While I walked I also did my level best not to think about Robbie. I tried to imagine the doll stripped of its power. There had to be something a person could do to change the doll so that it wouldn’t cause Robbie to look so injured. I had been brought up to think step by step, from A to B
and so on. My father believed that outside of the IRS the world was a logical place. For three days I made a stone wall along the slope of the driveway. I concentrated on keeping the bolt of fear at bay, the fear that the girls would be taken away. I guess in addition I spent a fair amount of time in the no man’s land that comes with wanting. I wanted in a savage way, as a child wants. I wanted in spite of reason, and without hope. What I wanted at times seemed simple enough. I wanted to open my eyes to the first light of May. I wanted to find that the summer had not yet begun.
The first few days Theresa brought my lunch in a sack when she picked up the girls in the morning. She’d just leave it on the table. It wasn’t too long before she said I should come to the house and eat with them. She said it was oppressive, that it wasn’t healthy to be working in the heat without taking a real break. I said I couldn’t, that she’d already done enough. She lowered her eyes while she spoke. “I don’t want to stand still, Howard. I don’t want to stand still to think. But I don’t want to have to go out and be social either. I’ve gone to lunch with my co-workers, and my sisters, and some old friends, and my mother, and we talk about redecorating our kitchens, and we laugh, as if choosing wallpaper is very, very hilarious. You need the same thing I do, to move and not think, and you need the silence and the talk that is not circling the pain. Please, just come up for twenty minutes, get something to eat, tell me about your morning, about the crops, and I’ll talk to you about the girls.”
Her recognition of my need was not unnerving. I found her perceptiveness consoling. She might just as well have put cool compresses to my forehead. I said that I’d stop over, that I’d like to. I did miss Emma and Claire during the day. I missed their noise. It was always a relief to lay eyes on them at lunchtime, to see that they were playing happily. I needed to have that check, to see for myself that they were still with me. During the day I’d get to feel as if there wasn’t much that was alive, that everything was drying up and dying. I used to praise the cats for their cunning, and now they seemed vile. They tossed the young rabbits, and the chipmunks, into the air, swatting and pummeling long after the animals were crippled. Every morning another few sheep were cast, the muscles in their bodies useless. I was killing one or two each day. Theresa said it wasn’t right to be alone so much, to have time to brood.
At noon I climbed along the dusty cornfield. I’d go through Mrs. Klinke’s backyard, down the treeless street, Rhode Island Court. I’d walk right up to the front door of the Collinses’ house. I always knocked. We didn’t speak about risk—the threat of neighbor’s talk. Dan was always at work and we rarely mentioned him. I was aware that my every action had to be beyond reproach, and also sure that I no longer had much of anything to lose, that I was pretty well damned. The one time I started to wonder if it was worth my putting Theresa in danger she turned on me with a ferocity I had never seen in her. She asked me not to bring it up again. I think we both understood that for a certain grace period she was exempt from community censure. She was safe because of Lizzy.
The girls always came rushing from a far corner. They climbed all over me for just a minute and then they scattered as quickly as they had come. There were good smells coming from the kitchen. Theresa had thick hunks of warm homemade brown bread already buttered in a basket, and watermelon and cantaloupe cut in slices in platters. There’d be a spread of cold cuts, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, fresh pea pods, a glass pitcher of icy lemonade. She made chilled soup with strawberries, or cucumbers. Although I have always stuck up for old houses with history and bad plumbing, every day I looked forward to stepping inside that 1982 ranch house with a garbage compactor and central air. I often had the urge, in those weeks, to stretch out on the chaise lounge in my dirty rock-gathering clothes, to sleep in a place where you needed a blanket.
I had not let it out of my mind since that first night we spoke that Lizzy was dead. Theresa always came to the door and let me in. I was careful to look at her for a minute, with the knowledge uppermost in my mind, that Lizzy was gone. Theresa had a particular way of smiling. She seemed to be winded. She was always striving to find a bright side. She opened the door and I guess we stood there maybe two beats longer than necessary. I think we were gauging each other’s sadness, or maybe acknowledging each of our distinct and common troubles. We looked, and then she opened the door wider, and I stepped into the hall.
