On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1)
Page 8
“There’s something I want to ask you. May I come in?”
She stepped back and let him pass. He smelled of lime scented aftershave and perspiration.
“Hester, how are you feeling? How’s everything going?”
She knew what he meant by “everything.” It ticked her off, him being all ambiguous, not having the balls to utter the word, pregnancy. He might as well have said, how’s the weather? She looked him in the eye and said, “Great. Everything is just great.”
She sounded annoyed on purpose. She wanted him to squirm, to be ashamed of himself for neglecting her. She looked at him long and hard, and started to go soft inside. His skin was golden and moist, like he’d just come off the beach. His dark brown eyes peered directly into hers. The slight cleft in his chin looked deeper, his lips fuller, more inviting than ever. She watched them move and listened in disbelief to the words they formed.
“Hester, things could work out between us. We have an attraction to each other, and I’m sure we can build on that.”
“Al, what exactly are you saying?”
He glanced down at the floor then back up into her eyes. “I’ll be a good father to our baby. I want our baby to be legitimate.”
Legitimate…the word made Hester want to keel over with joy.
Al took a breath and continued, “This summer. As soon as possible. Will you marry me?”
Alexander Murphy wanted to be a good father to their baby, to make everything legitimate, to marry her! She turned away. Wringing her hands, she prayed for guidance. She wanted to marry Al more than anything. She didn’t know what to say since there really wasn’t a baby anymore. If she told him that, he’d leave, and she’d never have this chance again. Nasty thoughts popped into her head. He didn’t say he loves me. Didn’t say a goddamn thing about how he feels. It’s damage control. He’s only looking out for himself.
But that was as far as Hester’s negative thinking went. She turned and faced him. She’d tell him the truth. She’d gotten her period.
But he was staring at her intently. His face was flushed. She was so attracted to him, to his beautiful face, his strong, beautiful body. In his eyes she could see how vulnerable he was. At this moment he was more like her than any man she’d ever met.
The word leapt from her heart to her lips. She spat the single syllable out more forcefully than she intended, “Yes.” It hung in the silent air between them before fluttering away like a wounded moth.
Nothing happened for several minutes. Then Al stepped forward and kissed her. His lips softly touched hers. How sweet they tasted. She wanted this man. She did not want to be alone, and lonely, again.
Al made short order of getting Hester’s clothes off. When she was naked, he held her by the waist at arm’s length in front of him. His eyes took her in. “I love your body, your breasts.” He moved his hands to her breasts, and he gripped them like they were two balloons he was trying to pop. Then he let go and stripped off his clothes and pushed Hester not-too-gently down on the sofa. He was on top of her, in her, his hands beneath her buttocks raising her up and into just the right spot. Hester whispered, “Yes, yes, yes,” as she felt Al about to come. But as soon as it was over, she was disgusted with herself. She wasn’t going to lie to this man for another minute. “Al, I have to tell you the…”
“Shush,” he whispered, “Hester Randall, we’re getting married right away. No arguments.” He was still on top of her, and he pressed his forehead into hers in such an intimate and sincere way, she couldn’t ruin it.
Al got off the couch, picked his suit pants up, and pulled a small black box from one of the pockets. He was naked, his penis still erect. He handed Hester the box. In it was a thin gold band with a diamond so small it was hard to see. Hester didn’t want to be petty about it, but as elated as she was about marrying Al, this token of his intentions sorely disappointed her. Nevertheless, she put the ring on her finger, which made it look even smaller.
Almost immediately, Hester, uncharacteristically, thought a rather selfish thought, what if this pathetic little ring gets lost before the wedding? Al will have to take me shopping, and in front of the sales person and me, he’ll have to buy a ring that is much more suitable for the wife of the vice principal of Sourland High School.
The problem of the too-small ring, along with the other larger problem of the lie, Hester solved two weeks later with another stroke-of-genius lie—an absolutely necessary one, Hester told herself.
