by John Searles
Follow the signs, I heard my mother’s voice say. Life lays them right in front of you.
One. Two. Three.
All you have to do is look.
That’s when it came to me: If anyone might know where Edie had moved to, it would be her. Vicki Spring.
Maybe my mother had led me to this spot, given me this sign because she wanted me to find Edie. There was nothing I could do about Roget at the moment, but maybe this was the way she wanted me to make things right. Once again I saw my life as that blank black chalkboard, and I thought of the choices before me. I could go home and lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling, and miss my mother. In a few days I could go back to school as if nothing had ever happened, even though I knew different. And then what? I just didn’t know. Or I could follow the signs like my mother told me to do. I could follow them to Edie, get that money back, and keep all those promises I had made to my mother on the bus a few days before. Even though they were promises I had made to my living, breathing mother, I told myself that if she was looking down on me, then she would see how much I loved her despite the mess I had made. She would know that I was trying to fix what I had done.
Then I saw something glittering beneath the surface of those thoughts. An urge that was far more powerful and determined. A desire that rose up in me, fast and quick, like something from the bottom of a lake rushing toward the surface, breaking out of the dark, still water and letting its ugliness be glimpsed in the light of day. And this is what that desire said:
Get back at Edie.
Make her pay for what she did.
She should suffer.
She should ache.
She should feel the way you feel.
Then those words disappeared, submerged back into the dark waters of my mind. I found myself chilled, shaking, afraid of what evil I was capable of committing. Just as I had a few days before, I wondered again if a hungry darkness could possess me the way those Manson followers had been possessed the night with Sharon Tate.
I shook my head to get rid of the thought.
As much as that feeling scared me, everything seemed to pull me toward Edie. All the things I wanted, or thought I wanted—the money, proof to my mother that I was sorry, and something else that I wasn’t quite sure of yet—swirled together in my mind. And I knew I had to find her.
At that moment I felt my old self shriveling and a new self being born. This me was harder and more determined. He wouldn’t be tricked. He wouldn’t be scared. He wouldn’t show anyone his sadness. “Bury it,” I said out loud. “Bury it and do what you can to make up for your mistakes.”
The car windows had fogged up a bit and I wrote BURY IT in crooked letters on the driver’s side. I put the car in drive and made a U-turn. The Moorehead Real Estate office was located over in the next town of Buford. It took me fifteen minutes to get there. Already I was a pro at driving, and I still had just over a month to go before being legal. My only behind-the-wheel crime so far was braking too hard a couple of times, which sent the junk on Marnie’s floor scuttling forward. Other than that it was smooth sailing.
I parked the Dart out front and made a plan in my head. If I flat-out asked this Vicki woman if she knew where the owner of the Victorian in Holedo had moved to, I doubted she would divulge that information. But if I pretended to be interested in the house, then casually dropped in a question about the former owner, she might spill. I knew I didn’t look like their typical customer, but I was banking on my suit and tie to win Vicki over. The old me would have been nervous, but I refused to give in to that feeling. My mother had sent me into bars. She had sent me into Edie’s. It was as if in some strange way she was sending me into this office right now. And I didn’t intend to disappoint her.
“Is Miss Spring here?” I said over the jangle of bells on the door.
An apple-cheeked woman sat at the front desk looking totally bored despite the ringing phones. “She’s behind you,” she said, flipping through the pages of a Cosmopolitan. The cover lines read “Complete Guide to Encounter Groups” and “Confessions of a (Formerly) Fat Girl.”
I turned around, but the second desk was empty. Then the door opened with another jangle of bells, and I got what Apple Cheeks meant: Vicki was just coming in herself. She was a pert-faced woman with narrow shoulders and a slim waist. Thirty, I guessed. Thirty-five. Dyed blond hair, cut super short like a man’s. Soft pink lipstick.
“This boy is here to see you, Vicki,” the secretary—or whoever she was—said, putting away her magazine.
