A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

  “It’s beautiful.” Caroline gently stroked the feathers. “Where did you find it?”

  Betty lowered her eyes. “That was a gift from my greatest admirer.”

  “Calder, since when do you know where to shop for stuff like this?”

  “She meant me,” I said. “They’re a lot easier to find in New York.”

  Betty whisked over to her closet and threw open the doors. She dug out a powder blue silk housecoat. “Here,” she said to Caroline. “Put this on. Just until I’m done.”

  “Done with what?” Caroline asked.

  Betty didn’t answer. She was already pawing through the piles of makeup, setting aside an eye shadow here, a lipstick there. I knew exactly where this was headed. Betty had tried numerous times to subject me to a makeover, but I patently refused to be tinkered with. Caroline, on the other hand, was more than willing, looking up at Betty with such gratitude I was forced to avert my eyes.

  I sat next to Calder on the bed so we could keep each other company while Betty worked diligently on Caroline’s transformation. Together, we watched as Betty made Caroline’s eyes rounder, her lips fuller, her hair thicker, adding a gentle wave. Betty went back to the closet and found a green satin dress; Calder buried his face in a pillow so Caroline would have privacy while she changed. Opera gloves, a simple pendant, and, of course, the peacock feathers in her hair, and Caroline was hardly recognizable. Or, perhaps more accurately, she looked like Betty. I could tell Calder noticed the resemblance also, and it made him uncomfortable.

  “You look beautiful,” he told his sister, but it sounded tight and forced.

  Caroline didn’t notice. She was too busy staring at herself in the mirror while Betty smiled, satisfied with her handiwork.

  “I’m hungry,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to the diner and get burgers.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Betty said. “You’re not hungry, you just want to see Owen.”

  “Can’t she want both?” Calder said.

  “Owen Shepard?” Caroline said, glancing away from her reflection for the first time. “Are you guys, like, together?”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew the answer was no, we were not together, and we never would be, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. If Caroline could play Cinderella for the afternoon, it seemed only fair I should be able to spend a few hours pretending that Owen was overwhelmed with joy every time I stepped inside the Halyard, that he lacked only the ability to articulate the depth of his feelings for me and not, in fact, the feelings themselves.

  “It’s complicated,” said Calder. “With older guys, it always is.”

  “He’s not that much older,” Betty said, rushing to my defense, and the defense of my imaginary relationship.

  Calder looked at Caroline. “Don’t listen to them. You stay away from older guys, you understand me?”

  Betty groaned. “God, don’t you realize telling her that just makes them more appealing?”

  “Fine,” Calder said, with mock seriousness. “Just stay away from all boys, of all ages, forever. Okay?”

  Caroline laughed. “Okay.”

  “Fin, if you want to go to the diner, we can go,” Betty said.

  I squirmed, suddenly restless and uncomfortable. The room seemed too small for all of us, and I needed to get out, but I didn’t want to see Owen anymore. Calder got up and put his arms around Betty, kissing her cheek, whispering something in her ear that made her giggle.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m just going to head home.”

  “No, don’t,” Betty said. “Please?”

  “I’m sorry,” Calder told me. “You and Owen are none of my business.”

  “We don’t have to go to the diner,” Caroline said. “We could just go get ice cream.”

  It was three against one, so I relented, and we went into town together. Caroline had changed back into her regular clothes, but kept the makeup on, and the peacock clip in her hair. Calder held Betty’s hand as we walked down Main Street, and jealousy spiked inside me. When we passed the Halyard, Owen saw me from behind the counter, smiled, and waved. I smiled back. Later that week I lost my virginity to him, but other than that, not much changed.

  Now, in the car with Serena, I winced thinking about that day, how normal it all seemed. How normal Calder seemed. Affectionate toward Betty, protective of his little sister. “Sometimes I feel like it’s my fault,” I said suddenly, surprising myself. I had never revealed this to anyone—not Owen, not either of my parents, not my shrink in New York.

  “Why?” Serena asked. “You weren’t even here when it happened.”

  “I spent a whole summer with him, when he and Betty were together. It’s like I must have missed something, a sign, a tell. He had me fooled as much as everybody else.”

  She didn’t disagree, and I felt a rush of affection toward her. I was so tired of being bullshitted, it was a relief to be with someone who couldn’t be bothered.

  “I think we should go in there,” she said, nodding toward the house.

  “Now?” I said. “While they’re doing the dishes?”

  “Saturday night.” July 4, I realized. “Everyone will be down by the water, watching the fireworks. We can let ourselves in and look around. Maybe there’s something—I don’t know.”

  Whether it yielded any answers or not, the desire to violate Calder in even the smallest way was too tempting to resist. I wanted to rifle through his belongings, wander through his house while he gathered with his family and the rest of the town, celebrating our nation’s birth, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t as safe as he believed, that not everyone had forgotten what he really was.