After Al and she booked the banquet hall at the country club with a sizeable non-refundable deposit, mailed the invitations, took her dress to the seamstress, and rented a large apartment near the high school, she called him up at school to tell him the bad news.
She was crying genuine tears because it was truly tormenting her to have such a falsehood between them.
“I’m so upset, Al. It started with cramps and I just started bleeding. It got bad, and, Al, I passed the fetus.”
“What do you mean, you ‘passed the fetus’?”
“Into the toilet. Our baby went into the toilet.”
“Hester, call an ambulance!”
“No, Al, I can’t. It was just a blob,” she told him in a voice wracked with what was true sorrow because she was thinking of her baby that wound up in the garbage can, “a huge blob of nothing. I stopped bleeding right away after I passed it. It was awful, though, and I felt so bad, so I reached into the toilet to touch it, and…Al, my ring slipped off my finger. I tried to get it, but I couldn’t find it, and it was making me sick feeling around in all of that blood. Al, I’m so sorry, I just flushed everything down.”
Fourteen
Hester was satisfied with the way the patio looked for now, and for the first time in days, felt hungry. She went inside and unwrapped the low-fat zucchini bread she’d baked for Al before the storm. She cut off a slice and stared at it, trying to decide if ingesting it would be a mistake since her stomach was still a little queasy. Just as she took a bite, someone tapped on the slider. She jumped and choked down what was in her mouth. It was Dee and Eve.
They looked like two middle-aged misfits peering through the glass. Hester knew they’d seen her sitting there, so she had to let them in. They were both pretty disheveled, which seemed par for the course for Dee, but totally out of character for Eve.
“Wanted to come by and tell you the good news. No fatalities! Isn’t that just the best news, Hester? And already the cleanup crew is all organized, the Dumpsters are on site, all of that’s been done.” Eve was so alive with energy, she was out of breath.
No fatalities, huh? That’s what she thinks, Hester tried to act interested in the details about the clean-up, but she wasn’t, considering the mess she had on her hands. Al’s mess. How could she think about anything else?
“Come on, we need you.” Dee was already cutting herself a piece of the zucchini bread.
“What about my roof? I’ve got to get ahold of the insurance guy.” It was the only excuse Hester could come up with. What did she give a shit about the roof for now? The damn roof was the least of her worries. It, at least, could be fixed.
“Hester, honey, Dee told me about your roof. How awful you got hit so hard; but let me tell you, they never cover hurricane damage,” Eve said as she moved into the chair opposite Hester and sat staring at her like she was a lost child. “They cover wind damage, they cover flood damage, but they don’t cover hurricane damage, which is really wind damage and flood damage rolled into one. It’s so unfair, I know, but you have to read the fine print on everything these days. Nobody will tell you the truth, especially insurance people. They’re the worst. You can’t believe a thing they say. Right, Dee?”
Dee nodded. Her mouth was full.
“But more importantly, Dee told me all about Al. How awful. You must be so worried about him,” Eve whispered, and her voice was so soft, it felt like a kiss to Hester. Hester wanted so much to smile at Eve and say, oh, he’ll be just fine, but she knew she’d choke on the words.
“I lost two screens. I was lucky.” Dee was leaning against the counter, brushing crumbs off the large shelf of her breasts.
“Great, that’s great.” Hester tried to sound sincere. She looked back at Eve.
“Nothing, no damage at all. All of Coconut Palm Drive is completely intact.”
“Good for you, Eve. That’s great. I’m glad it wasn’t a total disaster for everyone.”
“Nothing around here is ever a total disaster. We’ll have this park fixed up in no time. Right, Dee?” Eve winked at Dee, “It’s the Pleasant Palms way!”
Hester feared she might regurgitate the mouthful bread she’d forced down if these two didn’t stop with the affirmations.
“Believe me,” continued Eve, “I’ve been here off and on winters since I was a little girl back in the sixties, when my parents bought into the park. Pleasant Palmers stick together and get things done. Some trailers may not be worth much, but the land they’re sitting on is worth a ton of money. Marvin says sooner or later, some big developer’s going to come along and make us an-offer-we-can’t-refuse for this place.”
