Nina must’ve listened to Hester warning to keep an eye to the sky, that computer models weren’t perfect. “You never know with Mother Nature, Nina.”
Hester had offered to make the girl breakfast, but Nina hadn’t wanted any. Every day since she got here last week, she seemed to be eating less and less, and she didn’t seem to have a whole lot to say to Hester. When Hester confided that Nina might be having some kind of problem, Al said, “For God’s sake, Hester, she’s fine. It’s all in your imagination.”
My imagination? Hester could see Nina was too thin, and Hester worried she was starving herself or depressed or something mental like that. Hester worried about her like a mother would her own child. From the first time Nina walked into Hester’s English classroom three years ago, Hester had been…well, drawn to her, inexplicably drawn to her.
Al, who was the school’s vice principal, warned Hester, as he always did, not to get too attached to any of her students. “When they graduate, they’ll forget all about you, and then I’ll have to listen to how miserable that makes you so, please, for Christ’s sakes, save me the trouble.”
Hester, uncharacteristically, ignored Al. Nina was her favorite. Nina was special. Nina and she were close and would remain close. So when the girl called crying because she was having terrible problems at the community college and needed to talk to Hester, Hester sent her money for a flight down to Pleasant Palms. She didn’t tell Al about it until after the fact, until it was too late for him to stop her, until she could gloat, “See, Mr. Know-It-All, Nina hasn’t forgotten me. She needs me. She needs us both.”
Al, true to form, was completely against what Hester did. He tried several arguments on his wife, the main one being that Nina Tattoni was plenty old enough to take care of herself. Hester didn’t often cross Al, but in this case whatever he said didn’t matter. What mattered was, Nina was coming to Florida.
“Thou doth protest too much, husband,” Hester joked. “Besides, it’s a done deal. I already sent her the money.”
As soon as Nina got off the plane, though, Al seemed to change his mind. He paraded her around the trailer park, introducing her to everyone as though she were an exotic pet who said nothing much but was so unusual and cute it didn’t matter. He sat next to her on the beach, pretending to read the latest from Corbin or Patterson, while Nina slathered her bikini-clad body with lotion and stretched out on her towel like a well-oiled princess.
Hester watched them and stifled any nasty thought that tried to surface. Al’s interest was fatherly. They never had any children, so why wouldn’t he enjoy pretending Nina was his? And all along hadn’t she wanted them to be close?
This fascination of Al’s would wane. Hester would help it along. She’d have sex with her husband, lots of sex, and maybe even do to him what she seldom did anymore, but what she knew he liked best. It would reignite things between them, take his mind off Nina, and all would be as it should.
That had been her plan, but now the sight of Nina lying next to Al sickened her. What glaring proof that everything had backfired. Sweat was blinding Hester. She wanted to curl up somewhere, fall asleep, and wake up in the recent past, before this. She closed her eyes; fireworks exploded inside her head. She squeezed her eyes tight. The vision of Nina’s naked body emerged through the blackness. And—she had to admit it—she was momentarily satisfied by how, despite the sweltering heat, frozen-in-place the girl seemed. Maybe she really is dead.
Hester opened her eyes and forced herself to look at Al. He was on his back, mouth agape, limp penis resting on his thigh like a half-stuffed sausage. His feet flopped out sideways. His arms were over his head, the hair in his pits as black, wet, and curly as his pubic hair. The salt and pepper hair on his head thick and stubborn. Sunspots dotted his tan face. His neck sunburnt. His Roman nose as aesthetically sculpted as ever. His brown nipples hard and nubby like pinched dry clay. His appendectomy scar, a pale, lipless, closed mouth.
Yes, she recognized each separate part of this man; but right at the moment she couldn’t reckon the sum of those parts—the whole person, Alexander Bruno Murphy, whom she had loved long and intensely. If the man in front of her opened his eyes, she would have nothing to say to him, except maybe, who the fuck are you, really?
She wasn’t one to curse, but that expletive came to mind easily. Why should she feel like the intruder in her own home? Why should she feel like she opened the wrong door? Like she interrupted them in the middle of…something secret?
