Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  “She’s a tough old bird, your mother,” the woman said. “I’m Bess. I know you don’t know me.”

  Bess grasped Charlotte’s shoulders for a moment. “I’m so sorry about your sister,” she said.

  “You know about Lucy?”

  Bess shrugged. “You think we don’t read the papers or listen to the news? You think no one here recognizes pain? A bunch of us knew, and we waited for her to say something, but she never did. Then one night I walked by her room and heard her crying, and I stayed there knocking and knocking until your mom let me in. As soon as I saw her, I hugged her and then let her cry. I told her that my daughter Melanie died when she was fourteen from an asthma attack, right in my arms while I begged her to breathe. And that’s how we started to talk about Lucy, over and over, as much as she needed.”

  “She doesn’t talk about Lucy that much to me,” Charlotte said.

  “Well, of course not,” Bess said. “You’re her daughter. She wants to protect you.” Bess leaned closer. “And you should let her think she can.”

  CHARLOTTE CAME HOME to her apartment and turned on the lights. It was just a tiny space, but she loved the smooth wood floors, the high ceiling. She turned on the stereo and put on James Taylor, singing about having seen fire and rain, gliding into a love song. Charlotte poured herself a glass of wine. She took out a chicken breast and some vegetables and put it all in the oven to roast. The first sip of wine relaxed her, but the next two were even better.

  She listen to James singing about love, and then, as always, she thought about her sister, about that man she had been in love with. Patrick was still in Pennsylvania. He was another part of Lucy she didn’t know that much about. Charlotte thought of all the unfamiliar places and people that Lucy had mentioned in her journal. There was an ice cream joint Lucy liked because they made all these desserts by hand. There were people like the cashier whom Lucy had befriended. Maybe someone might know something. Or maybe Charlotte was kidding herself, trying to keep Lucy alive for a little bit longer.

  She went to one of her albums and looked through it until she found a photo of Lucy. Her sister was standing by a tree in their old backyard, wearing a pink psychedelic minidress. One hand was on her hip, and she was smiling.

  Charlotte downed the rest of her wine. She could smell the chicken roasting. Iris had told her to take care of herself. Well, tonight she would. She’d eat this delicious dinner she had made, maybe pour another glass of wine. Tomorrow was Friday, the start of a three-day weekend because Dr. Bronstein was going to a convention. In the morning, she’d get in the car and see who she could find.

  THE FARTHER SHE DROVE, the lonelier everything seemed. Jesus. She had driven this road before and had thought it looked pretty and peaceful, but now it seemed like a no-man’s-land. All she could see was farm after farm, cows dotting the fields, a spotted horse grazing. She knew people at Brandeis who went on and on about the glories of the country, how they wanted to live on a farm, get away from the cities and get back to the land, how the country was cleaner, purer, the people more genuine. One guy she knew actually took his tuition money and made a down payment on a small piece of land in Maine, and he and his girlfriend, a scrawny blond art major, were going to farm it. They’d dig a swimming hole, an irrigation system. They’d get back to basics. “Really?” she had said. “You know how to farm? How to irrigate crops?” He had laughed at her. “I will,” he said. The last she had heard, they were still out there, but the farm was a struggle. Their crops wouldn’t grow, at least not enough to make any money or to feed themselves. He was working as a carpenter, and his girlfriend was waitressing in town at a diner.

  She followed the map, and there it was. PATRICK’S FARM, like an image swimming up from a dream, a hand-painted sign in bright blue letters. It was small. Tables of fruits and vegetables, bins of flowers, an outside and inside market, filled with people milling around. The usual plaid flannel shirts and blue jeans, hippies with long hair, little kids in sneakers, and women in granny dresses. She parked the car and got out, not sure whom she was looking for, what Patrick might look like, or even how old he was. Lucy hadn’t said much about how he looked except hyperbole: He has eyes like green grapes. Just because he owned the place didn’t mean he would be here. She squinted at an older man in a sweatshirt. She started toward him until a child ran up and hugged his waist. Charlotte walked in the other direction, past the bins of apples and carrots, the bursts of different colorful lettuces, purple and green and red. She turned another corner, and there was a guy at a cash register. Maybe that was him. And if it wasn’t, at least he’d know where to find Patrick.

  The guy could have been a Brandeis student with that straight black hair, eyes hidden behind shades. He was rangy like a greyhound, and he had on a T-shirt the color of a purple grape. She waited while he finished counting out money to a customer, and then he looked up and saw her.

  “Hi,” she said. She thought of him making Lucy lunch every day, sitting beside her and talking to her, and she was suddenly jealous of all that time he had had with her sister. He closed the register. “Are you Patrick?” she asked.

  “I sure am. Can I help you find something?”

  “Thank you, no,” she said. He studied her. “You’re not from around here,” he said. “I can always tell.”

  She swallowed. She knew so much about him from Lucy’s journal. She knew that he loved french fries dipped in tomato sauce, that he loved old movies and would deliberately let Lucy beat him at Scrabble. She knew he had a secret, or at least Lucy had thought so.

  “I’m Lucy Gold’s sister. Charlotte.”

