The Probable Future

by Alice Hoffman

  The truth was, it was Stella he missed most of all; Stella’s trust in him, Stella’s faith. His daughter often left messages on the answering machine, since he always seemed to be out or asleep when she phoned. She missed him; she wanted him to come to Unity for a visit. But the bail agreement insisted he stay in Boston. Boston, his ball and chain. Boston, a cruel and thoughtless city if an individual had no money and no dreams. All those shops and cafés on Newbury Street, Symphony Hall, with its near-perfect acoustics, the Ritz with its glorious view, what good was any of it to a man who had no money and no prospects? Will was broke, and weakened by disappointment; at night he couldn’t sleep without several drinks to help him drift off, and even then his sleep was restless, a dreamless deep he couldn’t escape. Often he woke with the shudders, as though he’d dived into the coldest waters and could barely drag himself ashore. He sputtered and needed several cups of coffee, and still he was shivering.

  Now when he walked across the Common he stared straight ahead, not wanting to see the men on the benches, the homeless stretched out on wooden planks as if they were in their own beds. Jenny had told Will these men most often dreamed of slices of apple pie and beds with clean sheets; they dreamed that someone loved them and was waiting at the door, and of all the hundred small things that were slipping away from Will now. Since his piano was being held hostage at his previous address, and his hands were shaking anyway, he spent most of his time watching TV. He’d begun to have a whisky along with his second cup of coffee, just to get him revved up. In fact, he was a little buzzed on the afternoon when a reporter managed to get into the building, with no one to stop him before he managed to locate the Averys’ door. Occupants’ names were listed in the front hall, so Will hadn’t been especially difficult to find. Right beside his name several rude comments had been scrawled by his fellow tenants, in Magic Marker, in ink that wouldn’t wash away: Go get a fucking job. Ever hear of rats? Throw your damned garbage away!

  “I’ve got to ask you to leave,” Will was quick to say when he opened the door to a stranger who quickly introduced himself as a reporter. Will was still wearing the clothes he’d slept in, so he’d thrown on a sports coat in order to look presentable. “I don’t give interviews since my last debacle. I always say too much.”

  “I know,” the reporter agreed. “That’s how I found you. Posed in front of your building with the number showing. Major bad idea.”

  Will laughed. “I’m full of those.” He felt a certain kinship with this fellow who’d tracked him down.

  The reporter looked Will up and down and took measure of his situation “Look, I won’t print anything you don’t want me to. And that’s not all.” The reporter coughed, embarrassed. He gazed around the empty trash-strewn hall with something that resembled pity. “I’ll pay for the interview.”

  Frankly, Will’s stomach was growling and he felt somewhat dizzy from the caffeine and whisky he’d already consumed. There was half a cold pizza in the fridge and that was pretty much it. He was on the verge of having to call Jen and ask her for money. Or maybe Matt would come through, yet again. Henry Elliot had told him in no uncertain terms not to speak to another reporter, or to anyone else for that matter, in regard to the case. But Henry had always been a self-righteous ass and Will had never put much stock in anyone’s advice.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Two hundred bucks.”

  “I don’t know.” Will tried his best to look thoughtful. He did have to support himself, after all. “How about a thousand?”

  “Five hundred. It’s the best I can do.” The reporter took out a billfold and counted out five hundred-dollar bills. “Nobody will pay more.”

  “Why argue?” Will took the money and folded it into his jacket pocket. He grinned and opened the door wider, allowing his visitor inside, just in time, as Mrs. Ehrland was on her way up the stairs to once again complain about the trash and the late-night TV blaring out the window. By the time Mrs. Ehrland knocked on the door, Will had already brought the reporter into the living room. He ignored the rapping and took off his jacket, which he flung over the desk, littered with unpaid bills. That was what Mrs. Ehrland was probably blubbering about, the unpaid rent.

  “What paper did you say you write for?”

  “The Boston Herald. I’m Ted Scott. And I won’t keep you long. Everyone says that, but I really mean it.”

