The ring must have been the mother’s, then, although if she had been old enough to have a son go off to Korea, she must be dead by now.
“So where do the Lisacs live now?”
“What do you mean? They still live here. Allen inherited the house from his folks after they died. The house has been in the family since it was built. His great-great-granddaddy was one of those lumber barons. He built it for his fancy East Coast wife, but they say she only lasted a couple of years before she took sick and died.” He waggled his overgrown eyebrows at her. “Of course, some people do say that she just ran off. Whatever, it just left him and his son rattling around in this big house. Things have changed since then. If this house ever came on the market, one of those yuppie people would buy it in a minute. They like all the built-ins and the leaded glass windows. And Allen has made so much money he makes his great-great-grandfather look like a failure.”
Allen Lisac. Claire had heard of him before. He owned a construction company, and signs with his company’s logo, an interlocked L and C, for Lisac Construction, were at half the building sites in Portland. A shiver danced across Claire’s damp skin. Now that he had an audience, this Howard guy looked like he could go on talking forever, gossiping about a time long past, when he and the world were both young.
“Well, I certainly appreciate you’re telling me about the wall. I’d better get start running again before I lose all initiative.”
“Feel free to stop by if you think up any more questions.”
His expression was wistful, and Claire imagined his day - long stretches of silence broken up talking too long to the grocery store clerk or the guy at the auto parts store. She gave him a little wave with her right hand before turning on her heel and running down the length of the driveway. She was still careful to keep the ring’s winking diamonds from betraying that she was taking something that didn’t belong to her. Before she could cross the street, she had to wait for a brand new purple Porsche to pass. The vanity license plate read RUNVS – license-plate speak for “Are you envious?” Claire, who had once worked as a vanity license plate verifier for the state of Oregon, wondered how long it would be before someone keyed the car in a darkened parking lot. In her opinion, people who used their license plates to brag on themselves – like the Jaguar for which she had once approved plates reading IQ 189 – were just asking for it.
On the way home, she had to detour around an unidentifiable dead animal in the gutter that had been rained on, stepped on, and run over so many times the only thing left was a flattened patch of gray fur.
Claire thought nothing of it.
Chapter 4
A MR E
Skirting the foot-wide ceramic dog dish emblazoned with the word “Duke” that lay on the front porch, Claire opened the door to the big house she had shared with Charlotte Heidenbruch for more than a half dozen years. Charlie claimed the dog dish was cheaper than a burglar alarm – or a real dog. To add to the verisimilitude, she occasionally even filled it with the cheapest brand of dry dog food. The only drawback was that the stale kibble drew all the neighborhood dogs as well as the occasional raccoon.
Claire found Charlie in the dining room, kneading bread dough on the round wooden table. At four foot eleven, Charlie found the kitchen counter impossibly high for the task. The older woman was so full of life that Claire tended to think of her as both taller and younger, certainly not the 81 years she really was.
“Look what I found when I was out running today.” Claire stretched out her left hand. The ring’s diamonds caught the light.
In the ten minutes it had taken her to run home, Claire had had time to rehearse what Charlie’s reaction might be. Surprise, excitement, amazement – all these she had imagined. But not this, not Charlie staggering back, one floury hand pressed against her chest.
“Where did you get that?” Charlie was regarding the ring the way a gardener might a fallen branch suddenly slithering away with a telltale rattle.
“What’s the matter, Charlie?” Claire had never seen her friend look like this before.
“Just tell me where you got this thing.” The last words came out “dis ding,” the ‘th’ sound eluding Charlie’s tongue as if she were suddenly back in Germany. Her English was nearly flawless. She had immigrated to the United States in 1946 and become a citizen as soon as she could. Whenever anyone asked her what she was, Charlie always answered that she was, of course, an American.
“A couple of blocks from here, off 45th, inside an old rock wall.” Claire turned her hand so that the diamonds caught the light. “Why? Have you seen it before?”
