What I Saw and How I Lied

  “You’re crazy if you don’t see that it doesn’t matter,” Grandma Glad said. “They want to pin it on you. Can’t you read the papers? And you don’t help matters. What are you talking to a reporter for?”

  “He called me. He asked a question.”

  “I talked to John Reilly,” Grandma Glad said. John Reilly was a fat lawyer with a red face. Everybody went to him for wills and deeds and when their kid got caught doing something.

  “That shyster,” Mom muttered.

  “That shyster knows his business. He says don’t talk to reporters—you put your foot in it and you can’t get it out. You said in the paper you didn’t understand why they called the inquest. Dumb, Mr. Reilly said. He said, you say you welcome the inquest.”

  Joe dropped his head in his hands. “What am I going to do?”

  “What’s the most important thing down here?”

  I couldn’t get over it. There Gladys sat, in her navy flowered dress, her Red Cross shoes planted firmly on the carpet. She had gotten some authority somehow, and it wasn’t just because she’d talked to a lawyer. Gladys Spooner, sitting in a chair, listening to the radio, looking out the window, gossiping on the porch. All that time, she was gathering information for just this moment to take over.

  “The tourists,” Grandma Glad went on. “Murder hits the papers and they have to take care of it so the tourists keep coming.”

  Mom went pale. “It’s not a murder. Nobody’s calling it a murder.”

  “They are, and we might as well, too, or else, how are we going to fight?” Grandma Glad said. I hated her for using the word out loud, but she made us all shut up, that’s for sure. Once the word was out, we had to face it square. I hated her for it, but she was right.

  “I’m sunk,” Joe said. “I’m a nobody. They’ll pin it on me, all right.”

  “You’re not a nobody,” Grandma Glad said fiercely. “He was a nobody.”

  I started to cry, but nobody paid attention, even when I had to put my hands over my mouth so that the noise wouldn’t go out into the hall. Peter was there in the room with me suddenly. I could see the golden hair on his forearms, the way he twisted his mouth when he was trying not to smile at me. A nobody. He was still so clear and so alive and so much him. There was so much Peter inside me I felt sick.

  Dead. My stomach twisted as it hit me again. Dead.

  “I told you not to marry her,” Grandma Glad said. It was like me and Mom weren’t even in the room. “I told you she was trouble. I said she’d run around on you.”

  “Yeah, and you kept on saying it, even when Joe was overseas and I was working to put food on your table!” Mom said.

  “Working.” Grandma Glad sniffed. “Is that what you call it? Is that what you were doing with that Coldidge fellow?”

  “Coleridge,” I said. My voice was all choked and wavery. “His name was Coleridge.” I couldn’t stand hearing her. I had pushed evil away, I had tried to keep everything straight, and even though everything was horrible, she’d walked in the door and brought evil in.

  “This isn’t helping any,” Joe said. “We can’t fight each other. Not now.”

  “I’m going to get you out of this, Joey,” Grandma Glad said.

  “What about me?” Mom asked, her voice quiet. “You going to leave me in the soup, Gladys? You going to pin it on me and let your boy go free? This is Christmas for you, isn’t it? Wrap me up and hand me over with a big fat bow.”

  That stopped my crying. Mom had put her finger on it, all right. That was the possibility in the room, and I wasn’t even seeing it.

  Grandma Glad hesitated. She let Mom swing on the rope for a while.

  “Ma?” Joe said.

  You could tell she was about to eat some week-old brussels sprouts because they were the only things in the icebox. She didn’t want the taste of what she was about to say in her mouth. “What happens to you, happens to my boy,” she said to Mom. “I’d let you stew in the soup if I could. But I can’t.”

  “I’m crazy about you, too, Gladys,” Mom said, and she blew out cigarette smoke right in her face.

  I gave up my bed that night to Grandma Glad and bunked on the couch. Joe pushed it closer to the bed so Grandma Glad could get out to the toilet on the other side in the middle of the night if she had to.

