She could see it now, after all this time, and she wished she couldn’t.
It was one of those stories people tell over and over. Sometimes you don’t want to hear them, sometimes you do. “Police had me sitting in the police station looking at mug shots, and for years I’d dream about those black-and-white photos, those grim, tired, hard-looking men.”
It was like she was telling me this for the first time. “I’d dream I was looking at a row of faces,” she said, “and they came to life. They moved their lips. They frowned. One by one they moved their eyes. And looked right at me.”
When the doorbell made its ding-dong, a computer chip programmed to sound like iron bells, Mom gave me a reassuring smile.
I crept upstairs. I shut my bedroom door quietly but firmly and stood beside the jamb. The house was big, and the walls were thick. The faintest murmur seeped through to me, Detective Margate’s consonants, her s’s sharp, like a badly tuned radio.
I pressed my skull against the doorjamb, but the vague, simmering murmurs would not distill into words. Months from now people would pass me in corridors and whisper, She helped the police break the case. She fought off the attacker.
When people knew the truth about me, all this would vanish.
Chapter 18
My mother writes exams for software companies, tests designed to cull crooks and risk-lovers. To the statement “You like a lot of excitement in your life,” the correct answer is No. If you check Yes beside “You like to drive fast sometimes, just for fun,” you’ll end up working somewhere else.
Some of these tests are administered face to face, job seeker and psychologist. I took some of these exams, trying them out, cueing Mom when a question was too obvious. No one wanting a job would answer yes to, “I have been in shouting matches with my boss.”
When you lie, sometimes your eyes look upward, at the questioner’s eyebrows. Sometimes your foot gives a little kick, unconsciously booting the question away. Listen for the pauses in the examiner’s voice, Mom always said.
The tests are so easy I’m surprised anyone ever fails.
The detective stayed a longer time than I expected, like someone returning a borrowed book, saying they loved the ending, no time for any decaf, but then lingering anyway, to talk about their favorite chapter, the one where the murderer blurts the truth.
Afterward, my mother tapped on my door with her fingernails and said, “She’s overworked.” She wrinkled her nose as she said this, meaning, Just between you and me. “Her husband is a contractor—he remodels kitchens. They both want to have children.”
My mother asks, and people talk.
“She hates this attacker, whoever he is. Personally. She wants to see him rot on a meat hook. She says the Oakland police are staking out an apartment building on Fruitvale Avenue.”
“What did she say about him?”
“She said the suspect has been in and out of institutions for thirty years.”
“Institutions?” Not jails, not prisons. “A violent man,” I ventured.
“She says he’s sugar to everyone, nice-nice, until he gets a woman alone.”
A sick feeling throbbed inside me.
“I said you weren’t here,” Mom added.
“Did she believe you?”
Mom makes a quiet, pretty laugh through her nose, as though too courteous to laugh out loud.
“Are you sure she isn’t watching the house?”
“You’re as bad as Cass.” My sister had done a report on the CIA as a high school senior, and for months afterward was pointing out innocent-looking pedestrians who could be operatives.
“I’ll have a talk with Dad,” she said. She usually referred to my father as Terry or Terrance.
I took a ten-second shower, toweled off, and skimmed into my nightie. I turned out my light. I was sure I could see the dim strobe of an emergency blinker, the cops sitting at the curb conferring. I stole across the floor and parted the drapes. The street was empty.
Plumbing whispered quietly in a far corner of the house, my mother taking a bath or a shower, trying to quiet her mind so she would be able to sleep. The phone trilled beside me and I groped, knocked it off the bed, found it in the dark.
Cass gets affectionate and talky when she’s sleepy. She asked how I was feeling, was I getting enough rest, and then, niceties observed, careened right into her usual topic A. She said Danny found everything too easy, he rarely even had to study.
I said that this was hard for people like Cass and me to understand, because our own parents had worked so hard. Cass had always complained about Danny, said he was too good looking and that he was always going off to embassy cocktail parties with his parents, meeting God knew what sort of French-speaking temptress. It was her way of bragging.
