“Yeah.”
Joe looked at him again with that same cold expression.
“Teddy told me about the drugs,” Nate said.
“She’s in her room. We had to lock her in.”
They stood for a moment in the foyer. Nate could hear her upstairs like a caged animal, throwing things against her door.
“Is there anything I can do?” Nate asked.
“No,” Joe said, his eyes hooded, dark. “She’ll be all right.”
It was not his place to be here, Nate realized. Whatever was going on with Willa was none of his business. “If you need anything . . .”
Joe nodded his thanks and closed the door.
In the truck, Nate had a memory of Cat, sitting on the floor of their apartment, sick. They hadn’t been able to score; they didn’t have any cash. Her body shook. She cried out, she wept for it. He had to talk her through it. It wasn’t easy. She hit him, she bound herself up in his arms. He had tried to contain her like some kind of watery creature. Finally, as the sun was coming in, they’d fallen asleep. When he’d woken later, he saw what she’d done to him, his body mottled with bruises.
On the front lawn of Larkin’s place, a group of kids were making a snowman. Nate was glad to be home. He pulled into the back and parked in the old carriage house. It occurred to him that he wasn’t well, he was covered with sweat. He thought he might have a fever. He went up to the apartment, hearing his neighbor’s somber cello, and poured himself a drink. He lay on the couch, drinking, watching the snowflakes drift outside the windows. He realized he’d begun to cry.
The phone rang, but he refused to answer it, even though he knew it was Claire. He could hear her voice on the machine, begging him to pick up. But he could not bring himself to talk to her. He could feel himself slipping into a familiar dark place, dark as a grave and cold, where nothing lived.
41
In her face, was a fitting expression for the girl, because everywhere Maggie went, that’s who she saw. Dressed in a white cleaning uniform, a nurselike shift that buttoned down the front, and old white tennis shoes, the girl was the image of an ardent employee. With her stringy hair pulled back in a ponytail, she would wander around with her duster, her face flushed, her lips wet. There was no sign of any pregnancy, the girl was thin as a straight pin. Maggie walked in on her one afternoon in the girls’ lavatory, smoking. She flicked the cigarette into the toilet, then dropped to her knees and started scrubbing. They did not speak to each other. Maggie had complained to Greer, saying that the girl was rude, insolent, but Greer had countered, “She’s very thorough. She hardly speaks English! I don’t know what you’re talking about. And she’s cheaper than the cleaning service. Besides,” Greer added with relish, “Jack wants her.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this to us,” Maggie hissed at him.
“Look,” he said, giving her a wrinkled smile. “She needs help. Maybe the job will improve her circumstances.” The expression on his face was familiar, one he wore to church or reserved for his favorite charities. Maggie wanted to slap it right off his face.
“She is not a charity, Jack.”
His face darkened and in the fleeting moment she detected a smidgen of empathy.
The girl had figured out how to be a nuisance. Perhaps she’d decided that if she harassed them enough she’d actually get something for her trouble. She’d call the house at all hours of the day and night, either sobbing or giggling into the phone. Just last night, the phone woke her at four in the morning. Maggie picked it up and heard people in the background, noises that conjured in her mind the atmosphere of a bar—the girl’s voice sounded raspy and worn. “Is Jack there?” she said.
“Who is this?”
“I need to speak with Jack.”
“You most certainly cannot.”
The girl laughed. “But I’ll cry if I don’t.”
“You can cry your heart out, I don’t really give a damn.” Maggie hung up on her. The next day a package came in the mail. It was addressed to Jack, but Maggie ripped it open. Inside was a tiny outfit, the sort you’d put on a newborn baby. She held it up before her, its tiny shape moving ever so slightly, like the draft of a ghost.
They were two weeks into their unit on The Scarlet Letter when Maggie broke down in class. She had taught the book for so many years that, admittedly, she’d become numb to it, but for some reason on that morning it occurred to her that, regardless of time and space, the book’s moral considerations echoed her own. She looked down at her notes, her shorthand of topics she’d planned to discuss, and the words throbbed with accusation:
Humiliation
Sin
Social identity
Shame
With irony, she considered the similarities between her husband’s situation and Dimmesdale’s—ludicrous as it was—the girl’s name, Pearl, being another maddening coincidence—and she found herself taking on the gloomy preoccupations of an invidious wife whose dreams of revenge were not dissimilar to Chillingworth’s.
Her head began to pound. Her lips began to tremble as she searched the expectant faces of her students, who had begun to giggle at her, nervously, then to whisper, feverishly, among themselves. Everyone knows, their faces declared. Ada gave her a look, imploring her to offer an explanation, but Maggie couldn’t find words, and simply left the room as an eager uproar erupted behind her.
In her car, she began to come apart as if some force of nature had busted her seams. Her heart was beating very rapidly and she wondered distantly if she were experiencing tachycardia and if, perhaps, she needed a hospital—but there was no time for that now. She pulled out of the lot, nearly running into Nate Gallagher, causing him to stumble and drop his knapsack, papers flying into the dirt. Through her rearview mirror, she noticed he’d shaved his beard; he had not quite outgrown the gloomy, taciturn expression she remembered from Choate. She made a mental note to open the letter she’d received from her old high school roommate.