  He took off his glasses and studied her, and then she saw his eyes, his lashes long as palm fronds, startling her. No wonder Lucy had fallen for him.

  “Charlotte,” he said finally. He put one hand over his eyes for a moment, as if it hurt to look at her. “We should talk,” he said. He scanned the stand and then he called out, “Ray,” and a young woman appeared, two blond braids snaking over her red overalls, a smile full of teeth.

  “Can you take over for a bit?” he said, and Ray stepped in front of the register, and then Patrick turned back to Charlotte. “It’s more private inside the house,” he said, and she followed him.

  His house was directly in the back, more of a cottage, small but clean, and he led her to the kitchen, to a red Formica table. On top of it was a bowl filled with fruit. “Let me just pour us some coffee,” he said. “I always have some going.” He brought down two mugs and filled them and set them on the table. He brought out sugar and cream and then he pulled out a chair for her, a politeness that startled her.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  “What exactly happened? I know only what the cops told me. And the news.”

  “I don’t know much, either. But I want to find out.” She swallowed. “I have her journal. She said that William was terrified of the water, and I don’t see how he would have jumped off that bridge.” She watched his face.

  “People do a lot of things to themselves when they’re in pain.”

  “She mentioned different people, different places. I need to see what she saw, to know what she knew . . .”

  “That makes sense.”

  She took a sip of the coffee and frowned. “Sorry, it’s chicory,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

  “She wrote a lot about you,” Charlotte said. She watched the way his mouth tightened, and wondered what that meant. “She wanted to be a writer. She wrote about your farm stand. That’s how I found you.” Charlotte stirred cream into her cup. “She said she loved you.”

  “She was a kid. There was nothing between us.”

  “She said there was. She said she slept with you.”

  He drew back. “Jesus! That’s not true!”

  “She said it happened.”

  “She crawled into bed when I was napping, and I booted her out. Both of us were fully clothed. Look, I gave her a job. I tri
ed to help her, to be her friend. That’s all it was.”

  Charlotte frowned. “But she wrote—”

  “I’m telling you it’s not true. Did she used to make things up? You’re her sister, you’d know that better than I would.”

  That used to be true but hadn’t been for a long time. Charlotte remembered when they were younger, how she and Lucy told each other everything. She remembered, too, how abruptly it had stopped, how secretive Lucy became, and if Charlotte dared to ask, Lucy would go blank. Charlotte felt a stab of longing.

  “Did you know how young she was?” Charlotte asked.

  “Not at first. And lots of people look young. She had told me she was in college, at Brandeis, studying to be a vet.”

  Charlotte blinked. “That’s my life,” she said quietly. “Lucy never wanted that.” She pushed the coffee away. “Did you know William?”

  “No. I saw him and Lucy at a grocery. Lucy pretended she didn’t know me, and I didn’t like the way he was talking to her. Plus, he acted like a dick to me. He made it clear that he didn’t want anyone intruding on them. When she finally told me that things were bad, I told her to go to the cops. That was the only thing to do, that’s what anyone would say, but she was so frantic. It was like she couldn’t listen to anything.” He took both their cups and put them in the sink and then sat back down again. “You don’t know what you’re seeing sometimes, when you see it,” he said. “You don’t know how bad it can get.”

  “I hate him for jumping,” Charlotte said. “I wanted him punished in prison.”

  “It won’t bring her back, coming out here,” he said. “It won’t change anything. And chances are you’re not going to find out any more than the police have.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Could I read her journal? Would that be possible?”

  “I don’t want to let it out of my hands—”

  “You can watch me read it. How’s that?”

  She nodded. “All right,” she said, but she didn’t really want to let him. It seemed too private, too personal. Maybe he’d forget about it. Or she’d leave here and she wouldn’t see him again. Outside, the sky was darkening, as if someone had smudged it. It was getting late, and she yawned.

  “I think I’m going to have to find a hotel and call it a day. I’m only here for the long weekend.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “I just want to talk to people she might have known. Go to places in her journal. She was here—I need to be here, too.”

  He considered her. “I have a spare room. You can stay here, if you want.”

  “I can’t do that. I mean, won’t that be weird for you?”

  “Oh, probably. Will it be weird for you?”

  “Probably a little. Why would you do that, though? Let me stay?”

  “Because you’re Lucy’s sister.”

  Of course. She was always Lucy’s sister.

  HER ROOM WAS tiny, just a bed covered with a handmade quilt and a bookcase, and when she opened the closet, there was the leather jacket Lucy had said she kissed. Charlotte ran her hands over it and then drew it to her face, inhaling, but it didn’t smell like anything. She let the jacket fall back and then she moved from the closet to his books. Ken Kesey. Typical. But he also had The Great Gatsby, her favorite novel. And some botany books. And there were also medical textbooks. Why did he have those? Some of the pages were underlined. Thoracic embolism. Mitral valve prolapse. So he was smart. That counted for something.

  She opened one of the drawers, and there was the photograph Lucy had written about, Patrick standing with a beautiful woman, the two of them radiantly happy, a photo Lucy said he refused to talk about. Maybe he’d tell her or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe it was none of her business. She shut the drawer.

