Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  The tears began slowly. They rose up painfully behind her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, soaking her fingers as she tried to wipe them away, but they kept washing down. She could not move from where she stood. She had wanted to feel again what she had felt that night, she knew that now. She had wanted to be cracked open and relive the whole event, as if then she would know what to do. But there was only a sadness so overwhelming it pulled her to her knees and kept her there, even as the cold seeped through her skirt, and then down again until she was lying on her side, her cheek pressed into snow-covered grass.

  Someone was calling her. A woman’s voice coming nearer. She must not be caught here, she thought, alarmed, but still too heavy to move until the woman was almost upon her and Carole sat up in the brilliant sun, blinking. The woman had been running so fast her blond ponytail swung from side to side. “Are you okay?” she kept saying. “Did something happen?”

  Carole scrambled to her feet, dusting snow from her skirt, wiping her eyes.

  The woman stopped, hands on her hips, her head cocked as suspicion replaced concern. “That’s private property up there,” she said. “Are you with one of our guests?”

  “I just wanted to see,” Carole said, the fugitive once again, circling around the woman who was now in her way, between herself and the truck. “I didn’t realize—”

  “Is that your truck in front of the Putney?” The woman’s voice was accusing now. Carole passed her, smiling weakly, her mind gone blank because there was no explanation for what she was doing other than the truth. I came back to the place where I killed a woman. There was just flight.

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  The woman ran after her, calling out, “What were you doing up there? Who are you?”

  At the truck the woman caught up. “You stay away,” she said. “I don’t want to see you around here. You had no business.”

  Running from the scene. In her truck, hightailing it down the driveway, going left instead of right. She’d been the moth touching flame, flirting with exposure. And then the sickening possibility occurred to her, that she might not be anonymous. She might be known here in Stowe. It was possible, and not as the girl from ten years ago but as the business owner from Montpelier. She felt sometimes that she had a million fragmented identities, as though she was only a filament of reality. What you see is what you get. But not in her case. In fact, she thought as she drove north on a wet narrow road hugged by steep granite walls, she was nothing like she seemed.

  “Paint what you see and not what you know,” an art teacher had once instructed her, a difficult exercise because it meant looking fully at an object and not thinking flower or shoe, or whatever it was but concentrating only on line, shadow, and color. The teacher would stand behind her and say, “Where do you see that?” And of course it wasn’t there. She was certain now that Will loved what he knew and not what he saw, and why shouldn’t he? She wouldn’t allow him to see her.

  She drove until she came to a sign. “Entering Morris Center.” She pulled to the shoulder and let the van idle. 127 Baldwin Terrace, Morris Center, VT. Rita Marie Boudreau, the license had said. Five foot five. 150 pounds. Eyes brown. Hair brown. Twenty-eight years old.

  One-twenty-seven Baldwin was a drugstore, the old kind with a soda counter and a little bell that jingled when she went in. There was a man behind the soda fountain dressed in stained whites, like the soda jerks of her youth. The name HOWIE was embroidered on his breast pocket. He looked her up and down. “What can I do you for?”

  Careful, she told herself. Take it easy. Don’t do anything rash. She had to remember where she was, in the dead silence of this place. She browsed the shelves, which had only scant merchandise on them, rows of dusty Band-Aid boxes, some toothbrushes. End of the line, she thought with some relief. Her memory of the address must have been wrong. “I thought this was a residence.” She looked around. The store was clearly old. “I must have the wrong address.”

  “Who you looking for?”

  “I thought it would be a home. I’m wrong.”

  “We got an apartment upstairs, if that’s what you mean.” He pointed to a door in the back. “Hasn’t been rented in a while.” He had two different-colored eyes. One brown and one blue. She thought one of them might be blind and looked from one to the other, wondering which of them could see her. “Take a look if you want,” he said. He took a large ring of keys from his belt and picked out one of them. “It’s just through there.” He showed her to the door in back, opened it, and ushered her through to a dark staircase. She could feel him close behind her and turned. “Were you working here in 1965?” she said.

