Orient

by Christopher Bollen

The book was a matter for Mike Gilburn. Only Mills and Mike knew she had it. Even if she gave it to Mike, the killer might learn that she’d read it. How quickly would this house burn? She pictured a map of Orient marked by yeses and nos, each a flame consuming its wick, held from the wind by a tin-shaped house to keep it from spreading. In Manhattan, no one cared about a neighbor’s missteps over love or money. In Orient, such sins were unforgivable, unforgotten. Better to move than to face a village that knew the exact make and color of shame.

  A car pulled into the driveway. Beth watched as a slender figure passed the windows and opened the kitchen door.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” Gail said as she let herself in. She wore silken burgundy, and her low-heeled pumps brought her down to her daughter’s height. “I did know them forever. I feel like it’s my duty to pay my respects.” Her recently shoddy hair and nails had been restored to full chemical shine, befitting a woman preparing to bid farewell to her old Orient enemies. First Magdalena, now the Muldoons. Who was left but Beth and Gavril to stand between Gail and her native dominion?

  There was only one problem: Beth was also wearing burgundy, a wool sweater and thick, twill pants, like a faded photograph of her mother in her prime.

  “We’ll look like stewardesses,” Beth said as she poured Gail a cup of coffee.

  “It’s a good thing I stopped by, then. You still have time to change.”

  Beth set the cup on the counter and pulled the journal from the table. “I asked you once about Jeff Trader,” Beth reminded her. Gail sighed and headed for the downstairs bathroom, where she busied herself straightening the hand towels. “I’m going to ask you a strange question and I’d appreciate an honest answer.”

  “I’m always honest,” her mother called.

  “Did Jeff Trader ever try to use anything against you?”

  “Use anything? Against me?” The voice was an echo. “You mean like a weapon? Honey, I’m sure I wasn’t his type.”

  “No, I mean, like blackmail. Did he ever try to extort money from you? Something he knew about that he could use against you?” The majority of Trader’s list on her mother was harmless—cosmetic surgeries, divorce—but a pill dependency and financial ruin might have been worth some kind of payoff.

  Gail returned to the kitchen, her china white nails ticking through the stack of mail. Beth lunged for it, grabbing the envelopes in her hands with such ferocity that Gail tightened her grip as if by reflex. They wrestled over it briefly before Beth finally overpowered her, flattening the mail against her chest.

  “What’s the matter?” Gail’s mouth hung open like a stable door from which a horse had just stampeded. “I still get mail delivered to me here. I was just checking. Is that a letter from your doctor? What does it say?”

  Gail was right: there was an envelope from her gynecologist, a thin piece of paper in its waxy window. She was lucky she’d snatched the bundle before her mother could slit the envelope with her nail.

  “We’re expecting some important papers for Gavril,” Beth lied. “About his immigration.” She waved a Citibank envelope addressed to her husband, a stiff new bank card evident through the paper. “Anyway,” she said, “you didn’t answer my question about Jeff Trader.”

  Gail brought the coffee cup to her lips. She sniffed it before sipping. “I don’t know the first thing about extortion. Honey, Jeff Trader was so drunk most days that he could barely make it from his car to the door. Now get changed.” She examined her wristwatch. “We have to be there in twenty minutes. Is Gavril coming?”

  “No, he’s working in his studio and asked me not to interrupt him.”

  “I’ll just peek in and—”

  “He doesn’t want to be disturbed,” she insisted. There were two ads for playpens in the mail. Knobby toddlers climbed inside the structures as if they came with the product.

  Gail stared out the window and tapped her nail against the glass. “Now, would you look at that,” she said.

  Beth craned her neck and saw a woman in a purple pantsuit unlock the front door of Magdalena’s cottage. “Must be a Realtor,” Gail said. “They’re going to try to sell that house. I wonder how much they’ll ask for it. It’s half the size of this one.” Beth remembered the furniture she had yet to claim. Did she even want a grandfather clock that belonged to a murder victim, or the armoire where Magdalena had hid her jewelry from Alvara’s son? “God, I pray I’ll get some decent neighbors,” her mother said. “City people are the only types who will buy out here now. They’re the only ones who aren’t worried about some maniac setting homes on fire. I don’t think there’s any way they’ll get their asking price. Okay, hurry. We don’t have all day.”

