Climbing the stairs to his apartment behind Paul (the dark calves of his jeans moving up the stairs), she knew she would ask him for money, because she needed money now—there was something she suddenly realized she had to do. He would have given it to her regardless, she was almost sure of that. But she was desperate for money, and he, in some queer, agitated state, was desperate for her (not her, she knew, but for her mouth, her hands), and how could she say no and then ask him for money?
In the dark he unzipped his pants and then held her head, one large hand on either side, and she had liked it, the way he held her head, but when her face, her mouth, was pressed up to him there, she smelled how he was unclean, the pungency of those secret smells, fetid, sweaty. She was certain she could smell in this the faint and cloying smell of his latest crap—small streaks left, maybe, from when he had last wiped himself—and it was this that made her want to cry, how her face was pressed into that part of him that went to the bathroom, and how hard the thing was in her mouth; she was uncertain exactly what to do.
But it was like he couldn’t help it. It was like this thing had to be done, and she, being there, assisted him. He was nice. He even apologized afterward. And then he kept saying that if you found a dead body you had to call the police, that he was going to call the police.
But she just wanted money. He gave it to her and she left.
She had gone into the Laundromat because it had a change machine; whether other people had been there she was never able to remember; she only remembered standing there with her hands trembling as she fed dollar bills into a small conveyor belt that made a whining noise and hesitated, drew back, went forward, finally tumbling out coins for her. Then spitting in the alleyway, trying to get that taste from her mouth.
And then there had been the desperate long walk to the college, because the library at the college would still be open on a Saturday night and she had to get there, and the car that had pulled up, offering her a ride; in the mottled darkness she saw the face of a heavy older man who did not smile. No, Amy shook her head, No thank you; still, he had not driven away, his car creeping slowly along beside her. No thank you! She had screamed the words, started to run, briefly seen on his shadowy face how her scream had made him nervous; he pulled back onto the road, drove away.
In the quiet, high-ceilinged library at the college she felt that people watched her. Silent faces above the wooden tables watched her carefully, their expressions the crest of a silent wave of disapproval; she ducked her head.
The man behind the reference desk had that watchfulness too—he had warned her that the library was closing soon. But he had helped her with a politeness she was to remember for years, and when he presented her with a huge atlas, finding on one of the huge pages a map of Massachusetts, she thanked him three times in a row. She needed paper and a pen; this sudden realization brought tears, and the reference man helped her out again.
And then finally she was in the telephone booth on the basement floor. It was a closet, really, with nasty things written on the walls. SUCK MY COCK was written there, and this made her start to cry, sitting in the telephone closet of varnished wood that gleamed almost golden from the light, holding the list in her hand of towns in Massachusetts that began with the letter P, because he was from a town that started with P—she remembered that, dialing Information.
How many numbers did she call asking for Mr. Robertson? Maybe five? More than that. Ten? But then: an older woman’s voice, her hello delivered not very pleasantly, it seemed to poor Amy, exhausted, almost out of her head.
“I’d like to speak with a Thomas Robertson,” Amy said. “Is this the right number?” And when the woman didn’t answer, when there was that momentary silence, Amy knew she had found him. “Please,” she begged. “It’s very important.”
“Who’s this.”
“A friend. It’s really important I talk to him.” Amy closed her eyes; was this the alcoholic mother?
“Hold on.” A muffled clatter, murmuring, then a presence drawing nearer to the phone, the murmuring sounds of a man’s very deep voice coming close; a sound Amy recognized. Tears of relief slipping from her eyes, she leaned her head against the wooden wall of the telephone closet; finally, finally, finally, she had found him.
The phone picked up: “Hello?”
“Oh, Mr. Robertson. It’s me. It’s Amy Goodrow.”
A pause. “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Robertson in his lovely deep voice, “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”
“No, I don’t. It’s me, it’s Amy. In Shirley Falls. You know.”
