The third option was to be honest. But she wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore.
The white-haired woman was waiting for her at a far table in the gym lobby. She faced the glass-plated entrance, perhaps so she could catch Amity if she tried to slip out. Amity waved awkwardly and strode to the coffee bar. She poured herself a cup, not because she wanted one but because it simulated what she’d seen other women do when they met friends at the gym. She had toweled off in the locker room but still felt hot and clammy. And relieved in a way that she’d finally been caught. Maybe that’s what her husband had felt too, when his secret meanderings were finally exposed.
Over the past few months, Amity had wondered if she’d ever see the woman again. Since she hadn’t, she’d assumed she and her husband were just another older couple looking for a place to retire. Kicking tires of communities with Tom Fazio golf courses and cities with virtual colonoscopy centers, but ultimately heading south down I-95 and getting a golf course villa in Florida like so many other Americans.
Amity took a seat across from the woman, whose shoulder-length hair had been pulled back from her full face in a shiny headband. She wore a T-shirt and shorts and didn’t look like an athlete. Amity now recognized her from their brief encounter in the closet.
Amity sat down and tried to smile, not at all sure what the woman wanted. An awkward silence hung between them. The woman watched her carefully, looking at her as if she were a specimen in a science experiment. Her emerald eyes had a hard intensity to them.
“Thanks for coming. I’m so happy we ran into each other,” the woman started, as if greeting her at a cocktail party. “I know I was a little blunt earlier and this is a little random, but I was really struck by you when we met.”
“You were?” Amity felt complimented in some backhanded way.
“Yes, Amity, I was.”
Amity liked that the woman used her name, as though she knew her. “But I don’t know your name.”
“Catherine.”
“Look, Catherine.” Amity steadied her breathing. Her yoga teacher liked to say, Take a moment to set your intention. “As I think I told you, it’s just this habit I have. This thing I do. It’s not malicious. Your community is safe but—”
“Stop!” Catherine said sharply. She held up a stiff hand, like a traffic cop. “Just stop. Please.” Catherine closed her eyes tightly and ran her fingers through the ends of her hair. She seemed distracted. “‘My community’? You mean you don’t even live here?”
“Not exactly.” Amity could feel the movement of people behind her, athletes who had finished workouts and were heading off to prepare meals or water gardens. People who lived their lives with a routine of familiar exertions. “Say, are you okay?” Amity was a little concerned by Catherine’s red face.
“Listen, I want you to know that I promise, I promise, that I didn’t tell anyone about you and I won’t tell anyone.”
“So what is it you want?” Amity hoped the woman wouldn’t report her to security. Her own experience told her promises weren’t always kept. I promise to have and to hold from this day on, her husband had told her.
“We ended up buying that house. Not that it matters, but that’s where we live. It’s our home. It just seemed remarkable when I found you there.”
I found you. Something about those words made Amity soften.
Catherine continued. “Ralph—that’s my husband—Ralph and the real estate agent, Audrey Cunningham, came back in but didn’t suspect a thing. Naturally. Why would they? They really had no inkling, but maybe they had other things on their minds.” She laughed nervously and leaned in. “I wonder if you happen to know any of the Realtors here? Do you know Audrey? You know, actually, that’s a different story. What’s important is that you know your secret is safe with me. I just can’t stop thinking about what you said. I need you to share what you do.”
Amity might have considered some sort of exit plan, but she felt comforted. I need you, Amity heard loud and clear. I found you.
Catherine looked down to Amity’s hand. “Are you married?”
“Not anymore.” Then she felt the weight of the silence between them. “And I used to be an English teacher, too. Used to follow rules,” she added.
“Okay, so I just need to know about this thing.” Catherine stopped to sip her coffee. “This breaking and entering? Visiting? No. It feels deeper than that. But you don’t steal anything, do you? I’m a little unclear.”
“Of course not.”
“Right. I didn’t think so. Forgive me. So it’s cruising or drifting almost.” Finally the word came to her: “Creeping.”