We sat down to lunch, the three girls, Theresa, and I. They gave me a review of their morning. They had painted, or made a maze for the hamster. They had dressed up and conquered the world with the old-fashioned female weapons of high heels and strings of pearls. Emma
occasionally wanted to know what I had done. “What, again?” she’d say, when I told her I was gathering rocks. She was not impressed by the fact that ice had once come down from the Pole in tremendous solid sheets, a mile thick. So what if all the large and small animals had had to run from the cold as it came pressing upon them. She squirmed in her chair when I tried to explain that piles of stones were dumped right where the glacier melted. “Tell me some other time,” was her refrain as she slid from her chair and ran down the basement stairs with Audrey.
Theresa and I often talked quietly at the kitchen table. Before the children’s interview she worried out loud for me. Who was assigned to the case? Should we tell Alice about the session? What did Rafferty think? Could Theresa herself legitimately call over to the office and talk to Rose Ann Lexin? She’d never met the woman. It was touchy, to put in a word to an unknown quantity. She’d eventually come back to the fact that there was nothing the girls would say to incriminate anyone. On the subject of Alice, Rafferty had said over the phone that there wasn’t any reason to tell her, that she’d feel helpless and panicked in her isolation. To Theresa I said, “I would want to know.”
“You’d want to know,” she answered. “You think you’d want to know. But imagine being in that place and having that kind of worry. You can’t even go outside and run around. You can’t scream, without having a dozen people jump on you. I agree with Rafferty. There’s no point in telling her. I think knowing would drive me close to insanity, Howard, I really do.”
“And afterward?”
“Afterward is afterward. You can tell her when she’s out, play it down. Rafferty’s probably right, that it isn’t anything more than a thorn.”
“Nothing more than a thorn,” I said.
She was kind enough to ask for my permission to talk with the girls about the session. She said that of course she would never bring it up, but if they mentioned it she would reassure them, providing it was all right with me. When we spoke about Emma and Claire, I sometimes had the fleeting sense that we, she and I, were a team with a yoke around our heads, blindly pulling the load behind us. I most often felt that the burden was mine alone, and then at lunch, every day, there was the slightest easing. I’d forget that it was going to lighten until I knocked at her door.
“They seem fine, don’t they?” she often said. “They seem fine to me.”
I always said I thought they were fine. When we had exhausted that subject she told me stories about her large family and her Catholic upbringing. Sometimes we sat in an easy silence. The kitchen was cool and clean. I’ve thought since, how effortless life seemed in that house. After lunch I went out to the glassed-in porch that was also air conditioned. I sat on the wicker chair, at the wicker table, to write my daily letter to Alice. Theresa did the dishes and as she worked she sang. She had a light, sweet voice. It was cool in that house, as I said. It was hard to feel terrible there. I was tired and comfortable and full. I had nothing to say. Once or twice I fell asleep with my head on the table.
If I had the energy I’d read Dan’s
Wall Street Journal
. When there had been the slightest possibility of drought, way back in March, corn prices were already skyrocketing. A month later, when the corn was just being planted, when there was rain in the five-day forecast, corn prices fell. Now, because half of the Midwest’s corn was failing, corn futures were better than gold. It isn’t enough to walk through a field, day after scorching day picking up rocks so that you can plant a few seeds, and then cultivate it, week after week, with nothing more than hope and the advice of your local extension agent, and then through the wet fall wait for a bright, dry stretch so that you can work night and day harvesting. It isn’t enough to watch your work come apart in a hailstorm, a windstorm, a freeze. All that isn’t enough to get a fair price for corn.
When I started to complain about the stock market Theresa said, “You talk as if you’re an old fart. Like you grew up in these parts and aspired to be an old fart.”
“That’s awfully nice of you to say,” I said.
She laughed. “I meant it as a compliment, I really did!”