“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Robertson said slowly. “You have the wrong number.” He hesitated before adding firmly, in a slightly different tone, almost southern-sounding, it seemed, “I don’t know who you are. And there is no need for you to call me here again.”
Chapter
24
BY MIDNIGHT THE house was quiet. A small lamp on the kitchen table cast a glow through the downstairs hallway, but the living room was dark, and the dining room, and it was dark on the stairs except for where a strip of light fell across the landing. The light, dim enough to make the darkness nearby seem a deep-green hue, came from Isabelle’s bedroom, where a towel had been placed over the lampshade in order to keep the light low. Beneath the folds of a loose blanket lay the figure of Amy, sprawled on her back like some oblivious sunbather, fast asleep. In the muted light her face appeared neither peaceful nor distressed—a result, probably, of the sedative now moving through her bloodstream. Still, there was in the way her lips were parted, her nose thrust slightly upward on the pillow, a look somehow of tender openheartedness.
To Isabelle the girl looked separate. That was the word that went through her mind as she leaned forward to tug lightly on the blanket, rearranging how it fell over Amy’s arm and neck. Separate from her—Isabelle. Separate from everyone. Sitting in the ladder-back chair that she had drawn up close to the bed, Isabelle studied the different shadows and shapings of this face; at some point in these recent years the features of the girl had moved into their final place. And who had she become?
Someone separate, Isabelle thought again, touching tentatively a lock of hair that fell across Amy’s cheek. Someone who could not even inherit the Belleek china creamer of her grandmother; and here Isabelle sat back, the memory of the delicate shattering of the creamer bringing tears to her eyes, for the pale china had represented to Isabelle her own mother, delicate, impractical, sweet. And now gone. That its ending should have coincided with Avery Clark’s forgetting to come to her house brought Isabelle a pain so extensive as to not yet be fully absorbed; his words, “I’m afraid I forgot, Isabelle,” were harsh white spotlights lining the circumference of her mind.
But there in the center was Amy. Unknown Amy, who had been out in the woods with Paul Somebody (Isabelle’s stomach floated and swayed, although she had believed Amy when she said there was nothing between them—“Nothing, nothing, nothing”), stumbling across dead bodies in the trunks of abandoned cars; oh, horrible for a young girl, to discover the body of another young girl! Poor, poor Amy, coming into the house, her face streaked and darkened, her eyes queerly small, as though looking out from the depths of a cave. Really, she had not been recognizable, staring at the policemen as if they had come to arrest her—when in fact they had only come to check out Paul’s story, to ask her, perfectly nicely, what details she could add—and then, later, Amy had burrowed her face into the crevices of the couch, reminding Isabelle of a frightened dog in a thunderstorm, pure animal fear. Awful, guttural sounds she had made. “It can’t be real,” she kept crying into the couch. “No, I don’t believe it, no I don’t.”
The policemen, particularly the older one, had been very kind. It was the older one who had suggested Isabelle might call a doctor if the girl did not calm down. The doctor had been kind as well, telephoning in a prescription to the only drugstore open late on a Saturday night—in Hennecock, half an hour away. In the drugstore, with her ar
m around a huddling Amy, Isabelle had looked into the kind eyes of a tired pharmacist and said, “My daughter has suffered a bit of a shock,” and the pharmacist only nodded, his bearing exuding the suspension of all judgment, and in four years’ time, when Isabelle was to meet him again, she would have no memory of him (though he would remember her, would remember the touching femininity of this small woman whose arm was tightly around her tall, frightened girl); for Isabelle tonight the world was shapeless and whirling.
The telephone rang.
“Isabelle?” A woman’s voice, familiar. “Isabelle, it’s Bev here. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“Oh, yes,” Isabelle said, breathing quickly, for she had stumbled hurriedly down the stairs. “Yes, hello. No, you didn’t wake me.”
“Isabelle, we got a problem here.” Fat Bev spoke softly. “I’m at Dottie’s. Wally’s gone off to shack up with his girlfriend—he’s moved out.”
