Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  Miriam was the first woman to hold the position of Assistant Town Manager, and though she was officially a step below the Town Manager, it was common knowledge that Miriam was whom you saw if you wanted to get something done. Dick Stevens, the Town Manager, was a good face for the town, a good man to have at museum openings and public ceremonies. The Stevens family filled the Sunnyside Cemetery with their elaborate, fenced-in clusters of gravestones. There was even a monument for one of the family’s particularly rich patriarchs—an angel perched atop a stone slab, her clothes draped across her body, wings folded tight at her back.

  Miriam had gone to the graveyard for lunch during her teens. She remembered sitting on that tall stone fence, thinking of how silly it was to waste such a pretty statue in a graveyard. Now she worked for the grandson of that illustrious dead man, and she’d recently passed a law to keep people out of the cemetery unless they were there to mourn—no more joggers, lovers, or kids having lunch.

  Miriam remembered Dick Stevens from high school. He had been one of those blond boys with perfect teeth, boys who did everything with ease. He didn’t remember her and had been surprised to learn that she’d gone to school at Farmington High, just two years behind him.

  “I thought I knew everyone!” he’d told her. She’d only nodded. He had known everyone worth knowing. Back then, Miriam had not yet become no-bullshit Miriam. She’d been sad Miriam. Small Miriam. Miriam-in-waiting.

  The seeds of Miriam’s adult self were planted during her eighteenth year, when her father died silently in bed. Miriam’s mother had woken to find him cold beside her, his mouth and eyes open, his face surprised. That was the worst thing, she had told the children, how surprised he had seemed. Miriam wished she’d never been told that detail, but her mother had lost the difference between things you keep to yourself and things you tell your children.

  After her father’s death, Miriam’s mother no longer attended Mass, not even on holidays. Following the funeral, after his things had been packed away, dispersed, or given to charity, the family moved to a small apartment in downtown Farmington, away from their little white house; the rent was too much for Patricia after her husband was gone, and she didn’t like being far from town anymore. Living in town meant that she could shuffle from her front door to the corner store to buy packs of gum, Wild Rose wine, and cigarettes, which she smoked, pack after pack, while watching game shows or staring out the kitchen window into the street.

  Although Miriam could have left, she stayed home for two more years, until her younger brother was eighteen. She didn’t trust her mother to watch him carefully enough, to keep him from doing something stupid and killing himself, like so many boys did. It seemed that every month, a young man ran himself off the road and into the lake, or got so drunk he fell asleep on the railroad tracks. After she’d seen her brother through his teenage years, she applied to Farmington College, an all-girls school hidden back in the green hills just north of downtown, well away from the factories and convenience stores. She had seen the college girls downtown as a child, remembered wishing that she could be their age, walking around alone on the streets, free to do whatever she pleased. They had armfuls of books. They laughed in the windows of coffee shops and restaurants. They were lovely and alive and Miriam wanted to be more like them than her mother, who shuffled through life in stockings with a widening ladder of runs.

  Miriam had done very well in school—better than her siblings, most of whom were a few points away from failing. School tired them and left them irritable; it was almost a given that they would drop out before graduation, to begin working. Miriam, on the other hand, loved school. If possible, she would have stayed in school through Christmas vacation, maybe curled up under one of the heavy wooden tables in the library, wrapped in a blanket, books about Africa and the Salem Witch Trials and French poetry scattered around her.

  She received a hefty scholarship from Farmington College, one of the first schools in the area to give scholarships to underprivileged young women.

  “But how will you pay?” her mother had asked.

  In her mother’s world, everything cost something, even if they said it was free. When Miriam explained about scholarships, about how she was willing to work to support herself, Patricia looked down at her lap and shook her head.

  “You’re too much like Joan,” she said, “and you know what happened to her. That’s what her plans got her.”

  Miriam missed Joan. She remembered her well, how she talked and moved, the swish of her skirts.

  After Joan died, her parents had found a bundle of money under Joan’s mattress—over two hundred dollars. They also found her notebooks, her scribblings of stories and plans.

  Miriam remembered that she had cried violently at Joan’s funeral—ridiculously, her mother had said, enough that everyone stared at them. It wasn’t just that Joan was gone, but that everything Joan had planned was gone, too.

  Joan had died when Miriam was eight, just the age when she was beginning to understand the permanence of death. Sometimes she would lie in bed at night, curled under the thin blankets, and imagine what would happen if her mother died, if her father flew off the road while speeding (she never imagined him dying in bed, asleep, as he would many years later), or if she died suddenly from something tragic and wasting, like leukemia or tuberculosis. She imagined the casseroles and bread that the neighbours would bring, how the house would be darker than usual, dirtier because nobody would remember to clean, the dishes piling up and clothes spilling from the hampers. She imagined a time of things being unmoored and irregular, the usual rituals of home ruined and made obsolete with the absence of just one person. She imagined her own death, which she could only experience as a soft, dreamy slipping away, a fall into something like the fuzz after television stations ended.

