After the Woods (19 page)

“All this time he was right there,” Alice murmurs, fingering the zipper of her pink down coat. “Which door?”

“I'd go for that one.” I point to the one next to a lift-top mailbox stuffed with yellowed mail. We climb a few steps to stand on a rotting porch in front of a molded number 277 like black metal turds. Above the knocker, a sign written in red grease pencil reads: NO SOLICITERS & NO PRESS!

“We're neither,” I remind a fidgeting Alice as I ring the doorbell. I listen, hear nothing, and ring again. We wait a minute. I pull off my glove and knock on the door.

“She'd have a car, right? Well, the driveway's empty. That means she's not home.”

“Shh!”

“I'm outtie.” Alice steps down from the porch as the door creaks open.

“Mrs. Jessup?” I ask.

Behind the screen stands a woman no taller than five feet. She wears an orchid-and-green calico housecoat with a yoke collar and snap front, and Keds sneakers, baby toes pushing through holes on the sides. Her pink forehead is smooth, exposed by a shock of white hair combed straight back, and her mouth is tucked and lined. Enormous glasses magnify low-set blue eyes.

“Girls, is it? I wouldn't have answered if it was boys.” Her voice is crusty from underuse. “What do you want? Money for soccer? Softball? What?”

“We're not here to sell you anything. My name is Julia.” I clear my throat. “Julia Spunk. I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

She looks me up and down, rubbing her gums together. “Am I supposed to know you?”

My plan to tell her I knew Donald from work might not pass muster, because she seems sharp. I go with the truth.

“I'm one of the girls from the woods.”

Alice catches her breath. Yvonne can't hear it, but she heard me, because her eyes grow enormous and she backs into the house.

“What do you want from me?” she cries, her hand feeling for a metal walker I didn't see before.

“Nothing!” I say in a rush. “I'm not here for anything bad. Your son … your son didn't hurt me. Not really.”

Her head starts shaking, a loose-necked bobble, and I wonder if this is a mistake.

“I wanted to say I'm sorry for your loss,” I blurt.

She sputters. “You'd be the only one who said it.”

Alice touches my arm. “We should go.”

“You live here alone, don't you?” I say. “I mean, since Donald passed?”

“I have a big dog and a panic button linked to 911 right in my pocket!” She pats her coat pocket. I have stumbled onto her list of things intruders say to figure out if you're home alone before they burglarize/rape/murder you. I'll chew on the irony that Yvonne Jessup should be concerned about such things another time.

She moves to slam the door.

“Wait!” I shout. “What I meant is, it must be very lonely, with just your memories. I was hoping you could share some of those memories with me. My therapist says that viewing Donald as a human being will help with my recovery. But I don't know anything about him besides what the press says. That he was a terrible monster who attacked women, and may have killed one.”

Yvonne's eyes flare behind her glasses. “My Donny wasn't capable of killing anyone. He had his demons. But he would never kill anyone. I will go to my grave saying that.”

“We should leave,” Alice whimpers.

“That witch Paula Papa-whatever!” Yvonne shouts. “Made him out to be a murderer when the police said he didn't kill that girl, she fell into a hole and got stuck! The evidence was right there!”

I hear a noise and turn slightly. A group of boys in striped shirts walking from the soccer field next door nudge each other and stare. I look back at Yvonne. “May we come in, Mrs. Jessup?”

“No, Julia,” Alice whispers.

Yvonne crosses her short arms and rests them on her belly. “Tell me why I should let you in here?”

My belly roils, the black thing pokes.
How dare you, old woman?

“Because it's the right thing to do,” I say, looking hard at her.

She stares at us for a minute, gumming silently. Finally, she throws her walker in front of her, its feet sliding on tennis balls, and shuffles into a dark living room.

I follow while Alice stays on the porch. “Alice!”

She bends her knees inward and bounces, like she needs to pee. I grab her by the arm and drag her inside, past center stairs rigged with an electronic moving chair. We follow the
creak-drag
sound into a living room. The smell is antiseptic with an herbal, Tiger Balm tinge. The living room has heavy mauve drapes over dingy yellow sheers, and it's dark but for lamps in the corners, which Yvonne doesn't bother to turn on. At some point, someone made it possible for all of Yvonne's most basic needs to be met in here, including a tiny, humming refrigerator set on the fireplace hearth, and a toilet, which Alice stands next to looking like she might die.

