“It’s me,” Enoch said. “How could you just take Jake without talking to me first?”
If he thought this was the way to start with me, he was very mistaken. I lowered the volume on the music and said, “Enoch, you left the dog alone in a dark house with no water—and he had to go! You told me you’d take him to work. When I let him out, he hardly made it out the door!”
He sighed. “Claire. We had a six alarm over in Jamaica. Terrible. Three people—”
“Oh. All right, all right. I’m sorry. But still, don’t go blaming me for taking my dog when your job interferes with his well-being!”
“Well-being! He had to hold it in for an hour! Jesus!”
“Enoch, was there something else?”
“Well, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m out on Long Island. I have a safe place to stay and there’s nothing, really, you need to know after that.”
“Whose house are you staying at?”
I looked up at the shelves of dusty books. “Some old woman’s house.” I didn’t exactly lie.
“So what are you doing?”
“At the moment I’m cleaning out that old woman’s jelly safe.”
“So now you’re a cleaning lady.”
“Sort of.”
“Claire. This is ridiculous.”
“No more ridiculous than living with you under false pretenses.”
“I keep telling you. I’m not gay. It was so unimportant! Every guy—”
“No, Enoch, not every guy,” I said, my lips tight, thinking unhappily of Morgan Donovan and his loyalty to a pledge. “While I’m on my way to the city to get some go-nowhere, stupid job you put me up to so you could have unprotected sex with some man—”
“It wasn’t unprotected sex. I wasn’t having unprotected sex with anyone but you.”
Something about the way he said it rang true. “At least that.” I gave a guarded sigh of relief, my chances for survival improving.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said.
“Look. I’m not hurt. Not anymore. I don’t know what I am, but I just don’t want to see you.”
He said nothing. He hadn’t wanted this, didn’t ask to favor men. But, I reminded myself, he’d brought this on himself. I was his cover. I remembered that long-ago man in the park jacking off every chance he got to a young girl at a lonely bus stop. A girl who’d felt too guilty to tell. Well, I was grown up now and I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life as somebody’s cover. “Look, Enoch, it’s over. You and I both know it. Let’s just get on with our lives.”
“You’re just going to dump me?!”
His astonishment was so outraged I almost laughed. Finally, I said, “Look, I’ll call you before I come back to Queens to pick up the rest of my stuff.” We hung up and I thought, That’s it. My days of devoting myself to inappropriate love are over. Finished. Basta. A man with a yen for other men. A man engaged to another woman. A man still carrying a torch for the wife who’d left him! What was wrong with me? Well, whatever it was, I was done. I turned up the volume on the music. From now on I was off to a new start. And, as my ex-husband would say, Let everybody else go get locked up! So resolutely did I simmer, I never heard the door I’d never thought to lock creak open until Jake went berserk. He jumped up on it, knocking over one of Noola’s pretty china vases, banging the door shut with such an intimidating cacophony of barks that whoever it was had to have run down the hill in a sissy fit. I didn’t even think to be frightened as I picked up the pieces of china. I was more concerned I’d scared off Mrs. Dellaverna, or maybe a raccoon. Raccoon would be bad. I went to the door and opened it. I craned my neck but didn’t see a soul. Whoever it was had dropped a lovely gray glove on the step when Jake had gone into protection mode. I picked it up and laid it on the mailbox till someone would claim it, went back in the house, and then, with an odd feeling, turned around and locked the door.
It was the sky that had gone crazy, not him. He almost laughed at the churning, whipping treetops, dense and black as pitchforks against the starry sky. And that music. What lunacy! Oh, she was someone he was going to have a lot of fun with.
He tromped easily through the bush and heavy pine, the steep hill propelling him down and along. He hadn’t counted on that dog. That was a surprise. But dogs were no problem. Cats were the sly ones. Sinister, he thought with a smile, like me.
