“I’m going to the office. Somebody’s got to say something about this, and I guess it’s going to be me, since nobody else around here seems to have any balls or brains.” He grabbed his sunglasses, his hat, and left.
Hester was glad she wasn’t Debbie. She stopped cleaning and picked the notice up from the floor where Al dropped it. Thirty days is not much time, and Al’s ranting isn’t going to change anything. Hester put the paper in the basket with other bills and junk mail, grabbed her laptop, and went out under the Bo tree.
She turned it on and, for some unknown reason, Googled “Arthur Kendall.” She clicked on the third listing down. An article from 1980, in New Jersey Magazine about MIAs and POWs appeared on the screen. Ten years had passed since the men listed had disappeared in Vietnam. There was little hope any of them would be found. Hester scrolled down and there it was, highlighted in blue ink, Arthur Kendall, Lodi, N.J., missing since July 16, 1970. He’s gone. He’s been gone.
Her warped fantasy for so long—Arty finds her to tell her everything was a terrible mistake. They were young and foolish, and in the end they learned a hard lesson from what they did. It was his fault, all his fault. He hugs her and says, “Hester, I am so sorry.”
Now, Hester saw the truth right in front of her on the computer screen—Arty went to war and never came back. He would never find her, never apologize.
Hester logged off. What she wished for was true? Arthur Kendall had been punished too, severely punished. How many times had she imagined him with his wife Trish and kids, two or three kids, maybe more than that? One big happy family, but that’s not how it was. If he had a child, he never saw it. Just like she hadn’t seen hers, theirs. Many times she hated her life, but now she realized at least she had one. And she’d wasted all that time being jealous of Arty, imagining what Arty’s life was like, when he never had one.
In the shade of the Bo as the air grew cooler, Hester looked at the weeds between the impatiens. They needed to be pulled. She put her laptop aside and went to work ripping the stubborn invaders out by the roots. She twisted the dead leaves off the ginger plants and picked the shriveled flowers off the gardenia bush. Two feet down was Nina’s decaying body, but on the surface, the lush and colorful plants belied death and filled the space with beauty.
Hester knew she had to move Nina, but the thought of it, of digging up the plants, of going down deeper and deeper with the shovel, hitting something, seeing the black bags, seeing the duct tape, touching the bundle, feeling the fat, writhing maggots made her sick and filled her with shame.
Her hands were black with soil. She brushed as much dirt off as she could and went inside to do another thing she’d been putting off. She washed up at the kitchen sink, then went down the hall and into the guest bedroom.
The night Hester buried Nina, she also hid all of her belongings. Distressed as she was, she’d thought to throw whatever was in Nina’s drawers and closet into her suitcase and carry-on bag, and shove them under the bed where Nina had slept. Since then, Hester avoided the guest room and only came in to dust and vacuum.
The bright red luggage was cheap stuff from Marshall’s that Hester had mailed Nina $40 to buy, along with the $266 for her flight down. The girl had been desperate on the phone, crying about how no one at college spoke to her, how cruel her aunt was, and how she missed Mr. Murphy and her.
Hester sat on the floor, unzipped the carry-on first, and started taking things out. Two small black push-up bras, a copy of People magazine with Brad Pitt on the cover, a classroom copy of The Great Gatsby,—Hester knew Nina hadn’t turned it in—a plastic bangle bracelet, a Hello Kitty address book, a pair of shorts with “Too Cute” written across the rear, a hairbrush, a makeup bag full of cheap cosmetics, a box of tampons, and birth control pills.
Birth control pills? Hester felt her heart drop. What was Nina doing with birth control pills? She never paid one bit of attention to any of the boys at school. This must’ve started at the community college, or…
Hester lined the items up in a row on the floor in front of her. They looked like artifacts from a lost civilization of junk collectors. Nina had so little, and what she had was cheap and worthless. How insignificant her life seemed if this is what she left behind. Everything there saddened Hester, but it was the strands of Nina’s light-brown hair tangled in the bristles of the worn brush that made her go weak inside.
