He lowered his voice quickly.
“. . . that family, there’s trouble there.”
“He did that”—Stevie pointed at the phone—“to get at his dad.”
“You’re not helping his case,” Larry said. “Look, I feel for the kid. He’s not all bad. I think the dad’s the problem. But he always acted out. I know he was good friends with Element Walker. I bet he took it hard when she turned up dead and he found the body. That does something to a person.”
It had. David had broken down completely, and Stevie, unable to process what was happening, had freaked out. She’d let him down because she could not handle it all. Guilt crept around the edges of everything—the taste of the coffee and the smell of the room and the cold coming from the window. Guilt and paranoia. She felt the thrumming in her chest, the engine of anxiety rumbling, making itself known.
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
She shook her head.
“Have you been in touch?”
She shook it again.
“You willing to show me your phone and prove it?” he asked.
“It’s the truth.”
“You need to promise something to me right now—if he gets in touch, you tell me. I’m not saying he had anything to do with the fire—I’m saying he could be a danger to himself.”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “I promise.”
The room was starting to throb a bit, the edges of things jumping out in her vision. There was a panic attack just under the surface, and it would arrive quickly. She surreptitiously reached into her bag, grabbing at her key ring. She kept a little screw-top vial on it. She got this off with a shaking hand and poured the contents into her palm under the table. One emergency Ativan, always there if needed. Breathe, Stevie. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.
“I need to get back,” she said, getting up.
“Stevie,” Larry said. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
He didn’t need to say what it was she needed to be careful about. It was everything and nothing. It was the specter in the woods. It was the creak of the floors. It was whatever was underneath all these accidents.
“I’ll keep in touch,” she said. “I’ll tell you if I hear from him. I promise. I just have to use the bathroom.”
She grabbed the bag and stumbled back toward the restrooms. Once inside, she popped the pill into her mouth and stuck her face under the faucet for a swig of water. She stood up, wiped the dripping water from her mouth, and looked at her pale face. The room throbbed. The pill wouldn’t work immediately, but it would work soon.
She left the bathroom but waited in the hallway for Larry to leave. As she waited, her eyes ran across the community bulletin board, with its cards for yoga instructors, massage therapists, music lessons, pottery classes. She was about to turn and leave when something about the blue flyer at the bottom right caught her eye. She stopped and read it more carefully:
BURLINGTON CABARET VON DADA DADA DADA DADA
Come see nothing. Have a noise. Dancing is mandatory and forbidden. Everything is yum.
Burlington Art Collective Action House
Every Saturday night, 9:00 p.m.
You are the ticket
There was a picture of a person painted gold and blue playing a violin with a carving knife, another person with cardboard boxes on their feet and fists, and, in the background, holding a saxophone . . .
Was Ellie.
April 4, 1936
ELLINGHAM ACADEMY WAS RICH IN DYNAMITE.
There were boxes of it piled high, beautiful, dull beige sticks with warnings on the side. Dynamite to blast rocks and flatten mountain surfaces. Dynamite for tunnels. Dynamite ruled her heart. Not Eddie. Dynamite.
When she’d first arrived, Albert Ellingham teased her with a stick and then laughed at her interest. After that, Francis kept watch. There was less of it now that most of the campus was built, but every once in a while she would hear a workman say the word, and then she would trail along behind him. It was during one of these walks that she heard someone inquire about what to do with some bits of wood.
“Throw them down the hole,” his coworker replied.
She watched as the man went over to a statue. A moment later, he sat on the ground and was lowering himself into an opening.
Francis immediately investigated when the coast was clear. It took her some time to work out where the man had gone. Just under the statue, there was a bit of rock. This, she was sure, was a hatch in disguise. It took her some time to work out how it opened—Albert Ellingham liked his games and architectural jokes. She found it and the rock dropped, revealing an opening and a wooden ladder to aid her descent.
The space she entered had the look of an unfinished project—much like the time Francis’s mother decided she wanted a music room before she remembered that she neither played nor particularly liked music. The half-finished idea, the first blows of the chisel before the sculptor decided that the subject and the stone were not to their liking . . . rich people did this. They left things unmade.
This project was grander in scale than her mother’s music room. The first part of the space was hollowed out and walled up in rough rock to look like a cave. This space narrowed at the end and turned. There was a rough doorway made of rock. Once she passed through this, she found herself in an underground wonderland—a grotto. There was a vast ditch dug out, about six feet deep. Inside of this there were bags of concrete and piles of brick waiting to be used. Along the back wall was a fresco, that Eddie would later identify as being a painting of the Valkyrie. In the far corner, there was a boat in the shape of a swan, painted in gold and red and green, which was tipped over on its side. Half-constructed stalagmites and stalactites lined the area, so it looked like a mouth full of broken teeth. There was garbage strewn about the place—beer bottles, broken shovels, cigarette packs.
For months, the rock had been frozen over, but now the ground was yielding and Francis could introduce Eddie to the lair. They slipped into the grotto several times a week to go about their secret activities. There were the physical ones, of course; the grotto’s privacy was also very useful when working on their plan.
