Half Moon Bay

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by Alice LaPlante


  She will never get to that age of I hate you and Leave me alone and Drop dead. She will never climb out of her window after midnight with a bottle of her parents’ Scotch and a baggie full of weed to meet the local boys and girls from Berkeley High. She won’t lose her virginity against the back wall of a 7-Eleven.

  She is an innocent. She has been spared.

  Jane had been possessive, Jane had been controlling, Jane had punished when she should have encouraged. She had restrained when she should have set free. No wonder they butted heads. No wonder Jane was despised.

  It had gone too fast. Jane wasn’t ready. She wasn’t that different at forty than twenty-three, whereas Angela had transformed from a zygote to a woman. Not really. Jane hadn’t grown with Angela. She hadn’t gotten herself used to certain ideas.

  Jane opens her mouth and tries to call, but all that comes out is a soft croak. She attempts it again, and this time is a little more successful at making a noise. But no one comes. The team must be farther ahead than she’d realized. She finds herself retching in the bushes. She must get help. But she can’t leave Amy. She knows how mad her thoughts are, but if something happens to her, it will be my fault.

  * * *

  She doesn’t know why the police must question her over and over. Jane happened to see the body first. She didn’t see anything else, didn’t touch anything. Yet a man and a woman have brought Jane to a room in the FBI headquarters with a mirror covering an entire wall, behind which more people are undoubtedly watching and listening. Jane has watched enough crime dramas on television.

  Are you sure you didn’t touch anything? asks the man. He is one of the suited gang who moved into the Days Inn on Route 1. She’s seen him there and at the Three Sisters.

  Yes, says Jane. She let others do that, especially as the other, nonmustached man in the search group turned out to be an ER nurse. He easily ascertains that little Amy was indeed dead.

  And you didn’t see anything or anyone? asks the other detective, a thin woman with short blondish hair.

  No one but the people on my search team, Jane says.

  How do you suppose they missed it? The body, I mean?

  It was pretty well camouflaged by the leaves and what she was wearing, Jane says.

  Then how did you happen to see her? This from the man.

  They’d been over this at least three times already. Jane tells them again the steps she’d taken up to the discovery of the body. She doesn’t say what she’d been thinking at the time. She realizes she looks as though she is hiding something. She tries to make a mask of her face.

  Did you feel that anyone in your search party was deliberately . . . steering you . . . toward that tree, toward that discovery?

  No. It was the territory we were assigned.

  No one in your group specifically asked for that territory?

  Not that I heard.

  No one joined your group after the territories were given out?

  Jane shook her head.

  I understand that you lost your daughter last year.

  Yes.

  This must feel very personal to you.

  My daughter was quite a bit older.

  Yes. But still. Losing a child. That’s a trauma. You might even have PTSD. People do strange things when they’ve had a trauma like that. Do you do strange things, Jane?

  Jane feels almost hypnotized. Yes, she says. I do very strange things.

  Like what, Jane?

  Jane considers what to say. That she spits on the earth before inserting a seed to ensure good luck? That she gets up in the middle of the night and calls strangers on the phone and hangs up, just to hear human voices, no matter how cranky or anxious? That when she takes a disliking to a customer, she sells them plants that need full sunlight for their shaded yards and flowers that can’t stand too much sun for their sunny places?

  I mislead people, she says.

  In what way, Jane?

  But then there is a disturbance at the door. Voices arguing. Raised tones. The door opens, and Helen storms in, followed by Adam.

  Did they read you your rights? Helen asks Jane.

  Jane thinks. I don’t think so, she says, but she is confused. She seems to be waking from a dream.

  Of course we did, the man says. It’s all on tape. He points to a black box mounted in the corner of the room.

  She’s had a shock, says Helen. She is in no condition to be questioned. At least not without someone present.

  If she’d wanted a lawyer, she could have had one at any time.

  Are you going to charge her? This is Adam, surprisingly authoritative.

  No.

  Then she’s free to go. Come on, Jane.

  To Jane’s surprise, Adam barks more legalese at the detectives before they leave.

