This Time Might Be Different

by Elaine Ford

  Mandy wailed.

  “That was not at all a kind thing to say,” Mrs. Balch said to Rena. “No wonder Phil Guptill took off the way he did.”

  “Get up,” Elwood said.

  “What?” Mrs. Balch asked.

  “Get up. Now.” Keeping the gun on them, Elwood went to the glass door and unlocked it. Then, the pillowcase slung over his shoulder as if he was some kind of deranged Santa Claus, the plaid suitcase in his left hand, he marched the ladies past the rows of washers to the back of the laundrymat and out the rear door. Behind the laundrymat was an alley surrounded by a plank fence, where none of the ladies had ever been. It was empty except for two dented trash cans and some dead leaves from last fall. Chilly out here, for May, on account of a breeze off the bay. Blackflies had already hatched, and a few of them began to menace the ladies’ ears.

  “My driver’s license,” Rena said suddenly. “You’ve got my driver’s license in that pillowcase. And my MasterCard.”

  “Don’t worry. You won’t be needing ’em anytime soon. You and you,” he said to Rena and Mandy, “sit.” Elwood took a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors out of the suitcase and gave them to Mrs. Balch. Pointing the gun at her, he explained how she was to tape up the other ladies’ mouths and wrists and ankles as they huddled on the cold concrete.

  “My back,” Rena whimpered, “you remember about my back, don’t you?” but Elwood paid no attention. Mrs. Balch had prided herself on the values she taught her third graders (a job well done is worth two half done; a job worth doing is worth doing well) and she executed a thorough and efficient job of disabling the other witnesses. Then Elwood taped up his old teacher, every bit as competently as she could have done it herself. Humming a cheerful but unrecognizable tune, he unzipped the suitcase. He took out a floppy denim hat and clapped it on his head. Then he returned the duct tape and the scissors to the suitcase, along with the gun. With effort he crammed in the pillowcase. Once he’d zipped up the suitcase the bulge wasn’t that conspicuous. It could have been his winter jacket and some of his mother’s fruitcakes, wrapped well, packed to give him sustenance on his journey. “You have a good day now,” he said to the three mummified ladies. Suitcase in hand, he unlatched the rear gate and closed it securely behind him.

  The ladies heard cars and trucks go up and down Main Street. They heard the Bangor bus roar to a stop in front of Clip ’n’ Curl and shortly thereafter take off again. Gulls screamed overhead. Black flies swarmed and bit the flesh below their ears. Rena was dying for a cigarette. Mrs. Balch thought about her laundry mildewing in the washer and the chicken parts defrosting in her kitchen sink, probably going to end up spoiled. Mandy made a sorry little puddle on the cement beneath her.

  Finally they heard a squad car’s siren approaching from Route 1A, turning the corner onto Main Street, and abruptly terminating in front of the laundrymat. The sheriff must have been at the other end of the county when he heard about the heist over his shortwave radio, up to Lubec or Calais, and that’s what took him so long to get here. They’d be rescued now. But nobody came to the rear door of the laundrymat. After a while they heard the squad car drive away.

  They thought Elwood might get pretty far, after all.

  DEMONS

  January 2000

  Denia heard the church basement door open and slam shut, rattling glass in its window. Boots slapped across linoleum as though they were unlaced or the wearer had overlarge feet. The girl appeared in the doorway of the makeshift cubicle that constituted Denia’s office and stood there for a moment. A ratty imitation-leather handbag dangled from her shoulder. Under the fluorescent light, snow sparkled on her pale hair.

  “I’m so sorry, but my office hours are over. I’m expected at the nursing home,” Denia said, visualizing the dear old souls being wheeled into a circle around the piano so they could gum the words to “Sweet By-and-By.”

  Paying no attention to this, the girl seated herself in the metal folding chair next to Denia’s desk. She was long-limbed, sturdily built, pretty in an unwitting way. The girl looked around. Her eyes fixed on piles of theology books that had found no room on the few shelves, folders of clippings and sermon notes that still needed stowing in the file cabinet, the framed diploma from Bangor Theological Seminary propped against the wall, Denia’s black robe hanging from a coat rack, inside its plastic bag from the dry cleaner.