  The couch smelled like cigarettes and mildew. It was small, and I had to stick my legs up on the arm or curl up in a ball to be comfortable, which I wasn’t.

  I woke up to whispers in the middle of the night. For a second I didn’t know where I was. I stared at the blinds for a minute, trying to remember. All I saw were clouds glowing, like the moon was trying to bust out from behind.

  Grandma Glad sat on the edge of the bed, Joe right next to her. I could have touched her red slipper, touched her big toe with its thick yellow nail. If I wanted to.

  It’s funny how adults are. When they think a kid is asleep, they never expect you to wake up and listen.

  “You don’t ever let them know that you knew about her and him,” Grandma Glad said. “If it comes out, you didn’t know.”

  “She says it’s all lies. She says he chased her, but she put him off. She liked the attention, she said. I was busy with the Grayson fellow, trying to swing a deal. Is that a crime? It was Evie he went after, she said.”

  “You never were a chump, Joe. Don’t start now. How do you think she got along all those years?”

  I wanted to leap up and scream at her that it wasn’t true. I knew that. I knew Mom. All she had was her reputation. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of having gossip about her, she said. That’s why she dragged me to church every Sunday and nodded and smiled to the ladies as we walked up in our hats and white gloves.

  I had been thinking of the wives of the men who whistled as Beverly Plunkett went by, of them being the gossips. That wasn’t the enemy for Mom. All the time, her enemy had been waiting. Her enemy was sitting in the green chair in the living room.

  “She says I neglected her.”

  “You were building your business. Nobody did as good as you after the war.”

  “I haven’t been a saint, Ma. When I was overseas—”

  “You were a soldier. A hero. You made your way, best you could. Now stop it, Joey. We’ve got to get this straight, now. Reilly says to hire a lawyer. He gave me a name. Things aren’t always on the up-and-up, you know. If we know the right people, maybe we can close this down. That’s what he says—without coming right out and saying it, mind you. If you spread the green, he said, certain people will look the other way. I came down with eight thousand.”

  “Ma!” Joe’s voice burst out, and she shushed him.

  “We’ll only use it if we have to.”

  “That’s all the money I’ve got in the world. It’s going to buy us a dream house.”

  So Joe had cash, all this time. He could have paid Peter, and he didn’t. He wanted his dream house instead. He wouldn’t give that up. But Grandma Glad knew about the money.

  So many lies around me. Enough lies to fill ten houses.

  “Forget the house—this is your life. You saw your chance in the war, you took it, you made something of yourself. Just like your dad.”

  “Pop died broke.”

  “Hush your mouth, the man did his best. You’ll make it through this. We’ll try for the police chief. A bribe here and there. Maybe the judge. Reilly says to ask our lawyer when we get one, and he’ll give us the straight deal. But don’t ask until we have to.”

  The shadows moved apart. Joe went back to his bed. Grandma Glad took off her robe and got back into her bed. I kept my eyes almost closed. I watched her pull the covers up to her chin.

  I didn’t understand. There was so much I didn’t get.

  But one thing shone through, like the moon through the clouds, silver now painting my blanket.

  She told him this and that and what they were going to do and how bad my mother was.

  But never once did she ask him if he did it.

/>   Chapter 29

  Headlines. Words that once you read upside down, that popped out at you at a newsstand as you roller-skated by, or from the kitchen table as you went by to grab an apple from a yellow bowl on the kitchen counter. BODY and BLONDE and MURDER.

  Now they were about us.

  Grandma Glad went into action. It was like she’d been drafted and had blown through basic in a week. She started telling Joe what to do. The first thing she did, she hired a lawyer. She said we needed a local guy on our side. This guy, Mr. Markel, was a tall, pale man with a stretched-out face and rimless glasses covering colorless eyes. I couldn’t exactly see him facing down the enemy. The most he did, from what I could see, was tell Joe and Mom what to wear at the inquest. When Mom told him that she didn’t have any navy or gray outfits, he’d said, “Buy some.”

  They wouldn’t let me go to the inquest the first day. Mom wore a gray dress with a white collar and a black straw hat. Joe wore a suit and tie. Grandma Glad wore her diamond pin.

