“The police,” said Colm, “we’ll have to inform the police.” And Hartley squealed.
“It’ll be all right, all right,” Fay soothed, and she wrapped the girl in her arms as if Hartley were her own child and had had a bad dream, that was all, but now was awake and everything was all right.
“She’ll be all right,” Ruth echoed, and felt it to be a lie.
* * * *
It was bad enough to be baby-sat by that hired man and his half-brained Joey, who turned up
Wheel of Fortune
so loud, even the Willmarth boy upstairs screamed for quiet. But now, the hired man had gone and the older sister, what’s-her-name, had taken over. Mac didn’t like the principle of the thing. He should be baby-sitting
her
for pete’s sake, she was young enough. And big as a house! What could he do if she went into labor? And her grilling him, like she was some kind of detective: “Why’d you leave Glenna? Why’d you come here in the first place if you didn’t like it? Why didn’t you write when everybody thought you were dead? Why, why, why?” He wasn’t about to give an answer. Time passed, that was why. Simple as that.
And that kid of hers, staggering around the living room, switching lights on and off, the black-and-white TV (black and white in this day and age?)—just when there was finally a decent show on, though it was a repeat, and Inspector Morse was about to make a breakthrough and nab the guy jumping off the church roof. Mac liked Morse, liked his cynicism; he was Mac’s kind of guy: Don’t trust anybody, give ’em all a sneer. Give ’em an opening? Hey, they’ll do you in.
After what seemed an hour, she looked in on the kid. “Robbie? come out of there. Right this minute, I said.” When the kid turned a deaf ear, she steamrolled in, scooped him up like a heap of laundry, and marched upstairs, her brown braids bobbing, her bare feet punishing the scuffed steps. Pretty agile, after all, for that fat belly.
He had a stabbing memory. Glenna’d thought she was pregnant once, and when she told him, he was floored. Christ, he was almost fifty, for crying out loud—what’d he want with a kid? “Take some castor oil or something,” he’d said (words to that effect), and she’d got all in a rage and banged around the room, knocking things off the shelves. “You’ve got no romance in that skinny body, not a damned ounce,” she’d shrieked, and then, to really get his goat: “What makes you think
you
could make a kid anyway?”
Well, he’d caught the drift of that; he was one mad guy. Picked her up and threw her down on that scratchy sofa and told her he had a kid, down in the city, grown up now—how’d she like that piece of news? And she just looked him back with those big green eyes and called him a liar, said he wasn’t “man enough.”
“Then who is?” he’d demanded. “Who else you been screwing around here? Answer me, who?” He was a jealous man, he had to admit it. But there really had been a woman once, before Glenna. She got pregnant but then aborted it. He didn’t ask her to, either. He wasn’t that kind; it was her decision. The question was: Was it really his or not? He’d seen how she acted with other men.
He couldn’t stand promiscuity—it was like a disease. His own mother’d had it, left his father, one fling after another. It grabbed him in the pit of the belly, festered like stomach flu. Himself, he never cheated on anyone. No! Well, he never saw that woman again, and glad of it. She went to work on another newspaper, women’s news, that kind of trivia.
It turned out Glenna wasn’t pregnant after all, just going through menopause, her periods screwed up. He was surprised she had any periods at all, ever—all that horseback riding. Still, you never knew; he found himself looking closely at the men who came to the farm. Never realized how many they were—remembering now that Hanna had asked the question: the grain salesman—forgot his name—guy who picked up the milk, plumbers, roofers, electricians, the signmaker, that milk tester. Hungry looking kind of guys, reminded him of that Shakespeare character—Mac liked Shakespeare—something about a “lean and hungry look”? Probably screwing every farm wife around, or trying to. Some gave in, he supposed. But Glenna?
She was crazy enough to do anything when she was in a mood. Just to get back at
him.
Look at the way she rode that effing horse. Christ, he hated that horse! Never mind he couldn’t ride it himself. Jenny Two, she named it. Stubborn as Glenna. It was like masturbating, he told her once; she got her kicks, rubbing her cunt in the saddle. And then she socked him hard, in the gut. Knocked the wind right out of him—and him with weak lungs. He just laughed after he got back his breath. He’d dug a hole for that mare. He was going to do it in, too, he really was. Till one of them came—who? One of the Bagley brothers? He never could tell one from the other, both with that spiky yellow-gray hair, though they weren’t twins, Glenna said. She knew them apart. That said something, didn’t it? Knew them well enough to tell them apart? “What’s the difference, a mole on the butt?” he’d asked once, and instead of getting mad this time, she just laughed. You could never tell about Glenna. Maybe that’s why he hung out with her in the first place. She was unpredictable. Fun, even.