Turning onto the main road, her tires squealed. She took back roads across the border into Austerlitz, then over the mountain into Spencertown. She’d been out this way once or twice before. A handful of students lived out here and took a bus over the border to attend their school. New Yorkers bought weekend homes here. There was a country store that sold fresh pies, and the lofty Spencertown Academy, which offered art classes to small children and had a gallery; she’d been to some of their openings and they’d been quite good. The town of Chatham, which was cosmopolitan by comparison, was just up the road. Along the main drag there were charming little houses, side-hall colonials that had been built in the early part of the nineteenth century. The people who lived here had money. They had high-powered jobs in the city. They came up here to escape.
Angel Hill was a dirt road that ran deep into the country. Stately old homes were mixed in with ramshackle farms. She traveled several miles, eight or nine more, until she came to a small farmhouse. It was up on a hill, the way Jack had described it to her. It was two in the afternoon and the place looked deserted. She parked out front and sat there a moment, wondering what she would do once she got inside. She had her pepper spray, just in case. You never knew with women like this.
She crossed the wet lawn up to the front door. There wasn’t a sidewalk, only a few flat stones that had been laid years before and were half covered with grass. The door was slightly ajar, as if they were expecting her, but of course that wasn’t true, they had no knowledge of her visit.
Although it wasn’t cold, and the snow had almost entirely melted, the woodstove was roaring in the living room. She stood in the foyer a moment, just listening. She could hear people upstairs, the muffled sound of laughter. At the end of the narrow hall was a kitchen where an older woman was putting away groceries. A cat was playing with the empty grocery bag, crawling inside of it, jumping on top of it. There was a glare inside, sunlight streaming through the dirty windows. She walked down to the kitchen and asked the woman if she knew where Pearl
was. “We’re closed.”
“I’m a friend,” she explained.
The woman expelled a gust of sour air and went down the hall and called up through the banister. “Pearl!”
A moment later, the girl put her head over the banister and looked down at her, the necklace Jack had given to her swinging back and forth like a pendulum. “What do you want?”
“I just want to talk.”
“What about?” She sounded annoyed. “I’m busy now.”
“It won’t take long.”
The girl shuffled down the stairs, noisily, in baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt. Maggie tugged on her necklace, the pearl, and said, “We have the same necklace.”
The girl’s hand went to her throat, a reflex. She fondled the pearl contemplatively. “It was a gift.”
“From my husband.”
The girl shrugged. “I get many gifts. There are many husbands.”
“Can we sit somewhere?”
The girl ushered her into the living room. They sat on the couch together. She was pale. Her teeth looked gray.
“Why won’t you leave him alone?”
The girl scowled, arrogant. “Why should I? He promise me things.”
“What things?”
“I need money.”
“We have a daughter,” Maggie said.
The girl lit a cigarette. “Good for you. I am happy for you.”
“I want you to stay away from him. I want you to leave us alone. Will you do that for me?”
“But he loves me,” she said, her eyes glittering with spite.
“He doesn’t love you,” Maggie said.
“He says he will help me, he will take care of my baby.”
Maggie doubted the girl was even pregnant. “He’s just using you.”
The girl shook her head. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything. ”
“Don’t you talk to me like that.”
She shrugged again. “Look, I don’t make the rules. If he comes, I can’t say no. He has a key.”
“What do you mean, he has a key?”
“You have to buy one to get in. They cost a lot of money.”
Maggie felt a burning in her chest. “Why can’t he see someone else?”
“He wants only me.”
“How old are you?”
She smiled. “Old enough.”
“What do you do, when he comes?”
“We go upstairs. I have a room.”
Maggie shook her head. It was full of static. “What does he want?”
“He likes to pretend.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He likes me to dress up like a schoolgirl.”
A wave of nausea went through her. “I don’t believe that.”
“I will show you.” The girl stood up and held out her hand. “Come, we go up.”
Like a child, Maggie allowed herself to be led up the stairs. It was an old house with crooked floors. There was the smell of coconut oil. They went into the girl’s tiny room. It was messy, just like Ada’s room. On the nightstand was a candle, a pipe of some sort. A small TV blinked some idiotic program. The girl opened her closet, revealing the green tartan plaid of a Pioneer skirt. “Here, I’ll put it on for you.” She yanked the skirt off the hanger. Maggie looked away while she put it on, but the girl showed no modesty. “There, see?” She shuffled into a pair of fuzzy pink slippers and modeled the skirt for Maggie.
“I’m feeling sick,” Maggie said, clutching the bedpost for support. “I need some air.”
The girl lurched open the window. Maggie stumbled toward it, gulping the cold winter air. The girl went out into the hall and came back a moment later with a glass of water. “Sit down.”
Maggie sat on the bed. She felt very strange. The floor seemed to tilt. “Drink,” the girl said.
Maggie drank the water and the girl watched her.