“Well, Dad didn’t exactly suffer,” Cass began.
“Remember how he didn’t want us to see how upset he was when the restaurant burned?”
Cass had picked up a knowledge of sleeping pills from one of her first boyfriends, a pre-med student with an MG. I wondered if she had been mixing a few sleepy-time tablets with a glass of wine. For an instant I worried, thinking: Barbiturates, alcohol, coma.
Cass was making her feline sound of a person mulling heavy ideas, not to be interrupted. A yawn, or half yawn, flared the silence. “It’s true—there were tears in his eyes,” she said.
I found myself thinking how much easier it would be on Dad if the wedding was called off.
I looked dumpy in my maid-of-honor dress, a robin’s-egg blue Dupioni silk V-neck with a sweeping, A-line skirt. I didn’t look cavewoman, but I didn’t look half as good as Cassandra did in her princess-line skirt, off-the-shoulder bodice, white all the way. The wedding consultant had told Dad this was the glamorous but understated look an afternoon wedding demanded.
I had expected the consultant to be a friendly Dracula, eager to watch the fittings, all of us in our undies. Instead he had the carelessly well-dressed manner of a basketball coach and talked about flow: traffic, caterers. “Attention wants to flow to the bride.”
“I’d have a heart attack,” she continued, “rather than call off the wedding. If we agreed to get divorced right after the ceremony, we’re going through with it, no matter what.” A brace of her Stanford friends, willowy and talkative, were going to be stunning as bridesmaids, a court of powder-blue dresses.
“Dr. Theobald is going to recite a poem,” I said.
As she sometimes does when approached by news she dislikes, she checked her hearing, made sure her data was sound before she reacted. “Dr. Theobald is doing what?”
I told her again, same words, same tone of voice.
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“Dad left me a note, like it’s especially wonderful news.”
She didn’t sound sleepy now. “I told Dad that Dr. Theobald is unreliable.” She said his name with mockingly overcorrect pronunciation Tib-buld. “I don’t even like the way his voice sounds when he reads.”
“It doesn’t say what poem. But Dad used three exclamation points.”
“My God, what if Dr. Theobald wrote this poem and he’s going to recite it out loud.” She was wide-awake—I could almost hear the sheets slithering off her.
It would be easy to think that Cass had picked Danny out of a catalog, a glossy sampler of handsome guys sure to make bucks. She met him at a Monday Night Football party in Palo Alto, the pony keg nearly empty. They had volunteered to go out for more Miller Lite, and they missed the second half, never came back with so much as a bag of pretzels. Danny believed in God, could read German, and had once owned a budgie named Fatty. He told me he’d teach me how to play five-card draw, and every time he saw me he asked how Marta was doing, was I still running.
I was imagining demanding sexual practices, urgent appetites. “Danny’s used to having everything his way,” Cass said, not about to be bought off with a change of subjects.
I sensed that I was trespassing, but tiptoed ahead. “Danny�
��s insistent,” I hazarded.
Thinking about Danny calmed her, like he was a familiar bedtime story. “If I say I don’t want halibut, it has those bones that scratch your throat, he just laughs and has the fish man weigh out the biggest halibut on ice.”
“Danny cooks?”
“No, he expects me to bone this creature the size of a hog, because he thinks food runs in the family.” The word family seemed to trigger associations. “Why is it,” she asked, “neither you nor I can sing?”
It isn’t very dark in my bedroom at night. Headlights stroke the blank ceiling, and when you sense someone downstairs you can lie awake thinking it’s almost dawn, when it’s just one A.M. I wondered how much more of this I could stand, waiting for everyone to discover the truth.
For a quiet house, this place makes a good deal of noise, gentle, rustling, whispering sounds, Dad home, Dad hungry. I was aching for sleep, thirsty for it. I lay there wide awake, thinking, Where would I go once they knew.
I got up way before dawn and sweated six miles on the machine in the cellar. The last half mile I upped the speed so fast that I was nearly thrown off the machine backward, the belt whining. Dad had tacked an alpine scene on the wall. You ran toward a snowy slope, a meadow bursting with green, flowers like yellow stars.