Boy. That wasn’t going to help in my effort to convince her I was legit.
I thought about bagging the plan and straight-out asking Vicki if she knew where Edie had moved. But something still told me she wouldn’t give that information to a perfect stranger. Act casual, I reminded myself. Like I don’t really need to know where the previous owner had gone—I’m simply wondering.
Vicki smiled, which crimped the skin around her eyes and aged her. Forty, I thought. Forty-five. She had the thickest eyelashes I’d ever seen. Only six or seven spider legs to a lid. “What can I do for you, young fella?”
First it was “boy,” now it was “young fella.” This rickety little scheme was never going to fly. Still, I did my best to get the thing in the air. “I’m here about the house in Holedo that’s for sale. The yellow Victorian on Barn Hill Road.” I talked in a low voice, buttoning my blazer and standing up straight.
“What about it?” she asked. Vicki took off her scarf and hat, hung them on the knotty wooden coatrack by the door. “Do you know something about the vandals?”
“Vandals?” I said, then remembered. The window. “Oh, no. Nothing about that. I’m here because I’m interested in buying the place.”
“You!” that secretary said over the ringing of another phone. “Call us when you’ve finished high school.”
“Would you mind answering the phone, Lydia?” Vicki said.
“Actually, my mother would be the one buying the place,” I told her as Lydia picked up one of the lines and gave an overly cheerful “Good afternoon, Moorehead Real Estate.” Just saying the words “my mother” put a hole in me and left me feeling deflated. But I struggled to keep afloat. “I’m just here to look.”
“If your mother is interested in the place, then why isn’t she here?”
Because she’s dead, that’s why. Stay cool, I told myself. You can swing this. “She sent me to scout out places for her. I was wondering if you could tell me about the house so I could fill her in.”
Vicki made her way to the desk and began flipping through messages. She picked up her phone and started to dial. “I’m a very busy woman. If your mother is interested, she will have to get in touch with me herself.”
Fuck you, too, Vicki Spring. “Fine,” I said, pissed that my plan was doing a crash and burn right before my eyes. It was all that secretary’s fault. If she’d just stuck to answering the phone and minded her own business, I might have been able to play this thing my way. It’s not over yet, I reminded myself. You’ll get what you want somehow. “Will you still be here in a few minutes? I’ll pick up my mother and come back.”
Vicki put down the phone, taking me seriously once again. “I have an appointment. But I’ll be done at four-thirty. If your mother wants to see the place, I can meet her at the house then.”
“Great,” I said, not knowing what I would do to make this happen. “We’ll see you at four-thirty. Barn Hill Road. Holedo.”
I left the office and headed back toward home, wondering how I was going to pull this one off. I could just skip the four-thirty appointment, but then I’d never have another shot at finding out where Edie had gone. I could show up alone and tell Vicki that my mother couldn’t make it after all. Maybe she’d give me a quick tour and I’d fish out the answer to the $64,000 question. But I knew she was too no-bull for that. The moment she saw me alone, she’d probably get in her car and drive back to Buford.
By the time I reached Dwight Avenue, I was
wishing I had just gone for broke and asked her what I wanted to know right up front. So much for following the signs, I thought as I parked Marnie’s car in the same spot where I found it. Just skip the appointment and let Vicki Spring wait in the cold for you and your mother. Serves her right for giving you the runaround.
Upstairs, the party had cleared out except for Marnie. She sat at the kitchen table, picking at the leftover baloney and staring off into space. Her puffy eyes and red nose let me know she had just finished up another one of her sob sessions. “There you are,” she said. “Your father went to look for you.”
I pulled off my blazer, loosened my itchy tie. “For me? Why?”
“He said he was worried.” Marnie tore a fleshy baloney scrap in half and dropped it in her mouth.
“Spare me,” I said.