“I don’t know how you stand him,” Pearl said.
“I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”
“The things he likes.” The girl seemed to wince. “He has a problem.”
“He doesn’t mean it,” Maggie said. “We don’t—”
But the girl had taken her hand, interrupting her lie. “You should be careful,” she said. “He’s a very dangerous man.”
42
Claire hadn’t heard from Nate in three days. She’d left several messages, and he hadn’t returned them. Even Teddy had noticed his absence. “Go down there,” he urged her. “Maybe he’s sick.” So she did.
He came to the door in his bathrobe.
“You look awful.”
“I’ve been sick,” he apologized.
“I’ve been worried about you. I tried to call.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He took her in his arms. “Come in.”
They sat on his green couch and she made him some tea and he made a fire in the fireplace. He told her about Willa, about the drugs she’d been doing, about his guilt over it, and then he said, “There’s something you should know about Willa Golding.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“She’s my daughter.”
They made love as the snow fell all the way into evening. He made her a drink and they sat in the dark living room before the fire. Now that she looked at Nate she could see similarities in their faces, the shape of their eyes, their mouths. “I’m not planning on telling her. I know it seems devious, but I don’t mean it to be. I don’t want to hurt the Goldings and I think it might.”
“If it becomes important to Willa to find you one day, she will.”
“Do you think I’m despicable?”
“No,” she said. “I think it was something you needed to do.”
“When we gave her up, I wasn’t in a place where I could judge. I never knew if I’d done the right thing or not. It was like this hole in my heart. I had to come back here. I had to see for myself.”
“And how do you feel now? Was it the right thing, giving her up?”
“Yes. I believe it was.”
43
Willa had always been pretty good at math, but after three days without eating much of anything she thought her judgment might be off. She estimated that it was a twenty-foot drop from her bedroom window to the ground below. It was half past six in the morning and the house was still quiet. It had snowed the night before and now the ground looked fluffy and white. She jumped.
The jump was thrilling, and when she landed on the ground, hard as it was, she felt elated, free.
Free at last, she thought, and ran into the woods, where no one would ever find her.
44
It was Joe Golding who called the house with the news about Willa. He’d wanted to speak to Teddy’s mother, but she was at Gallagher’s. “It’s Willa,” Golding had said. “She’s gone.” When Teddy asked what had happened, his heart beating a million miles a second, Joe said, “We thought she was over it. She seemed better. But she climbed out her window.”
“Did you call the police?”
“They’re out looking for her now.”
Rudy showed up in his truck and they drove out to Spencertown, thinking she might have gone out there to see Pearl, but he doubted it. He didn’t think she even knew about that place. The roads were thick with snow. Still, Rudy drove quickly. There were only a few cars on the road, crawling along as the snow accumulated. When they got up Angel Hill, it was like being inside a feather pillow, the big white flakes coming down.
They went inside and Rudy said he’d wait in the living room, but within minutes he was coaxed into one of the rooms downstairs. Teddy started up to Pearl’s room, but the old lady grabbed Teddy’s arm and said, “She’s with a customer.”
He went up anyway. If anyone knew where Willa was, it was Pearl. But after he opened the door, it only took him a second to realize he’d made a mistake. And when Dale was lumbering toward him with his pants around his ankles, he didn’t exactly get out of his way. The punch came hard and fast. He hit Teddy so hard the whole
room tipped over and before he knew it he was on the floor, with Dale’s boot kicking his ribs.
“Here’s what you get, you son of a bitch. You think you can fuck with me? Huh? You think you can get away with that? I had to have fucking mouth surgery. You fuck. You fuck!” He kicked him a few more times, in the same way he’d kicked his dog, and then he held his head like a bowling ball and banged it repeatedly against the floor. Blood came up in his throat and he started to blubber.
“Stop it, stop it!” Pearl was screaming. “You will kill him!”
Teddy could hear them scuffling, and he had her back on the bed and finished what he’d come for, and they made a sick awful sound with her whimpering all the way through it, and all Teddy could think of was that dog Dale had set fire to, and that Pearl was in awful danger. But he couldn’t move. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Distantly, he could hear Dale pulling her up off the bed, shoving her across the room. Through his one good eye he watched Dale’s boots as they walked out into the hall, pushing her on her back. “Move,” he said to her. “Your boyfriend wants to see you.”
Then the boots stopped, like he’d forgotten something, and came back. They were steel-tipped construction boots and when they made contact with his ribcage all the air flew out of his mouth and he thought he was going to die.
But he came to moments later. The house was suddenly quiet. He discerned the sound of a car door closing. He crawled across the floor and then, with great difficulty, pulled himself up onto the bed. Everything swirled. He saw the world smeared with yellow. He looked out the window and saw a car starting up, some kind of old vintage car. It was creepy, he thought. He couldn’t make out the driver, but as it turned down the road he saw something he recognized. The face of a white pit bull pressed up against the glass.
45
Nate’s conversation with Claire the night before had filled him with a deep sense of resolve. And as the firelight had played across her face he’d experienced a vivid revelation. He was going to marry her.