The girls were on the deck spitting watermelon seeds at each other. Theresa rested her cheek in her cupped hand and watched them out the sliding door for a long time. She closed her eyes tight for a minute every once in a while. I gathered that she was wincing at what for her was still unthinkable. I tried not to look on. I wondered what to say that could be of help. At the same time I knew there was nothing anyone could say. She couldn’t see the other girls without wanting Lizzy. She couldn’t believe in her death, and yet after their vacation out West she had gone down to
Police Headquarters to talk to the officers about the drowning. She insisted, apparently, that nothing of a criminal nature had taken place at the pond. It was Rafferty, not Theresa, who informed me of the meeting. Sometimes, over lunch, I couldn’t keep from watching her as she struggled with her thoughts. I’d wonder about her while she was right across the table. Hers was a strength that was admirable.
On the twenty-third of July I took Emma and Claire from Vermont Acres after lunch and drove them to Racine for their interview. I had tried to be as casual as I could. They stood still with their faces upturned while Theresa cleaned their mouths with a wet dishcloth. The people were nice, she explained. No need to worry. The room was stocked with toys and games, stuffed animals and dolls. She put some spit on her finger and slicked down Emma’s cowlick. The girls knew enough to be afraid. Nothing we said allayed their anxiety. In the car Emma asked if she would be taken away. “No,” I said, again feeling the heat rising in me, seeing the road and sky in front of the car blaze and pitch.
Rafferty was waiting in the airy brick entrance at the Law Enforcement Center, where the Police Investigation Unit is housed. Emma and Claire did not know that their mother was in the next wing, four flights away. They took turns getting a drink from the bubbler while Rafferty whispered at me. “This place is up for grabs,” he said. “They’re not sure what to do. They don’t know if they have to honor my requests or if they can tell me to go to hell. Lexin said she’d put it on tape, the other one, Anderson, said they are under no obligation to do so. She made a ruckus about how taping children makes them uncomfortable. I smiled very prettily at her. I said that your girls had spent their formative years in front of a camcorder, correct? And that we would be glad, egregiously glad to pay for any expenses incurred. Then, goddamn it, if anything comes up, we’ve got it all right there. They have to haul the tape into court and it’s clear as dog shit, pardon me.” He turned to the girls. “How are we today?”
They looked out at him from under their bent heads. Emma whickered, “Go-o-o—d.”
Two young women came from a long hall, conferring as they walked toward us. They ignored Rafferty as he made the introductions. The attractive one knelt to look at Claire’s stuffed animal. Her natural speaking
voice seemed to be at the pitch of a whine. “What have you got there?” Claire turned her face into my leg. “It’s okay, honey,” the woman said, clutching my daughter’s hand. “Your dad will be right here, waiting for you. There’s a rabbit down the hall that wants to meet your bunny.” Claire hesitated, trying to think if it was worth leaving me. “There’s a kitty, too, and a frog. Do you think your bunny would like a frog?” Claire went slowly without looking back.
“I’m Mrs. Lexin,” the blond woman said to Emma. “Let’s you and I talk for a minute while Miss Anderson is playing with your sister.”
Theresa had mentioned an anger on my behalf strong enough to make her want to smash her recyclable glass against her garage door. As I sat listening to the noise of Rafferty’s talk, I did not so much want to break anything specific. I felt I might have shouted with a force unusual to me, those flights up to Alice’s pod.
Look! Look at your daughters!
Although the time went slowly Claire was out in about ten minutes, and Emma shortly after. Claire had been crying, judging from her feverish look and her matted lashes. Mrs. Lexin, a good ten years my junior, called me into her office. She had short hair and glasses that took up half her face. She was studying her folder. “The girls are quite upset about their mother, about her having been taken away.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“We’d like to see them again, tomorrow, if you don’t mind.” When I didn’t answer she glanced at me. “Would that work out?”
I nodded.
“It is clear that your girls are experiencing a good deal of trauma about their mother being gone and I would recommend to you, Mr. Goodwin, strongly recommend, that they see someone to help them through this time. We have a listing here, of therapists and human service agencies in the county. You are not legally bound to seek out help, but it would be most beneficial, under the circumstances.”
I would have liked to say that they’d been fine before they came for the interview. “Thank you,” I said from between my clenched teeth.