Hester rolled her aching shoulders up and back. She was burning hot. She spread her feet a bit to steady herself. Another cloud came. A slight breeze lifted the ends of the sheers on the window and jiggled the heart-shaped leaves that were still all over the room. They twinkled like flashing bits of green neon. Then the cloud was gone, and the air in the room collapsed in on her.
Shame on you, Al, shame on you, she thought, as something on the periphery of the moment jogged her memory.
“Two shall be as one.”
Isn’t that what Father Ferrara said when he married us? Two are one. We are one and the same in marriage. His sin, mine. His humiliation, his guilt, his shame, all mine.
Hester blinked the sweat from her eyes and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. She ran her fingers through her tangled long hair, trying to get it off her face. It fell into a natural center part, and her silver roots looked like a bald streak down the middle of her head. Already she needed to get another dye job. What a project it was keeping up with what used to be her honey-colored tresses. She didn’t want highlights. She didn’t want to be a bleached blonde. She just wanted to look like she used to.
But she didn’t, and wouldn’t ever again. The round apples of her cheeks had thinned. Her eyelids were puffy. Her mouth was a sad little hill. Her breasts looked like two barely inflated U’s, her nipples putty-colored asterisks in their valleys. One was streaked with blood. She was covered with cuts and scratches from her valiant effort to clear the mess away to save her, son-of-a…, philandering husband. She looked more like a boy than a middle-aged woman. She looked like that boy, Ralph. Was Ralph his name? She was trying to remember. It had been a while since she’d taught British lit, Lord of the Flies, but wasn’t Ralph the name of the one who ran from the others, the one they tried to hunt down?
Hester’s body looked thin and powerless. How had she had the strength to do what she just did?
“I can’t recall ever looking like this,” she said to the mirror as her knees stared back at her like the faces of two upside-down babies. She hardly recognized herself, and that was distressing to her, but now was not the time for self-pity. She turned away, remembering how Al always used to say she “cleaned up well.” There was never anything wrong with her that something from the makeup counter couldn’t fix. She had to tell herself that. She had to believe it. She’d constructed her life on a fault line. A tremor of doubt, the whole foundation might crack. A quake of significant magnitude might make her whole damn world crumble.
Bad enough I found them together, the two…? What were they? She hesitated to form the word in her mind. Lovers?
You think you know your man, and then, even after decades together, he arches an eyebrow or laughs a certain way or does something you’ve never seen him do before, and, suddenly, you are struck with the most frightening feeling of all: ignorance.
Hester struggled to reconcile the lingering “before” with the clamoring “now.” And she couldn’t, because they were galaxies apart. It was beginning to make her go mad trying to put two and two together. Before she retired at the end of last year, when she was still teaching English, she asked one of her students why she hadn’t turned in her research paper.
“Shit happens,” was what the brazen teenager said to Hester.
Shit happens? That was it, and Hester was supposed to know what that meant, to accept that kind of an answer, that kind of disrespect.
Hester decided to let the fact that the girl had used foul la
nguage go in order to get to the facts. “Exactly what kind of s-h-i-t happened, Angela?”
Angela let her jaw drop. Her mouth fell open like a puppet’s before she smirked and answered, “Shit, all kinds of shit. It happens all the time. You know what I mean, Mrs. Murphy.”
And that was supposed to get her off the hook. The big, old, screwed-up universe was to blame, not anyone as powerless as poor little Angela.
Hester might not have agreed with Angela’s philosophy then, but she did now because here she was knee-deep in s-h-i-t, and she certainly had done nothing to cause it.
Al still hadn’t moved, so Hester stepped closer to the bed, rallied what courage she had, and put two fingers on his carotid artery. He looked older in the unforgiving light, but not old enough to be dead. She wasn’t sure if there was a slight pulse or not. Touching him felt weird, and she removed her fingers quickly.