  “So you’re a preacher now,” the girl said. “Diploma and everything.”

  Where could Denia have encountered this person before? She’d remember the hair, so blonde it was almost white, if not the girl’s face. Denia wasn’t especially good with names or faces. “I’m afraid I’m not sure who you are. Please remind me.”

  “Good question. Who am I?”

  Denia clicked the point of her ballpoint pen. She’d been called to this congregation just after the new year, at the dawn of a new millennium; the ceremony of laying-on-of-hands marking her ordination went backward in time, in an unbroken line, for two thousand years—an omen, Denia liked to think. Her first ministry, at the age of forty-five, and a long hard road to this place. Now, having at last arrived, she could not simply turn the girl away. She did her best to smile. “Is this a riddle?”

  The girl leaned forward. “I bet they made you read the Gospel According to Saint Mark, over there at the seminary.”

  Ah, the Gospel of the Obtuse Apostles. Denia wondered more than once how the disciples could have been so clueless, Jesus’s parables sailing right over their heads. “Yes, I’m familiar with Mark.”

  “So you know all about King Herod.” The girl’s eyes were a very light, watery blue, and her skin was flushed by the warmth radiating from Denia’s electric heater. She hadn’t unbuttoned her pea coat or taken off her gloves. “How he married his brother’s wife. Probably an impulsive act, even though they both happened to be married to other people.”

  Were they? The girl knew the story better than Denia, but she certainly wasn’t going to admit her ignorance to this scruffy teenager.

  “Well, that’s how it is with kings,” the girl went on. “They tend to do things on a whim, just because they can.”

  What’s the girl’s angle? The pastorly patience Denia had taken great care to cultivate began to slither out of her grasp. She breathed deeply and smiled again. “I’m due at the nursing home in moments. If you could come back another time . . . ”

  “But then a certain prophet advised Herod that he shouldn’t, actually, have married his brother’s wife. It was unlawful, for starters, not to mention how the cast-off spouses might feel about the situation. The prophet, by the way, was John the Baptist.”

  Denia noticed that the fluorescent light overhead had begun to flicker. She put down her pen, feeling somewhat muddled. Who is this girl? she wondered.

  “The more the king’s new wife thought about the way that busybody John the Baptist had butted in, the angrier she got. It’s like she was possessed. First she made King Herod throw John in prison. Then, on the king’s birthday, she sent a daughter by her first husband to dance at Herod’s party.”

  “The daughter,” Denia said, in the graciously authoritative tone she’d absorbed at seminary, “was named Salome.”

  “True, but Mark doesn’t bother to mention that. Anyhow, the girl did a bang-up job. The king was so enraptured by her dancing that he promised, ‘Whatever you desire, anything at all, it’s yours.’ So she went to her mother and said, ‘What shall I ask for? Half of the kingdom maybe?’ and her mother answered, ‘No, not half the kingdom. You must demand the head of John the Baptist.’ ”

  The steeple clock began to strike the hour. “This is all very interesting,” Denia said. “However—”

  “The head of John the Baptist! Half the kingdom sounded like a better deal to the daughter. But if the prophet’s head was what her mother wanted . . . So the girl ran back to King Herod, and that’s what she r
equested. Now, the king wasn’t particularly eager to comply, because he rather liked John the Baptist, shaggy hair and all, but he’d given his oath, what could he do? So he sent for the executioner and ordered the head of John the Baptist to be brought, and it was carried into the birthday feast on a big platter. Exit one inconvenient prophet.”

  “Why are you telling me all this? Why have you come here?”

  The girl groped in her handbag, pulling out a rumpled tissue. “Here’s the thing. Seems like the king’s wife won. Seems like, in spite of all her sins, she lived happily ever after. But did she? I’d really like your opinion. As a preacher. With a diploma from the seminary and all.”

  Melted snow had made a puddle all around the girl’s rubber-soled boots. Denia would have to get some paper towels out of the john and wipe the muddy mess from the linoleum herself. The half-blind old sexton wouldn’t even notice it, should he deign to lug his mop and pail down to the basement.