“Let me look at it.” When Claire put out her hand, Charlie leaned closer, but Claire noticed she was careful not to actually touch the ring. Instead, she scrutinized it for a long time with narrowed eyes, before finally looking up. Claire had expected her expression to be sharp, but instead her friend’s eyes were unfocused, her mouth loose and trembling. For once, she looked her age.
“How can this be? Tell me again where you are finding it.”
“Why? Do you know what it is?” Claire waited a moment, but when Charlie didn’t answer, she continued. “I was on a run when I stopped up the hill from the Southwest Community Center. When I was stretching out I saw something shining inside a chink in this old rock wall where the mortar had fallen out. And it turned out to be this ring. I tried to ask the people who owned the house about it, but the neighbor said they were on vacation. So do you recognize it?”
Charlie was silent for nearly a minute. When she finally spoke, her words were heavy and slow. “It looks so much like the ring that belonged to my friend Elizabeth. It was her engagement ring. But the last time I saw it was nearly fifty years ago. When her man came home from Korea, something went wrong between them. She broke off the engagement and gave the ring back to him. And that’s the house where he lived.” Charlie’s faded blue eyes finally focused on Claire’s. “So why are you now finding this ring?”
“This Mr. Backus who lived next door, he told me the wall was made around that time. Maybe she lost the ring somehow while it was being built.”
“Backus? Was this Howard Backus?” Pronounced How-Vard.
“Do you know him?” Claire didn’t know why this surprised her. Charlie had lived in this neighborhood since shortly after the war. At the same time, Charlie didn’t dwell on the past. The past had stolen her husband and child, and left behind nothing but a green string of numbers tattooed on her forearm. One human being had done that to another, the better to keep track of perishable inventory.
Charlie paid no attention to Claire’s question. “Tell me again where this wall was.”
“Off 45th, above the Southwest Community Center. On one of those cross streets that’s named after a state.”
“And the house, what did it look like?”
“Like one of those English houses, you know, two stories with wooden beams running diagonally through the plaster on the second story.”
“That is where my friend lived.”
“So do you know where this Elizabeth is now? Can we give her back her ring?” Claire slipped it off and put in on the table, next to the plump dark ball of dough. Now her hand felt light enough to float in mid-air. “Or maybe it would really belong to the guy she decided not to marry.”
“The man she didn’t marry still lives in that house. Allen Lisac.” Charlie paused. “And for fifty years, Elizabeth has been buried in Moyter’s cemetery.”
“She’s dead? The woman who owned this is dead?” Claire was suddenly glad the ring was no longer on her finger. “What did she die from?”
“She killed herself.” Slowly, almost reluctantly, Charlie picked up the ring and weighed it in her hand, her eyes narrowed as if she were appraising it.
A shiver ran through Claire. “Killed herself? What was her name again? And how old was she?”
“Elizabeth Ellsworth. She was only nineteen years old.”
“How did she kill herself?” Claire tho
ught of sleeping pills, a quiet slipping into an endless slumber.
“She hung herself.” Charlie hesitated, then nearly whispered the next words. “I was the one who found her.”
Chapter 5
1951
“I’ve brought you lunch,” Charlie said on the day that Elizabeth died and everything changed. She held out the wicker hamper to Tom. Even though it had only taken her a few minutes to walk from her house to the Lisac’s front yard, sweat trickled between her breasts and slipped down the hollow of her spine.
Tom flashed her a smile while carefully setting into place another stone in the wall he had been building for the past six weeks. The stones were only a little larger than a loaf of bread and looked deceptively light. Charlie knew from the time she had tried to lift one that each weighed about twenty kilos, but the only sign they were heavy was the flex of the sinews in Tom’s forearms. Rather than putting the stones one right after another in a line, he fitted each into just the right space like a puzzle piece, matching contours so closely that only a little mortar was needed to hold them together.
