For a while Laurie sat silently and so did Crane; her hands felt cold around his.
“What happened, Laurie?” he asked her.
She looked at him with a face that was much too much like Mary Beth’s and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Laurie, Mary Beth wasn’t depressed one day in the two years I knew her.”
“She wasn’t all that depressed this summer, either. Just kind of blue.”
“Kind of blue.”
“Worse, I guess, the last week or so.”
“What happened the last week?”
“Crane, I was close to my sister, growing up. But we didn’t talk much this summer. Something was bothering her, that much I know. What it was, exactly, I don’t know.”
“It had to be something…”
“Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought. Never depressed a day while you knew her, huh? Well, a week after she got home I found her up in the middle of the night, sitting in the bathroom, bawling.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Her period, maybe, who can know? Only it was more often than that… I found her bawling like that four or five times.”
“And she never said what was troubling her?”
“Once she admitted to me that she was thinking about Dad. He died of cancer about three years ago, you know. They were close. Being in this house reminded her of him, and that got to her.”
“Got to her enough to make her do what she did, Laurie?”
“Who can say?”
“You mean you can understand it? You can understand somebody going into a bathroom and… and…”
“Slashing their wrists? I don’t understand it, exactly. But I can see it. Haven’t you ever thought about killing yourself, Crane? Hasn’t everybody?”
“Maybe everybody else has. I haven’t. It’s a fucking waste, Laurie! It’s the biggest fucking waste I can imagine.”
“Why? Because life is so wonderful? What’s wonderful about it?”
He pulled his hand away from hers. He didn’t like what he was hearing coming out of this face that was so much like Mary Beth’s. He didn’t like the sickness that Laurie seemed to have, in a small way, that Mary Beth must’ve had in a larger way.
She must’ve sensed it, because she seemed to soften, reaching out and touching his shoulder as she said, “She loved you, Crane. I know she did. You were the most important thing in her life.”
“A life that meant so little to her she flushed it down the goddamn toilet.”
He stared at the wall. Laurie wasn’t saying anything. When he looked over at her, she was crying into her hands.
“Laurie,” he said, putting an arm around her, “it’s been rough on you, too. I know that.”
“I… I do know one thing that depressed her.”
“Yes?”
“Brucie.”
“Brucie?”
“Brucie. My little Brucie. She was unhappy for him.”
He didn’t understand that. He let it pass.
“Laurie, who found her?”
“Mom. In the morning. Mom came and got me up. Mary Beth had been gone for hours by the time we found her.”
“Can I see where it was?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging.
She led him there.
He hesitated a moment.
Then he looked in and saw a bathroom, shining clean, guest towels hanging.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he said.
“I know,” Laurie said. “It should be more dramatic than just a bathroom. But it’s just a bathroom. It’s the only one in the house, too, so both Mom and I were forced to use it, and that helped us, in a weird way. It helped make it just a bathroom. I use it sometimes and don’t even think about her lying there.”
He looked at Laurie. She was looking at the bathroom floor, blankly.
“Laurie,” he said, guiding her back into the hallway. “Are you okay? I mean… are you really okay?”
“You mean, am I gonna be next?” She smiled a little. “I don’t think so. I’m depressed. My sister just killed herself. I got a right to be. And, anyway, I got Brucie. I still got little Brucie. I live for that kid. You want to see him?”
“I sure do.”
She took him into her room, a blue room with a bed with ruffled blue spread, and a Jenny Lind crib with a blue blanket nearby. She peeked in the crib and began playing with the well-behaved child, who made cooing, gurgling noises back at her.
Crane looked in at the child.
Brucie was adorable, but it wasn’t hard to see why Mary Beth had been disturbed about the boy.
He didn’t have any hands.
Chapter Five
The street light on her block was out, but there were lights on in the downstairs of the big white two-story house. It was a gothic-looking structure with no porch and paint just beginning to peel. There were trees on either side of the place and the overall effect was rather gloomy. He knocked on the door.