“He seems to have mistaken himself for Mr. Cleaver all of a sudden. It’s all I can do not to smack the man across the face. If your poor mother only knew the way he was carrying on after what he put her through.” At the mention of my mother, Marnie looked down at her almost-empty platter of lunch meats. “I don’t know why I’m grazing on this stuff. I’m too upset to eat. But you should get something in your stomach, Dominick. I want to make sure you stay healthy.”
My mind flashed on an image of my mother calling from the window to ask if I wanted lunch when I first got that note from Edie. Marnie was beginning to sound just like her. “Marnie, could I ask you a favor?”
“Whatever you need. Just name it.”
Here goes. “I want you to help me find out where Edie Kramer moved to.”
Marnie made a sour face. She stuck her fingernail in one of the eggs and scooped out a mouse’s portion of the yellow stuff. She held it in the air when she spoke. “How do you know that woman moved? And why in the world do you want to find her?”
“It’s a long story.”
She sat there staring at me, not eating a bit of that yolk on her finger. I got the feeling she was in the mood for a long story, that she wasn’t going to budge until I gave her more. But I couldn’t trust her with the truth. No way could I confess to anyone what I had done to my mother. So this is what I came up with: “I think my father gave the money he stole to Edie. I hitched a ride with Leon’s friend Ed over to her house to see about getting it back, but she’s gone. There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign out front.”
“Hold your horses. Why don’t you just ask your father—” Marnie said, then stopped herself, finally licked her finger. “Never mind. That dog wouldn’t admit a thing.”
We were both quiet a moment. I sat down next to Marnie. Up close, her skin looked papery and blotched. God had cheated her out of a chin and given her that beak nose as some sort of sick joke to keep men away. Anyone else might have given up, but Marnie kept on dyeing her hair all these years, wearing her wild colors and acting like a celebrity with her bingo show. I wondered what she would do with herself now that my mother was gone. Maybe she would finally land some dream man like she had always wanted.
“Marnie, I never told you this before. But do you remember that night last summer when we drove over to Edie’s house?”
“Of course,” she said. “Your mother was really fired up that evening.”
“Yeah, well, I told you guys that my father wasn’t inside. But I lied. He was there, asleep in Edie’s bed. I didn’t tell the truth because I hated to see her cry. And Edie, well, she sort of conned me, too. But I am really sorry for it.” I decided to rein myself in before I said too much. “I know my father was having an affair with her. I even know that Edie needed money because she’s pregnant. That’s why I think he gave it to her.”
Marnie rested her cheek in her palm, digesting what I had just told her. Normally she would have puffed right up at the first hint of gossip. Something this juicy would have had her bloated. But she just sat there. She looked wiped out from all that had happened the last few days, and here I was dropping more news in her lap. After a moment she took my hand. “Dominick, finding that money isn’t ever going to bring your mother back. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” I told her. “But I feel like I have to do something.”
“Me, too. That’s why I want to find a way to get Roget. You know, your father doesn’t even realize it wasn’t his baby. Your mother was sure he would figure it out. All I know is that he and Roget should burn in hell together.”
I sat there waiting for something more than Marnie’s usual line of tough talk that would land us nowhere. Finally she said, “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I’ll help you,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”
I explained the whole plan on the way to Edie’s house. I told her that Ed Dreary had given me a ride to the real-estate office and that Vicki had treated me like a criminal. “Say no more,” Marnie said when we pulled up front. “I know her type, and I’ll take it from here.”
Vicki was waiting outside, her face masked behind a pink scarf, hands stuffed in her pockets. She was doing a little bounce number on her heels in an effort to stay warm. The moment we stepped onto the porch, Marnie became my mother—or not exactly my mother but some warped version of one. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Spring. I’m Dominick’s mother, and I understand you have a problem giving out information to my son when he is perfectly capable of scouting out locales for us to take up residence.”
Locales? Take up residence? Jesus, she made it sound like we were house-hunting in the South of France. Thankfully, Vicki had left her wise-ass sidekick back at the office to not answer phones, so we were spared her commentary.