Hester picked up the People magazine; the corner of a page was turned down. It was a story about that cop Drew Peterson, who was accused of killing his wives. She put it down and picked up the copy of The Great Gatsby. The cover of the paperback was dirty, half the front torn off. Hester fanned through it and was amazed by the number of marginal notations. In the beginning the notes seemed based on class discussions, but further along there were curse words, doodles, small drawings of stick people in obscene positions—a couple having oral sex, a man on top of a woman.
Hester cringed. Her heart filled with dread. There were things going on in Nina’s head Hester knew nothing about and couldn’t have guessed, not in a million years. And she clearly had little respect for school property or for what Hester was trying to teach her.
After chapter six practically every other page was defaced. Midway through the last chapter, Nina made a list of each character and an equivalent slur. “Nick Caraway = pansy ass,” “Myrtle Wilson = fat slob.” And so on.
This annoyed Hester. It seemed so out of character for Nina, but clearly it was her writing. Hester closed the book and tossed it on the bed, and it flipped open to the inside of the back cover, where something was written in big capital letters that had nothing to do with the novel. “MRS. MURPHY = STUPID OLD BITCH” and “THIS BOOK BELONGS TO NINA MURPHY”
Nina Murphy? What had she wanted from them? To be adopted?
How could Nina write such things? Hester believed Nina had loved her. Obviously, she hadn’t. Hester put everything back in the carry-on, threw the battered copy of Gatsby in on top, and lifted the suitcase onto the bed. She remembered throwing a folder full of papers from the drawer into it. She rummaged through the short-shorts, skinny T’s, and hoodies until she found it. It was packed with old stuff like Nina’s report cards from elementary school, her First Communion certificate, notes she had written to her mother when she was a little girl, things like that. She shuffled through the papers and found Nina’s birth certificate.
Nina Alexandra, born—November 11, 1987. Mother—Jennifer Tattoni, father—unknown.
That date? That year? Hester sat still and counted back nine months and tried to remember what happened in the spring of that year.
Well, Al found out about the abortion. She couldn’t forget that traumatic event. She mentally tried to go forward from that awful day. Was that when she saw Al in the dugout with Jennifer Masterson? Then Jennifer dropped out of school and disappeared from the area altogether? Hester couldn’t remember the exactly sequence, and she couldn’t imagine a connection between Jennifer Masterson and this Jennifer Tattoni, who was Nina’s mother. And then there was Nina’s Aunt Linda, whose last name was Connery, but that was probably her married name. Hester remembered teaching another Masterson girl beside Jennifer, but she’d be damned if she could remember if her first name was Linda.
If only she had her old yearbooks, but Al had thrown them away when the whole rush-to- retirement thing started.
What really did happen last June? Al certainly had some sort of breakdown—over what?—she never did get a straight answer from him. Could it have been Al, and not Theo, who was harassing those girls? Was Al capable of molesting students?
Never, he’d never take a risk like that. He’s too smart, too cautious. They never would have given him his pension. So, it couldn’t have been him.
Hester put the folder down. That name, Jennifer, just a coincidence, that’s all. She dumped the rest of the stuff in the suitcase onto the bed. Everything smelled like soap. There was a used bar of Zest tucked in a pouch, more clothes. Hester unzipped
the lining inside the top and found some photographs. The first one was of a baby on its stomach on a blanket. Obviously, it was of Nina. The eyes had the same wide eagerness.
Baby Nina was bald as a cue ball, but her face was a pudgy miniature of the perfectly shaped one Hester knew. The next one was of Nina as a toddler. Sitting up, laughing into the lens, two little teeth visible in her open mouth. She looked like an angel. An adorable little angel.
Hester heard the slider squeal open. She slipped the photos back in the lining of the suitcase, scooped everything into it, and slid it under the bed. She hurried into the bathroom.
“Hey, anybody home?”
“Yeah, I’m in the bathroom.”