Eve Bridgeford, fit, cute, with hair dyed the color of pennies and cut into a short, straight page boy, was passionate about Pleasant Palms. She was married to Marvin, an older man from their hometown in Flint, Michigan, who started a business decades ago manufacturing hot-water heaters.
“Hot water is a red-hot business,” was how Marvin put it the first time Hester met him. “Don’t know a son of a bitch alive who likes a cold shower. Do you?”
Eve was pretty subtle about it, but every season Marvin and she arrived in new Town Cars, his navy, hers cherry red. You never saw her in the same bathing suit twice. She talked endlessly about their three kids who went to posh private schools and on to Notre Dame and into the family business. Four years ago, Eve and Marvin bought the old mayor’s 1953 West Wind on the Intracoastal at the end of Coconut Palm Drive. They had it shredded and carted away and put a brand-new Destiny prefab in its place. Hester never saw a trailer like it, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, a crystal chandelier, Jacuzzi tubs in both bathrooms, and a gas fireplace.
If Eve’s trailer was the palace, then Dee’s was the pits. Dee Larson, a retired state worker from Connecticut, had been a secretary in the accounting department, which to Hester’s thinking must’ve been a rather dull way to spend forty-three years of your life. But to hear Dee talk, the people she worked with were fascinating. She had wild stories about outrageous liaisons. Accountants, it seemed, screwed around more than college kids on spring break in South Beach.
Before Hester accepted Dee’s stories as gospel, though, she had to consider the fact that once you got to know Dee, you learned she would say or do just about anything to be the center of attention. It was obvious by the neglected appearance of her dark and dingy 1982 Vagabond trailer that she’d rather be out somewhere gossiping than home cleaning. Why, to even get from the doorway to the kitchen, you had to navigate stacks of Sun Sentinels and Star magazines, and boxes and bags full of yard-sale finds or things she swore she was getting ready to take to Goodwill. The once-olive sheers on the windows were as old as the hills. Orange-brown faux-wood paneling made the space look even smaller than it was. The counter in the kitchen was obscured with open cans of food, a grease-encrusted toaster oven, and an array of dingy Post-it notes Dee had obviously written to herself a while ago. When Hester went to visit her a couple of days before the hurricane, Dee ushered her past the disorderliness to the bedroom, where two twin beds were hinged to opposite walls. Thankfully, nothing was on them. Dee made Hester sit on one while she propped herself up with pillows and reclined like Jabba the Hutt on the other and told her a half-dozen stories.
“Eve, you know what?” Dee said now, “Marvin’s not the only one around here who thinks some developer wants to get his hands on the park. I heard the other day…”
“I hate to interrupt, girls…” Hester didn’t hate to interrupt at all, but she said it anyway. “I had a rough night last night and I really need to rest. So do you mind…”
“Hitting the bottle again, old girl?” Dee had a twinkle in her eye, but Hester felt herself stiffen at the comment. Really, Dee hardly knew her well enough to make such an accusation.
“Come on, Dee, my place is a mess. I’ve got to get somebody over here to put a tarp over the bedroom and…”
“And her poor husband’s in the hospital,” Eve added. “Leave her alone, Dee. Can’t you see she’s upset?” Eve turned to Hester with a serious look on her face that reminded Hester of the way her mother frowned at her when she got her first period. It was an expression that meant, “You poor thing.” It made Hester miss her mother, again, for the millionth time.
“Hester, you should’ve gone in the ambulance with Al the other night. You want me to drive you to the hospital now? How is he anyway? He was barely conscious.” Eve reached across the table, put her hand on top of Hester’s and patted it like she was trying to tamp down dough.