He put his hands in his pockets and waited. It was a cool evening; perhaps he should’ve stopped back at the motel for his jacket. There was no sound except the crickets. No sound from within the house, either. He knocked again.
Finally a muffled voice behind the door, Boone’s voice, said, “Who is it?”
And he felt another wave of embarrassment, like he had outside the church, after the funeral, and he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He turned to go.
He heard the door open behind him. Then: “Oh. It’s you.”
He turned and she was still in the plaid shirt and jeans, her blonde hair pinned back, pulled away from her face, and it was a good strong face with hard cheekbones but very pretty. Her expression, though, was cold, condescending, and it pissed him off.
His face felt tight as he said, “What did you mean?”
“What?”
“What did you mean by saying Mary Beth didn’t kill herself?”
“Did I say that?”
“You said it. And I want to know what you meant by it!”
“Is that why you were walking away with your butt tucked between your legs, when I opened the door?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself.”
“Why don’t you just go? Go home, Crane!”
The door slammed shut.
He stood and looked at it, wondering what he was doing here, standing in front of this door, of this house, in this town, in this state… maybe going home wasn’t such a bad idea.
But how could he, till he found out what Boone knew about Mary Beth’s death?
He was raising his fist to knock again when the door opened. Boone leaned against the door and looked at his upraised fist, smirked, shook her head, sighed and said, “Come on in. You look like a horse’s ass just standing there staring.”
The house seemed very big inside, but that was because there wasn’t much furniture, just a lot of dark wood trim and dark polished wood floors that reminded him of the church this afternoon; the cream-colored plaster walls and the secondhand-store furniture in the living room area she led him to reminded him of the duplex he used to share in Iowa City, where he and Mary Beth had spent their first evening.
She motioned to a sagging red sofa and he sat down. She pulled up a hardback chair, which was one of the few other pieces of furniture in the room. The place did look lived in; in one corner was a portable TV on a stand; against one wall was a small stereo flanked by speakers the size of cereal boxes, with a stack of albums, one of which—“No Nukes”—was propped up against the wall; and in the middle of a floor covered by a worn braided rug was a red toy fire truck which clashed with the faded red of the sofa.
“My husband left me the house and the kid,” Boone said, “and took all the furniture. Any other questions?”
“Jeez,” Crane said, “it’s kind of hard to picture you and some guy having trouble getting along.”
“I had that coming,” she said, smiling with almost no sarcasm at all. “D
o you want something to drink?”
“Please. Nothing alcoholic.”
“I got nothing alcoholic. You can have milk or herbal tea or juice.”
“What kind of juice?”
“V-8 or orange.”
“Orange.”
She brought it to him, in a big glass with Bugs Bunny on it, with ice. She had V-8 and the Road Runner and no ice.
He sipped the juice and said, “Thank you.”
She sat back down and said, “It won’t kill me to be civil to you, I guess. For some reason I find myself wanting to take it out on you.”
“Mary Beth dying, you mean.”
“Yeah. That and my divorce and life in general. You just make a handy whipping boy.”
“It’s nice to serve a purpose.”
“How did you find me? I’m not in the phone book.”
“Laurie gave me your address. I just came from there.”
“How are Laurie and her mother doing?”
“The mother seems dazed, in shock. People are standing around eating and smoking and talking about sports. How Laurie’s doing, I don’t know.”
“Laurie has her problems.”
“I know. I saw her son.”
“Little Brucie isn’t unique, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Birth defects are nothing to write Ripley about, is what I mean. Especially around here.”
“How so?”
“I know of two other women in Greenwood in the past three years whose kids were born with deformities. Mary Beth knew about them.”
“Boone, I was down this road with Laurie… she seems to think Mary Beth was depressed over Brucie’s birth defect, and by her father’s death… but I just can’t buy it. You knew her. Did she seem at all suicidal to you?”
“No. I told you… I don’t believe she killed herself.”
