“Do you have to be late on the one day I have to drive to Freeport?” Nora said.
Billy put his head down and figured he could not talk or she’d find out everything. He planned to leap out of the car as soon as his mother pulled up in front of the house, then wave good-bye with his back to her.
“I won’t be back till six, so when you get home from playing ball you start the baked potatoes,” Nora said as she put the car into gear. “Bake at three fifty. Or maybe it’s three seventy-five.”
“Teddy Bear” was on the radio and Nora turned up the volume and she got that dreamy look on her face that she always got whenever she heard Elvis. In the backseat, James was rattling a bag of pretzels. Billy made certain not to move at all.
“Oh, shit,” Nora said.
Billy figured there was something major wrong with the car, because it had begun to buck like a horse and he prayed it wasn’t anything too serious because he didn’t know if he could talk. His mouth was hot now and he couldn’t seem to move his tongue.
“Oh, lord,” Nora said and she stopped the car completely.
Billy shifted his gaze from the floor of the car and realized that a pool of blood had formed in his lap. Before he could do anything about it, Nora took his chin with one hand and tilted his face upward.
“What did they do to you?” Nora said.
Her fingers felt like ice, but maybe it was because his mouth was burning hot.
“Open your mouth,” Nora said.
Billy wrenched away from her and faced the window and began to cry. Nora took his chin in her hand and tilted his head back again, and when she did his front tooth fell into her hand.
“Who?” Nora said.
Billy lowered his eyes and rubbed one hand over his mouth; the places where he had pulled out patches of hair in the fall had grown back in wild, unmanageable tufts. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
Nora looked across the street. She saw Stevie Hennessy watching and instantly she knew.
“That little shit,” Nora said.
“Why do I have to be this way?” Billy said.
He had such fine bones and long, delicate fingers and all his shirts were too small; his sleeves didn’t reach to his wrists. Nora pulled him over to her, onto her lap.
“I have a headache,” Billy said, turning away from her.
“Every morning when you wake up you tell yourself you’re just as good as everybody else. Tell yourself that three times. You hear me?”
Billy nodded and put one thin arm around her neck.
James was jumping up and down in the backseat, shaking the car. Nora leaned her head close to Billy’s.
“Who’s my best boy?” she whispered.
Billy shrugged and put his hot cheek against hers.
“Who?” Nora said.
“I am,” Billy said in a small, froggy voice.
Nora drove him straight to the dentist, who immediately set to work making the mold for a cap. While Billy was in with the dentist, Nora ran out to the pay phone on the corner and canceled the Tupperware party in Freeport, saying there’d been a death in the family and she was immediately flying to Las Vegas; then she called Marie McCarthy and left a message for Ace that Billy was too sick to play ball. By the time they got home it was dark and James was whimpering for his supper and there was no time to bake the potatoes, so they had TV dinners and Kool-Aid and Nora let Billy stay up late to watch The Untouchables. When he went to bed, Nora tucked him in, something she hadn’t done for a long time. Billy liked the weight of his mother on the edge of the bed; he liked the way she smelled—a mixture of Kool-Aid and Ambush. He fell asleep holding her hand, and Nora sat beside him for a long time and then went into the kitchen. She cleaned up the dishes and put cold cream on her hands, so they wouldn’t wrinkle. Then she took four white candles from the drawer next to the refrigerator and put two in holders, lit them and shut off the light. She held the two unlighted candles over the flames until they were soft enough to mold. She stopped working only long enough to fix herself a cup of Sanka and then she kept at it, until she had formed the figure of a boy. She got a flashlight and went outside and searched until she found the perfect stone, one she could easily mold into the boy’s hand. Her Sanka was cold by then, but she drank it anyway. Her grandfather used to do that too, he used to drink cold coffee and eat a stale jelly doughnut before he cleaned his whittling knife of wax. The cat came and sat by Nora’s feet; he curled up and Nora could feel him purr. She couldn’t bring herself to switch the lights back on, so she sat there by candlelight, smoking a cigarette and turning the wax figure over in her hand. And before she went to brush her teeth and clean her face with cold cream, she held the boy over one of the lit candles and let the wax drip from it, until it formed a white pool on the kitchen table.