  Joan’s death had been nothing like that soft retreat: it had been an explosion. Suddenly, a person who had no business being dead was gone, along with everything she had ever felt or wanted, all of her personal memories and the constant narration in her head, all of it. The thought had terrified Miriam, but it had also prepared her. The world will constantly take things from you. So you have to push to get what you need while you are still alive and able.

  When Miriam first learned about Beans, she had been distracted by a small crisis—a police officer had tased some protester in the parking lot of the local power plant, which caused an outcry in the community. She’d only seen a memo posted on a sticky-note on her computer monitor about permits for a new establishment in the old slate factory.

  Later, when she sat in bed with the day’s paper, she saw the front page, the photograph—it was the New England Textiles factory, looking much as it had fifty years before, and a short article about the company Beans, a high-end coffeehouse that had bought the property and was beginning to remodel the interior. The article had quotes from somebody named Justin Hemmings, whose words were amusingly optimistic and empty, full of wonderful opportunities and benefits for the community, all of that bullshit that marketing and business people had to say and perhaps even believed.

  Miriam put the paper down on her lap, brushing the edge against her husband’s chin. He moaned in his sleep and turned away.

  She told herself that she had no reason to be upset. The factory wasn’t only Joan’s factory—she couldn’t claim its tragedies for herself. There was no logical reason why she should feel alarmed. But she was alarmed.

  After the fire, long after the factory had been fully restored, becoming one of the largest employers in the area, a series of accidents occurred that caused the factory to be shut down for good. A crate of batteries had exploded in the basement, injuring a few employees. Several had come down with mysterious illnesses, later determined as resulting from the unsafe handling of heavy metals. It was also the place where a teenager had died, what, fifteen years ago now? Miriam had been the program director at the Boys and Girls Club then. Th
e boy had been well known, well loved, though she had never met him.

  And now, this company was coming to give Farmington more customer service jobs, more minimum wage workers. Miriam shut the paper. If Justin Hemmings really wanted to help Farmington, he’d bring back the textiles factory, the steel mill, all of the jobs that had once made the town prosperous. But that was ridiculous, too: those jobs didn’t even exist anymore.

  The day of her meeting with Justin, Miriam wore her pearls, her powder pink suit with stockings, and the shoes that pinched her feet.

  “You dressing up for a lunchtime rendezvous?”

  Harry pinched her elbow. After thirty years of marriage, they felt safe making jokes about adultery, as they were both too busy and too tired to even consider an indiscretion. She simply smiled in response. Her hands shook that morning, and she feared if she spoke she might say something unexpected. She might cry. She was doing something good for the town, something she had been hired to do: she was welcoming in a new business. But she didn’t have to like it.

  Miriam checked her makeup in her compact and sniffed her wrists to make sure that the perfume was not too heavy or too faint.

  “You look good, Mom.”

  Her daughter, Jennifer, was in town for the week. Miriam had hardly been home—it was the end of the fiscal year and she spent most afternoons bent over ledgers and spreadsheets and indecipherable budgets while Jennifer watched late-night television, still in her pyjamas, often with a carton of ice cream in her lap.

  “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  Miriam almost wished that Jennifer had not come to stay. She had awakened that morning feeling afraid and guilty in an incoherent, lingering way that she’d only previously experienced after a night of bad dreams or too much drinking. That night, she had dreamed about her aunt Joan, about the factory, about the fire, and the boy’s death. The dream stuck with her.

  She sipped her orange juice. It touched a raw spot on her lower lip and stung.

  Jennifer paged aimlessly through the previous day’s Wall Street Journal. “You know,” she said, “you look ten years younger than your actual age.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Miriam said. She wondered if it meant anything to look younger than sixty. After forty-five, did it matter anymore?

  “You’re quiet this morning,” Jennifer said.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Miriam said. “I just have a very big meeting today. Somebody who might be very important to the town. Somebody I can’t disappoint.”

  Jennifer nodded as she broke a single Pop-Tart into pieces and ate each piece slowly, worshipfully. She now liked to eat the kinds of foods that she was never allowed to eat as a child.

  “You’ll knock him dead,” she said. “You look just like a president’s wife.”

  She laughed. “I’d rather look like the president.”

  That morning, the Fire Chief, Dwayne, gave Miriam his weekly roundup of activities. Beans was working on bringing the old factory up to fire code.

  “It’s a big job,” Dwayne said. “The whole thing. The wiring in there is ancient. But Justin is determined. Have you met him yet?”

  Miriam shook her head “We’re meeting later today,” she said. “Have you heard anything about him?”

  He nodded. “He wants to make himself a genuine part of the town, that’s what he said to Chris.” Dwayne rolled his eyes. “He wants to be on good terms with the movers and shakers. He said that too.” He smiled, and Miriam wasn’t sure if he was mocking Justin Hemmings or if he approved of such naked ambition.