“Oh, Lord,” Isabelle murmured, stepping toward the stairs to hear if the ringing phone had woken Amy.
“Dottie didn’t want to be alone, so I came over. But just being in this house is too much for her. I’d bring her home with me except Roxanne’s got two friends sleeping in our living room right now, and that’s the last thing Dottie needs.”
“He’s gone to live with his girlfriend?” It was the only thing Isabelle could think to say.
“He’s a fool,” Fat Bev said. “Making a fool of himself.” She paused. “Dottie’s having a hard time, Isabelle. She doesn’t want to stay here tonight.”
It had not occurred to Isabelle that Bev was asking something of her. She had been certain when the telephone rang that it would have to do with Amy again. But now she pictured, briefly, Dottie Brown sitting in the rocking chair in her kitchen, blank-eyed, a cigarette dangling from her hand.
“Would you hold on just one minute, please, Bev? Just one minute. Hold on.” She placed the receiver carefully down on the kitchen counter, then climbed the stairs. Amy was still asleep, in the same position. Isabelle squinted, leaning forward to watch for the rise and fall of the girl’s chest. She went back downstairs.
“Bev?”
“Yuh, I’m here.”
“Do you want to bring Dottie over here for the night?” It seemed ludicrous, really. Of all nights, when the inside of her head was so dazzled by those white spotlights of Avery Clark’s voice: “I’m afraid I forgot, Isabelle.” With Amy in such a state …
“Would that be okay, Isabelle? I’ll stay too, if that’s all right—be more comfortable for her. Probably for both of you. Just give us a couch to curl up on would be good. I know you’re kind of pinched for space.”
“Please,” said Isabelle. “Come.”
AND THEN HOW odd it was. How queer to have the three of them, grown women, sitting in the living room with the mattress from Amy’s bed right in the middle of the floor, complete with sheets and a blanket and a pillow. And the couch too had sheets and a blanket and a pillow. At first it promised to be awkward: Dottie being steered through the kitchen like a stunned child, Isabelle squeezing her hand, murmuring condolences as one would in the case of a death, Fat Bev following, lugging a large brown purse, the skin of her heavy face drooping like a tired dog’s, and then all three of them sitting in the living room, tentative, uncertain. But Isabelle said, “Amy found a dead body tonight. She’s upstairs asleep on my bed.”
That seemed to break the ice.
“Father of Jesus,” said Fat Bev. “What are you talking about?”
Isabelle told them. Of course they remembered the girl, Debby Kay Dorne—yes, they did. Remembered her picture on television, in the newspaper. “Cute thing,” Bev said, shaking her head slowly, pulling down on her heavy cheeks.
“An angel,” said Dottie. New tears seeped from her eyes.
“What do you mean Amy found her?” asked Bev, opening her large leather purse and producing a roll of toilet paper, which she handed matter-of-factly to the weeping Dottie. “What do you mean she found her?”
“She was driving around with a friend of hers. Would you like some Kleenex, Dottie?” Isabelle started to rise, but Fat Bev waved her back down.
“Used up all the Kleenex in town tonight—right, Dottie? Go on.”
“She was driving around. Her friend Stacy recently had a baby, you know. I don’t know if you know. Dottie, let me get you some Kleenex, it won’t be so rough on your nose.” Dottie’s nose was awfully red, you could see that from here.
But Dottie was shaking her head. “I don’t care if my nose falls off, I just don’t care. Get to the body, please.”
“Really,” said Fat Bev.
So Isabelle repeated what she knew of the evening (leaving out anything about Avery and Emma Clark), finishing up with the kind doctor, the drive to the pharmacy for tranquilizers. “Amy was almost hysterical,” she said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t believe in giving children tranquilizers—”
Bev cut her off. “Isabelle. She found a murdered girl. I guess if there’s a good time to pop a pill that would be one of them.”
“Well, yes,” said Isabelle. “I thought so.”