On the day they decided to leave Ellingham for good, it would be Eddie’s job to get the guns. Shotguns were easy to get—there were loads of them stored around the school. Francis would see to the dynamite. They would steal a car from the garage behind the Great House to make their initial escape, but they would quickly get a new one in Burlington. They got maps and spread them out on the ground of the grotto, plotting their route out of Vermont. They would go south through New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky . . . cut through coal country. Start with small towns. Get in at night—blow the safe. No bloodshed if they could avoid it. Keep going until they got to California, and then . . .
. . . jump off, maybe. Even Bonnie and Clyde hit the end of the road down there in Louisiana, when the cops ambushed and filled their Ford Deluxe with bullets until it was more hole than car. Bonnie and Clyde got it. They were poets, Eddie said, and they wrote with bullets.
All of this planning went into Francis’s diary: possible routes, homemade explosives, tricks she learned from reading true-crime magazines.
On this April afternoon, Francis and Eddie had come down into their secret place once more. Eddie set up a ring of candles on the ground and drew a pentagram in the dirt. He was always doing things like that—playing at paganism. This affectation annoyed Francis; this was a hideout, not some kind of subterranean temple. But Eddie had to have his fun if she wanted to have hers, so she tolerated it.
“Today,” she said, setting down a bag of supplies, “we play.”
“Oh. I like that.” Eddie rolled himself flat on the ground in the circle and pulled up his shirt a bit. “What game did you have in mind?”
“Today we’re playing Let’s Scare Albert Ellingham.”
“Oh?” Eddie pushed up to his elbows. “Not what I was expecting, but I’m listen
ing.”
“He was rude to me,” Francis said. “When he showed me the dynamite. He laughed at me, as if I couldn’t handle explosives because I’m a girl. So we’re going to have a little fun with him. We’ll make him a riddle. He likes riddles. Only one like this.”
Francis reached into the bag and produced a pile of magazines. She pulled one off the top called Real Detective Stories and opened to a page with a folded corner with a picture of a ransom note made of cutout letters. Eddie rolled onto his stomach to examine the magazine.
“A poem,” he said.
“A warning in the form of a poem.”
“All good poems are warnings,” he said. (Francis resisted an eyeroll.) “We could start it, Riddle, riddle, time for fun . . .”
Francis got out her notebook and wrote this down. Riddle, riddle, time for fun. A perfect start. Eddie was good at this sort of thing.
“Then we could do something like Dorothy Parker’s poem ‘Resumé,’” Eddie went on. “It’s a list of ways to die. We could do ways to kill.”
“Shall we use a rope or gun?” Francis offered.
Lines were added . . . Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty . . . Poison’s slow, which is a pity . . . Ropes, car crashes, broken heads . . . The signature: Truly, Devious, that was both of them.
Then the second part began. She spread out the magazines and newspapers on the ground. She had collected them for weeks, pulling things out of the garbage, taking items from the library, snatching them from Gertie—Photoplay, Movie News, the Times, Life, the New Yorker. She removed the sewing scissors she had stolen from her mother’s maid while she was home at Christmas and a pair of tweezers. The paper and the envelope were from Woolworth. Magazines, scissors, paper, glue. Such simple, benign things.
They worked carefully, clipping each letter and word, dabbing it with glue, placing it just so on the page. It took several hours to find the right letters, to place them at the right angles. Francis insisted they wear gloves. It was unlikely the letter would be fingerprinted, but it was sensible to take precautions.
When it was done, they left it to dry and harden, and they busied themselves with each other, the thrill of the work pushing them on. There were certainly other couples who had had sex on the Ellingham campus—one or two. Those people did it giddy, bashfully, and wracked with terror. Eddie and Francis came to each other without fear or hesitation. When your future plan is a crime spree, getting caught together is of no concern, and the hideout was literally underground, under a rock. There was nowhere more private.
When they were finished and sweating, Francis picked up her clothes and shook them out before dressing.
“It’s time to go,” she said.
“I refuse.”
“Get up.”
Eddie got up. He was reluctant, but he did as Francis said.
When she was finished dressing, Francis repacked the supplies. Then, after putting on gloves, she folded the piece of paper.
“I have someone to mail it for us,” she said, lowering it gingerly into the envelope. “It will be postmarked from Burlington.”
“How will we know he got it?”
“He’ll probably tell Nelson. He tells her everything. Speaking of, I have to get back now. Nelson always has her eyes on me. She doesn’t trust me.”
“She’s right not to.”
The pair reemerged into the daylight. Francis blinked and looked at her watch.
“We’re late,” she said. “Nelson will be after me. We’d better hurry.”
“Once more,” Eddie said, grabbing her at the waist, “up against the tree, like an animal.”
“Eddie . . .” It was tempting, but Francis pushed him back. He growled a bit and gave play chase. Francis rushed ahead, laughing, gripping her supplies tight under her arm. The air was full and fresh. Everything was coming together. Soon they would be gone from here, she and Eddie, on their adventure. Away from New York, away from society—toward the road, toward freedom, toward madness and passion, where the kissing would never stop and the guns would blaze.