Unconcerned and hatless, he kept on down through the heavy undergrowth. He was just beginning to enjoy himself and then suddenly—foraging through his pocket and remembering he’d forgotten his glove—he slammed to a halt. His shoulders tightened and hunched, his breath came short and rapid. Fir branches swatted and shushed the moldy stone along the Irish fence.
But it wasn’t important, he soothed himself. He’d get it back. And then he’d have to go underground for a while. But just for a while. …
Jenny Rose
Jenny Rose sat dwarfed in the blue flowered easy chair. She lit up a cigarette and tried to smoke, but it made her feel sick. She stuck it into a soggy tea bag and listened to it go sss. Her mother’s family all lived these entire lives and here she’d never known them, never been part of their holidays or meals or any of those things they took for granted. They probably never even thought of her. Never. You could see it on their smug faces when they posed for Christmas pictures. No one thought If only Jenny Rose were here. No one had longed for her. She leaned her chin against the windowsill. The paint was so old it was probably lead. And yet … she remembered today and her grandfather’s face.
She’d turned to see him watching her while she’d trimmed the fruit and their eyes had met. He hadn’t looked away as though he were loaded with guilt. His eyes, so much like her own, had said something nice. A little bit like love, she thought. He was her own grandfather, wasn’t he? She rocked with a fair dose of pleasure. Her own precious blood.
Claire
It was morning. Jake sat politely before me, his head cocked, his drool forming a puddle to his left on the floor. “Hello,” I said, “have you eaten the kitten?” I looked around. There she was, up on top of the fridge, sound asleep. But as I spoke to Jake, one little ear of the kitten stood up to listen. I’d stripped the windows before I’d gone to bed and now I rose, eager to see what had become of the delicate curtains. They looked all right. They hadn’t shrunk, anyway. I opened the screen door and let Jake out, hoping he wouldn’t frighten Mrs. Dellaverna. The kitten streaked past us and with equal measures of hope and fear I thought, Oh, boy, I’ll never see her again. The curtains were still damp so I put them in the dryer for a short time and then laid them out flat on the table, now blessedly empty and scrubbed to a sheen. I lugged the ironing board out and touched them up, then the embroidered dishtowels. Those ironed up so prettily, I hung them over the sink window with fish hooks I found in a bait box and stood back to admire my work.
When I went to let Jake back in, I remembered the glove from last night and looked to the mailbox. It was gone. That was odd. Jake lumbered happily over, ready for breakfast now. “What did you do,” I said, rumpling his fur, “hide it?” Oh, well, I figured, it’d turn up eventually. We went back in. I navigated him through a bowl of water and wiped his muddy paws, then gave him a dish of dry food livened with Mrs. Dellaverna’s leftover manicotti. He devoured this with gusto and when he’d finished, he mopped his snout this way and that on the old Turkish carpet. He came back to me with that drunken sailor gait of his and pressed the side of his warm body against my leg. I stood there for a moment just being with him. One of the bulbs in the pretty hanging lamp over the table gave a notifying flicker and went out. I knew I had plenty of bulbs and went to the closet to fetch one, then stood on a chair and peered into the bowl of stained glass while I had the pack in my hand. My heart sank. Six dead bees. I don’t know what it is about me and bees, but to see so many of them dead in there, it just made me
feel horrible. I reeled and held on to the lamp and climbed down. But I’m a modern woman and I don’t bother with omens. I went into the bathroom and washed my hands and face and brushed my teeth. We were going to visit Radiance this morning and I wanted to organize my thoughts. I fixed myself a percolated cup of coffee and opened the window to the cold and sat down with the view. The clean smell of the salt air wafted in. I didn’t know what I’d done right in life to have that view for me alone, but there it was and here I was. I wrapped myself in Noola’s old shawl and hugged my hot, milky coffee to my chest and listened to the screams of the gulls and—Was that him? Yes. The man with the doll. I’d behaved terribly. He might be crazy but no one deserved to be made to feel like a monster! I leaped to my feet and raced out the door, hoping to catch him, to apologize.
