The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living

by Martin Clark

  Pauletta hadn’t been terribly surprised when she called her office from Norton and got word through her secretary that Pascal had phoned from jail and wanted her to call him back. She had called Charleston from her car, in the morning, just before driving out of the parking lot at the Coin-O-Matic. Evers was still in bed. They had slept together, but didn’t have sex, just kissed two or three times and stayed next to each other for most of the night. A new white Lincoln was parked beside the Datsun; Evers had brought the new car home the night before, driven eighty miles per hour most of the way from Winston-Salem to Norton. Three Mexicans with heads of thick black hair were standing around the door to the Laundromat, chewing on toothpicks, watching Pauletta, staring at her while she talked on the phone. She stopped about a mile outside of Norton, and a man in bibbed overalls at a roadside stand with a few apples and a slew of watermelons told her how to get to Statesville.

  When he was brought into the interview room, Pascal was wearing prison clothes and handcuffs, but he looked the same to Pauletta, still had good color in his face and plenty of energy when he walked and moved; he picked up his feet, held his shoulders back and took good, long strides to get where he was going. So many convicts barely move, seem to wind down like mechanical toys or cold car batteries, get slower and slower each day, each week, each month—a result of, Pauletta guessed, having nowhere to go, nothing to do and ten years to live in a black hole with bars. Pauletta felt sorry for Pascal, felt a touch of pity seeing him in manacles. Pascal held out both of his hands, splayed them as best he could with the shackles on his wrists, folded up Pauletta’s hand in his and squeezed her tight enough that she could feel her fingers jam together. The chain on his handcuffs rattled and clicked when he held on to her. “Thank you for coming. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. How are you? How’s life in the big house?”

  Pascal used his foot to push a chair away from the table. “Not as entertaining and romantic as I’d imagined, but tolerable. I got my parole documents last week. My mandatory date is about two months away.” He sat down.

  “Is that why you called? Is there a problem with that?”

  “Oh, no. No. That’s fine. That’s all fine.”

  “Good.” She sat down next to him. “Oh, by the way. While I’m thinking about it—I left a carton of cigarettes and twenty dollars for you at the prison canteen.”

  “That’s thoughtful. Truly kind. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Evers told me you guys made some progress on the letter. Found out what it was.”

  Pauletta took her jacket off and laid it on the table. “We did. It cost us ten thousand dollars, but we found a copy.”

  “Wow.” Pascal was wide-eyed for a few seconds. “That’s pretty pricey.”

  “Did Evers tell you any of the details?” Pauletta asked.

  “No. My calls are limited to three minutes. He called last night—I guess you’d just driven back to his apartment. Anyway, said you’d gotten to the bottom of everything. And that he’d just won a car. He’s coming down on Sunday to visit. I’m anxious to know the whole deal; it should be a really interesting story. And I’m assuming that everything is good, that everything turned out okay, since Evers sounded upbeat on the phone and you’re here and no one’s in jail besides me.”

  “It’s quite an ending. I’ll let your brother give you the whole story. I won’t spoil the surprise. Plus, we might have different versions of the facts—you know how Evers is. I’ll leave it to him.” Pauletta winked at Pascal.

  “That’s the best idea, no doubt. It’ll be nice to have something to look forward to besides a shower and kitchen duty.”

  “Well, I don’t want to steal his thunder. He’ll enjoy telling you the tale and embellishing it all the way through.”

  Pascal took a deep breath. Pauletta saw his chest move, his mouth open. “Do you know why I wanted you to come? Thanks again, by the way. At least you were already in the state.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I needed to talk with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We still have a privilege, right?” Pascal asked. “Everything is confidential?”

  “Yes.”

  Pascal looked her straight in the eye. “Even from my brother? Even from Evers?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Are you two seeing each other? How is it that the tattooed, menacing, African American felon in the cell across from me put it? ‘Talking’? Are you and Evers still talking?”