  “Did you know that Magdalena changed her will before she died?” Beth looked at her mother, the frosted makeup disguising the plain Long Island woman underneath. Had she truly seen her mother in the last ten years? Beth was horrified to realize that she didn’t know exactly what Gail looked like even as she stood in front of her; all she had to go on was the failing memory of who she had been. Rouge was smeared across her face like brake lights on a wet road. Her poor mother, addicted to pain medication and still paying for the surgeries that had gotten her hooked. “She was going to leave her house to the Orient Historical Board,” Beth said, “but suddenly had that clause expunged. Don’t you find that odd?” It would have been odd to anyone who didn’t know that Jeff Trader had warned Magdalena about the historical board on his last visit.

  Gail shrugged. “Roe diCorcia said she would have been livid to see her name on that initiative. Didn’t want anything to do with it. He told me that as we were leaving Poquatuck on the night of the town hall meeting. That was the last time I ever saw Bryan Muldoon. Oh, honey.” Gail reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Beth’s ear. “You never know what life has in store. You better do everything you want now before your body fails and your dreams grow so moldy all they’re good for is the trash. There isn’t time and things never happen at a better moment. Your father wanted to wait to have you, but I put my foot down. If you had come any later, you would still have been a child when he died. I think, in some way, I knew that.”

  “Mom, Dad didn’t have cancer. He died in an accident. That could have happened at any time.”

  “Your father waited. I know he did. He waited to die until after you were gone.” Gail watched the woman in the purple pantsuit enter Magdalena’s house. “I was going to wait until after the funeral to bring this up, but money is getting so tight. And as I said, there’s never a right time.”

  “And?”

  “And,” she trumpeted. “I need you and Gavril to at least pay the monthly property tax if you’re going to stay here for another year.”

  “Of course,” Beth replied, setting her mug in the sink. “I’m sorry I didn’t offer sooner. But what if we decide to stay for more than a year?”

  “Is that likely?” It was as if Gail had guessed her daughter’s trouble in reassimilating into village life. And she was right: her closest friend in Orient was a teenage orphan who might leave any day. Gail steadied herself in her heels. “For a while I thought it was likely. I thought you were going to give me a grandchild here, and that’s why I was willing to pay the taxes. But I’ve been holding on to too many dreams of my own.” Gail’s lipstick grin was rather noble in its defeat. It broke Beth’s heart.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mom.”

  “I’m going to have to sell sometime. Not right now. I won’t get what it’s worth with all the madness going on. You’d have to be a fool to sell a house in Orient at this point, even though I’ve gotten calls. Sarakit said she’d help me when it comes time. I might have to take her up on that, one day, soon. . . .” Gail rolled her eyes, impatient with her own evasion. “Speaking of, honey, I might need to ask you and Gavril for a little help in terms of money. Just a loan, after how generous I’ve been. A few thousand to start.”

  Beth took her mother’s hand, which was chilly in her fingers.
She wasn’t aware of how warm her own fingers were until they made contact with Gail’s skin.

  “Mom, are you in trouble?” Beth was also sick of evasion. “Are you taking pills? It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” Gail smiled nervously, broad enough that Beth could see the veins in her gums. The rest of her face didn’t move a muscle. “I’m being serious. Are you addicted? Do you need some help?”

  “Never,” she swore. “Never ever. Honestly, I’ve never had the addict’s discipline. I don’t know where you’d get an idea like that.” They should Botox murder defendants on trial, Beth thought. Nothing in Gail’s face gave her agony away. She was as convincing as statuary.

  Beth opened the hall closet and dumped the baby announcements in the hidden plastic bag. As she climbed the stairs, she ripped open the envelope from her doctor, praying it said, “We regret to inform you that we were mistaken. Our ultrasound equipment was malfunctioning on the day we examined you. You aren’t pregnant. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Instead it was copying her on the bill that was sent to her insurance and reminding her to schedule her next checkup. Her mother was right. There was no time left for indecision. She changed from burgundy to gray.

  By eleven o’clock that morning, the better half of Orient had gathered in the pews of United Church of Christ. So many residents had taken the morning off to mourn: those who had known the Muldoons for a lifetime, and those who had first met them as recently as their last end-of-summer picnic. The mourners included Bryan’s employees, hunting partners, and fellow OHB members; Pam’s friends and covolunteers on various North Fork projects (Save the Osprey, Heart & Hale Elderly Meal Drive, the Maritime Museum Fun-Raisers, the Orient Historical Society Docents); Tommy’s entire senior class of Sycamore High, a somber, slouching teenage army bereft of the psychic comfort of their cell phones; and several small, unspeaking children in First Communion clothes who had playdated Theo.