“Nice to meet you,” Vicki said, completely ignoring Marnie’s opening diatribe. “Before we go inside, I just want to warn you that I have four other buyers who are close to signing.”
“Let’s skip the broker routine,” Marnie told her. “I’m freezing out here, and I want to see the place.”
Oof. I wished Marnie would lighten up a bit, or she was going to blow this whole scheme. The idea was to get chummy with Vicki so she would give us the dirt. Not piss her off so she’d send us packing.
Vicki had trouble getting the front door unlocked, and we stood there a moment longer. I kept feeling as if Edie were going to open up any second. “Hey, handsome,” she would say and give me a kiss as if the last few days hadn’t happened. Then for some reason I imagined my mother opening the door. She was pregnant and happy. She hadn’t died after all; she had moved to this house, and we were coming to visit.
“There we go,” Vicki said when the lock finally turned. She stepped back and let Marnie and me enter before she did.
It felt strange to walk through Edie’s front door without her around. I thought of that first night when I made my way down the hall in search of my father. But there was not much time to reflect on any of what had happened here because Vicki stayed on our backs, moving us from room to room with only a few seconds in each one. There were rooms in the house I had never even seen. A whole third floor with three bedrooms, one with a bookshelf that opened up and led to a narrow twisting staircase like something out of a mystery movie. Marnie kept making a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue and pointing out the features she didn’t like, hamming up the prospective-buyer routine more than she needed to. I kept my hands in my pockets, fingering that silver gum wrapper of my mother’s like a good-luck charm.
When we made our way back down the stairs and landed in Edie’s bedroom, Marnie started in. “Look at these hardwood floors. They’re a mess. And that ivy wallpaper in the dining room is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t begin to imagine the heating bills. Do you feel the draft, Dominick?”
Just ask the fucking question already. “It sure is cold in here,” I said, crossing my arms. Someone had taped a sheet of plastic over the broken kitchen window, but it didn’t help, because the place was colder than ever.
“Like I told your son this afternoon, the window was smashed the other night,” Vicki said, eyeing me. “Vandals. That explains t
he draft.”
I was getting the distinct feeling that Vicki suspected me as the window smasher. She was right, of course, but God knows how she picked up on it. Just let her try to prove it. Vicki Spring and her broken window were the least of my problems.
Finally Marnie said, “Tell me about the previous owners.”
Bingo.
“Well, they were divorced, and the wife lived here alone for a few years.” Vicki held her hand to the side of her mouth and dropped her voice to a whisper as if there were someone in the next room who she didn’t want to hear. “Between you and me, she’s pregnant with an illegitimate child. She was planning on renting out some of the rooms originally. But then she called me up and said to put the place on the market. She was leaving town.”
“Really. Where did she go?” Marnie said.
“New York City,” Vicki answered. “Manhattan.” And then she snapped back into business mode. “So are you interested? Because I have another buyer with an offer breathing down my back. But I like you people, so I want to give you a fair shot.”
Marnie looked at her deadpan. “I wouldn’t live in this dump if you gave it to me for free. Let’s go, Dominick.”
With that, we were out the door. Part of me wished Marnie had taken the time to fish for more information, but I was glad for what we got.
New York City. What in the world was Edie doing there?
On the ride home Marnie was busy making plans. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll call my Aunt Gladys who lives in Queens to see if she has any leads that will help us find Edie.”
“Marnie, it’s a big place. I doubt she’ll know.”
“Gotta start somewhere,” she said.
The truth was, I didn’t want Detective Marnie Garboni investigating this case with me any longer. Just being with her made me think of my mother. I kept feeling as if I were going to turn around and see her in the car with us, that she was going to interrupt Marnie any second. And when she wasn’t there I felt my insides drop. Still, I let Marnie make her plans. She made it sound as if we were going to be the Caped Crusaders, righting the wrongs of the world. All we needed was our superhero costumes and a couple pairs of tights.