She leaned into the steering wheel. “It’s an epidemic.”
Waiting at the pharmacy, she thought of all the questions that she should have asked the doctor. How long would it take for ringworm to clear up? How long was the incubation period? She pictured an angry mob of neighbors, boils and blisters, and scabs, marching to her door with torches and a hangman’s noose.
The pharmacist pulled out a reference book. His rounded belly rubbed against the counter as he read. “It takes four weeks to clear up ringworm if one maintains the course of treatment, and the incubation period is ten to fourteen days after exposure.” He peaked over the partition. “Is this for you?”
Debra had never contemplated an alias before, not until that very moment. She wanted to be someone else, anyone else, even for an instant. “Yes,” she said, avoiding eye contact. The affirmative word hung in her throat like a square pill.
Chapter 36
A warm wind swept the leaves into a whirlwind around Debra’s ankles. It was 60 degrees, a rarity for November, and her last chance to dig up the rest of the dahlia bulbs and to mulch the roses. The warm weather, fleeting at best, had delayed the gales of November. A cold front was approaching from Canada, and the sudden drop in temperature was likely to produce thunderstorms by tomorrow, on Friday. At least she didn’t have to worry about the electricity going off. Gus had rewired the entire circuit box. He must have known what he was doing—the house hadn’t burned down.
After Gus had left though, Debra had noticed an extra switch, kind of like a light switch. She hadn’t asked him to install it and neither had Greg, but there it was right next to the basement door. A switch to turn the sump pump on and off without having to unplug in the basement. A sump pump was an imperative now because when the creek rose; creek-water would back up into the basement right through the pipe that Greg had installed. So much for fixing the flooding problem. But this switch, this new switch perplexed her. Thinking back at it, she remembered how Gus had been talking to himself. At least she thought it was Gus’s voice. There hadn’t been anyone else there, just her and Gus and . . . . A chill ran down her back. No one had told Gus about Ed, not even about his accident. Debra instantly pictured Ed, the image of this policeman in the basement with water up to his knees, the plug in his hand. She tried to get that picture out of her head—him plugging it in—convulsing—electrocution—dying. Had Gus known? Is that why he put in the switch?
Friday came so quickly, and at 6 o’clock widespread thunderstorms were predicted to hit before midnight. LaGrange was often a target for storms that broke out over Lake Erie and pushed their way inland. The temperature had already fallen twenty degrees within the last hour. Debra wished Julie would call.
Greg had left, and Debra was wiping down the baseboards where he had sprayed ant poison. She heard the phone ring.
“Are we still on for tonight?” It was Julie.
“Julie! Hi! Sure! Come on over! I made a cake.”
Sure enough a lopsided chocolate cake, still in the pan, was taunting Debra. Frosting would have to even it out. She stood on her toes, barely reaching the powdered sugar, and pulled the edge of it from the top shelf. The bag, closed with just a clothespin, slipped out of her fingers and exploded on the floor. Julie got there just in time to see Debra sweeping it up.
“How bad do you want frosting?” Debra looked into her dustpan, poking at powdered sugar where she picked out a hair.
“I think I’d rather have a drink,” Julie announced, taking coconut rum and pineapple sherbet out of a paper bag. “Got a blender?”
“You always know just what to say,” Debra said, pretending to be coy. “Would you like some popcorn, too?”
After they had settled, they were sitting in the living room with the television on. They drank just enough to feel relaxed.
“You’re wearing your necklace,” Debra said.
“It makes me feel like I’m a part of something.”
“It’s pretty.”
“I’m sorry I carried on like I did. I’ve been meaning to tell you why I didn’t call you those first few days. My doctor put me on Valium. I took it because I couldn’t stop crying. All I could do was sleep. I didn’t call anyone, I couldn’t. You got me out for a jog the day after I stopped taking it. Then he prescribed Xanax. I took one a couple of days ago but I’m not going to take it anymore. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.
“Ask him about Elavil. It doesn’t knock you out, but it’ll stop compulsive thoughts from going over and over in your mind.”