  “I’ve no idea,” Denia said briskly. “I don’t believe the gospel reveals that information.”

  “See, I’m thinking that such an evil person couldn’t possibly live happily ever after. I’m thinking the demons she unleashed tormented her soul every minute until she died.”

  “There’s such a thing as redemption.”

  “Only if she atoned for her sins. Sincerely.”

  “That isn’t for you or me to judge.” Denia smiled. “It’s up to God.”

  “And God acts in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?”

  “I really must leave now,” Denia said. She rose and reached for her coat. “I’m already very late.” Devoutly she hoped this was the end of it. Then she saw the knife.

  November 1999

  He was a skinny little man with a sparse mustache. Setting a carrier on the counter, he said, “How much does it cost to have a cat put down?”

  “Put down?” Molly said. “What’s the problem?”

  “My wife told me to bring her here.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if the woman might be hovering behind him. “She scratches carpets and we just got new wall-to-wall.”

  “Did you think of taking her to the Humane Society?”

  “All the way to Bangor? Look, I don’t have time for that right now. My wife . . . ”

  “You need to fill out a form,” Molly said, attaching it to a clipboard and handing it to him. “The fee is fifteen dollars, plus thirty for the cremation.”

  “Cremation? Can’t you just put the body in the garbage?”

  “The Health Department isn’t real keen on that. You could come back later and dispose of it yourself.” She thought of telling him he better not get caught trying to sneak it into the bin over at McDonald’s—there’s a good stiff fine for unlawful disposal—but decided to let the jerk find out the hard way.

  She took the carrier into the back room and coaxed the cat out. Six-toed tortoiseshell short-hair, rigid with fear. Molly put her in a cage. The cat made no sound, just scrunched herself into as small an object as she could. Doc would dispatch her after he finished with his surgery schedule.

  When Molly returned to the reception area, the man gave her the form and a check for forty-five dollars. “Her name is Mittens,” he said.

  “Why are you telling me her name if you want her put down?”

  “I thought you might need to know for some reason.”

  “No.”

  “It won’t hurt her?”

  “She won’t feel a thing after the needle prick.”

  “You can keep that,” he said, motioning to the carrier, maybe hoping his generosity would let him off the hook, maybe wanting to be rid of the reminder of what he’d done.

  “No, thanks.”

  Molly watched him walk out with the empty carrier banging clumsily against his leg. Poor little wuss, totally under his wife’s thumb. Bitch. She was the one who deserved the needle.

  After work, Molly pulled on her gumboots and the pea coat she’d found in a thrift store for only ten dollars, still almost good as new. Now that she was working full-time she felt less worried about money, but she saved every cent she could. Someday Molly would need it for Ma.

  Cold out, nearly dark already. Earlier it had been raining, and the streets were wet, leaf-choked puddles along the curb. She drove to the big hardware store at the other end of town and sat in the parking lot, gazing at stacks of brick under overhead lights that turned them a bluish color.

  Shortly before five-thirty a Taurus wagon entered the lot and pulled in right in front of her. Molly noticed shiny stickers on the rear bumper: Jesus on Board! and Prevent Truth Decay, Read the Bible! Leaving the engine running, the driver yanked the rearview mirror toward her so she could see her own chinless face and fidgeted with her perm like a bird poking twigs into its nest. Exhaust fumes spewed into the air. Soon a tall balding man in an overcoat shuffled around the corner, his shoulders hunched. Uncomfortably he folded himself into the passenger side of the Taurus and they drove off, going north on 1A.

  Molly put the pickup in gear and turned out of the lot, following a few cars behind the Taurus. They headed out of Ellsworth, past the wooden toy maker’s shop and the apple store. At one time Ma was a picker in that orchard, fitting the work in around her other jobs.

  After a few miles the Taurus bore right off the highway, onto an unpaved road that wandered past a couple of trailers and a dilapidated farmstead. The truck’s window was stuck halfway open, and Molly smelled damp woods, felt the cold wind flaying her cheek. She tried to keep well behind the Taurus, though she was pretty sure they wouldn’t notice the pickup anyway, just one more rust bucket rattling along on this country road in the dark.