Yvonne heads for a blue chair, its arms rubbed silver. I choose the couch, patterned with faded bouquets that match the drapes. Alice sits as far as possible on the couch's edge looking weepy. Yvonne abandons the walker and sits with a grunt, lacing her fingers and resting them across her tire-bump of a chest. The chair and its matching ottoman are positioned across from a flat-screen TV hung on the wall behind our heads. On the fireplace mantel framed in brass are photographs of a young Donny, looking away from the camera. Thick glasses appear around the age of nine or ten. The pictures stop around age eleven.

She points above our heads with a bent finger. “Donny bought me that so I could watch my shows.”

Alice makes a tiny noise. I cross my legs and pat Alice's knee, working up my most GIRLy smile. “What kind of shows do you like to watch?” I say.

“Game shows mostly. At night, I like
Raymond
. It's still on, in repeats. The
CSI
shows. The close-ups, they show up real well on this new screen.”

CSI?
Worries about rapists coming door-to-door? Is a hidden camera filming this as a joke? Immediately, I think of the truth in Kellan's words: it's like I'm forever being punked.

“I bet,” I say.

“You said your shrink wants you to hear nice things about Donny, not what shows I like.”

The thing shifts again, a quiver in my gut. The speed with which I could snap Yvonne's chicken neck isn't such a bad thing to think of, not when you're just thinking about it. It would take the police a week, maybe more, to notice anything amiss. Even the postman knows Mrs. Jessup never collects her mail, just lets it pile up in rain-soaked wads in her mailbox, and if you don't have a car, you're basically a shut-in, so nobody's out looking for you, and those Peapod bags near the front door mean food gets delivered, so she must barely leave the house, probably doesn't leave the house, there isn't even a pet, no animal to feed, at least not now that Donny's gone, hardy-har-har …

“He must have had hobbies.” Alice breaks the silence.

My fingers tingle. I release my grip of the couch arm, letting blood flow back into my fingers. “Right. He liked gaming, isn't that true?”

“Ack, Donny and his computer!” Yvonne's eyes go someplace else for a second. “You couldn't get him away from that thing. He hardly ever left his bedroom. Kept him out of trouble, I figured.”

Alice coughs. I slap her back a smidge harder than necessary.

Yvonne's head bobs. “What was I saying?”

“You were talking about Donny's hobbies,” I say. “Did he have other ones, besides gaming?”

“What did you call it? Gaming? He wasn't playing games. He was working on his computer. That was his job! They paid him big bucks to work from home. He could work in his pajamas and fuzzy slippers, he'd say. It made me feel safe to have him here all day, not going off into Boston, riding the train and getting mugged, or worse. Now every noise I hear sets me on edge, and there's been a lot of it, those good-for-nothing kids partying in the woods behind the soccer field on Saturday nights. Any one of them knows an old woman lives alone here, they could get it into their drunk minds to break in and steal my TV. You can see the screen flashing through the curtains from Washington Street at night. I told Donny that wasn't a good spot for it, it's too tempting for burglars, but Donny insisted. He was trusting.”

I don't remind her that as a condition of Donny's parole he probably couldn't travel as far as Boston. Not that anyone was paying attention to the electronic breadcrumbs left by his monitoring bracelet. I also don't tell her that Donny hadn't worked a day since he left GameStop on disability for a back injury. I wonder what Yvonne lives on, cash-wise. Probably some dead husband's pension. Then I remember not to care.

“Plus his sponsor liked him to stay close,” Yvonne adds.

“His sponsor?” Alice chimes in, before I can.

“Donny got into a little dope problem when he was younger. Typical teenage stuff,” Yvonne says, shaking a gnarled finger at us in turn. “Now don't you go thinking he was a druggie.”

“Never,” I say. “You said he had a sponsor?”

“From a support group. Narcotics Anonymous. Said they met at the church. Guy would pop in and check on Donny once in a while. But he didn't need to; Donny'd been clean for years,” she said.