  Will gathered together the magazines and newspapers strewn about on the couch and the easy chair. Frankly, it was something of a relief to finally talk to someone. It felt good to get it all out, rather than bottle everything up the way Henry Elliot, a tightass even back in school, had advised. Besides, everything Will said in this interview concerning Stella was off the record: the fact that she had been the one to suggest he go to the police, that she’d somehow seen the death of the woman in Brighton.

  “Could I talk to her?” the reporter asked. “For a minute or so?”

  “Good lord, no. She’s at her grandmother’s. A big old house in the woods. Miles out of the city. Safe as a bug in a rug.”

  “What else did she see?” the reporter asked. “Did she see the circumstances? Could she make out what the killer looked like?”

  Will had poured himself another whisky. He loved the way it burned and made him feel something inside. “Off the record,” he reminded his guest. “All she saw was that the poor woman’s throat was slit.” Will was thinking about the five hundred bucks and how he would spend it. He could go to the Hornets’ Nest every night, once he paid up his bar tab, maybe even treat Kelly Butler to dinner. He’d nearly forgotten what it was like to eat a good meal. He’d all but forgotten how hungry he was. “I’m just going to grab myself something to eat.” He started for the kitchen. “Want anything? A beer?”

  “A little early for me,” the reporter said. “Thanks anyway, but I’m all set.”

  Will retrieved a slice of pizza from the crumpled cardboard box. There were no clean plates around, so he snagged a paper towel, and got himself a beer. Last one in the six-pack, but he’d soon remedy that.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Will called. “I’m looking for hot peppers. Pizza is worthless without hot peppers, in my humble opinion.”

  He carried everything out to the living room, bumping the door open with his hip. “You’re sure you don’t want anything?” he asked.

  But as it turned out, Will was talking to himself. The chair where the reporter had been sitting was empty. A breeze came through the open window and ruffled the newspapers that Will had tossed on the floor. Ted Scott was nowhere in sight.

  “Shit,” Will muttered. He tossed the pizza and the beer onto the coffee table. He stood there for a moment, chilled, then he went over to the desk and picked up his jacket. He slipped a hand into the pocket. The money was gone.

  The door of the apartment had been left open and the hallway was empty. Just some garbage bags Will had left in the hall that morning, toppled when someone hurried past. There were his empty beer bottles rolling along the floor. He never bothered to recycle; he couldn’t think that far in advance. His mother had warned him that the ease with which he lived his life would be his undoing in the end. When he’d last visited her, she had grabbed on to his hand and apologized to him.

  “For what?” Will had laughed.

  “Maybe I should have made things harder for you,” Catherine Avery had said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have applauded everything you did.”

  That was the sort of woman she was, always ready to blame herself, even for his ruined life.

  “Mother,” he’d said. He had bent down close to her, even though she smelled like death and he had always been put off by such things. Her breathing was labored and he realized all at once he had never asked her a single question about herself. Why, he didn’t even know how she’d voted in the last election, or what films she had liked, or if she read novels late into the night, when she was up worrying about him, unable to sleep. “You did an excellent job,” he told her. “
Any screwup is entirely my own responsibility.”

  “Oh,” his mother had said, with a last burst of energy. She had grabbed his hand so tightly that he’d pulled back, frightened. “I loved you so,” she said.

  If he hadn’t been such a greedy fool, his radar might have been out about this Ted Scott individual. It took one to know one, isn’t that what people said? Well, not this time. This time he’d been blinded by a few dollars. He phoned the Boston Herald and he wasn’t surprised when the editor of the Metro section told him there had never been a Ted Scott on staff. He called the tabloids then, but no one had ever heard of Scott.

  Every con man gets conned himself eventually, and Will couldn’t believe he’d let the five hundred dollars out of his sight. He was losing his touch. He gazed at himself in the hall mirror Jenny had found in an antique shop on Charles Street when they first took the apartment. He was losing his looks as well, he saw that plainly. Someone else might not have noticed, but they wouldn’t have inspected him as carefully as he monitored himself. There was a bloating in his face, a darkness around his eyes; his skin was sallow, and this time he couldn’t blame his pallid complexion on the terrible lighting in jail.