“Well, honey, looks like we’re moving.” Al sounded okay again. “I spent all this time with a couple of the board members, and the upshot is that Pleasant Palms is sold, and they’re going to tear this place down. Once we took that first installment, the sale became binding. It would take something huge to stop the closing. So I think we better talk.”
Al was outside the bathroom door. Hester flushed the toilet.
“Can you hear me, Hester? Come on, really, we have to talk. We’ve got to make some plans. We can go back to Lambertville, of course, and check up on Nina. God knows why we haven’t heard from that girl. I’ve tried to e-mail her and nothing, I get nothing back. Have you gotten anything?”
Hester stood in the bathroom thinking, he doesn’t know, he really doesn’t know. Then in her mind’s eye she saw the bulldozer plowing down the Bo tree, the trunk being pushed to the ground, and the roots popping up, and Nina with them.
“For Christ’s sakes, Al, give me a minute.” Hester washed her hands and studied her reflection in the mirror. There she was, as she really was, middle-aged, not the young, attractive person she used to be, changed—some would say for the worse. She picked up the brush, ran it through her hair, took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and stared into the small universe of her own eyes. Who would she be without Al? Another old woman, alone. Was she strong enough to endure that?
She could hear Al’s anxious breath on the other side of the door. Another decision to be made. The beginning of another chapter in their life together. Maybe they would start traveling again. Hester could hear the drums of Africa calling her. How long had she dreamed of going on a safari?
I’ll move Nina’s body. I’ll do it in the middle of the night. No one will know…
But did she have the strength to dig up the corpse? What would she do with it? She didn’t really believe Rosario chopped Lou Latimer up into little pieces and dumped him in the Intracoastal. Rosario and Mrs. Flowers were probably only cleaning out the old food in the freezer. Why waste it? Why not feed the fish?
Or she could leave Nina’s dead body where it was. She could let things unfold according to God’s plan. Maybe the workers would find it, maybe they wouldn’t. If they did, the truth would come out, and set her free. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…The words of that old church song. She could hear her mother’s voice singing them to her. If Nina’s dead body did come to light, the devil would get his due. Hester might go down with her husband, but the travesty her life had become would at last be over.
Oh, how she vacillated between doing something and doing nothing.
Hester came out of the bathroom casually dabbing some lipstick on her lower lip. She hesitated, then said, “Al, there’s nothing to talk about. I’ll do what you want to do. No need to talk about it, is there? Besides, I’m supposed to meet Eve for a game of euchre.”
She applied lipstick to her top lip and pressed them together. When she reached for her jeans jacket, Al grabbed her wrist. “I’m not fooling around here. This is serious business.”
Here it comes, she thought. He was just pretending not to know before. She waited for him to ask, to beg her to tell him what she’d done with Nina’s body.
“We have to find another place, and we can’t fool around about it. Three hundred of us are in the market now. All of the good deals will be gone in a week. You can play games for the rest of your life, but right now we’ve got to get a real estate agent and start looking.” Al slipped his hand from her wrist into her hand and swung her arm back and forth, just like a little kid who wanted to go for a walk.
Hester led him into the narrow kitchen and turned to face him. She looked at him, and he seemed genuinely concerned about just what he was talking about. Nina, in his mind, was still very much alive and having a grand old time somewhere in New Jersey.
“Look, Hester, I figure realistically we’ll end up with about five hundred thousand, which is a far cry from the million everybody’s been talking about, but with capital gains tax, closing costs, corporation fees, you know, all of that stuff chips away at our profit.” He leaned against the refrigerator. “Still, it’s a hell of a lot more than we ever had before…”
He kept talking, but Hester’s mind was elsewhere, back in the bedroom with those photos. That baby girl was gone forever. Her once-shiny plump flesh now rotting flesh, her short life a pathetic waste, and Al’s worrying about getting a jump on the real estate market?
And then there were those birth control pills. Were they for Al? So she could let Al fuck her without getting pregnant? Were they?
