by Joy Fielding
Susan gasped as the two officers approached Tracey.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Lieutenant Gill began.
Tracey giggled. “This is just like on Law & Order.”
“Don’t say another word,” Vicki said over the lieutenant’s continuing drone. “Call her father,” she instructed Susan as the officers escorted a bemused-looking Tracey out the kitchen door, Vicki directly on their heels. “If he’s not home yet, leave a message. Tell him to meet me at the police station as soon as possible.”
“And then what?” Susan asked.
“Have your dinner. Get some sleep. Something tells me things are only going to get worse.”
Twenty-Nine
Chris sat in the darkness of her apartment without moving. In front of her the television screen flickered without sound. Images of Barbara, of Tracey, of the house on Grand Avenue, took turns assaulting her dazed eyes until she almost didn’t see them anymore: Barbara smiling her Mona Lisa smile, the smile that disturbed as few muscles as possible but still managed to convey the unrestrained joy in her heart; Barbara, her eyes radiating maternal pride, her arms wrapped tightly around Tracey, who stared impassively into the camera; Tracey as a pudgy infant, as a curly-haired moppet, as an awkward adolescent in a pink taffeta dress, a lone ringlet falling past her forehead toward the large, empty circles of her eyes. Why had she never noticed this emptiness before? Chris wondered. Or was it only in retrospect that Tracey’s eyes seemed so void of emotion? There was a little girl, Chris could hear Barbara sing over the continuing barrage of photographs, who had a little curl.… Chris sat motionless, a sharp ache, like a knife wedged between her breasts, stilling the erratic beating of her heart, so that she had to remind herself to breathe.
How could this have happened? How could anything so horrible have happened to someone as wonderful as Barbara? How could Tracey be in any way responsible? No, it simply wasn’t possible. Someone had made a mistake. Barbara wasn’t dead; Tracey hadn’t been charged with her murder. None of what Susan had told her was true. Susan was playing some sort of sick, practical joke. She was just angry at her for disappearing after the funeral, for not staying over at Barbara’s house as she’d promised, for being gone all day and half the night.
“Where have you been?” she’d demanded as soon as Chris picked up the phone, before she’d even said hello. “I’ve been calling you all day.”
“What’s the matter?” Chris asked in return, knowing something was wrong, afraid to imagine what it was.
“You haven’t heard? Where the hell have you been?”
“Heard what? What’s going on?”
“Oh, God.”
In that moment, Chris’s stomach slid through her bowels to her knees. Her first thought was of her children. An accident involving Montana or one of the boys. Montana was old enough to drive now. Dear God, if anything had happened to her … “Tell me,” she said, a strange gargle disrupting the normal cadence of her voice, as if her throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and each word was being forced to navigate its way through a violent rush of blood.
“It’s Barbara,” Susan’s voice echoed even now. Barbara. Barbara. Barbara. “She’s dead.” Dead. Dead. Dead.
Chris couldn’t remember what happened next. She vaguely remembered someone screaming, although she couldn’t be sure now whether it was Susan or herself. Someone filled her in on all the horrible details. Maybe Susan. Maybe the TV. She didn’t remember turning it on, but there it was, flashing at her like a strobe light, noisy and invasive even with the sound turned off. When had she turned it on?
Her purse lay on the floor beside her thin mauve sweater, where she must have dropped them in her rush to answer the phone. Somewhere there was the faint odor of vomit, although only the unpleasant taste in her mouth reminded Chris she’d been sick. “Who did it?” she recalled asking. “Do they know?”
“The police arrested Tracey.”
It had to be a mistake. Or one of Tony’s sick pranks. That was it—Tony. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of him earlier? It hadn’t been Susan on the phone. It was Tony disguising his voice. Over the years, he’d perfected a pretty good imitation of all her friends. What was the matter with her that she hadn’t recognized him right away?
Except, of course, how did that explain the images flashing across her TV screen, pushing themselves in her face, pressing against her nose and mouth like a deadly pillow, no matter how many times she changed the channel? How did that explain the curiously interchangeable announcers who recited the same grisly details of the crime with a bland indifference bordering on cruelty? Chris had pushed the mute button to silence their well-rehearsed nonchalance once and for all, although something stopped her from turning off the television altogether.
So it wasn’t Tony.
And it wasn’t a joke.
Barbara was dead. Tracey had been charged with her murder.
“Where is Tracey now?” Chris remembered asking Susan.
“At the Helen Marshall Correctional Institute for Women. Ron was going to post bail, but apparently his wife didn’t want Tracey in the house.”
There was probably more, but Chris was too tired to retrieve it from wherever her shocked brain had hidden it. Let it come to her in fits and starts, bits and bites, snips and snatches, Chris thought restlessly. Let it come and let it go.
Was this really happening?
