"Listen, Sam, I really have to go to the bathroom. Could I use yours?"
Bathroom! Not only was she admitting she peed like the rest of us mortals, she wanted to use ours! Pauline Ostrova's bare ass on our toilet seat!
"Sure. I'll show you." I started down the hall and heard her footsteps behind me. The nicest bathroom in the house belonged to my parents. It was big and light and had thick powder-blue shag carpeting on the floor – very fashionable back then. But it was upstairs and I didn't think it appropriate to take her up there, no matter how much I longed to show off the carpeting. So I went toward the smaller one just off the kitchen.
Naturally when she was inside with the door shut, I wanted to glue my ear to it so as to hear every sound she made. But I was equally afraid she'd know and come bursting out of there like a Nike missile, intent on catching me listen to her tinkle. I went into the living room and quickly scarfed down the doughnut I had been eating before she arrived.
She didn't come out. The toilet didn't flush. Nothing happened. She just . . . stayed in there. For a while I thought maybe she was only taking her time, but that time grew too long and I began to grow apprehensive. Had she had a heart attack and died? Was she having trouble going? Was she snooping in our medicine cabinet?
I grew so nervous that I took another doughnut and ate it without thinking. I wanted to ask if she was okay, but what if that question angered her? What if she had taken sick and for some reason couldn't speak? I pictured her grabbing at her throat, her face cyan blue. With a last gasp, she'd reach weakly for the toilet flush so when they found her, at least she wouldn't be embarrassed by what she'd done before dying.
When I could no longer stand it, I purposely walked to the corner of the kitchen farthest from the toilet and shouted, "Pauline? Are you okay?"
Her answer was immediate. "Yeah, sure. I'm reading one of your magazines in here."
When she reemerged, we drove across town to the veterinarian to get the dog and then she took us home. I wanted the whole world to see me in her car and misinterpret why I was there. Unfortunately, the only person I recognized on the streets was Club Soda Johnny Petangles, the human commercial.
As I climbed out of her red Corvair with the dog fussing in my arms, she said, "I took that magazine out of your toilet 'cause I want to finish the article. I'll give it back to you in school."
"That's okay. What's the article?"
"It's in Time. About Enrico Fermi?"
"Oh yeah, I read that one."
Enrico who?
I was delighted because something of ours would stay with her and there'd be reason for further contact with her.
Sadly, despite a desultory "hi" from her now and then in the halls at school, I never spoke with Pauline again until I pulled her out of the Hudson River a few years later.
When the book tour was over, I returned to Crane's View. Working in the old guest room of my childhood home, I continued writing the first pages of the book. That was the easy part – just letting memories roll in and carry me along, like waves on their way to shore. There was no way I could tell this story objectively, so I decided to tip my hand early and begin it with my personal involvement.
I spent two days at Frannie's writing and talking to people who had been around at the time of the murder. Pauline's father was dead, but her mother and sister still lived in town. I decided not to talk with them for a while because I wanted an overview of things before going to the heart of their matter.
Frannie had kept a good file of the records of both the murder investigation and the subsequent trial of Edward Durant, but I held off reading those too. I pictured my investigation as a kind of circular labyrinth. Entering somewhere on the outer edge, I would inevitably make many wrong turns but hopefully close in on the center eventually.
That meant first finding out who were the peripheral people in her life and seeing them. A couple of teachers were still at the school who had taught her. Two old lizards who had long overstayed their welcome in academia. Wizened and cranky, they were not the most reliable sources in the world. Yet because they spend so much time with kids for a specific, concentrated block of their young lives, teachers experience them in a singular way no others do.
Her French teacher remembered her because good as she was at the mechanics of the language, Pauline could never say the words so they sounded anything like French. "Bonjour" became "Bone Jew" on her tongue, and hard as she tried, it always stayed right there. He remembered her ramrod posture and how she loved the poetry of Jacques Prevert. What I got from him was a picture of every teacher's favorite student – eager, inquisitive, occasionally remarkable.
The same wasn't true with her English teacher, Mr. Tresvant. I'd had him too when I was in school. He was one of those sanctimonious sour balls who made us read dinosaurs like Hope Muntz's The Golden Warrior, and then had the audacity to call them literature. He appeared to be wearing the same brown tie and dead corduroy suit he had three decades before. What was weird and perversely wonderful was that on entering his room again after all those years, I felt my asshole tighten with the same fear I had felt back when his grades meant life or death.
The first thing he said to me was, "So, Bayer, you're a bestseller now, eh?"
I wanted to say, "That's right, you old stump. No thanks to you and Hope Muntz!" But I gave an "aw shucks" shrug instead and tried to look modest.
I asked if he remembered Pauline Ostrova. To my surprise, he silently pointed to a picture on the wall. I continued looking at him, waiting to hear if he was going to say anything about it. When he didn't – Tresvant was famous for his menacing, pregnant pauses – I got up and went over. It was a fine drawing of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Whoever had done it had spent a long time because every possible detail was there.
"Did Pauline draw this?"