“What do you believe?”
“I believe she’s dead. Don’t you?”
He stood; the orange juice in his hand splashed.
“Goddamnit,” he said, feeling red in the face, flustered, “tell me! Quit playing with me! If you know something, suspect something, let me in on the goddamn fucking secret!”
A little boy about six in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms wandered in. He had thick dark hair and was rubbing his eyes and saying, “Mommy, what’s going on out here? I’m sleeping.”
Boone smiled at the boy, tousled his hair and said, “Mommy’s got company. Go on back to bed.”
The boy looked at Crane and said, “Who are you?”
Crane didn’t know what to say; he was standing there with a glass of orange juice in his hand, half of which he’d just splashed on himself, knowing he looked like an idiot, both to this six year old and himself.
“Just a friend of Mommy’s,” Boone said.
“If he stays all night I’ll tell Daddy,” the boy said.
“He won’t be staying all night,” she said, getting firm. “Now go to bed!”
The kid shrugged and said, “Okay,” and gave Crane a dirty look and shuffled off.
Crane sat down. “Sorry I got loud,” he said.
“I’m sorry I seem so evasive…”
“You’ve got a nice-looking boy, there.”
“He looks like his father. Same disposition, too, I’m afraid.”
“His father must be a good-looking guy.”
“He is.”
“There isn’t much affection in your voice.”
“There isn’t much affection in me, period, where Patrick is concerned.”
“Patrick? Your husband’s name is Patrick Boone? Pat Boone?”
She smiled. “Yeah. We used to kid him about that, back in the old days.” She laughed softly. “The old days. Did you ever think the Vietnam years would be the ‘old days’?”
“Nobody ever thinks any time is going to be the ‘old days.’ That’s when you met your husband, then? In college?”
“Yeah. He was a little older than me. We worked together on an underground paper. The Third Eye, it was called.”
“Was that around here someplace?”
“No. Back in your neck of the woods—the Midwest. Eastern Illinois University. Very straight school. We were regular outlaws.”
“It must’ve been a good time to be an outlaw.”
“Yeah, I keep forgetting. You weren’t there. You were just a kid. Still are.”
“You’re not that much older than me.”
“I’m older than you’ll ever be. You didn’t even live through the draft, did you? Jesus.”
“Neither did you. They weren’t drafting women, the way I heard it.”
“I lived through it with Patrick. A lot of young women lived through it with their men. Their husbands. Brothers. It wasn’t easy for anybody with that hanging over them.”
“You were active in the anti-war movement?”
“Yes. Patrick was. I was. We both were. Carried signs. We were at Chicago. Patrick got his head smashed by a cop. Pig, as we used to say. Six stitches. Back on campus, he was a draft counselor. He was studying pre-law.”
“So he’s a lawyer now?”
“No. He shifted over into business and that’s what he got his degree in.” Her voice took on a sad sarcasm. “Currently he’s in the personnel department at Kemco.”
“Kemco. That’s where Mary Beth was working this summer.”
“Right. It’s where her father worked. It’s where everybody in this town who isn’t a farmer works. Everybody in the whole area.”
“Why do I get the feeling you don’t like Kemco much?”
“I guess that’s because it’s what broke my marriage up.”
“I see.”
“No, I doubt if you do. What do you know about Kemco?”
“They’re big. Not the biggest. But big.”
“What do you know about Agent Orange?”
“Defoliant used in Vietnam. Some Vietnam vets exposed to it are now complaining about illnesses. Headaches, nausea, acne, that sort of thing. Lots of media play.”
“Mary Beth said you were a journalism major. You really do know a little bit about what’s going on in the world. Not much, but a little, anyway.”
“Well why don’t you bring me up to your level of awareness, then? If that’s possible without dropping acid.”
She flinched. “I said I was into the anti-war movement, way back when. I didn’t say I did dope.”