  “I’m not sure I like that location,” she said, observing Dwayne’s response: she didn’t want to sound fearful, irrational. “You think that anyone will come out to that old place? You remember the stories they told about it in school?”

  He nodded. “I heard that a while back one of those paranormal shows even wanted to come in and do some kind of nonsense with the factory. Bring in some psychic in a shawl, you know, have her use her tarot cards or something. But the owner wouldn’t give permission—he didn’t think the town needed that kind of tourism.”

  Miriam sniffed. “The town needs any kind of tourism it can get,” she said. She kicked off her shoes, which pinched her feet and gave her a blister on her left big toe. “It’s not like we have a lot of people who want to come look at our plaques celebrating places where generals stopped to feed their horses,” she said.

  Dwayne snorted. “Guess that’s true.” He looked at Miriam. “But you know how it is—we like to keep to ourselves. We don’t like people getting into our business. About the factory, though,” Dwayne shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt to try,” he said, getting up to leave Miriam to prepare for her meeting. “I don’t think you’ll ever find me there, drinking a six dollar latte. I remember the stories too well. I don’t need nightmares.”

  Justin was much younger than Miriam had expected. He had short, blond hair so thin and pale that his reddish scalp showed through. His eyes were a bright, freakish blue. His face was unlined.

  He can’t be much over thirty, Miriam thought.

  Justin rose and pressed his hand into hers.

  “Wonderful to meet you,” he said. “I have heard so much.”

  His hands were clammy with perspiration. He smiled widely, the skin around his lips stretched thin.

  “Please take a seat,” Miriam said. “We aren’t very formal here.”

  Most people liked to hear this—Miriam had seen people sink down in the seats, the tension in their shoulders dissolving after she absolved them of the need to watch themselves so carefully. Just the expectation of formality made some people hunch and pinch and shiver.

  But Justin only nodded; his head jerked back and forth mechanically like the top of a Pez dispenser. He sat severely upright, his shoulders thrown back like a Miss America contestant doing her stiff walk down to the microphone. He wanted badly to impress her, Miriam could see.

  “I thought I’d schedule a meeting with you simply to get to know you,” he said. “I’d like to make it clear how much I love this town, how much I want to be part of it. Beans is my way of giving something back.”

  Miriam couldn’t help but smile. Privately, she didn’t understand patriotism, all that flag waving and an unflinching belief in one’s superiority due to birthplace, but she understood loving a town, a particular piece of land. She loved Farmington, too.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “I’ve lived here my entire life. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”

  “I wish I could say that about my own home town,” Justin said. “I left there as fast as I could. You’re very lucky.”

  Miriam nodded, but didn’t ask him about his hometown. She assumed Justin was here to get some kind of information from her, to complain about the permitting process, to in some way get his project moving forward more quickly. He would probably appreciate brevity. “How is the construction going so far?” Miriam asked.

  “Fantastic,” Justin said. “It’s coming together perfectly. Some electricity issues, and the basement is a problem, but other than that, fine.”

  Miriam nodded, waiting.

  Justin beamed. “We’re trying a completely new model here in Farmington. The factory really is a perfect location—close to downtown, on a major scenic highway to the closest city. It’s exactly the kind of place we were looking for.”

  Miriam had sat through many pointless meetings before with small business owners. Usually, they wanted to get to know her in order to grease the wheels of local government, to make their faces and businesses familiar so that maybe, at some point, they could call in a favour. Miriam didn’t give favours. But she realized that this wasn’t why Justin had made the meeting. He wanted something else from her. Perhaps her approval.

  She didn’t know how to give it, so she simply kept nodding and listening.

  “I was worr
ied,” Justin said, “when I first found the location. The owners seemed . . . hesitant. I’ve heard things about the factory. That it has a history.” His eyes dropped and he became fidgety again, his hands twisting in his lap.

  “It does,” Miriam said. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the fire. The later deaths.”

  Justin nodded.

  “That’s one thing that worries me about the location,” she said. “If I’m being honest. I wonder if people might be hesitant to come to a place of business where so many people have died in very tragic ways.”

  Miriam heard her words as if from a great distance. She hadn’t intended on talking about the factory’s history at all, but it came out anyway.

  “I think you’ll find that people will be happy to come, if we can offer something they want.” Justin assured her. He leaned in closer, his hands on her desk. His air was intimate, knowing, as though he were telling a secret between the two of them.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, “that factory called out to me the first time I saw it. I knew it was meant to be our next location. It’s too beautiful to waste, all boarded up, a haunt for ghosts and a place for kids to come smoke pot and drink cheap liquor from paper bags. It should be used, shouldn’t it?”

  Miriam didn’t know how to respond. It called out to me. It called out to her, too, but in a different way. Nobody seemed to have a normal relationship to the factory. You’d never say that an abandoned Wal-Mart called out to you, that a combination Taco Bell/Kentucky Fried Chicken was clearly meant to be. But here she was, listening to a man she’d just met speak in vaguely supernatural terms about a building.