"No, of course not. That was, that is, the English award, Mr. Bayer. Obviously you've forgotten the goings-on here. Every year I give away a copy of that drawing to the best English student in my classes. Pauline Ostrova should have won it because more often than not, she was an excellent student. But you know something? She turned out to be too excellent for her own good. She was a cheat."
I reacted as if he had said something obscene about one of my best friends, which was ridiculous because she was dead almost thirty years and I really hadn't known her. Finally I managed to weakly repeat, "She was a cheat?"
"A very adept one. And not always. She read everything. Wayne Booth, Norman O. Brown, Leavis . . . Send her to the library and she took everything she could lay her hands on. But once too often what she read appeared in what she wrote, whole cloth, and she was dangerously stingy about giving credit where it was due."
"That's hard to believe!"
He smiled but it was an ugly thing, glowing with scorn and superiority. "Did you love her too, Bayer? Much more than the cheating, that was her sin. She made it easy to love her, but she never loved back."
"Did you love her, Mr. Tresvant?"
"The only thing that went through my mind when I heard she was dead was a mild 'Oh.' So I would guess not. Anyway, the less old men remember about love, the better."
Skin cuts the easiest. Even the thinnest paper resists – a moment's no before the knife slices through its surface. But a knife into skin is like a finger into water. I was cutting open a package of legal pads when the knife slipped and slid through the top of my thumb. Blood shot out and splattered across the yellow paper.
It was ten at night. Frannie was downstairs eating Mongolian barbecue takeout and watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme video he had rented earlier. I wrapped my thumb in toilet paper and called down, asking if he had medicine and bandages. When I explained what had happened, he raced up the stairs with a gigantic orange first-aid kit. He looked at my finger and wrapped it up like a pro. When I asked where he'd learned to do that, he said he had been a medic in Vietnam. Surprised he had spent his time as a soldier doing that and not flame-throwing people, I accused him of no
t telling me much about himself. He laughed and said I should ask any questions I wanted.
"How come you keep calling David Cadmus?"
"Because the fucker's father killed Pauline Ostrova."
"The fucker's father is dead, Frannie."
"But the crime isn't. Turn your hand over so I can get the other side."
"I don't understand what that means."
"It means I want someone besides Durant to admit killing Pauline."
"Why? Why's it so important?"
He held my bandaged hand in both of his while he spoke. I tried to pull it away after what he said next, but he wouldn't let go.
"What do you believe in, Sam?"
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly that. What in your life do you believe in? Where do you worship? Who would you give a kidney to? What would you go to the wall for?"
"A lot of things. Should I list them?" My voice went way up on the last word.
"Yes! Tell me five things you believe in. And no bullshit. Don't be cute, don't be clever. Say five things right out of your heart, and don't think about it."
Offended, I tried to pull away. He held tight, which made me even more uneasy. "All right. I believe in my daughter. I believe in my work, when it's going well. I believe in . . . I don't know, Frannie, I'd have to think about it some more."
"Wouldn't do any good. Listening to you talk, all that cynicism leads you to one big fucking wall of nothing. You know the saying, 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'? The difference between you and me is I have at least one big thing that matters and gives me direction. I'm sure Edward Durant didn't kill Pauline. One day I'm going to prove who did.
"Even with all your success, you've got a fox's eyes, Sam – nervous and edgy, they don't stay on any one thing too long.
"I think you're back here because you're trying to get away from your life. Trying to return to some old part that's dead and safe. But maybe there'll be something in it to save you. That's really what attracts you, because where you are now is some Sunday in the middle of your life and the rest of your week looks pretty grim."
He let go of my hand and left the room. I heard him go down the stairs and then the sound of the television again. What was most interesting was the calmness of my heart. Normally bells and whistles would have been going off in there. I have a quick temper and an even quicker emergency defense system that throws up the walls in my soul whenever it is attacked. This time, however, my insides were as calm as the truth because that's exactly what he had spoken and I knew it.
We didn't see each other again that night. Around two in the morning, after rolling over and over the phrase 'one big thing,' I gave up hope of sleeping. I went downstairs to do whatever I could find to do in someone else's house after I'd just had my skin peeled off.
In the kitchen, the McCabe cupboards were an explosion of circus-colored junk-food boxes and a vast array of bottled hot sauces. The fridge had a hodgepodge of nasty-looking survivors from various takeout joints. When it came to food, Frannie called himselt a "gourmutt" and seemed pleased about it.
There was nothing else to do but turn on the Van Damme video for a few minutes and spend time with the Muscles from Brussels. I went to the machine to put in the video. Lying on top of it was a porno film titled Dry Hard. It starred Mona Loudly and from her picture on the box, Mona looked like better company for the midnight hour than Jean-Claude, so I put it in, figuratively speaking. A little porno now and then is good for the soul, and mine could have used a spicy diversion.
Before the film started, the company advertised some of its "Come – ing Attractions!" A few minutes of sleaze to rev up our appetites for another trip to the dark corner of the video store. I laughed at the clip of the first one, settling into the mood. Then the second preview came on, Swallow the Leader. Veronica Lake opened a door to a hunky-looking repairman. My Veronica Lake. One and a half minutes of my lover doing guess what with a Jeff Stryker look-alike.