  Pauletta grinned. “Maybe a few words here and there. We don’t quite have a steady, traditional romance yet. It’s pretty halting. I don’t know.”

  “You know, I thought about getting a tattoo while I’m here. I thought MOM and a heart would be plenty safe and might even pass as high hip in some circles.”

  “Why not, Pascal? A tattoo might be a nice touch.”

  “At any rate, I need to tell you something. Just you, no one else.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have an idea, any clue?” Pascal wondered.

  “No.”

  “Do you think Jo Miller killed herself?”

  “You mean, I guess, do I think you killed her?” Pauletta’s enunciation was perfect, every word immaculate. Her voice barely told anything; she could have been asking someone to pass the salt or open a window.

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  Pauletta leaned back in her chair and gazed up at the ceiling, saw two fluorescent lights covered by a wire cage and a spider’s web in the closest corner of the room. A tan, dry, translucent wing from a mosquito was caught up in the web, hanging straight down, dangling ten feet above the floor, as lifeless as could be. “Now that you’ve asked me the question, I certainly have—what should I say?—an open mind on the issue. Two things have always stuck with me, Pascal. There were a pair of discharged casings in the gun, but only one wound. That’s strange. And the letter, the one she mailed to her mother. When I went back into court, after we saw her—saw Mrs. Covington, I mean—she had left the copy for me. Remember? Bless her heart, she was truly paralyzed by the whole thing. I’m sure that she left it for me. Who else would have? I thought that was very strong, very courageous on her part.”

  “Yeah, it was. I agree.”

  “But the letter, when I saw it … I don’t know. The writing was so deliberate and impersonal, and it was across the top of the page. I’m sure it was Jo Miller’s writing; her mother would know that. And it came to Mrs. Covington in an envelope with a handwritten address, so, well, that was important. But you know how it was signed, Pascal? Just ‘Jo Miller.’ Not ‘love’ or ‘Jo’ or ‘see you in heaven,’ just her name. A pretty restrained good-bye, huh? The other thing, clothes in the washer? That’s a third thing, I suppose. I said there were two things, but I guess that there are three problems for me. If I were going to kill myself, I’d at least take the day off. Why is she doing clothes in the middle of the night if she’s getting ready to shoot herself?” Pauletta crossed her legs and studied Pascal. “In the end, Pascal, the way I look at it is that the state didn’t have enough to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And that’s really all I do, all I’m concerned with, you know?”

  “But that’s not all there is to it.”

  “That depends. That’s all there is to it for me.”

  “Well, I need to tell you. I shot her. I did it.” Pascal bobbed his head up and down. “I shot Jo Miller.”

  “You did?” Pauletta was very collected. She didn’t move, didn’t change her position, didn’t blink or gasp or recoil.

  “I did. I shot her. It’s a lot to carry around with you, even if you feel you had a good reason for doing it.”

  “I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Let’s take this in steps. You murdered Jo Miller, your brother’s wife. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Pascal rested his hands on the edge of the table, and the metal chain on his cuffs scra
ped the wood, made a harsh, deep sound.

  “Shot her?” Pauletta had started inching forward, moving closer to Pascal.

  “I shot Jo Miller.” Pascal’s voice was determined; he seemed to be pushing the words out of his mouth.

  “You shot her with the twenty-two pistol?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her twenty-two, the one the police recovered?” Pauletta asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “How is it that she had discharge residue on her hand?”

  “Simple. That was the second shot. I shot her, put the gun in her hand, squeezed the trigger and fired the second bullet into a backstop. A piece of firewood laid over a copy of War and Peace. It was the thickest book on the shelf, and I thought it would score pretty high irony points, sort of playful and appropriate.”

  Pauletta nodded, thought for a moment. “So … so how did you get the gun? Find it in her house or—wait a minute. Let’s backtrack. How did you get into her house in the middle of the night?”