“Could I have one, Isabelle?” Dottie asked from where she half lay on the couch. “Could I have one of the tranquilizers? Just one so I could get to sleep?”
“Oh, good idea,” said Bev. “Lord, yes, Isabelle, can you spare one of the pills?”
“Certainly,” said Isabelle, rising, going into the kitchen, and returning with the bottle of pills, which had a sticker on it prohibiting by federal law the transfer of them to anyone else. “You won’t have a bad reaction will you?” she asked. “I know when people are allergic to penicillin they’re supposed to wear a dog tag around their necks.”
“These aren’t penicillin. They’re Valium.” Bev had taken the bottle from Isabelle and was peering at the label. “No one’s going to arrest you for giving your friend a Valium.”
Isabelle returned with a glass of water and Dottie swallowed the pill, then took Isabelle’s hand, her blue eyes with their red rims looking pathetically into Isabelle’s face. “Thank you,” Dottie said. “For letting me come here tonight. For not asking me anything.”
“Of course,” Isabelle murmured. But she said it too quickly, moved away too quickly, and a fog of awkwardness rolled back into the room. Isabelle sat down in her chair. The women were quiet. Intermittently glancing at Dottie lying on the couch with the afghan pulled over her, Isabelle had to keep looking away, for she was struck with the extreme ease with which lives could be damaged, destroyed. Lives, flimsy as fabric, could be snipped capriciously with the shears of random moments of self-interest. An office party at Acme Tires, whiskey flowing, and in one series of groping moments, Wally Brown’s life had changed, and Dottie’s, and even the lives of their grown sons, she supposed. Snip, snip. All undone.
Isabelle said, “Dottie, I need to tell you something.” Both women turned their heads to look at her, their faces expectant and cautious.
Isabelle wanted to cry, the way someone sick would want to cry, frustrated and weary at simply, for so long, not feeling well. “Amy,” Isabelle began. But no, that wasn’t right. She traced the arm of her chair with her finger. Dottie was looking down at her lap now; Bev kept her eyes on Isabelle.
“When I became pregnant with Amy I was seventeen,” Isabelle finally said. “I wasn’t married.”
Dottie stopped gazing at her lap and looked over at Isabelle.
“I have never been married. That’s one thing.” Here Isabelle had to pause, staring vacantly at her hands, which she kept squeezing into fists and then unsqueezing, before she said, almost loudly, “He was a married man, Dottie. A married man with three children of his own.” Isabelle looked in earnest at her friend whose pale face revealed blank surprise in the midst of its fatigue.
“I would love to be able to tell you I was innocent,” Isabelle continued, “ignorant of … things. I guess in a way I was. I had never experienced it before, been with anyone. But I knew what we we
re doing. I knew what we were doing was wrong. I knew that, Dottie.” Isabelle looked at the floor. “I went right ahead and did it anyway, because I wanted to.”
For a long while no one said anything, and then Isabelle added, as though she had only just remembered, “He was my father’s best friend.”
Fat Bev breathed in loudly, moving back further in her chair, as though she needed to spread her weight more comfortably in order to contemplate this. “Some friend,” she said.
But it was right then that Dottie leaned forward and said softly, “Isabelle, I hate Althea Tyson. I don’t hate you. If that’s what you’re afraid of.”
It was, on some level, what she had been afraid of. And more. She was afraid—had been afraid, ever since the day she drove Dottie home from the office room and sat with her briefly in her kitchen—that she, Isabelle Goodrow, had brought this sort of pain upon another person.
And it had never occurred to her before.
Not really. She had not really given Evelyn Cunningham too many thoughts over the years, at least not sympathetic ones. This was stupefying to Isabelle now, unbelievable. How could she have gone so long without recognizing what this might have—must have—done to the life of Evelyn Cunningham? How, year after year, had Evelyn Cunningham remained as unreal to Isabelle as a picture of some person in a magazine would be?