  “I was twelve in 1965,” he said with a laugh. “My dad owned it.” He followed her up the stairs and opened the door. “Give a shout if you have any questions.” She went inside, but Howie waited at the door and watched her.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said.

  But he still didn’t move. “Is it just you?”

  She put a hand on the knob. “Just me.” She pulled the door gently toward herself until she heard him turn and go back down the stairs. Then she shut the door tight.

  She was in a musty room with a single window that let in the afternoon light. It was bare, and you could see where the floor had been shellacked around the edges but left raw in the middle, to be hidden by a carpet. She walked across to the kitchen, the floorboards squeaking underfoot. The kitchen was large, with peeling wallpaper—a yellow background with clumps of brick-colored cherries. There was a small rusted stove against one wall and a refrigerator and a sink against the other. The window looked out on a house and an overgrown yard behind the drugstore. The bedroom was off the kitchen through another door. It still had a narrow metal bed in it as well as a small bureau and one of those freestanding full-length mirrors. The pale green curtains at the window were torn.

  Carole went over to the bed and sat down, her hands folded in her lap. It may have been Rita’s bed back then. And after Rita, dozens of people would have slept on it, but still it counted for something. She shut her eyes for a few moments and then looked up. Rita might have come from this very room that night. She would have looked at herself in the mirror before she went out. She would have adjusted the straps on that olive-green dress, then turned to see how she looked from behind. Maybe she teased her hair. Carole stood up. She raised her hair over her head and back-combed it with her fingers. It was what they did back then. And then Rita would have sprayed it. She turned in the mirror, again as Rita must have once, to see if the seams in her nylons were straight. It was as though they were sisters and she was watching Rita get ready for a big date.

  She opened and closed each drawer in the dresser. She opened the closet, which was shallow and small. A few wire hangers hung on a wooden rod. She touched one of them, thinking it might have held Rita’s parka, her dress. She wondered what they would have done with the other clothes when Rita never came back. The door opened behind her. Howie again. “So?” he said.

  She’d fallen apart at the motel, come within a hairsbreadth from getting into real trouble. She wasn’t going to do that here.

  “I need a little more time to consider,” she said, desperate to hold on to the moment with Rita—so unexpected, so satisfying, to be Rita for just a few moments more.

  “Look, for you I’d cut a deal.” He came to the bed and sat down. She felt like he’d stolen from her. If he’d only left her alone for a few more minutes, she’d have—She didn’t know exactly what. But something. It was like being pulled from a dream and then trying to recapture it. “It would help if you’d—” she said.

  But Howie lay down on the bed. “Two hundred, heat included.”

  She took a last look in the mirror. She could see him on the bed behind her, but so what? She swiveled, fluffed out her hair.

  Howie’s expression said he thought this was all for him. “You’re something else,” he said.

  “Right,” she said, a sense of alarm creeping into he
r. “But I guess it’s not exactly right. The apartment, I mean.” She was closer to the door than he was, and as she crossed back through the living room, she heard the bed creak behind her as he rose and followed her out, but at a distance. It was okay. He was fine. She had another thought, feeling bolder again. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” he said, behind her now.

  “I’ll pay,” she said. “I wasn’t asking to use it for nothing.”

  They were back in the drugstore, and she felt safer. “Who you looking for? I know just about everybody in Morris Center.”

  She smiled at him. “Just somebody I used to know,” she said. “I’m curious.”

  “Who?”

  She cocked her head and shrugged a little, giving him a look that said, Sorry, but this isn’t really any of your business.

  “Whatever,” he said. That word again. He indicated the wall phone behind the cash register and handed her a thin phone book. “It’s a dime for local calls.” He was suddenly cool to her, rebuffed, but so what? She shielded the phone book from him while she looked up the number. “I’ll bet a dollar I know your party,” he said.

  She forced a smile at him as if she hadn’t really heard.