  “The good news is that the coroner’s report says Coleridge did die by drowning,” Markel said. He’d stopped over for coffee before the inquest.

  I saw Mom swallow. “Why is that good news?”

  “Because if he’d died from a blow to the head, for example, they would have had more of a case that he was dead when he hit the water.”

  Mom turned her face away. “You certainly don’t mince words, do you.”

  He looked over at her. “No.”

  They were gone almost all day. I went downtown for the afternoon edition. I took it to the bandshell and held it in my lap for a minute. The park had been cleaned up and the branches carted away. The lake was gray, stealing color from the sky.

  I could see the headline, and I didn’t want to read the story.

  STARTLING TESTIMONY IN

  COLERIDGE INQUEST

  Suspicion Cast on Businessman’s Wife

  Surprise Witness Identifies Her in Court

  I read it fast, trying to just make sense of the jumping words.

  The witness was Iris Wright, owner of Iris’s Eye, a gift shop on South Dixie Highway. A couple had come in, in high spirits, said Iris, and browsed. She remembered them because they were both “so attractive.” The woman was dressed all in white. They bought a pineapple vase. They laughed together as the man paid for it. She recognized the man in the picture in the paper. And then the state’s attorney, Raymond Toomer, asked her if the woman was in the courtroom.

  Mrs. Wright pointed with her chin. “That’s her there.”

  “Please rise, Mrs. Spooner,” Mr. Toomer requested.

  Mrs. Spooner stood slowly. She was dressed in a gray silk frock with a white collar and cuffs, her bright hair obscured by a black straw hat with a pink ribbon. Mr. Toomer asked her to remove her hat. Mrs. Spooner’s fingers fumbled as she did so. When she pulled it off, her blond hair tumbled to her shoulders and glinted in the sunlight that streamed through the courtroom window.

  Mrs. Wright positively identified Mrs. Spooner. “That’s her,” she said, and pointed a finger. “She’s a looker. I’d recognize her anywhere.”

  She’d come back to the hotel with the pineapple vase the day we’d all gone to the movies. Peter had said goodbye and she’d walked off, her scarf trailing behind her. She was going to see if the shops on Worth Avenue were open, she said.

  So Peter had followed her in his car. He’d probably leaned out, his elbow on the door, and said, There’s nothing open on the island. Let me take you shopping.

  I’d thought that day was my first date with Peter. It wasn’t. It was Mom’s.

  All that time it had been him and her, not him and me.

  The world went white for just an instant. Then pain roared in. With all the lies around me, this was the worst. This was the one I couldn’t stomach.

  I had to sit down. I had to think. I had to breathe.

  When I’d heard Joe and Grandma Glad talking about it, I’d been ready to agree with Joe, to say it was just flirtation, that I was the one Peter had wanted.

  But now I wasn’t so blind. Not anymore. It had been between them from the very first.

  What makes you think you know what ails me?

  I can only guess.

  Two blond heads together in a dark movie theater, close together, whispering.

  Flirting. They’d been flirting the whole time, only I hadn’t seen it.

  Mom, running down the beach. Peter, picking her up, swinging her around. Her hands on his chest like she already knew how it felt.

  She already knew how it felt.

  Mom, riding in Peter’s car, her lips curving in a soft smile as he drove. A secret smile, a cat over a dish of cream.

  Peter putting his finger on her lips to stop her words. Letting his finger linger there longer than it should.

  All that time, I’d thought Mom was in the way. I’d been the one in the way. I’d been their cover.

  The knowing was so huge I couldn’t bear it. I sprang off the bench and ran toward the water, ran as fast as I’d ever run in my life, ran until my lungs burned. But I couldn’t run away from it. The facts slapping down like cards on a table.

  The orange petals on the car. Mom had tipped Wally every day to wash them off.

  She’d known how to find me at Peter’s because she went there every day. She went there to be with him. And when I’d first walked up to him that night, he’d thought it was her. I was wearing her perfume, I was wearing heels.