“Have you taken it?” Julie asked.
“No. My mom did though,” Debra said. “My mother is mentally ill . . .”
“Really . . . .” Julie sat straight up.
“She’s in an institution.”
“How come you never mentioned it?”
“I don’t talk about it. I never know how someone’s going to react. My mom killed my dad.” Debra stopped here. She waited for a reaction, but none came. “She almost killed me, too, a few times. It sounds so bizarre, I don’t think people believe me. I can’t tell you how many times I was taken away from her and put in another foster home. They would play with my mom’s medication and she would seem okay for a while, and they would give me back. Then she would start drinking again and would stop taking the pills because she couldn’t do both, and it would start all over again.” Debra was visibly shaking now. She’d never said this much out loud, and stopped herself from saying more.
“Oh Deb. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. It must have been horrible.”
“It’s past tense now. I don’t think about it.” Debra said, wanting to change the mood.
“I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been for you to deal with.”
“I got through it. Look at me. I’m married. I’ve got this nice house . . .” She laughed nervously, not an out loud laugh, a two-syllable laugh. Julie reacted with the same nervous laugh.
“How did you get to be so normal?” Julie asked.
Debra paused. To her ‘normal’ was more like a trick that she’d learned to master. How was she going to answer that? She would pull out her eyelashes. She would bite her fingernails and cuticles till her fingers bled. She’d had her share of panic attacks, too. Being as close to normal as she would ever be, she said the only thing that made any sense, “I truly believe, by the grace of God.” It was time to change the subject. “You haven’t told me. What’s going on with Kyle?”
“Let’s just say, for one night, he doesn’t exist. I want to hear more about you. How did you meet Greg?”
“On a blind date; we went with another couple to Hinckley Hills, spent most of the afternoon climbing the cliffs. It was fun until we took a boat ride. After that I decided to never go out with him again.”
“Well I know you married him. What happened?”
“We rented a rowboat, just the two of us.” Debra hesitated, giving the look of a teenager who was about to share a secret. “I’ve never told this to anyone.” She sipped her drink, and sat on the edge of the couch to pantomime. “Greg was rowing and sitting like, you know, like guys do . . . with his legs . . . out. He didn’t realize that he had ripped a hole, a big one, up in the seam of his pants when we were climbing the ledges. It was the longest boat ride I ever had,” she said, her two-syllable laugh infectious. “To this day I’ve never said a word to him.”
“You never told him . . . never?” Julie laughed a girlish laugh.
“No, and I never will.”
Rain hit hard against the house, the wind whistled through the drafty windows and the rustling bushes tap-tap-tapped on the porch outside. A tinny tap-clang resonated from somewhere outside, and a floorboard creaked from somewhere upstairs.
“What was that?” Julie asked, beaming with a fun-house kind of excitement. “This house really is creepy.”
Debra turned the television down so Julie could hear the full effect. Strangely enough the sounds seemed more amusing than scary. Stranger still, the house s
eemed to have a pleasant effect on Julie, and the house seemed equally pleasant by having her here.
“I’ve been thinking . . . about those letters,” Julie said. “From the way they’re written, they sound like something a businessman would write, someone with a higher education, not someone who stalks women in grocery stores. They sound like they’re from a weirdo, not a deviant. I’m starting to think there’s no connection between the letters and that guy.”
“Didn’t you say the detective was supposed to compare the handwriting?”
“Lieutenant Barger. You’ve talked to him. Right?”
“I did. It wasn’t bad. It was the first time that someone from the legal system hasn’t made me feel like I was the criminal. He actually seemed concerned.”
“I thought he would have called me by now.”
“Whatever he tells you has to be undisputable. That’s probably why it’s taking so long.”
It was 11 o’clock and Greg came home just in time to hear the thunderstorm warnings on the news. By then they could hear thunder from a distance, the wind blowing harder, and branches hitting the house.
Julie had walked over earlier, but now the thunder and lightning were getting closer, louder.
Heavy rain pelted the four-paned windows.