Last night had been so wonderful. Everything was finally falling into place. And now this.…
Chris leaned her head back against the lurid blue-and-green checks of her couch. It was a hideous sofa, as uncomfortable to sit in as it was to look at, but what could you expect from a furnished apartment in one of the more modest sections of town? When she’d rented the one-bedroom unit, she hadn’t expected to be here more than a few months. As soon as Tony discovered her address, he’d start harassing her again, bombarding her with phone calls at all hours of the day and night, standing for hours at a stretch outside her window, regaling her landlord with wild stories about her, leaving dog feces outside her door. It didn’t matter how tight the security, Tony always found a way to breach it. It didn’t matter what floor her apartment was on, it was never high enough. “Rise and shine,” he’d sing through the phone wires at four o’clock in the morning. “And give God your glory, glory.”
But now here it was the end of August, and until Tony’s unexpected appearance at Susan’s house the other day, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in months. Part of his grand plan for keeping her off guard and on her toes? Or maybe he thought this apartment was torture enough. He had no way of knowing that Chris was happier here than she’d been anywhere since leaving Grand Avenue. That she’d finally found the peace that had eluded her all her life.
What would he say when he found out where she’d been last night?
What would any of them say?
What would Barbara have said? Chris wondered, a fresh scream building in the back of her throat. Barbara. Oh, God, Barbara. Why Barbara? What had Barbara ever done to deserve such a gruesome death? “It should have been me,” Chris wailed out loud. Wasn’t she the one they’d all feared for? Hadn’t they all been holding their breath for years, waiting for that awful phone call in the middle of the night, the phone call that said their friend had been bludgeoned to death in her bed?
Except that when the call finally came, it hadn’t been Chris’s name whispered across the wires. It hadn’t been her battered corpse lying, limbs akimbo, at the foot of her bed in a pool of her own blood.
And what had Chris been doing while her friend’s head was being hammered to a bloody pulp? She’d been in a cozy double bed in a quaint little inn on the outskirts of town, listening to sweet phrases of love. As Barbara screamed in horror, Chris had been screaming with delight, brought to orgasm by the most delicate of touches, the gentlest flick of the tongue. Chris had drifted off to sleep as Barbara lay dying on the floor, waking up in the arms of her lover at the same time her best fr
iend was being wrapped in a body bag and taken to the morgue.
She’d had breakfast in bed, gone for a long walk in the country, sucking the fresh air deep into her lungs, relishing the peace and quiet, careful not to let anything interrupt her newfound serenity. No newspapers, no television, no radio. Not even in the car on the drive back into town. A CD of Glenn Gould on the piano accompanied her home.
“Do you want me to come upstairs? Tuck you in?” her lover had asked.
“No, I’m fine,” Chris had answered. And she was. For the first time in her life, she could honestly say she was fine and mean it. She was at peace. She knew who she was. She was no longer afraid.
She could hear the phone ringing as soon as she stepped off the elevator. Probably Tony, she thought, taking her time as she walked down the hall. He’d found her. Fine. So be it. She wasn’t afraid anymore.
She opened the door, locked it behind her, debated whether to answer the phone or just let it ring. Who would be calling her at almost eleven o’clock at night besides Tony? She almost didn’t answer it, but something propelled her toward it. What if it was important? She lifted the phone to her ears, the sound of Susan’s voice assaulting her even before she said hello.
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.”
Maybe it was a dream, Chris thought now, knowing it wasn’t, but clinging to the pretense nonetheless. She closed her eyes, saw Barbara’s face on the inside of her lids. Her sweet face, Chris thought, watching it change, grow perversely younger with the passage of time. Barbara hadn’t needed the layers of makeup she’d insisted on wearing, or any of the plastic surgery she’d subjected herself to over the years. Indeed, Barbara had remained beautiful almost in spite of herself. Why had she never realized how beautiful she was?
“My sweet, beautiful Barbara,” Chris cried into the hard pillow of the blue-and-green-checkered sofa. “I never even got to say good-bye.”
The words unleashed a flood of angry, bitter tears, and Chris had to bite down on the pillow to keep from screaming out loud. “No!” she wailed, writhing on the sofa as if in physical pain, covering her face with the pillow, as if to block out all sight, all sound, all sensation. “No!” The word echoed against the cheap fabric, damp with her tears. “No, no, no, no, no!”
Chris almost didn’t hear the timid knocking on the door, and even after she did, even after she understood that it was something other than the sound of her brain knocking against her skull, hammering for release, that there was actually someone in the hall, tapping to be let in, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to get up off the couch and answer it. Probably it was Susan, come to see if she was all right. Or maybe one of the neighbors, having heard her muffled cries. Maybe Tony, come to deliver the good news personally. Or to put her out of her misery once and for all. “Who is it?” she asked from the sofa, forcing herself to her feet. But the only answer she received was more knocking on the door. Chris walked toward the sound, not bothering to wipe her face or dry her eyes, not bothering to ask again who it was, not bothering to look through the peephole, not caring who was on the other side. Fine, she thought. So be it. She took a deep breath and pulled open the door. Immediately, the breath caught in her lungs, the air froze around her. “My God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God.”
“Can I come in?”
Chris stepped back, her wet eyes wide with shock.
“Are you all right?”
Chris nodded, shook her head, fumbled for words that refused to come.
“I can’t stay long. Dad thinks I’m at a friend’s house. I can’t stay long.”