  They’d been…something together. Something I didn’t want to know about. I thought of Peter’s kiss, thought of how he must have kissed her that way.

  More than that. It was sex. That was what had been between them.

  I stared at the gray water. It hurt so much I could barely breathe.

  The newspaper was still bunched in my hand. I smoothed it out and sat on the grass to read it.

  Mr. Markel got to ask the woman from the store a few questions. He asked if she knew for sure they were a couple. Did they hold hands? Did they kiss? Iris said no, but she could tell they were in love because of the way they were smiling. Judge Friend said her opinion on smiles wasn’t testimony.

  Smiles. I’d seen their smiles, too. But I was a little slower on the uptake than Iris Wright.

  My eyes stung with the sudden rush of wanting him. I needed Peter here to explain. The funny thing was, I still thought he’d tell me the truth. Had he loved Mom, really loved her?

  Checking up on me? How considerate.

  He’d been angry at her that night. Did that mean he’d regretted what they’d done? Was that why he’d turned to me that night instead of her?

  I felt dizzy and sick. I couldn’t bear it if I’d meant nothing to Peter. I couldn’t bear being a sap.

  The surf caster who found Peter testified. I skipped that part. I didn’t think I could get through this if I had to think about it. I had to close it like a book, the image of him dead. I had to think of him alive. I had to think of this as happening to someone else.

  The policeman who had driven Mom and Joe back to me at the hotel was next. The officer testified that for two people who had seen a man drown, they seemed more concerned about what they’d been through themselves. I smelled liquor on them, he said.

  The state’s attorney asked him what Mom had said when she saw me and realized I was okay.

  “She said she needed a bath,” the officer replied.

  A gasp went up in the courtroom. Those sitting in back stood on their chairs to get a glimpse of Mrs. Spooner.

  He made it sound like she didn’t care. But she had been relieved. I knew her best, and I knew that. I knew she was dirty and scared from what she’d been through. But I knew that when we saw each other, something frantic in her lifted. Because that’s the way she was. If she was upset about something, first she got mad at the mashed potatoes.

  The final witness was Officer Deary.

  He testified that Joe was packing the car when he drove up to tell him that the bo
dy had been found.

  “Did he seem concerned about the confirmation of the death?” Mr. Toomer asked.

  “I can’t say for sure,” the tall, plain-spoken officer replied. “He was worried about his business up in New York, he said.” The courtroom stirred, and all eyes rested on Joseph Spooner, who leaned over to whisper to his attorney. Beverly Spooner gripped her mother-in-law’s hand.

  I blew out a breath. Now I knew the paper was bunk. First Joe and Mom were from Brooklyn, and now Mom was holding hands with Gladys. She’d sooner hold hands with a black widow spider.

  Among the witnesses at tomorrow’s hearing would be Joseph Spooner and Beverly Spooner.

  I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes and doubled over. I could smell the newspaper, inky and damp. There were facts I was reading, and then those facts were twisted so hard they boomeranged in the wrong direction. What was the truth?

  I knew that Mom and Peter had been together. But what did it mean?

  If everyone else believed that Joe and Mom had killed Peter, would I be able to hold on to believing that they didn’t, even with my eyes wide open?

  Later that day Joe drove me to Mr. Markel’s office. I could barely look at him, and if Mom had been there, I probably would have had to jump out of the car. As soon as we got to the office, I put my hand on the door handle to get out. The clouds were low and the sky was completely black. I knew we had about two seconds to get inside before the rain started.

  “Hold on a sec, Evie. Before we go up, I want to talk to you.”

  In the time it took for Joe to start talking, the sky opened up and dumped the rain. We had to roll up the windows. Within minutes the windows steamed up and we couldn’t see outside.

  Joe looked ahead, his hands quiet on the steering wheel. “So maybe I didn’t get a chance to be much of a dad for you. I married your mother, I went right off into the service. I got back, I started my business. But I tried. And not just because I wanted to make your mother happy, either. I tried because you’re a good kid and I want to be your dad.”