In the morning Stevie Hennessy didn’t realize anything was wrong, not even when he pulled on his jeans and found he had to roll the cuffs up three times. When he went to eat breakfast, his mother asked him if he was feeling all right and she touched her lips to his forehead. Stevie said, “I feel great,” even though he wasn’t so sure. He felt off balance, as if he had a fistful of marbles in one pocket. He forced himself to eat a bowl of Kix and drink a small glass of orange juice.
“He looks like he’s coming down with something,” his mother told his father when he came in for coffee. Joe Hennessy put his jacket on, then felt Stevie’s forehead.
“Perfect,” Hennessy declared.
“I told you so,” Stevie told his mother, but all the same he felt weird as he walked to school. He went to the coat closet and quickly hung up his jacket so he’d have time to make up a good store of spitballs before gym. He’d been a little nervous last night, afraid that little jerk Silk would spill his guts and his mother would call up and then Stevie would have to hope that his father would go easy on him. When he’d gotten into his pajamas and she still hadn’t phoned, Stevie figured he had it made. He grinned to himself now as he made spitballs, and when it was time for gym he made sure to stand right behind Billy Silk.
“Hey, babyface,” he jeered under his breath.
Billy turned around and Stevie backed up. It seemed as if Billy had grown overnight, but he was still the same height as Abbey McDonnell, who stood in front of him on line. Stevie Hennessy, who had always been the tallest boy in the class, refused to believe that if Billy hadn’t grown, he himself must have shrunk sometime during the night. He could believe whatever he wished, but even Stevie Hennessy could see that if he ever wanted to hit Billy Silk in the mouth again he’d have to find the nerve to strike upward.
NOW BILLY PLAYED BASEBALL WITH ACE AFTER school and he handed his homework in each morning and he wasn’t punched in the face once. But he kept hearing things he shouldn’t, a buzz of words inside his head that he just couldn’t shake. Down at the candy store he heard Louie complain about his wife, when all he wanted was a pack of Black Jack gum. He heard his mother adding up figures and Rickie Shapiro worrying about the shape of her eyebrows and late one night he heard someone crying out in pain. The cry was so awful, in a wordless way, that Billy got out of bed and pulled the blinds up and he heard much more than he’d ever heard from anyone’s silence before.
It took a long time for him to fall asleep after that. He woke at dawn and was already in the kitchen, eating Frosted Flakes, when Nora woke up. He ate the whole bowl and watched as his mother set the kettle to boil and opened a pack of cigarettes, and then he told her he had seen Donna Durgin. She’d been wearing a black coat and standing outside her house, weeping.
“Did you see her face?” Nora asked. When Billy shook his head no, Nora suggested that the woman could have been anyone.
“It was Mrs. Durgin,” Billy said. “I heard her.”
“I’ve told you half a million times not to listen in to people,” Nora said, stubbing out her cigarette and getting up to shut off the whistling kettle. She had a heavy day booked at Armand’s and lately she was uncomfortable about having Rickie S
hapiro baby-sit; she had the feeling that when she was gone Rickie was snooping around, trying on her dresses, slipping on her bangle bracelets. “It’s going to drive you crazy,” she told Billy.
“All right,” Billy said, “but I know where she is.”
Nora thought it over while she had her coffee and put on her makeup and got dressed. She was still trying to decide when she left, as Rickie fiddled with the radio and Billy held James back from the storm door, while the baby cried and held out his arms to Nora, just as he did every Saturday when she left him. She started the Volkswagen, and as it warmed up she decided she wouldn’t be betraying Donna if she told just one person, so she let the car idle and crossed the street. Nora was checking her purse for matches and change when Stevie Hennessy opened the door. He was still in his pajamas and he’d slept scrunched up on his pillow so his hair stood up in a cowlick. When he saw Nora his mouth dropped open, and Nora stared back at him, just as surprised. Since he had stopped tormenting Billy, Nora had forgotten all about him. Now she noticed he was at least a good head shorter than Billy.