  He and his sister were finished with the dishes; Caroline went into the back of the house, leaving him alone in the kitchen. He took something out of a cabinet and put it in the microwave. I couldn’t see but I imagined it was popcorn, that they were about to gather in the living room for a family movie night, and I was consumed with a fury that mingled with grief inside my chest, so powerful not even the Vicodin could stop the tears from filling my eyes until they overflowed. I wanted Serena to floor it, just punch the gas and drive into his house and kill him where he stood; I wanted to watch him take his last breaths pinned between her front fender and his refrigerator, the gleaming stainless steel covered in his blood.

  “I know,” Serena said, putting her arm around me and pulling me close. I buried my face in her shoulder; she smelled like baby powder and ChapStick and coconut shampoo. I was shaking.

  When I stopped crying I sat up, wiping my face with my sleeve. “Saturday, then.”

  “Saturday.”

  • • •

  The next afternoon, restless, I drove into town. Charlie’s was doing a brisk business, the front door propped open to reveal a row of regulars slumped over the bar, their pints clutched tightly in their hands, cigarettes smoldering in their ashtrays. The rest of Main Street was still deserted, though, not a New York or Massachusetts license plate in sight. There were only a couple of days left until Fourth of July weekend, and I suspected it wouldn’t be long until we were infested.

  As I walked past the Halyard, I tried to resist glancing in to see if Owen was behind the counter, but I couldn’t help myself. There he was at the register. He didn’t look up as I went by. I wondered if he’d had the dishwasher fixed yet.

  “Finley.”

  I turned around. My father was emerging from the side door of the creamery; to my surprise, Emily Shepard was trailing him. She was as I remembered—tall and blonde and solidly built, someone you’d put your money on in almost any situation, and though she still wore her jeans tucked into her boots and a loose button-down tucked into her jeans, without her badge and her gun there was no question that something was missing. The look on her face when she saw me was not pleasant.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

&
nbsp; “You want to join us for lunch, Fin?” my father asked. “We were just going to get a burger at the diner.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I already ate.”

  Emily snorted, like she knew I was lying and just wanted to avoid Owen.

  “Hi, Emily,” I said.

  She ignored me. “I’ll go get us a table, Frank,” she said, and disappeared inside the diner.

  “What the fuck is her problem?” I asked.

  “She’s been a little cranky since she was fired.”

  “It must run in the family. You two on a date or something?” This was meant as a joke; Emily’s status as a lesbian was another of Williston’s open secrets.

  “I’m just picking her brain.”

  “About what?”

  “A story. She may not be on the force anymore, but she’s still got good connections.”

  I glanced inside the diner, where Emily was settling into a booth. Owen looked tense, like he wasn’t any happier to see her than she had been to see me. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked my father, suddenly realizing I had no idea.

  “A couple,” he said with a wry grin, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

  • • •

  I got an ice cream cone at the creamery and took it down to the marina behind Main Street. Sitting at the end of one of the docks, I dangled my feet above the water and licked my coffee-flavored lunch while I considered everything Shelly had said. The false confession thing made sense, in a way—not that I believed it, but I understood how people could convince themselves of something like that.

  Everyone I’d spoken to so far agreed that Betty had been unhappy in the months leading up to her death. Even if it predated the breakup with Calder, that didn’t necessarily mean he’d had nothing to do with it. He could have cheated on her first, or, knowing Betty, he could have just stopped paying her the requisite amount of attention; that alone might have been enough to set her off. I remembered times I hadn’t returned her phone calls quickly enough, and when we finally spoke she would have a chill in her voice, keeping her sentences short and clipped to communicate her displeasure.

  But Calder had always been a vigilant boyfriend. In fact, he had pursued her, apparently charmed by the things so many before him had found alienating. He was a lacrosse player who liked to perform in school plays, someone popular who didn’t look down on the artsy crowd.

  When they first started dating, at the beginning of sophomore year, Betty had regaled me with tales of his affections: the flowers he taped to her locker door, the way he waited for her outside all her classes. The stuffed lobster he’d won for her at the county fair. His family embraced her; she had dinner at their house several nights a week, became friends with the worshipful Caroline, who was in her last year of middle school then, and joined the Millers regularly for their excursions out to the movies or the beach. It was a reprieve from her own parents, I knew, from the claustrophobia of being the only child to two of the most conservative Catholics in Maine. When Calder broke up with her, she didn’t just lose him; she lost them all.

  Caroline wouldn’t even look at Betty in the hallways at school, but still I wondered how she felt when her brother was accused of her former heroine’s murder. Did she believe his confession had been coerced as well? Or did she have her doubts?

  I lit a cigarette and stared into the water. I missed New York. When I first moved down there I was so trepidatious about everything, from living with only my mother to navigating the subway system. With work to give her purpose again, Mom was no longer the shrieking harpy who had made our lives in Williston so unhappy. And every month in school, I was given a fresh subway pass and set loose on the island of Manhattan.