  How do you know so much? she asks him when they’re in his Volvo.

  I finished law school before I went into botany. I never took the bar. I wasn’t suited for it. But I know enough to understand that they are taking advantage of you. Never talk to them again unless someone else is present. You may need a lawyer even now.

  No, says Jane. She isn’t in trouble. How could she be? It’s not that she hasn’t done wrong. But they are asking all the wrong questions.

  * * *

  Earlier that day, as Jane had stood looking at the child, after the rest of her team had assembled in a horrified circle around her, Jane found herself in a strange removed state. Something familiar about this. The obvious attractiveness of the small child, the tiny hands, the delicate bones, posed against the sturdy trunk. All the trees that Angela had climbed in their Berkeley backyard, at Muir Woods, along the Marin coast. The pink delicate skin against the centuries-old rough bark. The incongruousness of it all. The indecency. Yes, she knew it all.

  * * *

  Of all the aspects of finding the third girl, of seeing her in the flesh, what stuck with Jane was the makeup. It hadn’t been obvious at first, so skillfully and naturally had it been applied. But the leader of the search party pointed out the foundation, the blush, and the lip liner. As much as any other thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girl, Angela had plied on the makeup, overdoing it with all of her friends, of course, with their overshadowed eyes and unrealistic lashes and bright red cheeks and lips. Like brightly colored Christmas toys. That stage lasted a year or so, and then they calmed down and started applying makeup more rationally, in a way that enhanced rather than hid their natural beauty. That’s what the murderer had done. He—or she—surely had exquisite taste.

  * * *

  Two days pass. All is quiet in town. It’s October 30. The eve of Halloween. Not yet time to panic. But it’s coming, it will come, Jane knows. Tomorrow night. October 31. The dread will start curdling meat and drink, sour the notes of the Bach she’s put on her CD player, seep into her very bones.

  One of the Three Terrible Nights. Ever since she was small, Jane had hated them. The three eves. All Hallows Eve (Halloween). Christmas Eve. And New Year’s Eve. All the nights when she’d felt most lonely. Even when surrounded by her seven sisters as a child. Even when married with a child of her own. There was something about those three nights that reminded Jane she was utterly by herself on the planet.

  Her phone rings. It is Helen.

  Jane! So glad I got you! This is not the voice of Helen, the boss. Or Helen the friend. This is Helen the Giver of Charity.

  Jane is not glad. She knows what is coming. Prompted by pity.

  You left the nursery so quickly this afternoon I didn’t have a chance.

  Yes. Here it comes.

  I’m having a small Halloween party—can you come tomorrow night? Dinner. Very informal. You don’t have to wear a costume if you don’t feel like it. And Helen went on to list the people who would be there. Hugh (her husband). Anthony (their twenty-six-year-old son who lived in San Francisco). Some neighbors (Jane doesn’t catch their names).

  There is no way out. Adam would have told Helen of his unsuccessful attempt to lur
e Jane to Santa Cruz for a party with his household of surfer buddies. And maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe the conversation would be fluid, not stilted. Maybe no one would drink too much.

  And, anyway, it wouldn’t matter. She would go, and the really bad part, Halloween, the eve of All Hallows Day, would be over.

  Jane has a trick. For things that are really horrible, really terrifying, threatening to her soul even, she divides time into before and after. She does the opposite of what the Buddhists do. She refuses to acknowledge the moment. This gets her through many things. One moment, it is before and the next, after. The moment itself doesn’t exist. But this didn’t work on Halloween. It didn’t work on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve either. But it was on Halloween, when magic was supposed to be strongest, our connection to our loved ones and to the spiritual world the closest, that Jane felt the most vulnerable.

  Okay, Jane concedes, and on her way over to Helen’s house, she keeps saying into the unseasonably balmy wind rushing past her: Okay. Okay. Okay.