“I need to talk to your father,” Nora said through the storm door.
“Who’s at the door?” Ellen Hennessy called from the kitchen.
Stevie Hennessy stared at Nora, unable to move.
Nora rapped on the storm door impatiently. “Your father,” she said slowly, as if talking to a complete idiot. “Is he home?”
Ellen came up behind Stevie and opened the door wider. She stopped when she saw Nora on the stoop.
“Oh, hi,” Nora said. “I know it’s early, but I’ve got to see your husband.”
“My husband,” Ellen said.
“Joe,” Nora reminded her. Nora grabbed the handle of the storm door and opened it. “I’ve got to be at Armand’s by nine, otherwise I get backlogged and my regulars go nuts.”
She came inside and Ellen Hennessy put both hands on Stevie’s shoulders.
“I could do you for half price,” Nora said. “Come in any Saturday.”
“I never have time,” Ellen said weakly. She couldn’t take her eyes off Nora’s red nails and her long, bare fingers.
“Make time,” Nora said. “Or I could come over here. Your cuticles could really use it.”
Ellen looked down at her own nails just as Hennessy came out from the bathroom, showered and shaved and ready to take Ellen and the kids to her sister’s in Rockville Centre. When he saw Nora talking to his wife in his own living room he stopped and put one hand on the wall.
“Joe!” Nora said when she saw him. “I really need you.”
Hennessy looked at his wife and their eyes locked.
“I’ll make coffee,” Ellen said. “Sanka?” she said to Nora.
“I can’t,” Nora said. “I’ve got to run. What I have to talk to him about is kind of personal. Police business.”
“Oh.” Ellen gave Hennessy a look, then guided Stevie into the kitchen.
“I hate to barge in on you,” Nora said.
“You’re not,” Hennessy said.
“It’s about Donna,” Nora said.
Hennessy was staring at the gold-plated chain Nora wore around her neck. Sometimes when he imagined Ace and Nora together he thought he would go crazy. He knew there were love bites on her throat, that Ace was screwing her all night long. God, when he was seventeen he was dating Ellen, and he had kissed her probably only half a dozen times.
“Billy overheard something she said, he knows where she is, and after I thought it through I decided I’d better tell you.”
“Look,” Hennessy said. “No one knows where she is.”
“Well, Billy does,” Nora insisted. “She’s at Lord and Taylor.”
“Lord and Taylor, the department store?” Hennessy said.
Nora and Hennessy stared at each other and then started to laugh.
“It’s not exactly like running off to France,” Nora said.
“I guess this means Robert didn’t chop her up into pieces and hide her in the basement,” Hennessy said.
“Oh, God.” Nora was holding on to the storm door because she had a stitch in her side from laughing. “Well,” she said finally, “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”
“You are. I’ll take care of it.”
“Boy,” Nora said. “If I had a husband like you, I’d still be married.”
“I would have never let you go,” Hennessy said.
Nora almost laughed, but then she looked at him and thought better of it. “I’m glad I told you,” she said before she left. “I just hope Donna is.”
Hennessy watched her cross the street and get into the idling VW, then pull out of the driveway and go right over the curb. He realized then that his wife was standing behind him.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Hennessy said.
He went past Ellen into the bedroom for his sport coat and his gun. When he turned from the night table to fit on his holster he saw that Ellen had followed him.
“I swear,” Hennessy said. “I’ll meet you at your sister’s.”
“Don’t bother,” Ellen said.
“I’ll be there by dinnertime.”
“You do what you want,” Ellen told him.