I shift in my seat, barely able to stand it, remembering the joint between Donny's thick fingers. Alice senses my distress.

“Are you sure he didn't have to stay close to home because he wore a monitoring ankle bracelet?” Alice says sweetly.

My head snaps.
Alice
, I mouth.

“You mean the thing on his leg? That was some device his sponsor gave him so that Donny could be in touch immediately if he had the cravings. Some crazy techno-thing. Worked like my Medical Alert pendant. You know: ‘I've fallen and I can't get up!'? Donny tried to explain how it worked, but I couldn't make sense of it. All I know is that he couldn't take it off. Whatever that guy said to him about drugs, it worked, because Donny was clean and sober, he was.”

“His … sponsor … must have been real broken up about what happened,” I say tentatively.

“Nah. Guy hadn't been around in years. Guess he knew he'd done his job right,” Yvonne says.

This has to be enough information for Paula. I start to stand and make excuses to leave when Alice, who apparently believes my lie about a therapeutic mission, pipes up:

“That's impressive, that he was clean and sober. Say, did Donny like to jog? Or bike ride? Maybe go to the gym? Lift weights?” She spits out every unlikely suggestion pertaining to that fat lard until Yvonne finally interjects.

“Donny didn't waste money on a gym. He liked to hunt. Had a real nice BB gun. Expensive. Saved for it. He liked to hunt birds, squirrels…”

Humans.

“… larger prey too.”

Alice drops her forehead into tented fingers. I kick her.

Yvonne shakes her finger at Alice. “I watch my
CSI
shows. I know what they say about people who hurt small animals. It wasn't like that.”

“Of course not,” Alice says.

“Donny had a sensitive side too.” Yvonne points at me. “You should know that. He was a real good artist.”

A ping of recognition. My eyes snap into focus.

“What did he like to draw?” Alice asks.

“Well, it varied. When he was little, animals, like dogs, ducks, horses. Then later, fancy ones, like dragons and unicorns and—what do they call those things? Half horse, half man? I can't think of the word. I guess those last two count as horses. He definitely liked horses.”

“Did he continue to draw? As an adult?” I say.

Yvonne chuckles softly. “Oh yes, he got pretty good, let me tell you. Especially at faces. He could draw real realistic. You know that man who used to be on the PBS channel?
The Joy of Painting
, that was the show. I can't remember his name now, but he always talked about ‘happy little clouds' and ‘happy little trees.'”

“Bob Ross,” Alice says. I stare at her. “My parents loved him. You can still watch him on YouTube.”

“He'd whip those landscapes out in a few short minutes. My husband, Don, never missed him—Bob Ross, that was it. I always said our Donny was better than him. It took Donny longer, but he could capture anyone. Particularly around the mouth.” She rubs her fuzzy chin, lost for a moment.

“That's wonderful, Mrs. Jessup,” I say. “That's just the kind of thing my therapist thinks I ought to know. I would love to see some of those sketches. Would that be possible?”

“Well, I suppose Donny can't mind now, God rest his soul. The whole sunroom is covered in them. Can't bear to take them down, never mind throw them away. They'll still be here long after I die, so whoever buys this house after I'm dead and buried will have to decide what to do with them. Might even make them a bit of money; he was that good.” She rises with a squeal of springs and metal. “You first, I'll tell you where to go.”

“I don't think that will be nec—” Alice starts.

“We'd love to.” I pull Alice up by the wrist. We step past the kitchen into a sunless sunroom. The Tiger Balm gives way to something fetid. Squirrel droppings lie in small black piles in the corners of the room. Alice stretches the front of her jersey over her nose. The walls are paneled in wormy wood with holes among the knots. Spanning the south-facing wall are jalousie windows, slats of glass shut tight by rusted crank-handles. Moisture has overlaid a cataract haze. I rub my shoulders as the cold pours in through the glass.

Behind us, the walker halts. “You're not even looking at them. Behind you.”

We turn slowly. Framing the door we just stepped through is sketch after sketch, dangling from pushpins tacked into the door frame, a child's drawings pinned proudly to a kindergarten corkboard. The subjects include the animals that Yvonne described, plus sexy fairies, hobbity things, and warriors, the latter with some Jessup DNA mixed in.