  She gets to Helen’s Victorian house, located a little south of the center of town, a little before 8:00 p.m. Neat. Not in the least ostentatious, although Helen, affluent businesswoman, could certainly have afforded to be. Discrete Halloween decorations: a line of uncut pumpkins on the porch, a string of orange lights on the border bushes. California holidays. Even after nearly twenty years, Jane isn’t used to it, to the mild breeze, the lack of ice and snow and shivering. She rides her motorbike around the block a couple of times to make sure she isn’t too early. She remembers how, in her previous life, she would be dismayed if a guest arrived before the expected time. The panic of the first knock on the door before everything was perfect.

  At five minutes past eight, she parks the motorbike by the curb, combs her hair back with her fingers, and walks up to the front door. It opens before she can knock, and she is enveloped in a warm embrace by Helen. She smells rum on her breath. The living room is already full—it seems as though there has been a predinner get-together, but that she, Jane, had been invited for the meal only. A boisterous, red-faced man—Jane finds out later he is one of the neighbors, wearing a pirate’s outfit—insists on getting her some punch. A woman who gives off an air of elegance, with smooth white hair in a neat chignon and pearl earrings, makes room on the sofa for Jane. A young man, who looks as if he feels as out of place as Jane does, is on her other side. This is Tony, Helen’s son from her first marriage. Hugh, Helen’s husband, Jane knows well, of course. She likes him, as she likes Helen. But that doesn’t mean she wants to be uncomfortably dressed, making small talk, in their living room on one of the Three Terrible Nights.

  She thinks of her last Christmas Eve with her family. That is, her family: Rick and Angela. Holidays had decidedly less charm since Angela had entered her sullen teenage years, and the wonder and magic of Santa and presents had faded. How short those years were! And yet, in the middle of them, they seemed to last forever. I will forever be Mommy and will be thinking at all times what will delight my child. I shall bake and shop and wrap and do everything I can to make this experience truly magical. That last Christmas, they were in Hawaii, at a rental beach house, they hadn’t even eaten together. Angela had opened her presents on Christmas Eve, as she always had, appeared gratified at all the stuff Jane had contrived to pull together from the local stores, from Amazon, from other online venues that would deliver to the islands. Jane had brought an extra suitcase so she could get all the presents home. Angela photographed herself wearing the new sweater and earrings, toyed with the perfume, and then retreated to her room to talk to her friends on her cell phone.

  Rick and Jane had spent the evening companionably enough, reading on the porch overlooking the beach, so different from the Northern California one. They ended the evening in bed with some lovemaking that felt somewhat obligatory on Rick’s part—he knew how Jane feels on Christmas Eve—but nevertheless was reassuring. All in all, the abyss had been kept at a distance that evening and the next day. And then, of course, everything had changed.

  The mood in the room shifts. They are talking about the children. The girls.

  It’s a sleeper, someone who’s been here a while, declares the neighbor man, whose name Jane has already forgotten. Something’s been triggered in him.

  Or her.

  No, it’s a him. It’s gotta be.

  A woman could easily do it. And would. Women are more dangerous. This is, surprisingly, from the petite elegant woman.

  Why would anyone do such things? Helen asks. The meal is over, and she is serving coffee now, and her watchful gaze is on Jane, but Jane feels in control. She’s had three glasses of champagne and is feeling no pain. She’s thinking of Angela, but then she’s always thinking of Angela.

  She remembers her dream of the night before. The lost girls gather around Jane. Heidi, Rose, and Amy. They play ring around the rosy. Jane is filled with inexplicable happiness. Little Amy grabs her hand, pulls her into the game. We all fall down. They do, and suddenly they are all dead. Jane too is no longer alive; she can’t feel her limbs, she can’t blink her eyes. But she can still see, lying on her back on the grass, the sky and the sun and the tops of the trees. Someone bends over her, checking her heart for a heartbeat. There is none. Jane is not breathing either. The person is satisfied and goes away.

  Then they are at the top of the bell tower at Berkeley, and Jane pushes the three girls off the edge, one by one. Others watch. No one interferes. It had to be done, Jane explains to the people who have gathered around to watch. At the bottom of the tower, three small broken bodies. Jane has no regrets that she can detect. But she woke up gasping for air.