Hennessy stopped for coffee and the paper on his way to Garden City. As he drove on, the houses got bigger and broader, with rolling lawns and tall, glossy rhododendrons. He pulled into the empty parking lot of Lord & Taylor so he could see the door; he finished his coffee, then opened the glove compartment for the Pepto-Bismol. By now, he figured he knew the Durgin kids as well as anyone; Melanie always ran right to him, and he kept lollipops in his coat pockets for her. Last time he’d visited he’d brought over some of Suzanne’s old clothes for her, little dresses with lace collars, corduroy overalls. He sat parked, reading the newspaper, and at a little before ten the lot started to fill up. He watched the sales clerks arrive; they parked in the last row or walked over from the bus stop, wearing sheer stockings and high heels and scarves knotted tightly to keep their hairstyles in place. They were well-dressed, and Hennessy figured they had to be. If Donna Durgin had been among them he would have spotted her a mile away; she would have stuck out in her lumpy cloth coat, with that coy, rolling gait of a fat woman. At ten the shoppers began to arrive and Hennessy was glad Ellen wasn’t here to see the way they dressed or what they drove up in. They were pleasure shoppers, and as far as Hennessy could tell there was nothing they needed, especially the ones who got out of their Cadillacs and Lincolns and buttoned their camel-hair coats against the wind.
He sat in his car till eleven, thinking that Billy Silk wasn’t the most reliable witness in the world, what with his unruly hair and the way he sat on the front stoop lighting matches when his mother couldn’t see him, with his baby brother beside him, much too close to the flame. He knew Billy’s type, the oddball who always got picked last for any team, and then only because the gym teacher insisted. And actually, Stevie was becoming a little that way. He used to spend all his time with a gang of friends, and now Ellen complained that he came straight home after school and switched on the TV. He seemed somehow punier to Hennessy, as if all the fight had been taken out of him. But just when Hennessy was about to leave and drive to Rockville Centre, even though he was fairly certain Ellen wouldn’t talk to him for the rest of the day, whether he showed up or not, he got that feeling along the back of his neck, and he knew that something was about to happen.
When he went in, it seemed to Hennessy that he was the only man in the store. He felt like an ox, making his way past the swinging display of handbags, over the thick carpeting. He made a circle around the first floor, and once he held up a long black evening dress studded with sequins and imagined Nora Silk wearing it in the dark, barefoot, with her hair pulled back and around her throat the gold chain that moved slightly when she breathed. He didn’t see any signs of Donna, but the sensation on the back of his neck felt even stronger. He went upstairs to the credit department and got a form for a charge card that he filled out and broug
ht back to the window.
“Won’t your wife be delighted,” the clerk said to him.
“You bet,” Hennessy said. “You’ve got the best clothes in the world. The best salesgirls, too. My wife was telling me about one of them. Donna Durgin.”
“Oh, Donna,” said the clerk. “She certainly knows her lingerie. You forgot your place of employment.”
Hennessy filled out the name and address of a law firm where one of the divorce lawyers he knew was a partner. “Send the card directly to my firm,” he told the clerk, and then he made his way back downstairs. His head started to pound as soon as he walked into the lingerie department. He picked up a black satin slip and rubbed it between his fingers. He figured there must be a special department for fat ladies where Donna worked, a department kept out of sight where wide, white underpants were hidden in cabinets, where thick brassieres with wire hooks were kept in boxes. He took the black slip to the register and waited while a woman paid for three pairs of lace panties. Hennessy made certain not to look at the woman who bought the panties, but he blanched when he heard that her total was twenty-four dollars. The saleswoman who finally helped Hennessy was a tall redhead who had doused herself in heavy perfume.
“Birthday present?” she asked.
“Anniversary,” Hennessy said as he took out his wallet, carefully, so his holster wouldn’t show.
It was eighteen twenty-five for the slip, including tax, more than Ellen paid for most of her dresses. But it was worth it, because while the saleswoman was wrapping the slip in tissue paper, Hennessy heard Donna Durgin’s voice. He was sure of it; her small, little girl’s voice asking if the silk bathrobes had been hung up for display. Hennessy saw a group of saleswomen lift bathrobes out of a carton; tangerine-colored silk, and pink, and a pale, shimmering blue, the color of robins’ eggs. Donna wasn’t there, but as Hennessy watched he saw her emerge from the tent of silk. Her eyes, her mouth, her pale blond hair, swept up now into a French knot, but if he hadn’t heard her voice he would never have found her. Not in a million years. She was thin now and truly beautiful as she joked with the other saleswomen and lifted up the pale orange silk to model against her white skin.