“You know what the problem is? She’s still out there.”
Don’s mind was on Miz Evelyn and Miz Judea and the mysterious Gladys upstairs. “Who?”
“Lissy. My roommate. My murderer.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“I know I can’t live here forever, Don. If you can call me alive.”
He squeezed her hand.
She smiled at him. “I know that if you’re really going to be happy, you have to love a living woman.”
“I do,” he said. “You.”
“I know that maybe if I could let go of this place, if I could drift away. I mean, think about it. Who is it the house holds onto? Not the Bellamys. When they died, they drifted away.”
“True,” said Don. “And why didn’t their children get caught up the way the ladies next door did? They grew up here and yet they could leave, they could even sell the place.”
“That is odd, when you think about it. Why would two prostitutes be tied here, and not the others? Why me, and not the others who died here?”
“Maybe because you lost something here. Maybe you all lost something.”
“My life,” she said. “What about them?”
“I don’t know. Their innocence? Their trust?”
“Their self-respect?”
“I don’t know them that well,” said Don. “But they lost something and so they can’t leave the house until they get it back.”
“Maybe it’s not something in particular at all. Maybe it’s just—loss.”
“Other people have to have lost things here, too.”
“Well, then, maybe it’s need.”
“What do you need?”
“A life,” she said, laughing.
“But that’s not a joke, is it?” he said.
“No,” she said. “Even before she killed me, I needed a life, Don. My parents were gone. There was nobody to show my accomplishments to. You know? Nobody to watch me sing or dance or whatever and clap their hands when I got through it without a single mistake.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“So I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself.” She laughed. “Can’t be done. You can’t please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn’t mean anything if it’s just you. There has to be somebody else it matters to. I think . . . I think that in my heart I needed that to be Lissy. I needed her to care about what I did.”
“And instead she cared so little that she was willing to wreck it all just to get a good grade on a paper.”
Sylvie nodded. “So it’s my own need holding me here.”
“Maybe,” said Don.
They sat in silence for a while.
“Or maybe,” said Don.
“What?”
“Maybe it’s justice that you need.”
“What’s justice? I hit Lissy with a stone. I could have killed her. As far as I can tell, my being dead and trapped here may very well be justice. Maybe this is hell, Don.”
“Hell is knowing she’s out there, thinking she got away with it.”
“Not just thinking,” said Sylvie. “She did get away with it.”
“I want to find her,” said Don.
“No.”
“I just want to . . . I don’t know. Send her a note. Just let her know that somebody knows what she did.”
“And then?”
“I just don’t think she should be happy,” said Don.
“Will it bring my body back to life?”
Don thought of the corpse lying on the mattress down in the tunnel. He thought of Nellie’s little body—and his ex-wife’s, too. She at least had died for her sins. Lissy hadn’t.
“She has to face what she did,” said Don.
Sylvie laughed. “You’re not going to do that by sending her a note.”
“How, then?”
“Bring her back here,” said Sylvie. “Bring her back to me.”
Don looked at her. What was she talking about? What did she mean to do?
“Maybe now that the Bellamy house is becoming itself again, it’s time for it to be haunted.”
He thought back to the movies he’d seen with haunted houses. Poltergeist. The Uninvited. The Changeling. He thought of Lissy coming into this house and coming face to face with the woman she murdered. And the house . . .
“Oh, man,” he said. “What would happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Sylvie. “But one thing’s certain. She couldn’t hurt me again.”
“So she comes,” said Don. “We find her somehow and she comes and you face her and she, what, I don’t know, runs screaming from the house and never has a good night’s sleep again. Or she goes to the police and confesses. Or she laughs at you and burns the house down. Or she dies of a heart attack. Whatever. Then what?”
“Then nothing,” said Sylvie. “We know, that’s all. We find out what happens and then we both know.”
Don thought about this. “Is there really some balance in the universe? Some scale of justice that will bring her here and find some way to set things to rights?”
“She’s what’s missing, Don. You’re the one who kept saying it—she’s out there. And she shouldn’t be. She committed murder in this house, Don. If anyone should be trapped here, it’s her.”
“You think the house wants her?”
“The house just wants. But if she comes, I think it might want her.”
“And it will let you go.”
“Maybe.”
“Let you go, but how? By making you disappear? Like you did this morning out there in the yard?”
“Would that be so terrible, Don?”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“Don, be honest, please. You don’t have me. You never can. And I can never have you. So maybe the best thing, the right thing—remember, you were asking about that?—maybe the right thing is for me to be set free of this place. And maybe if Lissy comes here, that can happen. I can . . .”
“Go to heaven,” he murmured. “Whatever.”
Don swung his legs off the cot and got up. “I’ve got to use the john.” Then he laughed. “And I actually worried about whether you’d been peeing in some sink or something.”
“Gross,” she said.
He walked through the huge ballroom instead of along the narrow hall. When he got to the bathroom he closed the door out of habit. It felt so good to release his bladder. The easing of that pressure.