  “Idiot,” he said to his reflection.

  Had he thought it would be easy forever? Had he imagined he’d never have to pay for all the shortcuts he’d taken in his life? He thought of those men on the benches in the Boston Common, and their dreams of what had been stolen from them or what they’d thrown away. Lately his fleeting murky bits of dreams had been of the very same things: clean sheets, true love, a woman who didn’t care what he looked like or how much cash was in his wallet.

  For the first time in a very long while, Will looked past his own reflection. There in the mirror, right in his sight line, was the trestle table where Jenny kept the mail, where she had left Stella’s bagged school lunches, where she used to tack notes for Will, reminding him of his domestic responsibilities, errands and tasks he was sure to shirk. It was now he realized that the model of Cake House, which had been there earlier, good for nothing but collecting dust, was gone. He could tell because the empty space where it had once been seemed polished, where everything around was covered with a film. The old house in the woods, given over like a gift, free of charge. The location of his daughter, a witness before there’d been a crime.

  The phone rang, but Will didn’t answer it. His stomach felt like hell now. It might be Henry Elliot calling him, or, worse still, his brother. He wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. He needed a moment before he could admit what a mistake he had made. Now whoever wanted to find Stella would have something far better than a map. He would have a model, and it wouldn’t take long before he managed to find the real thing, the address where the forsythia was not made of felt, but of flowers, tumbling into bloom. Before long he would be at the front door that was full-size, where the hedge of laurel was so tall this season no one would ever see if someone were hiding there, breathing in the scent of laurel, surrounded by the hum of bees.

  IV.

  IT HAD BEEN MORE THAN thirty years since the last dinner guest had been invited to Cake House, that colleague of Saul’s who had arrived late, so that even before it began, dinner had been ruined. Their guest had been attractive, with chestnut hair and arched eyebrows, black as crows. Who can find these little towns? Their guest had laughed, not bothering to make excuses for her tardiness. She’d been overdressed, lost without a map; while Saul went to the parlor to fix them drinks, their guest watched Elinor finish up the salad. She’d asked too many questions about Saul: what his favorite foods were, did he work in the garden on Sundays, watering the seedlings, wearing a straw hat? Or did he take the paper up to bed, and was it the sports page he looked at first or was it the news? Their pretty dinner guest wasn’t lying, not exactly, which made her especially difficult to read. She just wanted to know Elinor’s husband better; she just wanted him for herself, that was all.

  For thirty years there had been no visitors other than Dr. Stewart occasionally stopping by for a bowl of vegetable soup or some gingerbread near the holidays. Why, the silverware had grown tarnished in its velvet case and needed to be polished, the decent china was dusty and had to be rinsed, the ashes were swept from the fireplace, and a new fire was lit, for although it was April, and the fields were filled with trillium and trout lilies, although jonquils were blooming in the lane, the dining room was as cold as a tomb.

  “You don’t have to be involved,” Jenny told her mother. Elinor prowled about the kitchen, useless, as Jenny cut up leeks and onions for a chicken dish she’d decided upon, not too fancy, not too plain, a recipe that wouldn’t reveal how hard she’d been working simply because Matt was coming to dinner. In fact, she’d been up at six, planning the menu, before rushing off to North Arthur to the farm-stand where the vegetables were always so fresh.

  “Of course she has to be involved,” Stella called from the scullery. She’d reached behind the bottles of pond water for the oldest cookbook in the house, the one that had belonged to Elisabeth Sparrow, and was now thumbing through the grainy pages stained with suet and jam. “Gran and I are making dessert. I found it!” Stella declared as she returned to the kitchen. “Bird’s-nest pudding. Isn’t that perfect?”

  “Perfectly awful,” Elinor replied.