“Creeping?” The word reminded Amity of creeps. Men who cheat on their wives. It reminded her of her husband.
“For lack of a better word, let’s call it that. Anyway, I’d like to know what it feels like.”
Catherine seemed sincere, not distracted by the herd of women passing through after their Awesome Abs classes. Amity noticed the chatter of conversation, but Catherine was focused on her, as if she were the only one in the world who mattered. “Okay. Listen. When you are in a grocery store, do you ever pick up a magazine that you have no intention of buying?”
“Like Time?”
“No, not the newsmagazines. The fancy ones. Travel and Leisure or Elle Decor. The ones where celebrities sprawl across plush velvet couches or frolic in infinity pools. The ones that show farmhouse kitchens and feathered king-size beds and candlelit, bubble-filled slipper tubs.”
“Sometimes.”
“And flipping through the pages, you are transported. For a moment you are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Somewhere else. You’re a countess at a stone villa in the Loire Valley. You aren’t just standing in line at Piggly Wiggly waiting for the woman in front of you to find her coupons.”
“Uh-huh.” Catherine nodded as if beginning to understand.
“You feel different. You are somehow changed.”
“And you lead someone else’s life for a moment?”
“Yes. That’s it. That’s what it’s like. I don’t hurt anyone, but I feel what it’s like to be them. I am them.” And I’m not me anymore, she added to herself.
Catherine’s face opened up. Amity liked the freshness about her, like an old-fashioned stage actress who had just taken off her makeup. “I understand.”
I understand you. I found you. I need you. “My husband left me rather suddenly. We transferred here last year for his job, found a place to live downtown on Tattnall Street, and one day he just decided to take off. Voilà!” She snapped her fingers. “He’d ‘had enough.’” Amity made air quotations with her fingers. “He hooked up with his high school sweetheart on Facebook and moved out of state. Out of state! She lived in Iowa City, for god’s sake. They somehow had this whole life going on that started on the Internet. A virtual life. A life based on a lie.” She could feel herself getting worked up. Breathe into the pain. “I don’t know, but that’s when the creeping started.”
“I’m not following.”
“One day after he left, I saw an ad in the paper. I was looking for a teaching position but there it was. Open house. Marsh views. One phone call does it all.” She might have said it was also the abbreviated language that struck her (HW thruout, W/D HKUP, EIK, SOHOA), a private patois as if everyone on the island were part of the same tribe, but that would have gotten her and Catherine off track. “So once I got to the gate and waved my circled ad, the guard handed me a guest pass and a treasure map of for-sale houses and waved me right through.” I hope you find what you’re looking for, he’d even said. “I went from one open house to two to four. Every weekend I returned. And as I stood in strangers’ living rooms, with their books and their photos and their cats, I felt a freedom. Like I’d taken custody of a new history. Like a fresh start. Eventually, I just did it on my own.”
Catherine smiled. “I see. But aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”
“I’m more afraid of b
eing alone.”
“And this creeping, this fresh start, it works?” Catherine asked.
“Like a charm.”
“Please. I promise I won’t tell. Just one time. Take me with you.”
“Just once,” Amity said firmly.
chapter 14
Ida Blue jumped at the sound of her barking cell phone. She’d been enjoying a quiet afternoon on her couch watching The View. “You’re barking up the right tree at Ida Blue’s pet psychic line.” She enjoyed varying the way she answered the phone. She liked to be a little edgy. Today that included a double waterfall braid that cascaded down her back.
“Yes, hello, I found a flyer on my windshield and see you have a ten-minute free trial.”
Finally, Ida Blue thought, someone who can read. She’d been surprised that the entire city of Savannah hadn’t jammed her phone line. “You bet I do.”
“But I’m a little cynical. Are you clairvoyant?”
“I’m an animal communicator.” Sometimes Ida Blue liked to say com-moo-nicator just for fun. “I can’t tell you the future, only what your pet is feeling, like Google Translate. So all I need is a name.”