She was still holding the hammer as she shuffled through the loose leaves and broken branches and trailer parts to the other side of the bed. Against the pattern of white shells on her favorite sheets, Nina’s long curly brown hair spread out around her face like damp seaweed on a beach. Her wet, matted bangs covered her eyes and nose. Her mouth was open, the inside like the pearly inside of a conch. Her small chin was tilted as though she were trying to balance something on the tip of it. Hester, standing there with sweat running down the small of her back, had the chilling sensation there was no hope for Nina.
What to do?
Hester felt the weight of the hammer and squeezed the handle. Gently she bumped it against her thigh.
Again and again.
There! There. She thought, I don’t know what to do.
She felt stuck between them now, just as she probably had been for a while without ever knowing it. Or had she? Had she known deep inside and done nothing to stop it? Had she, perhaps, wanted it to happen?
No, never.
She heard…no, she saw something. At least she thought for a second she had. She stopped swinging the hammer and held her breath. She stared around the bedroom, remembering all that happened in it since Al and she first bought the place several years ago. They’d fly down from New Jersey for long weekends. She’d bring a stack of essays to grade. Al would take them away as soon as they got on the plane. He wouldn’t let her look at them until the flight home. The rest of the weekend they lounged on the beach, ate, drank, and made love. Love, love, love, all I ever needed was love.
Hester looked down at her husband, at her former student. Something inside her snapped. Throw yourself on the bed between them, be with Al one last time before the truth has to be faced, before the police come, before everyone finds out what a sham your marriage is?
She imagined Nina waking up, watching her and Al, wanting Al.
It was absurd, yet the black feeling welled up. She hated Nina.
No, she hated Al.
Let it go back to before. Nina on the beach, Al taking a shower, me sipping coffee, paging through a magazine.
But her life would never be the way it was, because of them.
It was quiet, so unearthly quiet, like the split second when the tide pulls a wave out and the next one hasn’t broken. That split second of absolute silence.
They deserve to die for what they did to me.
Hester fought against this hateful conclusion, against the wave of anger breaking over her.
It passed, but something worse came into her head.
Nina’s nipples, large and dark, glistened like eyes watching Hester, the only thing watching her. They made her look back at them. She couldn’t help it.
Swing the hammer high. Bring it down into the smooth, flat skin between those breasts. Swing the claw end into the pink thong, the pubic hair, and finally into that face, that beautiful angel face.
Hester had loved Nina, had believed, until now, Nina loved her too. Hester must have been wrong. The hammer burned in Hester’s hand; she wanted to hurt the girl, again, and again, and again.
Four
Hester must’ve blacked out for a second. Then she heard Al groan. His eyes opened. He stared at the girl.
“Nina, are you alright?” His voice was weak.
For a split second, Hester was relieved to hear him say something, but in the next instant, she was overcome by the impulse to smash his head in. She could’ve gotten away with it, made it look like a concrete lawn ornament had flown through the air and landed on his skull, maybe one of the silly miniature leprechauns that populated the O’Neals’ patio or Gerri Trainer’s oversized smiling duck. It could’ve happened.
“No, she’s not, you fool.” Hester was looking at Nina, at her thin neck arched like a swan’s. Her hands were upturned; her fingers curled inward, their long, narrow nails like white-tipped claws. Hester started crying.
Al winced with pain and tried to turn toward Nina. He couldn’t, so he stopped. His eyes met Hester’s before he glanced down at her breasts and saw the one caked with dried blood and stared at it.
“How dare you?” Hester bent over to lock eyes with him.
He rolled his head to turn away. “What are we going to do?” He whined like a baby.
“There is no ‘we’ anymore.”
“Hester, please? I’m hurt.”
“Too bad.” Hester smeared her tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands.
Al grimaced, rolled his head back to look at her, and begged, “I can’t move. Please? Hester? Goddamn it, call an ambulance.”
“I think she’s dead, Alexander,” Hester said distinctly. It didn’t matter. Her words had fallen on deaf ears, Al was unconscious again.
Hester pressed the palm of her hand against her hot forehead. Al’s slack face had a frown on it. Lately, he always seemed to be frowning.
Was it displeasure? With her? She tried to get what was wrong out of him, but he insisted nothing was wrong, barking at her, “It’s all in your head, Hester, so quit bugging me about it, will you?”