  You okay, Jane? Helen. She looks concerned.

  No. Yes, Jane lies. Then she quickly makes her excuses and leaves the party, rides her motorbike home. She can see from an empty wineglass on the table that Edward has been there, from the level of the wine in the bottle that he must have waited some time for her. But for once she’s glad she missed him.

  * * *

  When everything you value is gone, when you’ve been stripped to bare flesh and bone, what then?

  You have to laugh.

  There have been many incidents. Here is one. One day in the cafeteria, sixteen-year-old Jane had been approached by an older boy, a football player, not one of the stars but a lesser of the gods on Mount Olympus. A benchwarmer, but even that carried considerable cachet in Big Cabin. His nickname was Tree. Tree! Tree! The cheerleaders chanted Friday night at the end of the game when he was finally allowed to play for two minutes, when he could do no harm, he was that kind of fuckup for sure. Jane didn’t know his real name. He was an envoy, she could tell from the snickers coming from the popular table where he’d been sitting. His intent, malevolent; you could tell from the way his fingers twitched.

  Jane was at a table across from the school’s only Asian girl, Lisa Lee. Jane didn’t exactly like Lisa, but there was always space at her table and Jane hated eating alone. She could have looked around, squeezed in next to one of her sisters, but that was admitting defeat. Lunchtime was a battleground, requiring a tightening of the stomach, hours of anticipatory terror. Once in the cafeteria, Jane always entered a sort of fugue state, the din of voices and the odor of burned tater tots and sour milk barely registering. She simply had to endure. She sometimes tried to find a safe place to sit, on the fringe of a group slightly outside what was considered okay but not so far that they attracted attention. She kept her eyes fixed on the clock, mechanically eating her tuna fish or peanut butter sandwich, her mouth dry.

  What was she afraid of? Something like what was happening now.

  Tree was, as his name implied, enormous and implacable. A thick trunk, heavy shoulders like trestles. He tromped rather than walked toward Jane. He was also hairless, having shaved his head. A skinhead. Typical Big Cabin. Someone on the cutting edge of the 1970s in the 1990s. He’d even shaved his arms. A skinarm. A new twist on an old, old theme.

  Tree reach
ed Jane. He seemed to have trouble stopping his forward momentum. He put his hairless arms out and felt for the edge of the table, steadied himself, and relaxed into a slouch. Jane had to crane her neck to see his face, he was that big and that close to her. You going to the dance? he said to the air. He wasn’t looking at Jane, but he could hardly have meant Lisa Lee. She was, according to the caste hierarchy of Big Cabin High, an untouchable.

  Lisa picked up her tray, loaded her trash and milk carton onto it, and stood up to leave.

  Please don’t go, Jane managed to say, but Lisa just shrugged and high-tailed it off.

  Still without looking at Jane, Tree lowered himself, not so much onto the bench as on top of Jane. It was as if she didn’t exist. She saw his massive Levi jeans-clothed bottom descending and quickly moved over, but was still trapped into uncomfortable thigh-to-thigh contact. Jane tried to wiggle away but was prevented by a steel support bar under the table. She was trapped.

  Go with me. It was not a question.

  He moved closer. He reached one thick-boned arm behind Jane, around her but not touching her. His hand on the seat on the other side. Locking her in.

  His breath was foul. Day-old fish.

  Jane could hear the continued laughter from the popular table as Tree leaned closer. The lunchroom was emptying fast. The sun no longer shone through the high windows. It was afternoon now. Time for trig, then English, then home. A respite of sorts. Although in the chaos at home she often wished for the classroom, for the lines of desks, the straight rulers, the rows of books lined up on the windowsill. Order.

  I gotta go. But Jane can’t move. His arm is blocking her. She feels a tightening in her groin, almost sexual. Terror? Excitement? He is so close she can see what an uneven job he’d done shaving. Little tufts of blond hair stuck out amid the shiny scalp. A thin red line sliced across one corner of his mouth. An accident with a razor blade.

 

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