“Good timing. I was just thinking about how hungry I was.” Tom grinned, and the look he gave her, one eyebrow raised, white teeth flashing in his tanned face, made the double meaning clear. They had been lovers since the first day they met, when she had invited him back to her house, talked with him for two hours, fed him, then matter-of-factly invited him upstairs. Now every evening Tom knocked on Charlie’s door, dirty and scraped and with a faint gray dusting of cement worked into every pore and crevice. And every evening, Charlie would be waiting for him with a glass of whisky and a tub filled with tepid water. She knew it would offer cool relief after a day spent laboring under a sky baked such a hard blue it looked like it might crack. Leaning over his powerful back, she would slowly rub the white washcloth along the bunched muscles, then reach around to the strong slabs of his pectorals, then lower, lower, until he finally stood up or pulled her into the tub with him. His hands – strong and callused, the nails bruised and torn – were always gentle when he touched her.
Now he washed those same hands under the outside faucet. No matter how strong their desire for each other, Tom needed this job, and Mr. Lisac frowned on lunch breaks of any duration. There was no question that they would do anything now but eat and talk. In a way, this was Charlie’s test, to see how much they had to talk about during the daylight hours, when there was more to say than urgent murmurs on twisted sheets.
They walked a few blocks and then spread their blanket on a grassy strip next to the fenced field of a dairy farm. On the other side of the fence, three brown and white cows watched them without curiosity. Tom and Charlie sat in about the same spot where, fifty years later, the Southwest Community Center’s whirlpool would be. But for now there was nothing but a single oak tree, and they sat in its dappled shadow. Charlie had made a picnic for them, with the last of the blueberries and a loaf of her rough bread and some cheese she had recently discovered, real, pale-colored cheese with a strong, sour flavor. She thought she would never get used to America’s bland cheeses, dyed unnatural colors as if to camouflage their lack of taste.
The hot air pressed down on them, heavy and still. At the refugee resettlement center, they had told Charlie that it rained a lot in Portland. She had since discovered that Portlanders had a six-week-long secret called Indian Summer. Charlie loved the term. It reminded her of her childhood spent reading books set in the American West, featuring noble Indians. It was only recently that she had learned that the man who had written these books had never set foot in America.
“I figure I’ll be done with the wall in two weeks. Maybe less.” Avoiding her gaze, Tom took a bite of bread and stared down at the grass as he chewed. His face was expressionless.
A flash of something approaching hatred ran through Charlie. He was as simple as an animal. He ate, drank, slept and fucked with complete enjoyment, abandoning himself to the moment. She knew what he was trying to say. When the wall was done, Walter Lisac would pay Tom and he would go on his way. He already had a job lined up in Oregon City, twenty miles away. As for what would happen to her then, Charlie told herself that Tom was not the first lover she had taken, nor the last.
“Will you miss me?” she said lightly.
“Did I say I was going anyplace?” He looked up at her then, with his golden eyes, and she saw that he was focused only on her answer, watching intently. “Or are you telling me you want me to go?”
Charlie, always so sure of herself, opened her mouth but could not find any words. The words came out anyway, as if someone else were saying them. “No. I do not want you to go.” Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. She had never before betrayed Richard with her heart. Seven years after his death, he still came to her in dreams.
Tom covered her hand with his own, his large hand completely enveloping hers, and didn’t say anymore.
After they finished eating, Charlie couldn’t find the flask of iced tea she thought she had packed. She must have left it sitting on her kitchen counter. Her throat was so dry it itched. After she walked Tom back to the Lisacs’ house, he set to work immediately, not one for lingering. The city had widened and deepened the street earlier in the year, leaving the Lisacs’ house sitting alone on top of an unnaturally sharp-edged hill. Walter was still angry about it, and it was why he had commissioned the wall. It would stop his property from washing away when the rains came in November.