Dee was rooting in the refrigerator for some milk. Her large buttocks in her bright-red sweatpants looked like a giant inverted heart. She was mumbling something about fat-free milk and how gross it was. Hester slipped her hand from under Eve’s and started feeling worse about everything. She knew Eve meant well. They both meant well. They were damn nice women Hester was lucky enough to have met; but nice or not, she needed to be alone. She figured she’d throw them a bone of information and then maybe they’d leave and not be offended.
“Look, thanks for coming over, and Eve, thanks for offering to take me to the hospital. Al’s okay. He had a concussion, broken ribs, slight heart attack…”
“A heart attack!” they said it together.
Dee spun around and her thick lips hung open in amazement. “Hester, jeezus, so it was a freaking heart attack!”
Why didn’t Hester just keep her big trap shut? God, she was furious with herself. Now she’d have to listen to them say how upset they were about poor Al. In an hour all of Pleasant Palms would be at her door with everything from garlic hummus to key lime pie. By noon tomorrow all the details about poor Al’s condition would be in the goddamn “PP Newsletter.”
“Dee, Eve, I’m exhausted. Don’t tell anyone anything. Let’s just wait a few days and see how Al does. Please, I just want to lie down and take a rest now.”
“Okay, we can take a hint. Right, Dee?” Eve got up, locked eyes with Dee, and jerked her head toward the door, but before she took a single step toward it, she said, “Oh, I forgot to ask about your young house guest. What’s her name? Nina, was it? Where was poor Nina when all hell broke loose?”
Hester’s cheeks turned red hot. Yes, where the hell was Nina when all hell broke loose? In bed with my husband! How she wanted to say it, to tell the truth. There was a fatality. Almost two fatalities. I wanted to kill my husband. I almost did.
But what she said was, “Nina was on the beach. Can you believe it? She was looking for shells, but she saw the storm coming and ran back here to the trailer. Thank God she had enough sense to get out of danger. Thank God she’s alright. She was pretty shaken up.”
“Poor thing. Maybe she can help with the clean-up. Keeping busy might help take her mind off things. She can come with us. It’ll get her out of your hair, and you can have some quiet time to yourself.”
“Well.” Hester could barely think what to say. “Well, I’ll tell her when she gets up. You know how young people are. They could sleep forever.”
As soon as Dee and Eve left, Hester lowered the bamboo
shade and the mini blinds. She lay on the couch in the dim room and put her feet up on the throw pillows. The wound on her calf throbbed. She closed her eyes. She hated telling lies, but she told them anyway. To her parents, to Al, at some point, to just about everybody. And now the lying was going to have to go on and on and on. What was the alternative?
Al’s words rang in her head. He’d been emphatic. “Hester, I did not do anything wrong.”
Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe Nina was scared. Maybe… bubbles of thought burst inside of Hester’s skull and disintegrated. She could not sustain the process of putting two and two together. It was as though her brain had shrunk to the size of a pea.
Nina’s dead body was in one of those thoughts. Hester tried not to let it burst open inside her head, but it did, and she saw the plastic bag in the hole beneath the Bo tree. It was useless to try to stop the thoughts. Another burst. She could see the outline of the young woman’s features against the black plastic of the garbage bag. Maybe, Hester, had made a mistake, and Nina hadn’t been dead and maybe even now the girl was trying to squirm out of the sheets and the bag and the earth.
Old Chet’s kitchen light, probably a hundred and fifty watts, shone like a beacon and backlit Hester’s shade. What was in her medicine cabinet that might anesthetize her—K-Y Jelly, saline spray, Visine, Tums, Tiger Balm, Benadryl? Benadryl. Maybe a handful would work.
She rolled over and turned her back to the light, but it seemed to be everywhere and penetrated her closed lids. Too exhausted to get off the couch and get the pills, Hester lay there and let her memories torture her. Some would never go away.
Fifteen
At their wedding reception Al was at one of the tables telling a joke to a couple of school board members. Hester stood by the next table waiting for him. Her colleagues Janine Apgar and Frances Middleton were seated not far from where she stood, and bits and pieces of their conversation drifted into her hearing range.