I bumped into Dad as he stood waiting his turn. He looked baggy eyed and worn. There was definite pudge around his middle inside his gray T-shirt. He says he puts on weight just holding his breath.
He started the machine but didn’t get on it, the black belt humming along unoccupied. The machine burst into action at the speed I had previously set, and he looked at me with mock horror, leaning into the button until the machine was ticking along sedately, three miles an hour, nothing.
“Your mother and I had a chance to talk last night,” he said, not getting on the machine yet. “She has a good idea.”
“Mom is full of ideas.”
“But this is one you’ll like,” he said, starting to run.
Chapter 19
“I think it’s just awful the police won’t leave you alone,” called Mrs. Emmit over the hum of the van. “They should leave you in peace.”
Marta’s dad swore at a truck that changed lanes too quickly. He cocked his head to yell into the back of the van, where Marta and I were swaying with the motion of the stop-and-go traffic. “You have to be a certain type of person to be a cop.”
I felt a little defensive about my own two detectives, and offered, “They just try to do their job.”
“No, they don’t,” said Mr. Emmit, ready to launch into a story about an officer he had seen bullying a homeless person, or maybe a meter maid with a snippy attitude. Mrs. Emmit said something, a sharp whisper, and Mr. Emmit put his shoulders up, like a turtle. “You’re right, Jenny,” he sang out. “They do their best.”
This had been Mom’s plan: a couple days out of town, and maybe the cops wouldn’t need me after all.
The back of the van was a jumble of blue diving fins and Aqua Lung cylinders, heavy tanks of air. The diving masks were night-glow yellow, the Scubapro buoyancy compensator vests and wet suits perfect black. It looked like a squad of sea monsters had run afoul of the Emmits and paid a terrible price.
All the way down Highway 101 the Emmits were especially sensitive, asking me if I needed the window up, or maybe down a little more, and did I mind the radio on, KCBS jabbering the news. They finally turned the radio to some easy listening station at Mrs. Emmit’s whispered prompting, the music you hear in the dentist’s office, jazz musicians without any blood in their bodies.
During this drive it was never, “Is anyone hungry?” or “Anyone have to use the ladies’?” meaning did we need to pee. It was always, “How do you feel, Jennifer?” “Jennifer, need a soda?” They usually traveled along in a happy uproar, caught up in one of Mr. Emmit’s anecdotes, actresses with laryngitis, actors with elevator shoes. Mrs. Emmit usually tossed the lunch into the farthest corner of the van and then had the passengers pass food forward all the way to Monterey, two or three hours, depending on traffic.
Today they were like hospital workers taking a celebrity madwoman out to see the scenery. I had never seen them so considerate, asking me if I was hungry, offering me a pillow for my head, as though I could not hold myself upright.
The drive to Monterey goes in three distinct stages as you head south from San Francisco Bay. First, there is urban damage, freeway construction and stucco houses, Fremont, San Jose.
Then, hills. They were dry now, in the middle of July, cows looking up-slope or downhill over yellow pasture-land. The Emmit family always grew calm as they left this landscape behind, because they were finally reaching the point of it all, the gentle descent into a new countryside, rolling past the sand dunes toward the curve of Monterey Bay.
Their weekend house is in Pacific Grove, right at the Monterey city limit. It overlooks the heavy seaweed and sluggish surf of the Pacific, down a short, sandstone bluff blanketed with ice plants.
Because they visit only every few weeks, the front gravel always needs to be raked, and the back yard needs to be mowed. The Emmits immediately tore into every challenge the place offered, a cute wood-frame house, green with white trim. They aired out the garage, unlocked the basement, laid gardening tools in the driveway, a hoe and shears on a long handle.
Mrs. Emmit was a round, pretty woman, with red hair cut short. Mr. Emmit used to be an active stick-figure, all hurry, cursing with every step. Now he was mostly peaceful, on the latest nerve medication. He wanted to see me happy, turning the living room light off and on and off again as I unwound the vacuum sweeper cord. “Or leave it on,” he asked me, hand on the switch.