Chris wiped the tears from her eyes with an impatient hand. They got in her way, and she would allow nothing to hamper her view of the glorious young girl standing before her. “Montana,” she whispered in a voice that could barely be heard, her eyes sucking her daughter in like liquid from a straw—the long blond hair, the pale skin, the apple cheeks, the wondrous navy blue eyes. She was a young woman now.
“Are you all right?” her daughter asked again.
“I’m all right,” Chris heard herself answer.
Montana closed the door behind her, although she took only a few tentative steps into the room.
“It’s a mess,” Chris apologized, imagining the room through her daughter’s eyes—the old-fashioned shag carpeting in the same garish tones as the sofa, the small glass-topped table hugged by two mismatched chairs, the tiny galley kitchen.
“It’s fine.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Susan told me. I called her this afternoon. She called me back after she spoke to you.”
“You called her?”
“Barbara was dead. They thought Dad might have …” Montana stopped, swallowed, lowered her eyes to the floor, as if to escape the intensity of her mother’s gaze. “Nobody knew where you were.”
“You were worried about me?”
“Where were you?”
Chris tried, but couldn’t take her eyes off her daughter, as if she were afraid that should she turn away, even for half a second, the girl would disappear. “Would you like to sit down?”
Montana shook her head, leaned back against the door.
“Can I get you anything to eat, something to drink? Water?”
“I’m okay,” Montana said, then: “Would you like some water?”
Chris nodded, sinking to the sofa when she felt her legs about to give way, her eyes following her daughter into the galley kitchen, staying on her as Montana filled a glass with water and brought it back into the living room. Chris felt a bolt of electricity charge through her body as their fingers briefly touched. It took every ounce of strength she had to keep from throwing herself into her daughter’s arms, smothering her sweet face with kisses.
“Where were you?” Montana repeated.
Chris shook her head, not sure what to say. “After Susan’s mother’s funeral, I went for a drive in the country. I stayed overnight at this little inn, spent the day walking around, visiting antique stores …”
“Alone?”
“No. A friend was with me.” How much could she tell her? Chris wondered. Dear God, there was so much to tell her.
“So you didn’t hear anything about what happened.…”
“Until maybe an hour ago.” Chris sipped her water slowly, her eyes never leaving the beautiful young woman who shifted uneasily from one foot to the other before her. Montana wore white jeans and a pink, sleeveless sweater, and her arms were slim and toned. How she ached to feel those arms around her, Chris thought, watching as Montana pulled a chair away from the small, round, glass-topped table and sat down.
“At first they thought Dad did it.”
“I know.”
“But he was home last night, looking after Rowdy.”
“Rowdy’s sick?”
Montana shook her head with pronounced vigor. “He just has a cold. He coughs all the time. Keeps everybody up.”
“Has he been to the doctor?”
“It’s just a cold,” Montana said, growing quickly defensive. “Dad’s taking good care of him. He gets up every night to give him his medicine.”
Chris said nothing. Her baby had a cold. Tony was giving him his medicine.
“He’s a good father,” Montana said. “He takes good care of us.”
“I’m glad.”
“You probably don’t believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“I know you two had problems …”
You don’t know, Chris wanted to say, said nothing.
“But ever since you left …”
“I’ve tried to see you so many times. You know how much—”
Montana jumped to her feet. “I should go.”
Chris was instantly on her feet as well. “No, please. Please don’t go. Please.”
Montana’s eyes moved nervously between her mother and the door, as if trying to figure out the time it would take to run the short distance, as if she were afraid
that should she try, her mother might tackle her to the ground. She hesitated for what felt like an eternity before sitting back down. “He’s been a good father,” she repeated.
Chris nodded, afraid to say anything lest she say something that would send Montana catapulting out of her chair again. “How’s Wyatt?” she ventured after a lengthy pause.
“He’s okay.”
“And you?”
Montana seemed surprised by the question. “Me? I’m fine.”
“You look wonderful.”
“Thank you.”
“Enjoying school?”
“It’s okay. One more year, then I’m off to college.”
“Just one more year?”
“I’m thinking of applying to Duke. Or maybe Cornell.”
Duke or maybe Cornell, Chris repeated silently, wondrously.
“I’m not sure yet what my major will be. Maybe political science. Maybe English literature. I haven’t made up my mind.”
Were they really sitting here making polite conversation? Was any of this really happening?
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Chris ventured, afraid to overstep, but so hungry for information, she could almost taste it on her tongue.
“I have a friend,” Montana said, as Chris had said earlier. “I don’t know if you’d call him a boyfriend exactly. We hang out.”
“What’s his name?”
“David.”
“David,” Chris repeated. “I always liked that name. What’s he like?”
“He’s tall, funny, really smart.”
“Kind?”
“What?”
“Is he kind?”
Montana shrugged her growing impatience with the conversation. “I guess.”
“That’s the most important thing. To be kind.”
A moment’s silence as Chris willed Montana’s eyes to hers. If you take nothing else away from this visit, Chris’s eyes directed, understand that.
“So, where are you working these days?” Montana asked, shifting uneasily in her chair, crossing one leg over the other, returning both to the floor.