  There were two Boudreaus. A Paul and a Lionel. She dialed the Paul number. Howie moved closer and was tidying the shelves behind her. The number rang twice before she hung up. What was she doing?

  “Busy?” Howie said.

  She nodded. She used the dime to dial again, this time letting it ring through. It clicked and buzzed, and then she got a recording that the number was no longer in service. She went over to the counter and sat down.

  Howie slipped behind the counter, poured a glass of water, and slid it down the counter to her. “No answer?”

  Carole didn’t dare raise the glass to her lips. She hunched over the counter and tipped it with both hands to keep it from spilling, but even so it sloshed over the counter. She took a deep breath. She tried to fish another dime out of her purse to pay for the next call, but her change spilled, spinning this way and that. Howie helped her collect it. She held open her purse so he could drop the money in.

  “You could use a calmer-downer.” He indicated the whole drugstore with a sweep of his hand, and when she smiled, added, “We got everything here. Just name your poison.”

  “I have to make another call,” she said.

  He frowned and shook his head. “Suit yourself.”

  She called the second number. It rang once before a man picked up. “Hello?”

  “I’m calling to ask,” Carole said, her voice low. She waited until Howie moved away.

  “Speak up,” the man on the phone said.

  “I’m looking for the family of Rita Boudreau.” Was she crazy? She should have found a pay phone someplace else. What if Howie could hear? She looked over, but he was sponging down the counter.

  “Who is this?” the man said.

  “Are you related to her?”

  The man said something to someone else in the room. The sound was muffled, as though he was holding his hand over the receiver. Then he came back on the line. “You tell me who you are first, young lady.”

  “I went to school with her. I was just wondering.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you I don’t know who you mean.” The man hung up.

  Howie had drifted back toward her and was standing nearby, pretending to study one of the shelves. “You never went to any school with her,” he said without looking at her.

  Trembling, Carole gathered up her purse.

  “You weren’t looking for an apartment either, were you?”

  “I need to go now,” she said. “Thanks for—”

  “They found her in Stowe. Dead. Shit, you think I’d forget that?” He headed her off as she went for the door. “Hey! You listening?”

  Her truck was several cars down on the left. She pulled open the drugstore door, and the bells sounded. Howie was right behind her. “Hey, wait,” he said. “They told my old man to let them know if anybody came looking for her, you know. What’s your name? Hey.”

  She ran from the store and down the street. She had to get out of there before he could see her license plate. Howie was on the sidewalk outside the store when she sped by. He gave her the finger as she passed.

  What was she doing? She’d panicked. Why had she ever thought she needed to go to Stowe again? The idea of it had lain out there all these years like some kind of mission she had to fulfill. Something she would do, something she needed to do. Returning to the scene of the crime. She cursed herself for doing it so impulsively. Hadn’t that been the trouble in the first place? She’d spent all these years taming her impulses, only to give in to them and then take those awful risks. That woman at the Snowtown and then Howie. Now two people had seen her and would remember the bizarre way she had behaved. It was as though she wanted to bring on the danger. Would Howie call the police? Would he describe her truck to them? She stepped on the accelerator, then slammed on the brake. Don’t draw attention. Try to act normal, Naomi had said that night on the telephone at Grand Central. If that’s even possible. Naomi should talk. It was her call that had set off this backward slide, that had sent Carole trespassing and calling attention to herself. It made her wonder now if all three of them—she, Naomi, and Eddie—were drawn to one another and to these places like ants to sugar, as if a certain amount of time passed and then each of them needed to take another look. What had Eddie said that time in San Francisco? Don’t think this is over.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carole and Will drove the frosted back roads to Rachel and Morgan’s for the Saturnalia dinner, a ritual event they held each year in mid-January to cover Christmas and Thanksgiving at once. Eight weeks had passed since she’d gone to New York for the reunion and then to Stowe, and there had been nothing from Naomi and nothing from Howie or anybody else. Not a phone call, not a letter, not a visit from the police. The dread had gone from a constant hour-to-hour, sick-to-her-stomach vigil to something less sharp. But it was still there, a sort of dull wariness, until she began to wonder about that house Naomi had mentioned and why she hadn’t even thought to check it out. The Rowling sisters’ house. She wasn’t sure where it was, but Rachel would know. Rachel knew everything about the area. It was on a back road somewhere out in Middlesex, Carole knew that much. There had been four unmarried sisters, and the last of them had died a year or so ago at the age of about ninety. Carole had read about it in the paper. If she could see the house, she’d been thinking, yes, if she could see it abandoned, falling into disrepair the way it had been described in the paper, then she would be sure. That would seal the danger, she was almost sure. All this would be over, a thing of the past.