I bet you've never had that experience: The woman who is charmingly modest about undressing, always closes the door when she goes to the toilet, and likes to wear simple white nightgowns to bed is suddenly in front of you on a television screen, doing things only prisoners and misogynists dream of women doing.
My Veronica Lake.
What is the decorum for asking your lover why they didn't tell you they acted in porno movies? Where is Miss Manners when we really need her?
The next morning I called a friend who is a movie buff and also happens to be plugged into every Internet station in the galaxy. I asked him to find out how many movies Marzi Pan had made. Two. Swallow the Leader and The Joy Fuck Club.
While I was sitting in a semi-coma, trying to think of what to do next, Veronica called. I tried to be normal but my voice must have sounded like it was coming from the other end of the Alaskan Pipeline. She picked up on it immediately.
"What's the matter?"
"I found out about Marzi Pan, Veronica."
Whatever I was expecting, what she said next wasn't it.
"Oh that." Her voice was dismissive, uninterested.
"What do you mean, 'Oh that'? For Christ's sake, Veronica, why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I was afraid you would react like this. What do you want me to say, Sam, I'm sorry? Sorry for once being a person I no longer am? Sorry you had to find out before you cared, or knew, enough about me to understand? Which sorry do you want?"
"I'm spinning, Veronica. I feel like I'm inside a clothes dryer."
Her voice became very small and hesitant. "Do you want to hear about it now? The whole story? That's what Zane meant in L.A. when she told you to ask me about Donald Gold. It was his fault, but I went along because I wanted him to love me. I would have done anything and that's what he wanted. He even thought up that name for me.
"But it's over, Sam. That was years ago. You're not ashamed of anything in your past? Something you can't do anything about, so you just have to be sorry and move on? I'm proud of myself now. Proud of who I am and what I do. I'm proud that you want . . . ," her voice faltered and she took a quick breath, ". . . that you want to be with me." She had begun to cry and it was clear why.
Shit that I am, I could think of nothing to comfort or console her. Instead, I whispered I would call her back and hung up.
The cemetery in Crane's View is wedged between the Lutheran Church and the town park. It's nondenominational and some of the gravestones date back to the eighteenth century. Ironically, both Gordon Cadmus and Pauline are buried there, not far from each other. It's a small place where you can have a good look around in less than an hour. When I was a kid we'd go there at night to mess around, sneaking up on each other, or making noises that were supposed to be scary but fooled no one.
I got out of my car and climbed over the low stone wall that enclosed the grounds. It was a beautiful morning, warm and still, the air full of birdsong and the smell of flowers.
I found Pauline's grave first. The stone was a small black rectangle, engraved only with her name and dates. The plot was well tended: Clearly someone spent time there bringing fresh flowers, weeding, keeping a candle burning inside a small protected lamp. I stood above it, thinking not very original thoughts – what a tragedy, what would she be doing now if she had lived, who killed her. I remembered the time I saw her at school bent over a drinking fountain. She was wearing a white blouse and long red skirt. Her hair was in a ponytail that she held to one side while she drank. Passing by, I had purposely veered so as to pass within inches of her. For one instant I was the closest person in the world to Pauline Ostrova. Her hair was shiny, her fingers so thin and long on the silver knob.
Kneeling down, I ran my hand across the lettering on her gravestone and said, "Remember me?" I stood up slowly.
I started away, thinking to look for Gordon Cadmus next. A car slowed and stopped out on the street. Thinking it might be Frannie, I turned and saw it was only a brown UPS van making a delivery. Then b
ecause of my position, I saw the back of Pauline's gravestone for the first time. Written on it in thick white letters was "Hi, Sam!"
After Pauline's death, a number of strange occurrences took place in Crane's View. Some of them we were aware of, others Frannie told me about years later.
The day after we'd found her body, someone went around town writing "Hi, Pauline!" in large white letters on walls, the hoods of cars, sidewalks, you name it. We saw it on the side of the Catholic-Church, on the huge glass window at the Chevrolet showroom, on the cashier's booth at the movie theater. Our gang was used to rowdy acts, but this was sick. Never for a moment did we think any of us could have done it. Gregory Niles, the class brain, said it was "pure Dada." We didn't like the sound of that, whatever Dada was, and threatened to kill him if he didn't shut up. Pauline's death was bad enough. Murder doesn't belong in a small town and we were dazed by what had happened. But someone – someone we probably knew – thought it was funny. Writing a greeting to a murdered girl was funny. For the first time since returning to my hometown I felt real foreboding.
When I got back to Connecticut, my darling child was sitting in the backyard, feeding popcorn to Louie, my unpleasant dog. Of course when he saw me he growled, but he always did that. I could feed him steak, pet him with a fur glove, or take him for hour-long walks. No matter, he still growled. Cass thought he blamed me for the breakup of my last marriage. So I tried to tell him Irene didn't like him either but to no avail. We put up with each other because I fed him, while he was at least some kind of company when my empty house got too large. Other than that, we gave each other a wide berth.
Cass had been baby-sitting him while I was in Crane's View. Normally, she lived with her mother in Manhattan during the week and came up to my house on the weekends.
Kissing the Beehive Page 8