  Beth also counted Orient’s most dependable residents: Holly Drake with her veil of freckles, Karen Norgen, George Morgensen, Arthur Cleaver. Even Roe diCorcia in the last pew, his camel hair jacket rigor mortis from years hanging in a dry-cleaning bag. Ted and Sarakit Herrig sat in the second pew behind Lisa and her grandparents. Adam Pruitt, in sunglasses, mouthed the words to the opening hymn, and Beth watched as Luz tiptoed down the side aisle to claim a seat by the electric candles. Beth couldn’t fathom Luz’s motivation for attending—maybe it was research for her portrait series. Mills and Paul sat on the opposite side. Beth waved at Mills, who had clearly borrowed a coat and tie from Paul. The coat sleeves gaped wide at his wrists, and the bulky shoulders gave him an awkward, overstated demeanor, like a new funeral home assistant unsure how much grief to add to the commemoration.

  “Lisa fed the birds this morning,” her mother whispered. “Heartbreaking.”

  Four caskets were spaced before the altar, flat mahogany boxes with sprays of yellow lilies dangling over the lids. The coffins were all the same size, with no indication of which Muldoon lay hidden in the velvet-lined beds. The display was too much for Lisa, who spent most of the service with her hands cupped over her mouth, red nose flared above her knuckles. How easily the dead were dispensed with, in mahogany boxes nailed shut and slipped in vaults to prevent the earth from penetrating bone. It was not the dead who watched over the living, as Reverend Ann Whitlen said at the pulpit, but the living who watched over the dead.

  As Reverend Whitlen read the Twenty-third Psalm, Beth thought of the note Tommy had written: “Orient’s real threat is its trust.” She glanced around at the funeral’s teary, warm-blooded faces. Every single person looked as if something sweet had broken in them, a bit of the trust that had held them together in this small suburban hamlet cut off from civilization, reassuring them that neighbors would always look out for neighbors, that no one would want any of them dead. Such trust was no longer a given in Orient.

  Ted stepped from his pew, briefly pressing his hand on Lisa’s shoulder, and walked to the pulpit with his head bowed. He sighed into the microphone. “I ask us all to take a moment to stop thinking of causes, or of who could have done such a brutal act to the kindest, most generous family Orient has ever known. I ask us to think, instead, about the four neighbors we have lost. Their love should not be stolen from us by the atrocity of their deaths.”

  As Ted recounted a few honeycombed Muldoon memories, even the driest eyes brimmed with sorrow. “As we all know, Bryan was a savior to Orient. He was the head of the historical board, which meant the world to him. I was honored to serve with him on OHB for twenty years. And I know”—Ted choked, as if being slowly consumed by gas fumes—“he would want us to continue the fight against development. The initiative is named for Magdalena Kiefer, but we will fight in Bryan’s name to ensure a green future in Orient. At Lisa’s request, Sarakit and I are manning a table outside of the church for anyone who wants to receive more information on the Nondevelopment Initiative and honor Bryan and his family by carrying on his battle to protect Orient, to which our dear friend committed his life. I cannot think of a better tribute. We can still realize his dream.” Ted left the podium with his head high, certain the audience was on his side. There was nothing left to do but sing “Amazing Grace.”

  The crowd outside the church spilled onto the lawn, where Sarakit and Ted took their place behind a table borrowed from Karen Norgen, clipboards and brochures arranged before them. Most of the mourners moved around anxiously in the cold, lost in their individual cabins of thought. Amid them, Lisa’s stillness had an unpiloted effect. She was hugged by friends and strangers, was told of virtues or an unselfish favor performed, was offered food or a seat at Thanksgiving dinner. She looked into each of their faces as if staring into a cavern from which human sounds echoed but never cohered into sense. The four caskets were wheeled past her like luggage organized for transport by a divine concierge.

  Leaving her mother with Ina Jenkins, Beth searched the church grounds for Mills. Someone tapped her shoulder, and she turned to find Luz in a white shirt and a silk tuxedo jacket with black gloves buttoned at her wrists.