Behind Hester on the counter was the cutlery set, their gleaming stainless steel handles jutting out of the walnut block like so many invitations. The temptation to reach back, to swiftly grab one, to swing it up overhead and bring it down into Al’s jugular was extreme. What on earth was stopping her?
Hester forced herself to say, “Al, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to get over to Eve’s. She’s waiting for me.” How wonderfully calm she sounded when she really wanted to scream, fuck you, Al. But she wanted to get the hell away from him, so she added, “I’ll tell her maybe we’ll get together later for dinner. Maybe we can barbecue something up by the beach. Or is that too much for me to decide? I mean about dinner and what we might eat. Maybe it takes more brains than I have to figure something like a barbecue on the beach out. Anyway, then you can talk to them about buying real estate because at least they’re not dumb…like…”
She was babbling on as she worked her way to the door and slid it open. Right before she stepped out, she noticed Al had a strange look on his face, of befuddlement, mixed with pure anger.
Leaving him standing there looking so bewildered, so bewitched…why, it made her feel better than the damn sparkling rosy-tipped fingers of dawn.
Forty-One
Walking into the school foyer was like entering Hades. It was the last week of June, and since only the main office was air-conditioned, the rest of the building was hot as hell. Hester headed drearily down the hall. As she passed the glass-enclosed, climate-controlled, inner-sanctum of the principal and vice principal, she noticed the condensation on the windows and thought, I hope they freeze to death in there. Lydia and Diane, the two secretaries whose desks were strategically positioned to barricade the entrances to Glatton’s and Al’s offices, actually had sweaters on. Sweaters! Hester shook her head. The injustice of it all.
Hester worked in her blistering hot classroom until noon, when she sat down to rest because she was feeling dehydrated and morose. She thought about it and decided, Theo was a nothing but a drama queen, and Al had a good excuse for falling asleep right after ejaculating. The fiasco in the gym must have taken a toll on him. She’d do something nice for him. She’d go down to his office and invite him to lunch.
Rummaging in her pocketbook for a couple of Kleenex to blot the perspiration off her nose, Hester headed back through the searing heat in the hall. She saw a flurry of activity in the main office. Several top administrators, one board member, and the district’s attorney filled the space between Lydia’s and Diane’s desks. They were gesticulating wildly to each other. Hester pulled the door open; a wave of hotness went in with her and made everyone turn to look. But they all quickly averted their eyes, which gave Hester a bad feeling
.
“Let’s take this behind closed doors, why don’t we?” the attorney said and began ushering everyone into Glatton’s office. Lydia and Diane, who Hester was sure knew exactly what was going on, turned back to their computers.
Hester didn’t take the hint. “Hey, girls, what’s going on?”
Diane tried to sound casual, “Oh, some big meeting or other, probably nothing, nothing they told us about anyway.”
“Is Al in his office?”
Lydia swiveled in her chair to face Hester. “No,” she said, and swiveled back to rummage through some files.
“Well, do you know where he is, or is that some sort of secret too?” Hester’s patience was wearing thin. What was the big deal?
“Look, Hester.” Diane got up and came around the side of her desk. She stood close to Hester and whispered, “Honestly, we’re not sure what’s going on, but Al’s in Glatton’s office, and something pretty unsavory seems to be going down. Right, Lydia?” She glanced over at Lydia.
“Right.” Lydia whispered too. “I think it has something to do with some of the senior girls accusing one of the male teachers of molesting them. But please, don’t say I said anything.”
“Oh my God, what a mess. Don’t worry, Lydia…Diane. I won’t say a word about it until Al brings it up. But who do you think it is? The teacher, I mean?” Hester thought of Theo. He’d gotten so bold with her.
“Not a clue, Mrs. Murphy.” Diane went behind her desk and sat down.
“Me either,” Lydia said as she stuffed papers into a folder.
Hester knew they both knew exactly who the pervert was. Nothing could happen in this microenvironment without them finding out.
“Well, I hope it isn’t true, but if it is, I hope whoever the son of a gun is, he gets what he deserves. Right, ladies?”
On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) Page 20