  “I wrote Jo Miller when Evers told me what was happening, about catching her in the rack with Falstaf. I knew they were going to get a divorce. I tried, you know, to talk Jo Miller into not being so punitive and greedy. I was sincere at first, really tried to work things out. I called her on the phone, too. She wrote me back and told me, basically, to drop dead. I tried a couple more times to get her to settle things with Evers, sort of tried to broker things, threw out some possible offers, even tried, tried one time, to get her to call Evers and see if they could get back together. I did not want them to go back to court after the first hearing was such a nightmare. Pauletta, Jo Miller was rattlesnake mean, all fangs and venom. I finally told her I had some pages that Evers might be okay with, an outline of a separation agreement, and that I needed to sneak it to her and talk with her about it. If she’d go along with the proposal, I promised her that I’d twist his arm a little. I told her that the whole thing was making life tough for Evers and me, that it had really caused problems, my testifying about sleeping with her, and that we needed to get something done. That was, all in all, pretty much true.”

  Pauletta waved her hand to cut him off. “Did you sleep with her? I’m assuming that you did, right?”

  “Yes, once. Years ago.”

  “Was she married to your brother then?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Evers knew this for sure?” Pauletta asked.

  “Yes. But you’re getting too far ahead. Hang on.” Pascal took his hands off the table and put them back in his lap. He seemed rushed and hurried, but eager to tell Pauletta every piece of the story.

  “Okay.”

  “Will it bother you if I smoke?” Pascal asked.

  “No, of course not. Go ahead.”

  Pascal took out a cigarette, tapped the open end on the table several times, bent his head toward his hands and stuck the cigarette between his lips. “Okay. Here’s the truly sad, amazing-as-hell thing. I get up and Ruth Esther is gone in my car. At first, I figure it’s Evers, but I look in the bedroom, and he’s in there. So I talk on the vibrator-and-leather-boots line for a while, wait for Ruth Esther to get back, sneak out through my bedroom window, roll my car out of the drive and take off to Jo Miller’s. I called her from a pay phone to tell her I’m on the way. Now—and this may strike you as small, insignificant, all things given—now she has to shoo Falstaf out of her house, and they’d just had sex, remember? That was the final report from Loggins and Greenfield. The lab analysis. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. So here I am, and she opens the door at four o’clock in the morning in a short T-shirt and a thong. No shit, Pauletta. She’s wide awake, got makeup on, hair combed, the whole nine yards, just unbelievably arrogant and vain and corrupt, and just got through with another guy. And you know she was doing all of this just to rub my nose in it, to tempt me and to hurt Evers.” Pascal had been talking with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Would you help me with this, help me light this thing? It’s sort of hard to strike a match with my hands like this.”

  “I don’t have my lighter. They made me leave my purse at the front desk,” Pauletta said. “I’m sorry.”

  “My matches are in my shirt pocket. Just reach in and get them.”

  Pauletta found the matches and lit Pascal’s cigarette. He inhaled as much as he could, held the smoke in and then breathed it out through his nose and mouth at the same time. “I left a boom box at the corner of Jo Miller’s porch with a Halloween tape in it. It’s a great tape. Ghosts and goblins and screams. We’ve had it for years at the trailer. Scares the shit out of the kids when they come to the doublewide trick-or-treating.”

  A guard opened the door and stuck his head into the room. “Everything okay in here?” he asked.

  Pauletta swiveled in her seat and faced the guard. “Sure. Why are you asking?”

  “Just policy. We have to check by every so often.”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Good.” The guard shut the door, and Pauletta smelled a little wave of cologne waft across the room.

  Pascal was taking drags off the cigarette, sucking in smoke and exhaling it while he spoke. “I showed Jo Miller this outline, this agreement I’d done about two weeks before, and while she’s gone to get a beer for me and to get a pair of sweatpants—she’s cold, right?—I tell her I hear something, go out, punch the play button on the box, come back in, and then, of course, she hears something. I ask her for the gun, tell her to go to her room and lock the door. I go back out, stay a few minutes, walk back in and tell her that it was a couple of raccoons in the garbage.”