“Aye!” Mrs. Dellaverna stood at the gate barring my way. “Buongiorno!”
“Good morning!” I called in return, relinquishing any idea of the beach. And I got a load of what Mrs. Dellaverna was carrying: a pot of homemade gravy and ravioli, all for me. This would have to stop or I’d be big as a house. I invited her in to get acquainted with Jake and sat with her while she talked. Not once did I look at my watch.
By the time I got to Twillyweed, the sun was high in the sky. When Jenny Rose saw me coming up the drive, she burst out the door. There was no walking out the door for Jenny Rose; wherever she went it was always a bursting, the door slammed and the birds holed up in the bushes took off for their lives. I got a warm hug and a How’s the pooch? and then she ran back in and upstairs to grab her stuff. I was standing in the kitchen waiting for her to come back down when I heard a car in the driveway. It was Oliver’s snazzy red vintage Alpha Romeo. Jenny Rose sort of danced back down the stairs.
Paige came in wrapped in a perfectly ironed lavender bathrobe. She threw open the cabinet over the sink. Without greeting me she said, “Turn off that fluorescent light, will you? I have such a splitting headache! Jenny Rose, will you run upstairs and ask Patsy Mooney where the painkillers are?”
Oliver opened the back door and rubbed his hands together. “Man! It’s nippy out there.”
He looked happy to see me. He was wearing a lightweight navy blue cashmere overcoat and brought the cold in with him. He looked like a diplomat, his blond hair brushed straight back. He was different when he wasn’t drinking. Younger. His eyes were bright. I was glad to see him, too.
Paige pursed her lips. “And where have you been all night?”
He went to the sink and washed his hands. “Just over in Freeport.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “Took the casino boat.” He flicked his wrists to dry off rather than disturb the ironed hand towel, purposely sprinkling water on the potted ivy. “Claire,” he said, “I was wondering if you’d accompany me to the dance?”
Paige put in hurriedly, “We have to go. It’s not a dance dance. It’s for charity. Everyone sort of has to go.”
“When’s that?”
“After the big race.”
“I’d love to.” I smiled.
Paige crossed her arms. Out of the blue, she said, “Look, Claire, I know from Jenny Rose that you’re worried about the AIDS thing. I’ve got a friend over at St. Francis. She’s a volunteer. Runs the joint, to hear her tell it. Anyway, she could get you in for a test. In and out. What do you say?”
I tried not to look at Oliver. What must he think? “Absolutely. That’s so kind of you. I have insurance. I just … haven’t had time to do anything about it yet. Thank you so much.”
“Not at all.” And then, knowingly, “I don’t want my brother catching it.” She winked. “Oh! That reminds me. Oliver, come inside and help me pull down the crystal punch bowl. It’s our contribution. They want to show it off today to raffle it. I asked Patsy to get it down yesterday and she never did.” She saw his face and frowned. “Don’t look so aghast. We never use it.”
“Can’t it wait?” He moved her perfunctorily aside.
“No, it can’t. Mrs. Lassiter is stopping by to pick it up for the dance. I don’t want her coming in and sitting down, wasting my time,” she insisted ungraciously. “I really want it done now.”
He padded halfheartedly behind her into the dining room. His toes, I was sad to notice, pointed out.
Jenny Rose trailed the rim of the sugar bowl with her finger and cocked her head at me.
“So what now? You fancy Cupsand saucers?”
“It’s just a dance, Jenny Rose.”
She lowered her voice, “Did you ever notice that Morgan Donovan watches you when you’re not watching him?”
I fought the coming blush with all the might of last night’s resolution. “Morgan? He’s nice.”
“Nice? He’s worth two of that moron you’re thinking of seeing.”
“Morgan happens to belong to someone else.”
“Who?”
“That ‘moron’s’ sister, as if you didn’t know.”
“That’s not the way I see it. He doesn’t love her. And they’re not married. Anyway, it’s pretty obvious he’s got a crush on you.”