Anyway, there was that knockdown fight, time he found Glenna on her back in the hay. What other conclusion could a man reach? And that asshole running off. But first—memory foggy now—he grabbed Glenna and struck her, and she got that shovel, or rake or whatever, and hit him with it. Then ran, damn her. Last thing he heard was the horse galloping off; knew she was on it. She didn’t even stop to see if he was dead. Though she must’ve thought he was, according to that Hanna fellow, the guy who’d dragged him up here. He was as good as dead for a time, though, head like a bucketful of mud, he remembered that.
Then someone else was groaning, not just him. Like
Hamlet,
act 5, the whole stage full of groaners, dead men. He’d clobbered the guy before he went to Glenna, he remembered now. He’d killed that guy. He was still mixed up about the sequence. Anyway, he was fed up, it was the final straw, her rapping him like that. He left town. Just took what was his: the typewriter, tape recorder, his O’Brian sea novels—all fifteen of them. Rented a room in Montreal till it blew over. Month, two months later, no one coming after him, and he went home—his old rooming house in the city. No one ever called.
That skeleton, though—did he put the guy in there? The one he killed—whoever it was? In that horse hole? He must have, but he couldn’t recall. Though Hanna said it was Glenna put him in it. He chuckled. Thought it was old Mac MacInnis in that hole, and she’d killed him. Wished he’d seen her face! Was she sorry? Or glad ... Well, he guessed he wasn’t always so great a husband. But what’d she expect, dragging him up here, out of the city? He was a city boy, born there, raised there, right in Brooklyn, where his dad ran a meat market. Nobody rode horses then in the city—except the Irish cops. Nobody kept cows. The only tits he knew were on the streetwalkers.
But here he was. What was going on anyway? What kind of mix-up here? When she sees him again though, she’ll know it wasn’t him in that hole. She’ll know he just up and took off. She’ll be in a fury. Christ! he doesn’t want to see that. Doesn’t want the police finding out about the one he killed, either.... Mac doesn’t want to be here, that’s all he knows.
He heard that young woman upstairs, singing off-key to her kid—squeaky voice, putting him to sleep. Heard the older boy, her brother, yelling at her to “shut up,” he was “trying to do his homework.” And that did it. Mac wasn’t hanging around here another minute. He went to the phone, called a taxi; he’d meet it out by the road, he said. “Hurry up. I gotta make a plane in Burlington.”
And swiping a tenner he saw lying beside the phone— he’d pay the woman back—he was no thief—he had, well, probably just the bus fare in his pocket, to Montreal maybe— Mac stumbled out.
Chapter Fourteen
Sharon was in tears, but what could she have done? The toddler was crying; she had to pee; she was getting bigger and bigger—huge! “Mom, I think I’m having twins. I mean, they’re in Jack’s family, Mom. If I do, I’ll shoot myself; we can’t afford it.”
Sharon had a way of turning a defense into an offense. Ruth gave up; impulsively, she hugged her: Sharon was bearing a second grandchild—new life. Ruth wanted to think about life, life ... “Go to bed, love, go to bed right here,” she ordered her older daughter. Anyhow, Mac was gone, and Colm was mad—after he’d gone all the way to the city to get the man, and now the phone ringing and ringing. “Colm,” she hollered downstairs, “pick up the damn phone.” She wished she had one of those cellular ones she could carry around, but at what cost?
She glanced at her watch; it was already after ten. She had to be up by five, because she couldn’t ask Tim to do the morning milking again. Another note from Tim on the breakfast table: “Zelda broke the west gate. Still mourning that calf she never fed? What is it about women?”
Humph. She’d ripped up the note. Women, indeed. They’d never really come to terms, men and women, would they? It seemed a grave difference, impassible. Try to break down the fence between the sexes and you landed on someone’s ego.
“Jeez. Jeez,” Colm was saying into the phone, “jeez, Roy. Well, hurry up forensics about that stuff in the cabin, will you? And find that old guy. No, I’m not making it up. He’s alive; it’s really Mac. He just took off on us while we were looking for Glenna. Yeah, I’m sorry, I know we didn’t. It was just—”
Evidently the chief had hung up. Colm’s face was a study in purple. “He’s ticked off that we didn’t let him know right off. About Glenna, I mean. He had to hear from Hartley’s stepmother down in Poughkeepsie. And he thinks I’m kidding about Mac. Says it’s Mac in that hole all right. Kept repeating what the forensics guys said. Blow to the right temple, just what Glenna said she probably did. A puncture in the breastbone—that arrowhead. As for the teeth, Fallon said half of them were choppers—bad ones at that, not all his own teeth at all. Glenna verified that. And I wore out shoe leather looking for a damn dentist.”