Hester leaned close to the frowning face and whispered, “Do you hear me, Al, you son-of-a-bitch? I think she’s dead!” She threw the hammer on the floor. Roused by the thud, Al moaned, “Did you call the ambulance?”
“No, so shut up.” Hester turned and walked to the dresser. She took a towel out a drawer and began wiping herself off.
Al watched her. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“What I have to.”
“Hester, listen to me…”
“No, you listen to me,” she spat out. She never spoke to him like this, in this harsh tone of voice. She turned her back to him and reached down to wipe the insects and dirt off her legs, and realized he had a full view of her buttocks and between her slightly spread legs, he would see her breasts hanging like small white eggplants. Quickly, she spun around to face him.
“Do you think I want everyone to find out about you and her? Do you think I want this all over the park? You’ve spoiled everything. I don’t care about you. I’m looking out for myself now.” Even as she said it, she knew she was lying, knew what she was about to do would be for Al, too. If no one found out about what happened, they could go on as before, and at the moment that seemed to be the only thing Hester could bear.
She grabbed a clean bathing suit from another drawer and stepped into it. She struggled to pull it up.
“But, Hester….” Al was watching her while she reached in and settled each breast in its foam cup.
“But, Hester, nothing. I’m not talking to you anymore. Just lay there and suffer.”
As if on cue, he was unconscious again and that was for the best. The less Al knew, the easier it would be for her.
She had to think of something to do with Nina’s body.
Beyond the partially collapsed wall, the top of the long gash on the Bo tree was visible. It gave Hester an idea. She hurried outside to examine the damage. The weight of the top-heavy branches had severed the trunk down to the roots, pulled them out of the ground, and left a shallow four by five-foot hole—big en
ough for a body.
Hester checked to make sure no one was around. It was early in the season, and the few people who were in the park were probably in the community center trying to organize the cleanup. Still, she decided to wait until dark to bury Nina.
Hester had never touched a dead body before, except at a wake, when sometimes she felt obliged to kiss a stone-cold forehead. And now she would have to touch Nina’s dead body. She looked down at her former student, her skin had lost all color and looked like white jade streaked with sap. Hester’s rage subsided. Minutes ago she wanted so badly to hurt Nina, but now she felt sick at losing her. Whatever happened wasn’t this child’s fault, because that’s what she still was, a mere child. Hester could see that now, and she would bury her as decently as she could.
She went into the bathroom, got the bucket from under the sink, filled it with hot soapy water, and grabbed a washcloth and towel. She came out of the bathroom and bent over Nina. The musky odor of her body mixed with a putrid smell coming from her open mouth. Hester pushed her chin up and closed it. Then she dipped the cloth in the sudsy water and wrung it out. She smoothed Nina’s hair back off her forehead. It shocked Hester that Nina’s eyes were open. She didn’t shut them. That would seem too final. Gently, she washed the girl’s face, neck, and shoulders. Nina’s breasts jiggled when Hester cleaned around them and ran the cloth over her nipples. With her other hand, Hester pressed down where Nina’s heart was. Could her touch spark a pulse? Bring Nina back to life? No, the girl’s body was slowly turning colder.
Hester wiped Nina’s flat stomach and her legs. A pool of urine and stool spread out beneath the body so Hester rolled it on its side. The stench made her gag, but she pulled off the pink thong and threw it on the floor. Nina’s rear end curved out from her spine into two firm mounds. Hester washed the filth off her, then rolled her back onto a clean spot and washed between her thighs, the back of her calves, her feet, between each toe.
Hester worked methodically. After she rinsed Nina with clean, hot water, Hester got her best lotion from under the sink and rubbed it into Nina’s skin hoping the scent of verbena would overpowered the smell of death. It didn’t. She brushed the knots out of Nina’s thick mane of hair. Hester was getting tired so she sat on the bed next to Nina and reached out to pat her calf. She felt the soft stubble. She reached up and touched one of Nina’s stubborn curls and twisted it around her finger. A sob caught in Hester’s throat.
On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) Page 2