“I’m Catherine. My dog is Ralph.”
“R-a-l-p-h. Am I right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
It’s all about bagging yes responses. Ida Blue had read a Reader’s Digest article that explained five yes answers could close any deal. “I’m getting a strong feeling that he is male. Am I correct?”
“Of course.”
Two yeses. A gold-medal performance.
“You see, I’ve had him for quite a while and need advice. I mean I don’t know if you really have a connection . . .”
A connection? Ida Blue thought. She was six months behind on her Comcast bill, and the personalized notes from the billing department had gone from Kindly Pay Your Bill to You Are THREE MONTHS Overdue to PAY NOW OR SERVICE WILL STOP!
Catherine continued, “You see, I don’t know if he’s happy or even what he does when I’m not with him. You know, if other dogs wander into the yard.”
What he does? Ida Blue wanted to ask. He farts. He scratches. He sleeps. He’s a dog.
Ida Blue had a feeling about people who gave their pets human names. Maybe owners were using their dogs and cats as child substitutes. Helloooo, Dr. Freud. But she didn’t want to scare away a first-time caller, so she imagined the only Ralph she had known, her mother’s brother, who had left her enough of an inheritance to buy this condo. Her uncle was a pock-faced man who liked to drink beer out of a size-twelve ceramic boot and had been married four times, twice to the same woman.
“I’m getting a message.” Uncle Ralph had adopted a potbellied pig named Otis and kept him behind his grizzled trailer. Otis drank as much beer as he did. “I get the sense that Ralph is a rescue in need of being saved. Am I right?”
“Not exactly. Ralph is just, I don’t know, not expressive.”
“The word indifferent is coming to mind. Is that accurate?”
“Yes.”
Three yes replies. Hell’s bells. She hadn’t had three yeses in the last five years.
Ida Blue looked to the back porch. It was almost a reflex now, to see if the ghostly older woman would appear from nowhere, to see if she could feel a connection to something greater than herself. All that was out there was an overgrown camellia bush that needed pruning.
“Okay, so I’m feeling Ralph’s been abandoned on some level. In psychoanalysis we call it displacement.” Ida Blue didn’t know if that was exactly right, but she knew what she felt and sometimes it even sounded good. “His insecurities will be transferred to other things. In a word, he will misbehave.” Her uncle had once dressed up Otis as Princess Diana, in a white gown and a glittery tiara, and paraded him through the trailer park.
“Misbehave?” Catherine asked softly.
“Act out. He’s thinking he is the alpha dog now, so go ahead and let him make mistakes. If Ralph makes a run for the Invisible Fence with his new doggie friends, don’t call him back before he gets zapped.” Ida Blue didn’t need to be telepathic, or even tele-pathetic, to sense skepticism in Catherine’s silence, but giving people something to believe in wasn’t any more of a scam than Dr. Oz advising patients to lay off the salt.
“Can you put Ralph up to the phone? I need to feel his essence.” Ida Blue was ready for heavy panting and a slop of saliva. She took her braid and twirled it excitedly.
“He’s not here right now.”
“Maybe he’s in the yard with the neighborhood poodle?” She laughed at how easy this was.
“Yes, maybe he is.”
Four yeses. A new client would pay to keep the lights on and the TV humming. It would pay enough to keep her behind the gates and safe from an intervention by Dr. Phil.
“So stay connected to him. And to me. Next time prepay on PayPal. Call me once a week.” She took her sweet time and reapplied her lipstick to orchestrate a dramatic crescendo. “Two more things Ralph wants you to know.”
“Go ahead.”
Ida could hear the caller’s breathless anticipation, as if she were going to reveal other animal mysteries like what the Loch Ness Monster had eaten for lunch or whether Bigfoot vacationed in Oregon or British Columbia. “He likes company, so find a dog park.”
“Okay. Sure. And the second thing?”