“I’ll drive you home.” Debra got her car keys.
Julie looked out the window. “Sounds good to me.” The tree limbs flailed in the force of the wind. Lightning flashed. It thundered.
“Would you rather stay here until the storm is over?”
“No, I’ll be fine,” Julie answered, returning to a somber face.
They ran to the car and Debra backed out of the driveway, windshield wipers swishing madly. Pulling onto the road, she could hardly see because of the heavy rain. Hailstones, the size of pebbles, hit the car, first one ping, then two. Then an all-out hailstorm dropped from the sky and pounded the car.
“I’ll turn around in your driveway and get you closer to the door,” Debra told Julie, pulling into her driveway.
“I’m going to wait for it to let up some. I’ve never seen it like this.”
They huddled in the car, watching the hail pile on the road. Lightning extended fingers across the sky, cracking thunder. In a lull between lightning strikes, the sound of hail didn’t seem so loud any more. Then lightning flashed again, feathering out this time. This time it exploded in a thunderous clap and struck Debra’s farmhouse, engulfing the lightning rod.
“My house! Did you see that? It hit my house!”
“Go!”
Debra hit the gas pedal hard, spinning the wheels, throwing gravel. The hail finally stopped when she turned onto the road. Through the blinding rain, lightning flashed again, momentarily unveiling Greg’s silhouette. He was climbing onto the roof.
“I don’t see any fire.” Julie squinted, looking through the watermarked window.
“Can you see Greg?” Debra asked, watching the road.
“No.”
They pulled into Debra’s garage and made their way to the kitchen. Debra opened the kitchen door hesitantly to see if it was safe to go inside. She smelled smoke, not thick smoke like the fire she’d survived, but lingering smoke like a fire that had been drenched. Debra quickly rummaged through a cupboard, pulled out a box of baking soda, and headed toward the stairs.
“Do you think it’s safe?” Julie asked, holding her back by her elbow. “Don’t you think you should call the fire department?”
“It would take too long to get here. I think it’s manageable.” Debra pulled away gingerly. “There can’t be a fire, not anymore. The rain would have put it out.” She marched up the stairs with Julie right behind her. Cinders were melting the rug at the top of the stairs so Debra doused it with baking soda. Rain was coming in through the roof, from the hallway to unused part of the house. She pushed the door open to an unused room where she could see the second staircase. A heat register in the center of the floor didn’t conduct heat, per se. The thirty by thirty inch grate, which was right above the bathroom, was meant for heat to rise between the two floors. She had thrown a rubber mat over it to conserve heat. Rainwater was dripping through that, too.
“Greg!” Debra yelled through a watermelon size hole in the ceiling. She could hear the branches of the old catalpa tree caught up in the gusts of wind, the scraping sounds they made on the roof, the house, the windows. She could see the lightning rod, an orange steamy glow. The carpet was getting wetter by the minute, and so was the bathroom below.
“Deb?” Greg yelled from the living room, running up the stairs, dripping wet.
“You should have seen it. The entire room turned blue.” Greg shook off his baseball cap. “It sounded like a bomb went off. It went through the whole house and blew a hole right though the wall downstairs, above the front door.”
“I thought the lightning rod was supposed to prevent lightning from hitting the house,” Debra said.
“It does, as long as the metal cable grounds it, but that was broken.” Greg looked up at the hole in the ceiling and back at Debra. “I don’t get it. That cable was fine a week ago. It’ll hold for the night. I wound it together with a couple of wire coat hangers and made a temporary ground. I’ve got to throw a tarp up there.”
“You’re going back on the roof?” Debra said with a please-don’t sort of look.
“Get some buckets. A tarp’s not leak-proof, not as long as this keeps up.” Greg hurried down the stairs and back outside.
Debra grabbed a pile of towels from the bathroom and handed them to Julie. “Can you take these for me to sop up some of the water? I’m going to get a garbage can to catch the rain. I’ll be right back.”
When the towels and catch-buckets were all in place, Greg finally came inside. All of them had gotten wet, none of them as bad as Greg. Debra handed him a towel and gave one to Julie.