He thought of the ladies next door. What pressure they felt, what its easing would mean to them. Was Sylvie right? Did it all depend on bringing Lissy back?
When he came back into the ballroom, he could feel a draft. A cool breeze was blowing outside, and the front door was open. She couldn’t have gone outside!
No. She was sitting on the bottom step of the stairway, looking at the outdoors.
He sat down beside her. “You know, I’m not some macho guy who avenges murdered girls.”
“I know,” said Sylvie. “That’s what’s eating you alive. That you aren’t the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty bad.”
“I was talking about you, not . . .”
“Not your little girl. But that’s still part of what this is about. It’s your hunger, Don. You need to save some captured girl before this whole thing plays out.”
“So you’ve got me figured out, huh?”
“You haunt this house just like I do, Don.”
“I’m not dead.”
“You live in dead places.”
“I bring them back to life.”
“But then you move on to another dead place.”
Don sighed. “Whatever. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for her. She could live anywhere. Under any name.”
“Not if nobody’s looking for her,” said Sylvie. “Not if she thinks no one ever found my body. And even if they did, there’d be no way to tie it to her.”
“So I just check ever
y American phone book looking for Lissy—what’s her last name?”
“Felicity Yont. But she has changed her name, I’ll bet. To McCoy.”
“Why McCoy?”
“Because that’s her boyfriend. Lanny McCoy.”
“So I look up Yont and McCoy.”
“Lissy was from Asheboro, but her people were all dead—it’s one of the things we had in common, that we were both alone. Lanny, though, he was local. He even lived with his parents. She used to laugh about that. How she never thought she’d be with a guy who lived with his parents. She said all that was left was for her to put on Spock ears and go to a Star Trek convention.”
“You think they might still be living in town?”
“No,” she said. “Lissy couldn’t wait to get out of North Carolina. She was so jealous of my getting a job in another state. We joked about how she was dying to leave and couldn’t, and I didn’t care about leaving North Carolina, and I was the one who had the cool job waiting for me in Providence.”
“So I start calling directory assistance? That’s the way to go through my bankroll, a quarter at a time.”
“No, silly,” she said. “Haven’t you ever done any research?”
“Not lately.”
“Not ever,” she said, teasing him. But they both knew it was true. “The library has a lot of phone books from other areas. But you won’t start there. If Lanny’s people still live in Greensboro, all you have to do is find them and they’ll probably tell you where Lanny is living now. With his wife Lissy, I’ll bet.”
“That would be too easy.”
“But maybe that’s how easy it’ll be.”
18
McCoy
Plenty of McCoys in the Greensboro phone book. Calling from a pay phone at the grocery store, twenty-five cents at a time, was tedious work.
The same conversation, over and over. “I’m looking for the family of Lanny McCoy.. . . He would have been in school at UNCG back in ’85.. . . No, I never met him, but my wife did.. . . Sorry for bothering you.. . . Thanks for talking to me.. . . Sorry for.. . . Family of Lanny McCoy who went to UNCG back in ’85.. . .”
Going on maybe four hours of sleep, Don had a hard time staying awake between calls. A hard time listening to what people were saying. A teenage kid walked by talking loudly to his girlfriend. “The X-Files is a crock. The government couldn’t have secret UFO stuff because the government can’t keep a secret, period!” He almost missed hearing the soft voice on the other end of the phone say, “You knew him?”
So there was a pause in the conversation before he realized that maybe he was hitting paydirt. “Actually, not me,” he said. “My wife knew him. Good friends with him and his girlfriend in those days, what was her name? Missy? Lissy?”
“Oh, yes, that dear girl, that poor girl.”
“Poor girl?”
“So broken-hearted. Oh, you don’t know, do you? Of course not. Lanny’s gone. All these years.”
“Gone?”
“You don’t—you haven’t seen him, have you?”
“No ma’am, I’m sorry.”
“Can’t help hoping. Silly, isn’t it? To hope that a phone call out of the blue.. . .”
This was it. And he wouldn’t get anywhere on the phone. “Mrs. McCoy, I don’t mean to intrude, but can I come over?”
“Oh, I wish you would.”
As soon as she said the address, Don knew half the history of the family. It was a tiny crackerbox house on a street of crackerbox houses, in a neighborhood built by Cone Mills for their textile workers. A strategy for keeping the unions out. The paternalistic employer provides workers with homes and they’re grateful; meanwhile, labor agitators get evicted, not just fired, so their families are out on the street. Very effective disincentive. But when times changed, the company sold the houses to the workers at a better than fair price, and now those factory families or their children or grandchildren kept immaculate yards around those tiny houses, their labor insisting that the size of the houses did not tell you about the class of the people inside. These were solid people, working people, salt of the earth. And for one of these families to send a child to college was still a big deal, even in the days of student loans and government financial aid. Lanny must have been the bearer of the McCoy family honor, their hope, their ambition.