  “Actually, I have to agree with your grandmother.” A shock for them both, a first, perhaps. All the same, Jenny was pleased by Stella’s interest. Anything other than stomping out of the room was a definite movement forward. Here they were, three women from the same family in one kitchen, and trouble had managed to stay away, at least so far.

  “It’s custard poured into apples.” Stella tied back her hair and set to work coring the apples. “We can make vanilla or butterscotch. Elisabeth preferred vanilla,” Stella informed her grandmother, whom she’d set to work beating eggs. “I wish Juliet could see me now. She wouldn’t believe I could cook.”

  “Juliet?” Jenny’s radar went up.

  “My best friend,” Stella reminded her mother. “Ever hear of her?”

  “Well, well,” Elinor said, not exactly pleased by the obvious rift, but glad to see a chink in Jenny’s alleged perfection, grateful for human nature. “So you don’t know her best friend.”

  “I know her. I just don’t think Juliet is the right sort of person for Stella to spend time with.”

  “At least Juliet’s mother went to college. She went to Smith. She didn’t give up her whole future to support some man’s education.”

  “That man was your father. And are you comparing me to the woman who poisoned her husband? You don’t have to go to Smith to do that.”

  Elinor noticed that the custard was cooking too fast on the back burner of the stove, boiling over, in fact. In no time, the filling for the bird’s nest would be singed, a faint rubbery skin formed at its edges.

  “Well, now I have a parent who’s been in jail, too. Does that make my friendship with Juliet all right, Mother? Is she good enough for me now?”

  “You take everything I say and turn it around.”

  “I don’t need to! You turn it around yourself! You always think you’re so damned right!”

  “Well, I am about some things! Not that you can ever admit it!”

  They faced each other across the table, the cored apples turning brown between them, the leeks cut to pieces, the pudding boiling over.

  “Everything was perfect until you got here,” Stella declared. “Everything was absolutely fine.”

  “This is clearly none of my business, but the pudding is on fire,” Elinor announced.

  Stella grabbed a tea towel and ran to lift the heavy pan from the flame. In the old cookbook, Elisabeth Sparrow had recommended stirring for fifteen minutes, but this pudding was ruined, scorched beyond use.

  Stella threw up her hands and ran outside, so it was Elinor who placed the pan in the sink and ran the cold water. Billows of steam rose and fogged up the kitchen window. In the reflection of the old green
glass, thick as a bottle, Elinor could see that Jenny had sunk into a chair, her head in her hands. The chopped leeks and onions made the room smell like spring, a sweet, rainy scent. Elinor stayed where she was, by the soapstone sink. A long time ago she had known how to comfort someone, she had rocked her baby in her arms, but she had lost the knack for consolation. She really hadn’t a clue of what to do next.

  “Don’t worry about the pudding,” Elinor said briskly as she scoured the burned pan. “Everyone in town knows Matt Avery doesn’t eat desserts. He’s a bread-and-butter man.”

  “He used to love sundaes. I guess he gave them up.” Jenny blew her nose on a paper towel. “Good old easygoing Matt.”

  “Somebody had to be.”

  To Elinor’s surprise, Jenny laughed. Elinor felt a tinge of pride at having cheered her daughter when Jenny went back to fixing the meal; at least her daughter had the ability to get on with things, to pick up the pieces, to adhere to the task at hand. By the time Matt’s truck pulled up, the casserole was browning in the oven, the rice was made, the salad was on the table.

  Matt had brought along a bottle of wine and some caraway cakes, the kind his mother had liked for him to pick up at Hull’s Tea House. On the porch, Argus woofed at him and ambled over, back legs dragging due to arthritis.

  “Hey, old man.” Matt patted the dog’s head, then opened the white bakery bag. He took out a caraway cake, freshly baked. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he said as the dog gratefully gulped down the cake.

  Stella had watched the encounter from the garden, where she’d been sulking. She smiled when she saw her uncle dust crumbs from the wolfhound’s beard.

  “You made it,” she called as she walked over through the damp grass. Little frogs skittered out of her path, leaping into the bushes.