“Well, it was time to get a new roof, anyway.” He seemed to make light of it, but Debra picked up on his sarcasm. That house had swallowed their every last cent, and always seemed to beg for more.
“I never saw anything like that,” Greg said, still toweling off. “The whole room turned blue.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t here by myself when that happened,” Debra said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
Julie wasn’t paying attention. She seemed fixated on the blackened hole above the front door. “Look at that. Does that look like . . .?”
Greg glanced up half-wittingly. “Like what?” he asked, stepping out of his wet shoes. Debra looked hard at the charred formation.
“Deb, do you see it?” Julie took a couple steps back, eyeing the hole.
Debra concentrated. The shape of the hole wasn’t round at all. It was half-round on the right side. “It looks like . . . a half of a heart. Doesn’t it?” Debra spoke, half-whispering. “Just like your pendant, Julie.”
Greg had been towel-drying his hair and peaked out from under it. “You guys are funny. I’m going to bed.” He kissed Debra and turned towards the stairs.
Chapter 37
Debra had no idea what to expect when she had answered the door. The person pounding was yelling, “Game warden! Open up! Game warden!” He neither looked nor acted like a professional. A heavy chain looped in and out of his jean pockets, and a faded denim jacket hugged what looked like a muscular frame. His shoulder-length hair half-covered a cobra tattoo on his neck, a cigarette dangled from his mouth. And a tattoo baring a ring of skulls wrapped his wrist like a vulgar bracelet at his tattered sleeve.
“You got infected cats?” He flipped out some sort of I.D. and instantly shoved it back in his pocket. “I’m supposed to take ’em out of here. Where do I go?” He looked over his shoulder, his back to the road, and hocked a wad of snot from the back of his throat and spit in the direction of the bushes. Debra knew he’d missed. She could see where it had landed on the sunken porch, and quickly looked away.
“They’re back by the barn. I’ll get my coat.” Debra was just about
to close the door when he caught it, acting like he was going to come inside.
“I’ll meet you in back,” she said, abruptly closing the door, instinctively leaning into it. He was absolutely not coming inside. Debra had instantly decided, she didn’t like this man, his West Virginian drawl, and his dirty fingernails.
She brought the bag of cat food outside to lure the cats. The unlikely game warden was waiting on the deck with burlap bags and some sort of a pole that was outfitted with some sort of leash. She felt a shortness of breath . . . the reality of what they were about to do next sank in her chest. The extinction of all of these cats, what else could she do to get the fast spreading ringworm under control? There had to be more than twenty cats including kittens and the most recent drop-offs. She’d been spraying Kitty Callie twice a day with a fungicide and had made clean straw bed for her, only to be contaminated again by infected cats. There was no consoling herself; they had to be put down or they would suffer terribly. The sores were spreading quickly, and mucus matted their eyes. She had wanted to catch them all and make them better. She’d tried. Oh how she’d tried. The only consolation was at least they would die humanely.
Debra rattled the bag of cat food as she called out, “Here kitty, kitty. Here kitty, kitty.” She poured out a smattering into an old aluminum pie plate. She may as well have poured poison.
“We inherited these cats when we moved in. I couldn’t tell you how many generations these cats go back that have never been tamed.”
The cats waited for her to back away from the generic cat food before they gathered around it. They growled like wild animals as they ate. Most of which had never let Debra get close. “You can’t even pet them. They’ll back away.”
The game warden put on leather gloves. He placed himself a good distance behind a gray tomcat, extended the pole, and slowly looped the pole’s retractable leash around the cat’s neck. He jerked it fast and swung the cat up. The cat hissed and wailed, growling spitting, baring claws. The warden scooped it into a burlap sack and tied it closed. Debra wanted to slap the bag out of his hand. She wanted to tell him to leave and never come back. She had tried as hard as she could to corner just one more cat, just long enough to spray him, just long enough to save him. The same three-second recording spun in her head. These cats had to die. These cats had to die. Debra swallowed hard, her face ashen.
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