Mr. and Mrs. McCoy were white people in their late fifties, her hair gray, his graying. They ushered him into a tiny living room filled with furniture covered with doilies and throws. The fireplace mantle was covered with knickknacks, including a couple of Hummels and a Lladro that must have been the markers of special occasions. The pride of place in the center of the mantle went to a framed eight-byten of a young man with longish hair and a great smile. No sooner had Don sat down than Mr. McCoy took down the picture and handed it to him.
“That’s our Lanny,” he said. “Senior picture from high school.”
“Nice-looking boy.”
“He was the first of our family ever to get to college,” said Mrs. McCoy. “And he was with that nice girl, too—we were sure they’d get married.”
“You just never know,” said Mr. McCoy, shaking his head.
“Nice girl?”
“You mentioned her on the phone,” said Mrs. McCoy. “Felicity Yont.”
“Lissy,” said Mr. McCoy.
“Then they didn’t get married?” asked Don. “We all assumed that they would.”
“It just broke her heart,” said Mrs. McCoy. “She came over here crying and crying about how he ran off with her roommate.”
Ran off with.. . . This was not the story Don had expected to hear.
“A snake in the grass, that’s what that one was,” said Mr. McCoy. “The librarian steals the man? What a joke.”
“And you don’t know where they’re living now?”
“We’ve never heard from him since.” Mrs. McCoy broke down in tears.
After a delicate pause to show respect for his wife’s grief, Mr. McCoy said softly, “I don’t expect they’re together. A woman like that, she’s got no loyalty. She probably left him cold somewhere.”
What could Don say? What would be gained by telling them that in fact Lissy murdered that very roommate, who certainly did not run off with anyone because she was still haunting the house where they roomed together?
The only sound was Mrs. McCoy’s soft crying. Her husband gave her a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry I made you think of your loss again,” said Don.
“Oh, young man, we think of Lanny every day,” said Mrs. McCoy.
Mr. McCoy nodded sadly. Don suspected he carried handkerchiefs solely to deal with his wife’s tears.
Don hated deceiving these people, but it was kinder than the truth. “My wife always assumed Lissy and Lanny must have ended up together.”
“Maybe our boy is alive, maybe not,” said Mr. McCoy. “I don’t know what we did to make him leave us without a word.” He stood up to keep himself from crying openly. So . . . maybe the handkerchiefs weren’t just for her. “I guess we’ve disappointed you,” he said.
Don could take a hint. Besides, he’d learned what he came to learn. There’d be no address from these people. “I appreciate your time. I’m just sorry that . . . I’m sorry.” He got up, shook hands with Mr. McCoy, and took the one step that was needed to get him to the door.
Mrs. McCoy rose to her feet.
“Don’t be sorry, young man,” she said. “Don’t. It’s good to remember a child you loved, even if you’ve lost him.”
He thought of his own tears, his own rage, his years of hiding in old houses from himself and the whole world. The pain he had suffered . . . and yet she was right.
“I know,” said Don. Almost he told them about Nellie. But he couldn’t. In this home, there was only one lost child to be remembered. There were other places where Nellie’s memory was the foundation of life. After ten years, they still shed tears for their boy. The edge of grief never lost its sharpness. And yet . . . ther
e was a nobility about their suffering. Their child still lived in them as a light of goodness. If Lanny were still around, they would not have the grief; but they would not have the illusion, either. Just as Don would never hear a teenage Nellie shout at him what a terrible hateful man he was, how he was trying to ruin her life. She would never wreck his car, never fight with him over whether she would or would not wear that outfit on a date. The lost child remained a dream of a child. A sweet ghost haunting the memory. The tears that came were not bitter for these people. It was a sweet grief they felt. They had lost him, but once they had him, such a good child, they had him and he still gave shape and meaning to their lives.
He hadn’t bargained on learning so much from these people.
Mrs. McCoy came to him in the doorway, took his hands, held them in hers. “I believe you do know,” she said.
Out in his truck, driving back through the streets of Greensboro, Don got caught up in the traffic of teenagers from Page High School racing to get to the Weaver Center downtown for special classes that no one high school in the city could afford to teach. The kids called it the “Weaver 500,” and drove like stock car madmen. Don wasn’t exactly moseying down Elm, but they were whipping around him to pass at fifty or sixty on what was, after all, a residential street through this part of town. Miracle that more of them weren’t killed.
He imagined talking to Nellie when she got her license. “I don’t care how late you are,” he’d have said. “You got twenty miles an hour over the limit for three blocks, do you know how much time you’ve saved? Exactly none. But in the meantime you’ve put your life, everybody else’s lives at risk. Better to be late. Always be late. I’ll never be mad at you for being late. Just be safe. Be safe.”
It was blinding him, the tears that came when he thought this way, when he imagined the kind of father he might have been. The father he would never be. Even if he married someone and had children, none of them would be Nellie. That ache would never be eased. Besides, look who he fell in love with lately. A woman who couldn’t trust herself with her own children. Then a dead woman. Nope, he wasn’t exactly picking the child-rearing type. Nellie was it. Because he knew how much it cost to lose one. Couldn’t put himself at risk like that again.