Once they were back in the more populated part of the campus, Eddie peeled off to greet some boys from his house. Francis continued on to Minerva. While there was more equality here at Ellingham than most places, there were still more rules for the girls. They had to come back earlier to rest, to read, to prepare themselves for dinner.
Francis pushed open the house door and found Miss Nelson sitting primly on the sofa, a large book on her lap. Gertie van Coevorden was there as well, smiling her idiotic smile and reading a movie magazine, the only reading she ever seemed to do. If Gertie van Coevorden had two brain cells, each would be amazed to know of the other’s existence. She did, however, have an uncanny sense of when someone else was going to get in trouble, and she made sure to be there to see.
“You’re a bit late, aren’t you, Francis?” Miss Nelson said as a greeting.
“Sorry, Miss Nelson,” Francis said, sounding not sorry at all. She was physically incapable of sounding sorry about anything. “I lost track of time at the library.”
“The library is a much dirtier place than I recall. You have leaves in your hair.”
“I read outside for a bit,” Francis said, brushing her hand lightly over her head. “I’ll go wash up for dinner.”
She shot Gertie a look as she passed, one that suggested that Gertie better wipe that smirk off her face if she wanted to keep all of her glossy blond hair. Gertie immediately turned back to her magazine.
In the safety of her room, Francis set her things down on her bed. While Albert Ellingham had furnished the rooms well, the furniture was plain. Francis’s family had sent her to school with an entire van of personal furnishings—bedding from Bergdorf, a silk dressing screen, fur rugs, tall mirrors, a French chifforobe, a small glass-and-walnut cabinet for makeup and bath oil, a silver dresser set and a dresser to go under it. Her curtains were handmade, as was the lace bed ruffle. She pulled off her coat and tossed it onto her rocking chair and regarded herself in the mirror. Sweaty. Dirty. Her blouse creased all over and the buttons all wrong. It could not have been clearer what she had been doing.
It pleased her. Let them see.
She turned back to the items on the bed. She made sure the magazines were all stashed in the paper bag. She would burn them later. She shoved this under the bed. The notebook was the important thing. It always had to be secured. She scanned their afternoon’s work, reading through the riddle with satisfaction and checking the envelope that she had tucked between the pages. But something . . . something was missing. She flipped through the book in a panic.
“Francis!” Miss Nelson called.
“Coming!”
More frantic flipping. Her photographs were in this book. The ones Eddie took of them posing as Bonnie and Clyde. Their secret images. They had come loose from their photo corners and were gone. They must have fallen out in the woods when she ran. Damnable, stupid Eddie! This was why she needed to be in charge. He had no discipline. When you rush, you make mistakes.
“Francis!”
“Yes!” Francis shot back.
There was no time now. She opened the closet door and got down on the floor and pulled back a bit of molding. She shoved the notebook into its place inside the wall and pushed the piece of wood back. Then she smoothed herself as best she could and went back to face the world.
4
THE BURLINGTON ART COLLECTIVE ACTION HOUSE WAS A TEN-minute walk from the coffee house on Church Street, or a seven-minute race-walk with a giant bag of coats and boots. Stevie was very careful not to check the time, because it would inevitably be too short. She had no clearly articulated reason for going, except that something needed to be done, so the fewer impediments (like practicality and basic self-preservation) the better.
She didn’t have to check the house number to know she had arrived in the right place. The Art Collective was in the same general area as Fenton’s house—a neighborhood of large Victorians in various states o
f repair, some owned by the college, some turned into apartments. While the basic size, shape, and style of the Art Collective house matched that of its neighbors, everything else singled it out. The house was painted in a deep, somewhat dirty lilac, with a sunbeam of purples on the gabled roof. The front porch sagged. A dozen or more mobiles hung from the porch roof beams; these were made of tin cans, broken bits of glass and pottery, rusty cogs and machine parts, and, in one case, rocks. There was a macramé plant hanger that suspended a mannequin head, which spun gently in the wind. The leg part of the mannequin stood alone in the far corner of the porch and was used to support an ashtray. A wooden box by the door contained a snow shovel and cat litter.
Stevie pulled back the screen and knocked on the inner door, which was painted wine red. A shirtless guy in a pair of patchwork pants and a massive knit hat opened it.
“Hi,” Stevie said, almost blanking for a moment as she realized that she had come to a very strange house to talk to strange strangers about something she had not clearly defined in her mind. Having no prepared statement, she held up the flyer and pointed at Ellie in the photo.
“Ellie was a friend of mine, and I think she came here. . . .”
The guy said nothing.
“I was wondering if . . . I . . . I just wanted to find out . . .”
He stepped back and held open the door for her to come inside.
The Burlington Art Collective Action House was a big place. One wall was full of bookshelves from floor to ceiling, packed solid with books. There was a small stage in the back, with an old piano and a pile of other instruments. In every direction, there was stuff. There were feather boas and top hats, half-formed pieces of pottery, drums, yoga mats, art books, a stray flute sitting in an empty fish tank . . . Off to the side, there was a mattress on the floor with loose bedding; someone called this living area their bedroom. The second floor was open, with a large balcony sealed off with a white wrought-iron rail, from which several painted sheets were hung. The smell of sage lorded over the space.
The Hand on the Wall Page 4