“We only have a few minutes left.”
chapter 15
Safety never takes a vacation,” Amity told Catherine as they power walked through the Greenleaf Park section of Seven Oaks.
“I’ve heard that before.” Catherine nodded with excitement, a bobblehead doll, her sunglasses moving precariously down her nose.
“Pardon?”
“It was our motto at summer camp. The head counselor told us that just before he broke both legs on the high dive.”
“Oh, right. Sure.” Amity had lost her train of thought. She’d been thinking Catherine seemed a little needy, the type of woman who shouldn’t ride alone on a merry-go-round. “Concentration and awareness. You need to be aware of your surroundings and take care of things that need attention.”
“And you bought a commercial guest pass? You just drive right on through the gates? That doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s amazing how far a clean driver’s license, tutoring business card, and a hundred bucks will get you.”
“But what about getting into the actual houses?”
To her surprise, Catherine had asked a series of good questions, which kept leading Amity off track: How do you choose a house? How long have you been doing this? Are you ever afraid? “A fake rock. That’s one of the things you can look for.”
“Interesting. But what about alarms? Or motion sensors?”
“Here? Where someone getting locked out of a car makes the front page of The Oak Log?” Amity was being facetious, but still. No one needed yet another layer of safety with the security team and twelve-foot perimeter fence.
“It just seems too easy,” Catherine answered.
“It is.”
Despite herself, Amity was rather enjoying the company of the woman who’d found her in the closet, then cornered her at the fitness center. The woman whom Amity had agreed to take creeping, only so she wouldn’t be reported to security and ruin the one activity in her life that made her feel something, even if it was just the sensation of leaving herself. Some women play golf, she thought. I break into houses. Big deal.
“So what’s your backstory?” Catherine asked.
Amity appreciated her interest but was beginning to feel like a guest on an afternoon talk show. “Used to be an elementary school teacher. Loved kids. Loved rules. ‘I before e except after c’ and all that.”
“How about ‘A dog has claws at the end of its paws. A comma’s a pause at the end of a clause’?”
Amity had never heard that one but she liked it. Maybe she’d get to use it when she found a full-time position. “I’m a substitute teacher. Have had three interview
s with the Savannah-Chatham school district but they’re not hiring until late spring. Fortunately, I’ve got some savings and alimony.”
“Good for you. I’m beginning to think it’s important for a woman to have a plan B.”
After they had agreed to meet, Amity didn’t really believe Catherine would show up. She would probably get a better offer from the New Neighbors group to tour Old Fort Jackson or visit a macramé workshop at the Savannah College of Art and Design. But when Amity drove into the community center parking lot that morning she saw a single blue car and Catherine. Early. Doing trunk rotations with arms extended as if they were meeting for Jazzercise.
As they continued down Seven Oaks Way, Amity realized she hadn’t taken an interest in anyone or anything in months. When she wasn’t subbing, which was most of the time, her days consisted of distracting herself, logging miles on the gym treadmill or around unfamiliar neighborhoods or doing laps in the pool of a stranger’s three-bedroom house, then sleeping for twenty-four hours. Weep. Creep. Sleep. Her life could be the basis for lyrics in a pathetic country-western song.
Catherine touched Amity’s elbow, then pointed to her untied shoelace. “I said, ‘Be careful.’”
Amity stopped and crouched to tie her sneaker, then noticed Catherine’s ancient tennis shoes with rubber soles and fraying mesh sides. Part of a white sock peeked out of a small hole. “Wow. You’ve put some mileage on those puppies.”
“Yes I have.”
“I played as a kid. Was going to join a Bacon Park league when we moved here but things just didn’t work out the way I thought.” She might have mentioned her new, unused tennis outfits and credit for clinics. In fact, maybe Catherine would like her graphite rackets. They hung in her front hall above a wire hopper filled with dead, graying balls. Amity double-knotted her laces and grabbed Catherine’s extended hand as she rose. “Thanks,” she said, and they found their rhythm again.
Good Karma Page 8