying. “Tonight. Before it’s too late.”
I throw up my hands. Stop. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Yes, what’s wrong with you, son?”
The growl of a voice nearly loosens my bowels. I hadn’t noticed Amory in the hallway. He has Kris in a headlock before I can register what’s happening, yanking so hard that he drags Kris off his feet, the rug bunching beneath him as he hauls Kris out the door.
I fall against the wall. A commotion erupts downstairs, and then the front door slams. Regina appears in the bathroom doorway, her face flushed.
“You okay?”
She helps me toward the closed toilet, but I push her off. “I have to get downstairs. We must pretend like everything is normal, or it’ll get worse.”
“All right,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “But what just happened?”
Rather than respond, I lead the way downstairs. I understand that how I play this has very real consequences, even if I don’t yet know what they are. I step onto the main floor. Everyone is still, quiet, the whole room of guests watching me. Then, like robots who’ve been plugged in, they start moving again, laughing and drinking and acting like this is normal.
My bones turn to jelly.
I pivot so I’m facing Regina, who’s behind me on the stairs. I smile and nod as if I’m telling her a joke but pitch my voice so only she can hear it. “I shouldn’t ever have asked you to come. I’m so sorry.”
Regina is pale. “What are you talking about?”
“You need to go,” I say, the lightness in my voice and the way I’m holding myself belying my words, I hope. “I’ve invited you into the lion’s den. Please, just act like everything is normal.”
She steps ahead of me. She threads her way through the crowd. I follow. At the door, I hug her. In the reflection of the front window, I catch Amory staring at me with such naked hate it feels like a punch, but when I turn, he’s wiped the expression off so completely that I wonder if I imagined it.
But I know I didn’t.