I looked up, desperate to hear just these very words and yet knowing the hopes they brought with them would ultimately be dashed. Jenny Rose was just a girl. She thought a man’s keen interest meant he was stuck on you. She didn’t realize that in the end, commitments held men accountable. I was just the new gal in town. Besides—and this I knew for sure—I wasn’t about to be anybody’s last fling before he tied the knot.
Oliver came back in in his shirtsleeves and Paige, not trusting him, followed carrying the crystal bowl, then rested it on the marble countertop. “How’s our boy?” Oliver said.
Jenny Rose leaned over a basket of fruit on the table. “Off to school. And,” she added merrily, “he walked the whole way.” She took a bite of a green apple with a delicious-sounding crunch.
Irritated, Paige touched her temples. “Jenny Rose. Please. The Tylenol. I’m dying.”
“Okay.” She trotted off down the stairs.
“Why is it so quiet?” Oliver said. Brother and sister squared off and faced each other.
The atmosphere between them was so thick they seemed about to have an argument. “Well …” I stood. “I’d best be off. I’ll wait out—”
“Don’t be silly.” Paige raised a shoulder. “Have some tea.”
It didn’t take much of a dimwit to realize I was in the way. “If I have any more tea this week, I’ll float away.”
“It’s the clock.” Paige stood erect. “No one’s wound the clock.”
“Oh, that’s it,” Oliver agreed. “Someone’s walked off with the key. Wait, Claire. I’ll drive you up. Car’s still warm.”
I considered what to do. If I told him we were off to Radiance’s, I might get Jenny Rose in trouble. Maybe her mornings weren’t her own. “I really do want to walk.” I smiled insincerely at him. “But thanks.”
There was a clunking, banging sound. We all looked up. The cellar door flew open and Sam the cat shot across the room like a bat out of hell. Jenny Rose staggered into the room. Her mouth was in an O. She didn’t look at us. She grabbed her throat and with a pitch to the heavens, she screamed and screamed and screamed.
“What’s happened?” Mr. Piet hurried in, knocking over the avocado plant and spilling dirt across the white tiles.
“It’s Patsy Mooney,” Jenny Rose gasped.
Oliver and Mr. Piet rushed down the stairs she’d come up.
“She’s dead,” Jenny Rose whimpered.
They came back up.
“Call the police,” Oliver said. He was pale as a ghost. “She’s been strangled.”
Chapter Five
Claire
Jenny Rose came up to the cottage after the doctor and the coroner had come and the police had cordoned off the place. She fell into my arms and I let her cry, then we sat down together on the old couch, w
hich, at last free of clutter, was warm and embracing.
“So you gave them the stones?” I said.
“No,” she whispered, like they were listening.
“What? Are you crazy? Now they’ll think we have something to do with it!”
“Well, you left!”
“Oliver told me to come here and wait. Did the detective interview you?”
“No, I said I had to go get Wendell.”
“But it was you who found Patsy! And Wendell’s in school.”
“I know. I lied.”
I stared at her. “You can’t lie to them. They’ll find out and think you have something to hide!”
“They’ll arrest me. Is that what you want? Whoever killed Mrs. Mooney was after me.”
“What! Why?”
“Don’t you remember me telling you I changed rooms with her? Somebody went there to get me. And then they found her instead and killed her.”
We sat there looking at each other. Then she said, “So what should we do?”
“Being arrested is better than being killed.” I said. “Anyway, why would they want to arrest you?”
She yelled, “That’s the big story in the media, illegal immigrants who kill Americans! Of course they’ll think it’s me. Is that what you want, me to go to jail?”
“Of course not. Just … Just … I don’t know. There’s a vast difference between a Dominican gang member and an Irish au pair!” But even as I said it I recognized the take a Nassau County detective would have on Jenny Rose with her hip-hop hair and blue nails and tattoos, even if they were fake. She looked like a punk. I said, “Let’s just try and think clearly. You came to Sea Cliff and right away Wendell gave you the moonstones.”
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