  “You’re still in her bedroom?”

  “Exactly. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and I ran over and put the barrel right up to her head. Oh—I guess it goes without saying that I put on gloves when I went outside. The whole thing took about twenty minutes.”

  “The suicide note?” Pauletta asked.

  “I took the last page of one of the letters she’d written me. I just thought of it that night, thought up the whole plan right after I went into my room. It absolutely broke Evers’ heart when I told him what I’d done—you know, sleeping with Jo Miller. I mean, we’d talked about it before, and he probably had some suspicions, especially after the trial, but when I told him for sure, it really hurt him. I’ve never seen him cry, but he got really upset, and I stuck my head out of my bedroom after I left to go to sleep and, well, he was just sobbing, had his head in his hands. More because of me, what I’d done and what it would do to us, more because I’d let him down than anything Jo Miller had done.” Pascal had smoked his cigarette almost to the filter, and he dropped it onto the floor and stubbed it out with his foot.

  “I’m not sure I understand. I can see why Evers was upset, but I’m not sure how you managed to produce a suicide note.”

  “I just took the last page of one of her letters to me, typed the suicide message on the computer, and printed it out on that same page under her signature. I had the letter at the trailer, and I just took off the last page. I’ll never forget it: ‘I’m sorry that it has come to this. Sorry for all of us. I wish things could have turned out differently, but I truly believe that I have been a good person and a good wife and that this is the right thing for me, for you, for Evers, for everyone. I deserve my freedom.’ Pretty dramatic, huh? She wrote it on rose-colored stationery with an embossed monogram, too. How perfect. Like I said, I just thought of it that night—right after I’d decided what I was going to do.”

  “That’s clever, Pascal. And lucky—if that’s the word you want to use—lucky that you had a page with no more than that on it.”

  “I’d really tried to work something out, right up to the end,” Pascal said. “I didn’t start out trying to get her to compose a suicide note, not at all. The only tiny fly in the ointment—if anyone had ever really looked at the letter, there were no fingerprints on the paper. I’d handled it, so I had to completely clean it up, wipe it off. And I fucked up her name; tha
t wasn’t good.”

  “How’d you get her to mail it for you?”

  “That was a little trickier. I took a check with me, one of Evers’, forged his name and wrote it for fifty thousand dollars, told Jo Miller it was good-faith money. She didn’t trust me to hold it and I didn’t trust her, so we agreed we would send it to her mother while we worked out the deal. If she didn’t sign anything, we got the check back, so on and so on, and you get the picture. I just used the envelope she’d written out, and the check never got sent. I was even going to use her saliva, but her mouth was full of blood after everything happened, so I used tap water. I couldn’t be sure that her mother would let someone know about it, but it was a pretty good bet. Made it easier to take the dive on the confession, too, knowing I probably had a little backup. And there you have it.”

  “So you really killed her? This isn’t a joke or feint or trail to nowhere?” Pascal had put another cigarette in his mouth, and Pauletta lit it for him.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess I’m … a little shocked, but this isn’t a total surprise. I always thought there were a few gremlins in this one, some stray pieces and rough edges. To tell you the truth, though, I figured that most of it had to do with Evers. That he was involved or knew more than he was letting on.”

  “Nope. He has no clue. None.”

  Pauletta glanced up at the spider’s web in the corner above her head. “And I guess I know why you shot her, because—”

  “Because she was absolutely vicious and had just about ruined Evers. Steady betrayal, lying to him, taking his money, taunting him. Then when I told him what I’d done, about sleeping with her, told him the truth, it almost, like I say, killed him.”

  “Perhaps, if we’re handing out punishment for betrayal and causing Evers suffering, you should have shot yourself as well. You were as guilty as she was.”

  Pascal reached up with both of his hands and took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I was guilty once and regretted it. I asked Evers to forgive me. She was guilty again and again and reveled in it.”