“Forget it. Go on.” Crane wondered why dope was a sore point with Boone; but she was talking again…
“Agent Orange is an herbicide. We dumped forty-four million pounds of it on Vietnam. To kill the plants, so we could see the people better, to kill them, too.”
“Don’t take this wrong,” Crane said, “but it was a war. Killing the enemy is the point in a war.”
“The point is that undeclared war was supposed to be saving a country for democracy. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that one of the ways we saved that country for democracy was to dump poison on it? Poison that killed plants, and animals, and people, and caused miscarriages and raised the infant mortality rates and…”
“And Kemco made this stuff?”
“One of the major suppliers, yes. I remember when they came to our campus in the early ’70s, recruiting, and we protested. And nobody protested harder and louder and better than Patrick. Nobody.”
“Only now he works for them. For Kemco.”
“Right.”
“He took the job and you divorced him.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’ll tell you what it was like. He told you he’d work from within. Change the system by getting inside the system. That he’d cut his hair and put on a three-piece suit and be quietly subversive.”
He’d struck another nerve: she got up and walked over to him and looked down at him with a stone face and said, “I didn’t leave him, Crane. He left me. Because I wasn’t the corporate wife. I didn’t adjust to the life-style. I couldn’t entertain his business asso
ciates. All I could do was spend my time writing my ‘little articles,’ as he called them, for what remains of the radical underground press.”
She sat next to him.
“He bought this house, you know,” she went on, “and filled it with modern furniture. Can you image? This house must be seventy, eighty years old—it’s beautiful—and he fills it with modular this, and modular that. The son of a bitch. He sold me out. He sold us all out. Himself especially. That’s the worst fucking part.”
“People change.”
“Oh, fine. People change. They drift apart. Like in, one of them stays in Iowa and digs ditches, and the other one comes home to New Jersey and slashes her wrists.”
It hit him like a physical blow. She saw it and said, “Sorry. Sorry. I keep taking it out on you, don’t I? Mary Beth didn’t get depressed and kill herself, Crane. Kemco killed her.”
“Yes, well,” Crane said, rising. He handed her the half-empty glass of juice and said thanks.
“You’re writing me off as a nut, aren’t you?” Boone said, quietly, calmly, following him to the door.
“Good night, Boone,” he said, and let himself out.
“You’ll be back,” she said from the doorway.
He’d have felt better about it if there had been some hysteria in her voice, when she said that; some bitter craziness.
But there wasn’t.
“They killed her, Crane,” she called out to him. Quiet. Sane.
He walked away from the house and crossed the quiet town and went to his motel room and tried to sleep.
Chapter Six
Waking up came as a surprise to Crane: he didn’t remember falling asleep and, for a moment, didn’t know where he was. Then the yellow walls brought the motel back to him. He sat up in bed. He had a sense that he’d been dreaming, but he didn’t remember what about. He did know that he was glad the dream was over.
He got up and showered and put on his jeans and a shirt and stuck his head out the front door. A brisk morning, but he wouldn’t need a jacket. He glanced at his watch: ten minutes after ten. Had he slept that long?
He sat back down on the bed, feeling disoriented, off balance. He didn’t feel so hot, his stomach grinding at him. Then he realized, suddenly, that he hadn’t eaten yesterday.
He walked from the motel to the business district, five blocks of double-story white clapboards, an occasional church and the constant trees for which Greenwood had undoubtedly been named, a few of which were turning color as fall took hold. The business district took up a couple of intersecting streets and consisted of old buildings with new faces: hardware, florist, druggist, accountant, insurance, jewelry, medical clinic, pizza place, laundromat, one of everything, and two each of bars and cafes. An American flag drooped outside the Wooden Nickel Saloon, an old brick building painted white with a Pabst sign in the window; next door was a unisex hairstyling salon. Across the street was the Candy Shop Restaurant, a two-story brick building with a white wooden front and a green-and-black striped awning that said: “Since 1910.” A neon sign, circa 1940, said candy in yellow, soda in red and lunch in yellow. He went in.
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