“He might have identified the false ones.” She tried to sound calm; she disliked controversy, arguments. With Pete, she was always the first to make up. Pete would blow, and then give her the silent treatment, face closed up like a coffin. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she went to him, apologized (For what? she sometimes wondered). He’d grab her and pull her upstairs. It seemed that sex was the only way to end an argument. Sometimes she enjoyed it, too, she had to admit. She still woke nights, missing it, wanting it....
But she and Colm weren’t on that plane. They weren’t on the point of ending a quarrel upstairs, though she knew he’d like to. She was the one holding off. Colm was sunk in a chair now, his chin in his hands. He was wearing that blue-striped shirt with the kelly green corduroys she disliked, that ridiculous Green Mountain Boy cap—he looked as though he was headed for a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. His sneakers were blackish with dirt, and some of the dirt was on her floor, little triangular patches, from the rubber cleats. For some reason, she almost laughed.
He looked up, as though she had. “Both of them missing now. You think they had a rendezvous? Old lovers do sometimes. Rediscover each other?”
“Uh-huh. Not at the Flint farm, though—Fay would call.” It was a silly thought, but she rather liked it. She liked the idea of people getting back together. Herself, though, with Pete— she didn’t know. As long as she gave Pete no answer, there was no divorce.
“It’s out of our hands, I’d say. At least we know Mac isn’t far. He has no wheels,” Colm said.
“Taxi?”
“Jeez. Yeah.” He leapt up, fumbled through the phone book. His fingers were shaky on the dial. He told her she needed a Touch-Tone, and she thumbed her nose at him. He described Mac to Branbury Taxi. “Short, sort of a Grumpy the Dwarf look, if you know what I mean.” He winked at Ruth. “Yep,” he said when he hung up, “they took him into town. To the bus station. He’d catch that last bus to Burlington, maybe Montreal, depending on when—” He looked at his watch. “It’s already ten-thirty. “Jeez.”
She wished he’d stopped saying “Jeez”; she hated the word. Now he was back on the phone, dialing the police chief. They’d have to stop the bus. “But suppose he got off somewhere in between?” He looked helplessly at Ruth.
“That would complicate things.”
“Jeez.”
When the phone rang again, they both lunged for it. Ruth got it first; it was her phone, after all. The call was for her anyway. It was from Marna, one of the women down at the Healing House. “It’s Rena,” Marna said, sounding like someone who’d just fallen into a pit. “We found her in the bathroom. I don’t know what it is. She was slumped over on the floor. It was awful. I called the ambulance—though Isis wanted to wait. What else could I do? They’re on their way. I remembered you came; I didn’t know who else to talk to, I’m not from around here. I don’t like what’s been happening. We need help!”
Outside, a wind storm was blowing up; the phone crackled in Ruth’s hand, and she dropped it. Colm picked it up, put an arm around her, led her to the living room couch.
“Let’s neck,” he said. “Till it all blows over.” He put an arm around her waist and she let it stay. “Close your eyes and imagine Mac and Glenna, like this, on that horsehair sofa.”
“Till he rubs her the wrong way and she slugs him. Like this.” She shook a playful fist in Colm’s face.
“Spoilsport,” he said, and buried his face in her neck.
She relaxed—a moment’s sheer pleasure. Until the phone rang again and Marna asked if Ruth could come. “Now?” the woman pleaded. “Could you possibly? Please? I don’t know who else to ask!”
* * * *
Somehow the Healing House atmosphere was lighter with Isis gone—to the hospital to see about the two sick women. Anyway, Ruth thought, a visit would help to keep her mind off Glenna. Hours now and no trace of the old lady—but the police alerted and searching. What else could Ruth do? Except worry. She had a talent for that.
Three of the remaining women were playing cards in the scrubbed living room; two others were in the kitchen, whipping up a butter cake. “It’s strictly illegal,” one of them said, a woman in her twenties with long, straight black hair. “I have a sweet tooth, you see. She never allows it, even though my cholesterol’s low, only one forty-two. I mean, it used to be high, high! I went on this oat-bran diet.”