  “Why are you wearing gloves?”

  “You should see my hands.” Luz smiled, holding up a hand and flexing leather fingers. “They’re electric blue from painting. I thought it might be more respectful to wear these than to come to a funeral like I’d just fisted an alien.” Luz’s upper lip snarled and she quickly fit a cigarette into its crevice. “My skin color already freaks these people out. I bet half of those farmers”—she pointed her lighter toward Helen Floyd before flicking it—“think I was the Muldoons’ cook. Mastah’s dead. What iz’a gonna do now?” Luz grunted. “Persecution does wonders for personal integrity. Still, the looks I get.”

  “Did you know them?”

  Luz bit the smoke and let it slide from the side of her mouth.

  “Yes. I knew them. Not well. But Bryan was a nice guy. He came by to welcome Nathan and me when we moved in. Said he was glad to see one of the bigger houses in Orient going to a young couple. I think he expected toddlers to materialize around our legs. He told us about all of Orient’s hidden treasures, the history of the buildings and lighthouses. Then he got all conservancy on us. But I liked him. I even showed him the paintings I was doing of his neighbors. He promised he’d take me hunting one weekend. He raved about the quality of the deer. He didn’t seem to realize our bedroom has a prime view of Plum—I’d rather not eat bush meat somebody gunned down and seasoned with Ebola.”

  “You know they use bows out here more than guns.”

  “I might need a gun,” Luz said. Beth imagined Pam Muldoon catching a black woman with a gun running around Orient and the weeks of racial insinuation that would have followed—with phrases like “that rich woman” or “that artist” standing in for “that black woman.” Did those local gossips know that Luz supported her entire family in Trenton with her work? Of course not. Beth had learned that only by reading Jeff Trader’s journal. Karen Norgen passed nearby, eyeing Beth str
angely, wrapping herself protectively in a hand-crocheted scarf.

  “I mean it. I’m frightened,” Luz whispered. “Two nights ago I heard someone walking around our property. I heard footsteps and rustling in the grasses by the water. When I got up to look, I swear I saw a shadow near the dock. I almost had a heart attack. I went around making sure all the doors were locked.” She laughed uneasily. A contrail of breath and cigarette smoke drifted from her lips. “The doors were just fine. The problem is, we don’t have walls. We’re about the least protected house out here. Maybe we should go back to the city for a while. Or maybe we should just sell and find a new house somewhere deeper in the woods. Nathan thinks the danger is good for his work. And he has a point—everyone loves a dead artist. It’s the living ones that people can’t tolerate.” It occurred to Beth that the obscenely rich and the obscenely poor had one thing in common: neither really lived anywhere for long. One by choice, the other by necessity, they came and went as if the entire world were padding for their beds.

  Luz wrapped her arms around Beth’s shoulders. Many were hugging on the church’s lawn just as they were. Holly was leaning on the church railing, her head turned toward the grotto so no one could see her face.

  “How are you doing?” Luz asked. “Are you holding up okay? You know, if you ever want to talk to me, about anything, I’m here.” Beth gently slipped from Luz’s embrace. Luz exhaled. “Will you and Gavril at least come for dinner tomorrow night? There’s no reason we can’t get together and remember that our own lives have nothing to do with these local deaths.”

  Ted waved a clipboard at Roe diCorcia. The tall farmer took it, pressed an ungulate fist on its page, and dropped the board on the table with a clack.

  “You people are still at it? Even after Bryan’s death?” The farmer shook his head. His chin-length hair fell forward, curled from its time spent gathered in a ponytail.

  “Now, Roe,” Ted said.

  “It ain’t going to happen. Your little eco-friendly fairy tale ain’t going to happen. This was farming land long before it was cute-house land.” Roe cocked a finger at Ted’s wind- and tear-streaked face. His voice was the relentless sound of car wheels stuck in a snowbank. “And I tell you what. That water-main proposal wasn’t beaten. It was temp-o-rarily shelved. And I’m making it my mission to get it back on the table at the Water Authority. You can write that down on your clipboard. We need improvements, not pretty views. Did you ever think that if Bryan hadn’t blocked the water main, we would’ve had hydrants that might’ve saved his wife and kids? Did you ever think about that, Ted? Someone should.” Roe crossed himself, and with the last horizontal slash of his wrist, flicked his fingers to renounce the Herrigs.