“I’m all right,” I said.
I never could get impatient with the Emmits. Besides, today I came to think that they saw something in me, a pallor in my skin, a weakness in my gaze, that I was only half aware of.
Marta asked, “Do you want to dive this afternoon, or wait?” She phrased it a couple of different ways, “We could suit up and head down there now. We could do it in the morning.”
“Let’s wait,” I said.
“Sure,” said Marta, as though I had guessed the winning answer.
Her family unpacked, saying I could have the back bedroom all to myself, the one with the brand-new mattress and a digital clock I could unplug if it made me nervous. “I hate waking at night and seeing the little dot blinking off and on,” said Mr. Emmit, as though I would take comfort in hearing that other people had troubles, too.
Coverlets had to be shaken out, windows opened all the way, the bungalow reawakened for the weekend. While Marta and I swept dust mice out the back porch, I told her about Desert Flower.
I had wondered how I would bring up the subject, and now that I had started I told her about Quinn, too. Not in detail, reserving everything but the bare facts, folding up a multicolored quilt as I spoke, Marta giving me her full attention, holding her head sideways, like a dog eager for every sound.
Marta enjoys other people’s good news. What kind of horse was it? she wanted to know. Who had trained her? Had I seen her medical papers, and did I know anything about Flower’s diet? What kind of tack did I have—saddle and bridle—and who was going to take care of the mare when I wasn’t around?
It was easy to brush off Marta’s questions, but I felt embarrassed for not knowing the answers, not having learned more. The horse was even now standing in the shadow of a stable, needing someone’s company.
Marta was thrilled, so much to ask. When was Quinn’s dad moving back to Oakland? Would they buy or rent an apartment? What had gone wrong in Reno? Was Quinn still going to go to a California college, or did he try for one of the Nevada schools? Did he still play basketball?
All I knew was because of my lie Quinn was a part of my life again.
Marta stopped asking, suddenly. She probably felt bad for talking so much, pestering a victim.
Lynn Emmit, Marta’s mom, was a student set designer in t
he days when my mom was studying opera, and Mrs. Emmit still created sets for various theater groups up and down the West Coast. She drew pictures in idle moments, beautiful doodles, ballerinas and deer.
“Now I know this is ordinary macaroni,” said Mrs. Emmit, scooping out noodles baked with cheese. Nothing like what you’re used to, she implied.
“We eat pasta all the time,” I said.
“What I do is freeze stuff before we head down, meat-loaf, chili, pack it into the Coleman cooler, and stick it in the microwave.”
I knew her culinary methods, we all did. But the litany of how the Emmit family cooked their suppers in advance, and the admiration of the food as we ate, was a part of the comforting ritual of a visit to the bungalow. No, it didn’t need any more salt. Yes, we would each have a second helping.
The surf was in the distance, huffing and puffing.
Chapter 20
I had slept the night through, no dreams, and I wondered how long I could stay where I was.
My body made the decision to sit up, feet on the floor, standing, walking on autopilot. I parted the curtain, and cloudy morning brightness made me blink. House finches fluttered from branch to branch.
A hummingbird feeder hung from the tree. The feeder was always empty when the Emmits arrived, ignored by the aggressive, iridescent hummers. But they came back, loyal to their memory, even after weeks of nothing. The hourglass jar was full of ruby sugar water, two quick male hummingbirds sword-fighting in mid air.
I heard the Emmits in the kitchen, whispering.
Marta and I agreed that a lean breakfast was best before a dive. We each ate half a piece of dry toast. “Feeding the fish” was scuba lingo for throwing up underwater. It was an experience we both wanted to avoid.
I washed the few cups and dishes, while Mrs. Emmit used a worn dishtowel patterned with Shakespeare’s face and the words THE PLAY’S THE THING. The dish soap smelled like lemon candy. The view out the kitchen window was a pine tree, syrupy sap beading the crook of a branch, a fishing boat chugging out to sea. The window was dirty with salt spray, and the view was hazy.
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