  It was still early in the day, and sun sparkled through iced trees. In the backseat she had platters of corn bread and antipasti, a pan of vegetarian lasagna and Will’s turkey drumstick, still warm in its aluminum foil on the seat. When they pulled off the road, Carole got out and checked the garage, a big homemade corrugated metal box, to make sure Morgan and Rachel really were home. It was padlocked, which meant the truck was inside and the Weaver-Lears were there. They’d set the date weeks ago, but since her friends didn’t have a telephone, it was always iffy.

  Carole and Will struck out along the icy, ridged snowmobile tracks. It was lovely in the woods, with gentle sounds as lumps of snow fell from branches and plopped onto the snow. Just before the long final curve, Will stopped and held up a hand for her to stop so they could listen one last time to the stillness of the forest. “Will?” she said, so safe that she was willing to be reckless. “Remember that girl from Spence who called that night?”

  “Sure I do. The mess. The one who drinks too much and steals.”

  She nodded. “Here’s what I was thinking. I never heard from her again.”

  “Well, good,” he said. “I guess it’s good. You didn’t want to, right?”

  “Maybe tonight, after, we could drive by that ho
use she was talking about. The Rowling place. I’m just curious.”

  His parka hood was pulled in tight so only the center of his face showed. “Sure,” he said. She thought he was smiling in there. She hoped he was.

  They rounded the bend and stood looking at the dome hunkered down among the trees. Morgan and Rachel had improved it over the years. They’d put in running water and electricity, added on a mudroom, and built a chicken coop. It still felt like home to Carole, like the place where she was from.

  She could see Rachel framed in the door, waiting. When they got close, Rachel threw her arms around them and drew them inside. She had on a muslin India-print dress, red and brown, and she twirled in it to show it off, the long, droopy sleeves flying out like streamers.

  The house was hot and steamy and smelled wonderfully of roasting squash. Light streamed in through murky Plexiglas panels overhead, giving the room a warm yellowish glow. A large couch was in the center of the room with shawls and blankets on it. The stove, a square black Defiant from down in Randolph, stood free in the center of the room with its long silvery chimney going straight up. The only other furniture was a low table, pillows thrown here and there where people could sit, and a long dining table that separated the living space from the kitchen. The floor was covered with books and magazines. The kids’ and Rachel and Morgan’s bedrooms were still separated by blankets strung across.

  Pepper was sprawled on the couch, sipping water from a jar. “Hey, Pep,” she said. Pepper raised two fingers in a victory sign and grinned at her.

  There was a banging noise somewhere, and Carole looked around the room. Dylan, naked except for a diaper, was slapping the crib rail with his fists. Pepper got up, dragged him over the crib rail, and then fell to the floor under his brother’s weight. Then he hauled the baby onto the couch and removed the diaper. He worked quickly, holding the pins in his mouth while he wrapped a clean diaper around the baby. “Watch him, will you?” he said to Rachel. She picked up the baby and held him while Pepper disappeared behind one of the blankets and came back with clothes and shoes for Dylan. “There,” he said when the baby was dressed. He started picking up the place after that, straightening out magazines and stacking pillows. “Place isn’t safe,” he said to Carole and Will. “I keep telling them.”