“I’m sorry.”
“We all expected more from you.”
They drove into Stockbridge in silence. Finally, he said, “Do you know that girl?”
She shrugged. “She knew you, didn’t she.”
He kept his eyes on the road, his jaw tight.
“She knew you,” Willa goaded him. “I could tell. It was so obvious.”
“Many people know me in this town.” But his voice wavered.
“She wants to go home. She wants to go back to Poland.”
He laughed and shook his head. “And you offered to help her, right?”
She nodded.
“She’s not the sort of girl you should associate with.”
“Why not?”
“Because girls like that—” He stopped himself.
“Girls like what?”
“Girls like that bring out the worst in people.”
“What do you mean?”
Mr. Heath squinted into the darkness like a man with a toothache. “They deserve what they get,” he said. “That’s what I mean.”
He turned down her road. They didn’t speak, but she could feel something between them, something ugly. She had the feeling he’d been to see Pearl, that he was one of her customers. She wondered if he’d been the one to give her the kilt.
“I haven’t said anything to your parents about your little adventure this afternoon,” he told her. “But I will if I have to. At this point, information like that could jeopardize your chances of getting into college. I’m afraid Harvard’s a bit out of reach.” He looked over at her.
She sat there a moment, trying to think. Her brain was a jumble of wires and plugs. “I don’t get you,” she said, finally, swatting her tears. “I don’t understand what you want from me.”
He jerked his head like she’d made a preposterous statement. “Why would I want anything from you?”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Why would I? I mean, I’m very flattered, my dear, but I’m not that kind of man. I would never betray my wife.”
She shrugged, confused. Her head was pounding.
“I don’t know what gave you that impression.” He smiled like he felt sorry for her.
Her father was coming out of the house, his face elated. For some reason, he always treated Mr. Heath like royalty. “You might want to pull up your knee socks,” Heath muttered, getting his headmaster face on. “Tattoos are against school rules. I suggest you keep it covered. I don’t want to have to suspend you.”
She reached down and pulled up her socks and got out of the car, stumbling a little. Her legs were shaking. Her ankle hurt where she’d gotten the tattoo and she experienced a sudden terror that the needles the man had used had been contaminated. Everything seemed dim and strange. She had almost forgotten how to walk. Her teeth hurt. Her gums were stinging.
“Talk about service,” her dad said too loudly, and she understood that Heath had called him with some phony story.
“I’m afraid that van’s on the fritz,” Heath said. “Sorry to hold up your dinner.”
“No, no. Not to worry. How about coming in for a drink?”
He shot her a look, letting her fully understand that he was the one in control and could do what he liked. “No thanks, Joe. I’ve got my family waiting.” He emphasized the word family, and she felt a rush of shame.
Her dad put his arm around her as Mr. Heath pulled out of the driveway. “You must be starving,” he said, as they went inside. “Your mother’s got your dinner in the oven.”
The drugs had worn off, she felt ragged. She felt like she’d crawled home on her hands and knees. She didn’t want to eat. Her mouth felt sticky and prickly. What she needed was more. She had to have it. She was like a dog with mange. She scratched and shook. Her mother frowned. “My skin is pink,” she said to her.
“What? Don’t be silly. Are you all right?”
Crack an egg, watch it run down. Her hands on her head, her hair. She tucked it back behind her ear. Leave it, leave it. She tucked it back again.
“Maybe you’re coming down with something.” Her mother put her hand on her forehead. “Why don’t you go up to bed?”
Willa took a shower and put her nightgown on. She wanted to feel clean and innocent; she wanted to forget everything that had happened—Mr. Heath, Sunrise House, Pearl and her terrible stories, the meth. Mr. Heath didn’t like her anymore; maybe he’d never liked her. Maybe she’d made it up in her mind. It embarrassed her to think about. Maybe it was her doing, she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell. Maybe she’d been asking for it.
What kind of slut are you, anyway?
She didn’t know what to do about it. It made her feel ugly. She didn’t know how to manage all the feelings. She closed her eyes very tightly. She shoved them deep down inside of her, where no one could see.
39
Jack admired reserved women. Reserved women were refined, her husband used to say. Women like his mother. He used to say that he admired his mother because she was self-possessed, and even as smart as Maggie was she never understood what he meant. The word possessed always threw her. His mother didn’t have to blab her ideas and opinions all over the place, Jack had clarified. She was content to sit and listen. Demure, he’d said. Everything about her was demure and dignified. When Maggie had met Jack’s mother for the first time, the words that came to mind were less flattering. Remote, detached. Repressed. She hadn’t been the same, Jack’s father had explained, since the accident that killed little June. When Maggie had asked what had happened, the question simmered in the air, making the room seem ten degrees hotter. “Our little girl was asphyxiated,” the captain had told her. The four-year-old had been playing dress-up with dry-cleaning plastic.
Repressed, she thought, pulling apart the word in her mouth like a mealy piece of meat. She could almost feel its weight on her tongue.
“You never get over something like that,” Jack had told her.
That Sunday after church Jack took Ada up to Miller’s farm to buy a Christmas tree. It was something the two of them did together every year, and Maggie always stayed home to be surprised. “That’s the most beautiful tree we’ve ever had,” she’d say.