  The Taurus turned into a driveway. Molly eased to a stop a ways farther down the road and watched the garage door jerk upward and the car disappear inside. The short chinless woman and the balding man left the garage through a side door and walked toward the house. Molly didn’t know what she’d expected, but this modest bungalow wasn’t it. He was carrying a supermarket bag full of groceries.

  Molly waited ten minutes by her watch and then climbed down from the truck, shutting the door as quietly as she could. She decided to approach the rear of the house by walking through some weedy brush rather than heading across the lawn or down the gravel driveway. The legs of her jeans got drenched. Brambles snagged her clothes, and she was glad she was wearing gumboots instead of sneakers. No moon to help her out. She could see a light on at the back of the house—the kitchen, she guessed.

  She thought about Ma, maybe starting to get hungry, maybe wondering in a vague sort of way why Molly wasn’t home yet. Cautiously, hoping a dog wouldn’t begin to bark or security lights flash on, Molly crossed the patch of grass in the backyard. She paused and then stepped onto a concrete patio, where there was a metal trashcan, some folding lawn chairs leaning against the siding, a charcoal grill whose rack nobody’d taken a wire brush to in a while. A plastic line with clothespins clipped to it dangled from the overhang, nearly catching in her hair as she approached the window.

  Yes, this was the kitchen, all right. Molly peered past ruffled café curtains and saw him unpacking groceries onto the table: a box of cereal, a bunch of bananas, a few cans of soup and tuna fish, it looked like. She could make out a spice rack, a wall calendar, a philodendron trailing from a shelf. The woman was bent over in front of the open refrigerator, brown polyester pants stretched over her big butt. She turned to say something to her husband, but Molly didn’t try to hear what. His face looked cowed, woebegone.

  It was all so ordinary. No children baking in that oven, no cauldron of poisonous brew simmering on the stovetop. Still, there was evil here, Molly could smell it: spoiled chicken hearts and gizzards in the trashcan, crumbling concrete soaked with rain, rotting leaves, burnt flesh. She shivered, feeling queasy.

  He wouldn’t have told his secret to this woman, his wife. He wouldn’t ha
ve withheld even a dime of his measly salary. He would not have dared.

  Molly crept across the lawn to the pickup, turned on the engine, backed into the driveway and drove up the road.

  At home Molly unlocked the door with two keys and locked it again behind her, turning a key in the bottom lock and throwing the deadbolt. She hid the keys in the kitchen, in the flour canister. Molly kept having to change hiding places. Ma didn’t cook anymore—she wouldn’t be getting out the flour to mix up a batch of biscuits—but she had an uncanny way of homing in on the keys when she was ranging around the house in the middle of the night, almost as if she had a special radar.

  “Ma?” she called. No answer. Molly poured water into a saucepan. She’d soft-boil an egg for her mother’s supper.

  Ma wandered into the kitchen, her hair askew, wearing a black cardigan that was missing most of its buttons. She hadn’t put her arms through the sleeves. Her hair was no longer the exact same shade of blonde as Molly’s, but the color of the ash that’s left when you burn white paper. She wouldn’t let Molly trim it anymore, and it ended up in horrible tangles.

  Something about her mother’s expression made Molly remember the tortoiseshell cat in the cage, but then Ma’s face went blank again. “I’m making you something to eat,” Molly said. “Are you hungry?” She set the saucepan on the stove and turned on the electric burner.

  Her mother began to sing a little rhyme that Molly knew from her childhood. “Bat, bat, get under my hat . . . ” Ma stared out the window, her black cardigan wrapped around her, the empty sleeves hanging down from her shoulders like broken wings. “And I’ll give you a slice of . . . ”

  “Bacon,” Molly prompted.

  “Bacon. And when I bake I’ll give you a . . . ” Her mother turned from the window and looked at her helplessly.

  “Cake,” Molly said, tears stinging her eyes. “I’ll give you a cake. If I am not mistaken.” But by now her mother had lost the thread and was dancing on unsteady feet to a tune only she could hear.