  Soon I realized I had found my real home. To walk down the street and not be recognized, to not have every interaction with a cashier or a waitress include detailed questions about my family or myself, to not be expected to make eye contact and smile and say good morning to every fucking person I passed on my way to get a cup of coffee at the bodega on our corner—at last I could understand my mother’s protracted misery in Williston, the claustrophobia she must have felt. I might not have forgiven her for infecting our entire family with it, but a newfound empathy gradually warmed me.

  Our first apartment was a railroad. Mom slept on a pullout couch and had to walk through my bedroom to get to the bathroom. As her practice grew, picking up more and more momentum, we moved again, and then again, until we each had our own bathroom and there was a spare bedroom Betty eventually came to think of as hers.

  In two months I would be moving into my dorm at NYU, with a roommate who wasn’t Betty. Everyone—my mother, my father, my friends in the city, my therapist—had promised me that it wouldn’t always hurt this much, that slowly, gradually, the pain would recede, like the tide going out, and that scared me shitless. Betty’s death had hollowed me out, and I was sure if I ever stopped mourning for her, there’d be nothing left of me. I’d be as gone as she was.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  ON FOURTH OF July afternoon, I told Dad that I didn’t feel up to going to the Sandpipers game, or the fireworks afterward. He tried to give me a hard time, but all I had to do was place my hand in the general area of my uterus and wince in feigned menstrual agony and he gave up, leaving me on the couch with the remote and my kitten mug full of steaming tea.

  Serena arrived about an hour later. She had dyed her hair black.

  “I thought the pink was a little bit conspicuous,” she explained.

  “Clever girl,” I said, and smiled.

  I filled my bag with the essentials—flashlights, knife, cigarettes. The plan was to hike several miles through the woods behind my house and eventually come around behind Calder’s. We couldn’t risk taking a car; there was nowhere to park where we could be sure we wouldn’t be spotted. No one in Williston ever locked their doors, so once we knew the Millers were gone, we would just walk right in. And then—I wasn’t sure what, exactly. We’d know when we got there.

  It was still light out when we left, but the sky was the color of slate and it smelled like rain. There was a damp chill in the air, and I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my sweatshirt.

  At the edge of my backyard was a narrow deer trail that wound north. Serena led the way; I watched her march forward with confidence and told myself this was a good idea. There was no reason to be nervous yet; right now we were just two girls taking a walk in the woods.

  “Whatever happened to Monica?” I asked her. “Do you two ever talk anymore?”

  “No.” Her shoulders tensed as she answered, and I thought it wise to let the subject drop.

  We were quiet after that, although the forest around us was filled with sound—mourning doves calling from their perches in the trees and twigs snapping under our feet. A mosquito buzzed in my ear and I slapped ineffectually at the side of my head. There was no sun to dapple through the leaves, and the gloom increased as we slipped deeper into the woods.

  “What about you?” Serena asked. “You seeing anyone back in New York?”

  “I wasn’t exactly ripe for romance this year.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We came to a shallow creek; a series of slick, glossy stones made for a potential path to the other side. Without looking at me, Serena held a hand out behind her back; I took it and followed her careful steps. After we crossed, she released my hand from her firm, solid grip, but not before giving it a slight squeeze.

  It was a long time before we spoke again, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable around her; something about Serena set me on edge, as if I’d never fully recovered from the shock of seeing her flip off the entire faculty at graduation, or the scare she’d given me in the theater the day we’d officially met. It was not an unpleasant sensation, though; it made me more aware of my body—my stomach clenched, my chest expanding and cont
racting with every breath, the place on my shoulder where the strap of my messenger bag bit into my flesh. Being with her felt like I was constantly bracing for impact, what I imagined it would be like in that split second before a car crash, when you can see what’s about to happen but can’t react fast enough to stop it.

  It started to rain. We pulled up our hoods and trudged forward. Occasionally the path veered close enough to the road that I could hear cars passing by, water swishing under their tires as they drove toward town.

  “Do you think they’ll cancel the fireworks?” I asked.

  “No way. Williston would celebrate Independence Day in the middle of a nuclear fucking holocaust if it had to.”

  “You’re right.”

  She glanced at me slyly over her shoulder. “You’re not looking for an out, are you, Finley?”

  Was I? I pictured Calder accepting his diploma, and my resolve hardened. “No.”

  We finally came around the back of the Millers’ house. The lights were off and the driveway was empty. I slid open the glass door, but Serena stopped me before I could step inside.

  “Shoes,” she said, pointing at mine. They were covered in mud from our rainy walk through the forest. I took them off and placed them neatly on the cement outside the door. She did the same.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now.”

  We slipped inside, just enough gray light still coming in through the windows that we avoided bumping into the furniture. I had forgotten about the fucking dogs, though. The two chocolate Labs rushed us as we came inside, barking wildly, and Serena shrank behind me; I crouched down and made a series of soothing noises, scratching behind their ears and whispering their names, Cassie and Gemini. I remembered them, and they, apparently, remembered me; Cassie licked my face while Gemini shoved his nose directly into my crotch, his signature move.

  “It’s okay,” I told Serena. “They don’t bite. Go into the kitchen, there should be a jar of treats on the counter. Grab a few.”