  She could hear him outside the door, so she got into bed and shut her eyes, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy.

  WHEN CHARLOTTE WOKE in the morning and came into the kitchen, there was a note. At work. Make yourself at home. You don’t need a key because the door is always open. If there’s anything you need, come and find me. He had left her a fruit salad, some bread for toast, and a jar of homemade peach jam. Each thing she did—washing her plate, putting the jam back in the refrigerator, which was stocked with produce—she wondered whether Lucy had done.

  She walked outside. There he was, piling apples onto a table, joking with the girl with the braids. She could walk over there and say good-bye, tell him where she was going, or she could just take the car and go.

  He didn’t look up. She kept walking.

  SHE WASN’T SURE where to start, so she drove back to Lucy’s old house. Maybe she’d notice something new. It hadn’t been that long, but maybe someone had rented it and had found something she had missed. The closer she got, the more she remembered. The cackle of the hens as they skittered in the dirt. The blood splashed on the floor. The way Lucy’s legs were splayed, as if they had been kicked from under her. The smell, like rusted metal. She pulled the car over and put her head to her knees. It’s okay, it’s okay, she told herself. It’s okay. But she knew better. It would never be okay.

  The first thing she noticed was that the house looked different. Someone had painted the outside yellow, and there were new flowers by the walkway. The henhouse was gone. She walked up the path, and when she knocked on the door, a woman carrying a baby answered. “Yes?” the woman said. The baby, sunny and fat, yawned. Charlotte could see inside. The living room was gold now, and even though there was wall-to-wall carpeting, Charlotte still knew exactly where the bloody floorboards had been. Charlotte braced one hand along the door.

  “Are you lost or selling something?” the woman said. The baby burbled and the woman laughed. The woman peered at Charlotte again. “You don’t look so well. Are you okay? Should I call someone for you?”

  “My sister used to live here,” Charlotte said, and the woman tightened her grip around the baby, but Charlotte kept going. “I just wanted to know if when you moved here—if you found anything.”

  “This again?” the woman said. “How many times do I have to call the cops? This is a private home. It’s not a tour. I live here now with my family, and none of us know anything about her or want to know anything about her. I’ve had enough gawkers here.”

  “I’m not a gawker. I’m her sister. And any information you could give me, anything you found, anyone coming by—”

  “No one came by, and we found nothing. I’m very sorry for your loss, but this is a private home,” the woman said. She closed the door, and there was the click of a lock, leaving Charlotte alone out on the porch.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Charlotte went through Lucy’s journal like a map, determined to go to all the places her sister had written about, trying to imagine what Lucy must have felt, to find someone else who might have known her. She drove to William’s free school and spent half an hour looking for any adult who might know something. Kids were running wild, hurling paper airplanes, and when she stopped one little girl to ask where the principal was, the girl laughed, jutted up her third finger, and ran away. When Charlotte finally found the head of the school, he didn’t want to speak to her.

  “We fired him. We knew there was something wrong,” he said defensively. Fired, Charlotte thought. Lucy hadn’t written that in her journal. He told her Lucy had never come to the school. He said he had never seen or heard of Lucy before this, and then two kids slammed into the room, and he excused himself. “Good-bye, now,” he told her.

  She got back into her car and drove to a dress shop Lucy had mentioned, then a bar. There was a high school where she had gotten her GED information. Charlotte brought out Lucy’s photo, and no one ever knew anything about her, except sometimes they recognized that she was that girl, the one who had been murdered. And then they started asking Charlotte questions, and she didn’t want to talk to them anymore.

  She came back home tired. She didn’t want to bother Patrick, so she ate quietly and t
hen retreated to her room.

  The next morning, just as she was leaving for an ice cream shop Lucy had written about, Patrick came outside. “Where you off to?”

  “I’m just going to this ice cream place. Sweet Stuff,” she said.

  “Come on. Let’s go together,” he said. “I know the place.” She stayed still, considering.

  “I have to go into town anyway,” he told her. “I need to pick up some things at the hardware store.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said.

  “Do what? I need nails. And I like ice cream.”

  “Okay,” she said finally. “As long as you’re going anyway.”

  It felt funny to be a passenger in someone else’s car. Patrick rolled down the window and put his elbow out, and when she put on the radio, he took out his sunglasses and put them on, hiding his eyes.

  “It’s around here,” he said, and then he turned down a road, and there it was, a small white building with a FOR SALE sign on it. The front door was boarded up, and a few kids in jeans and sweatshirts were hanging around, smoking cigarettes. They looked up expectantly when they saw the car and then looked away when they saw who was in it. Charlotte felt herself deflating.

  “I’m sorry. You drove me here for nothing,” Charlotte said.

  “It’s not for nothing. Now I know I can’t get ice cream here anymore.”

  He drove to the hardware store, and she came in with him, studying the nails, watching him banter with the owner. When they got back in the car, he began talking quietly to her, telling her about a dog he had as a kid, until she realized he was trying to make her feel better.

  THAT NIGHT, CHARLOTTE saw Patrick sitting on the porch, drinking a glass of wine, and she came out. “Did you want to be alone?” she said, and when he shook his head, she sat beside him.