With only a week left before Christmas break, she had a stack of exams to correct and essays to read and comments to write. There was laundry to be done, bathrooms to clean. There were presents to wrap.
Looking around now, she felt at odds with the disarray, the routine of chaos that characterized their lives. Of course she was the one to do the cleaning. It would never occur to Jack to pick up after himself, or Ada either, for that matter. Ada was becoming so distant, so aloof, and she blamed her husband for it. He was always putting her down in front of the girl. That sort of sentiment wore off on people, like second-hand smoke or cheap perfume, and Ada would treat her with the same eye-rolling antagonism that Jack did, as though Maggie were some sort of housemaid, some servant to be neglected and abused.
What about me? She couldn’t help thinking it. What was she getting out of the situation? Not much. Yet she felt she was a good mother, a good wife—she’d held up her end of the bargain. Her mother had raised her to be good and loyal and patient, to make the best of things. But now she felt detached from Jack, as though he had a whole life that existed without her, and her happiness had grown less and less important to him. Everything they did together—meals, work, even sleep, was somehow out of context, as if they were just filling in temporarily, substituting for the real married couple they once were.
She vacuumed the first floor. In the corridor outside Jack’s office, she took a moment to study the framed photographs on the wall as if they might have an answer for her. The pictures chronicled their history as a family, living the life of nomadic academics—a front porch here, a city stoop there, a deck, a terrace. Clapboard and brick. Amherst, Somerville, Hadley, Maine, this house here at Pioneer. Vacation scenes on display, tedious family trips; the Thanksgiving table;
Ada and Jack on the blanket at Tanglewood. Nothing is what it seems, she thought. The way they were on the outside. And the way it really was in here.
Snarls of dust, piles of mail, toppling stacks of books. An ashtray had fallen off the coffee table and now there was a pile of ashes on the carpet. Smoking was another of her husband’s little secrets. He only smoked in the house, of course. God forbid anyone should see. It occurred to her that the goldfish had died. It lay on its side, drifting around the bowl. She hated the fish; she was glad it was dead. She left it there and went to do the laundry, pushing the dirty clothes into the machine, pulling the clean ones out, folding them into stacks. Ada favored padded bras, which were harder to fold and always toppled over in the basket. She wore thongs too, tiny insectlike pieces of satiny fabric purchased with her babysitting money. They certainly didn’t look very comfortable, Maggie thought, holding up the skimpy garment between her fingers like a dead rat.
Later, as she was putting away Jack’s clothes, she discovered a small box in his bureau, concealed under a stack of undershirts. The box was long and slim, wrapped in shiny black paper, with a pink bow. She shook it gently: jewelry. She tried to think. It wasn’t her birthday or anniversary, and Christmas wasn’t for two weeks. A tiny card had been slipped under the ribbon, but it was blank.
He’d bought her a gift, she realized. Perhaps he planned to give it to her tonight. Perhaps it was his way of apologizing.
How sweet.
She returned the little box to his drawer in precisely the way she’d found it. He loved her, of course he did! She almost felt guilty for mistrusting him. It was she who should be apologizing to him.
Traditionally, the week before Christmas break was a festive time at Pioneer, with choral concerts and the exchange of Secret Santa gifts, and this year was no exception. There was a plethora of baked goods around campus, platters of brownies and blondies and lemon bars made by the more industrious homemakers. Of course Maggie ate none of it. Toward the end of each day, Maggie would tingle a little in anticipation of the evening that lay ahead, when she would likely receive her husband’s gift. So light was her spirit during that time that she’d make casual jokes with the other faculty members, or treat the students with exceeding kindness, and people took notice of her in a new way, and told her how well she looked. But the nights came and went with routine indifference, and at the end of the week there was no gift or celebration, only the impenetrable silence of the house. Then one morning, while Jack was in the shower, Maggie checked to see if the box was still there; it was. The pretty box grinned at her like some kind of cruel joke. While Jack whistled away in the steam-filled bathroom, she took it out and carefully removed the tape along the paper seam. Gently, so as not to rip the paper, she unwrapped the box and opened it. Inside, she found a gold necklace with a single white pearl.
There, now you’ve seen it. Now put it back.
With great care, she rewrapped the gift and resealed the tape and returned it to its place inside the drawer. It was a lovely Christmas present, she thought, and very generous, and of course she would pretend to be surprised when he gave it to her. But Christmas came and went, and the slim box did not appear. Instead, he gave her a blender. When she went up to check on the box the next day, it was gone.
Over the years, Jack had bought her gifts for special occasions, the usual birthday and anniversary presents, but she couldn’t remember one that she’d especially liked. Choosing gifts for people wasn’t easy, she knew, and she usually succumbed to traditional choices on Jack’s birthday or Father’s Day, things like ties or hand tools or golf accessories, which he always seemed to like. Once, early on in their marriage, she had knitted him a scarf for Christmas and he’d been so touched that his eyes actually produced tears—he was not the sort of man who revealed his feelings, even to her, and she’d never once seen him cry. As a young boy, his father would criticize any display of weakness, tears included, even after he’d broken his arm playing football. On the way to the hospital, his father had threatened to break the other arm if he saw as much as one tear run down his face.
Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t imagine Jack being comfortable in a jewelry store, trying to pick something out for his lover, whoever she was. It dawned on her that being who he was in a very small town, he wasn’t about to purchase a necklace in one of the local shops, as he would run the risk of being judged for the purchase. Tongues were always wagging about one thing or another, and it stood to reason that tongues might wag over the Head of Pioneer School, whose parents paid close to twenty grand a year per student, purchasing a less than spectacular necklace for his incredibly selfless, hardworking wife. Maggie closed her eyes, picturing Greer Harding’s tongue wagging about it all over the place and laughed out loud.
The fact that he’d given her a blender confused her. It was an insulting gift, really, a hefty piece of machinery, bulky, painfully domestic. But the necklace was just the opposite. The necklace had been delicate, feminine. She could almost imagine the tiny pearl between her fingertips.
He’d purchased the blender at Sears. If she knew Jack, he’d purchased the necklace there as well.
He was, after all, a very practical fellow.
It had begun to snow and the roads were slippery. The parking lot was crowded and the mall was bustling with people returning unwanted Christmas gifts. Maggie entered Sears on the lower level, and wandered through the balmy serenity of the furniture department, tempted to lie down on one of the mattresses for a little nap. The jewelry department was upstairs, on the main floor. She took the escalator. The jewelry cases were lit from inside and her hands felt warm on the glass surfaces. It didn’t take her long to find the necklace, and her heart began to beat very fast. A saleswoman came over to see if she needed help. “That one,” she tapped the glass impatiently. “I’d like to see it, please.”
The woman took it out, handling it the way one might maneuver a small slippery snake, and gave it to her.
“Is it a real pearl?”
“Yes, it’s real.”
“How much is it?”
“I believe it’s eighty-nine dollars.” The woman reached back into the case and turned over the little ticket pinned to the pink velvet to check. “Yes, that’s right. Would you like to try it on?”
Maggie fastened the chain around her neck and looked at herself in the oval mirror. The chain felt light, the small pearl hit her at the throat. “I’ll take it.”
On the way home, she stopped at Loeb’s and bought lamb chops and mint jelly and cauliflower. To start, she would make soup. In her sparkling new blender, she would beat her famous vichyssoise till it had the consistency of milk.
That night, her husband and daughter ate hungrily. He was so busy eating that it took him nearly an hour to notice the necklace around her throat.
He did a marvelous double take, then his face turned all sorts of interesting colors. He excused himself, as she knew he would, and went into his office and shut the door and did not come out for the rest of the night. He was so quiet, in fact, that you could almost believe he wasn’t even there.
She took her time cleaning up. Standing at the sink washing the dishes, she could hear the snow coming down like a hundred people whispering the same two words: Everyone knows.
“I’ll be at Monica’s,” Ada said, going out the door with her overnight bag.
“Have a good time,” Maggie called. She glanced out the window and watched her daughter get into Greta Travers’s car. The car pulled away.
She could feel her old strength returning, the same courage she’d summoned during that terrible week at Remington Pond, after they’d found the girl.
She dried her hands on a towel. The kitchen was neat and quiet and a small lamp glowed in the living room. For a moment she lingered with expectation outside his door, like an acrobat about to do a life-threatening trick. Then she knocked.
“Yes?” came his voice.
She pushed open the door. “I want to
ask you something.”
He took off his glasses and looked at her, waiting.
“Who is she?”
A flush rose to his cheeks, as if he’d been slapped. He turned back to his desk.
“I’m losing my patience, Jack.”
“She’s just a girl I met,” he said finally. It was a simple sentence, she thought, with an ordinary noun and verb, yet to her it was as esoteric as some obscure poem. “She’s a prostitute, actually,” he said almost casually, as if that made it all right. “Since you want the facts.”
“Yes, I do. I want the facts.”
“Look, Maggie.”
“Don’t you look Maggie me.”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s unforgivable.”
“You promised me, Jack,” she said. Her voice sounded whiny. “You said never again.”
He looked down at his guilty hands.
“Liar!” The word shot up from someplace deep and she said it again and again.
“Maggie, please. Keep it down.”
“What’s the matter, Jack? You worried somebody’s going to hear? Huh? You worried somebody’s going to find out? Everyone knows, Jack. Everyone knows about you.”
He glanced up warily, as if the very sound of her voice caused him pain.
“The notes,” she reminded him.
“You’re paranoid.” He got up and walked past her, nearly pushing her out of his way, and went into the kitchen. “Nobody knows.” He took out a glass and poured himself some gin. He drank it warm.
“Someone does. Someone out there knows.”
He shook his head, he didn’t believe her. He drank the gin.
“Fix it, Jack.”
“I can’t. It’s too late.”
“This school is our life,” she said. “This was our chance to have a life. And look what you’ve done.”
“I know.”
“How is it possible that a smart man like you could be so stupid?”
He took his drink into the living room and sat on the couch. She stood in the darkness, watching him. “I don’t know what to say, Maggie. I made a mistake.”