Just thinking about rain made Charlie even thirstier. She imagined a cool glass filled with ice water, condensation beading on the surface. Instead of using the heavy brass knocker, she rapped lightly on the door. Somewhere inside, she thought she heard a door close. Someone was at home, then. Probably Elizabeth, who at Allen’s parents’ urging spent most of her time here rather than her own-tumble down house filled with squabbling children. Or maybe it was Elizabeth’s future mother-in-law, Austrid Lisac, who might have been beautiful, with her wide gray eyes, if they hadn’t been offset by the thin line of her mouth. She knocked again, then after a minute tried the door and found it unlocked.
“Hello?” Charlie called, then pushed open the door. At first, all she could take in was that something was wrong, out of place. It was more than the chair overturned on the rug, it was the thing that swayed faintly in the draft from the door, something dangling from the huge oak crossbeam.
Then Charlie realized the thing was Elizabeth, her limp form, dressed in a black peignoir, completely lifeless. Her head was bowed, and her pale yellow hair covered her face. Two feet above the ground, her bare feet slowly danced in the air.
Charlie ran forward then, screaming Tom’s name as she ran. She grabbed Elizabeth’s thighs in a bear hug. They were still warm and wet where the piss had run down them. With all her might, she pushed up. Elizabeth weighed at least twenty kilos more than Charlie, but the strength came to her from somewhere. She wanted Elizabeth to be alive. She willed it.
Tom ran in the still-open door, took one look. Yanking the knife from his belt, he righted the chair even as he stepped on it. With a single slice, he cut the thin white rope that tied Elizabeth to the air.
The full weight of Elizabeth’s body shifted and fell onto Charlie. She lost her balance and stumbled sideways, her arms still around Elizabeth’s thighs, her face pressed into her soft belly, into the smell of piss and shit. Together, they reeled into the china cabinet. Charlie would forever after remember the sound Elizabeth’s head made as it struck one of the etched glass doors, shattering it. A terrible hollow thunk, accompanied by the crack and tinkle of shattered glass. It reminded her of Kristalnacht.
And then they were lying in a tangle of arms and legs, dead woman and live woman. Tom had been through the war. He knew how to act when you must. Without hesitation he clawed his index finger into the narrow white cord that dug into Elizabeth’s long neck, slid the flat of the blade under, and then turned it and cut the cord. The edge of the blade nicked her skin, leaving behind a red line two inches long.
“Breathe,” Charlie implored Elizabeth, on her knees now, stroking the pale blond hair back from the equally pale face. “Breathe.” Elizabeth’s eyes were open and dull, the pupils fixed, dwindled down to two dark pinpricks. She wore a black silk nightgown, and Charlie slammed her fist down between the other woman’s breasts. “Breathe!” Tom caught her fist when she raised it again.
“She’s dead, Charlie.” His words were flat, without emotion, and she saw his own pupils had shrunk down so small she couldn’t see them anymore, just his golden irises. “You can’t help her.”
“Elizabeth?” Charlie spoke softly to the dead girl, the way you whispered to someone who was still asleep. “Why?” She noticed there were other smells in the room. From Elizabeth’s parted lips came the smell of wine. But mingled with it and overpowering it was the smell of blood. Blood rimmed the white even teeth that showed between the girl’s open lips. Blood matted the hair at Elizabeth’s temple. When Charlie closed her eyes, all she saw was red, all she smelled was death.
Chapter 6
42GRAPH
“How did you know her?” Claire asked softly. Charlie’s eyes were closed, but they still moved underneath the pleated lids.
At the sound of Claire’s voice, Charlie jumped a little, then opened her eyes. “There was a group of us who were friends, all of us, for one summer. This was in 1951. In September, Elizabeth died, and then everything changed. Wait. I think I still have some photos of us. From the old days.” Charlie turned and went upstairs, leaving Claire at the dining room table, staring at the ring, glinting dully next to the smooth brown round of bread dough. After hearing what had happened to its last wearer, she found it no longer drew her.
Overhead, Claire could hear Charlie moving around in the attic. It was another fifteen minutes before Charlie returned with a half-dozen black and white photos beginning to crack with age. She handed one to Claire.