Authors: Andrew Coburn
At six she was up. At seven, her aunt called, concerned, anxious. Lydia gave assurances that she was all right, which Miss Westerly was hesitant to accept. “Auntie, believe me.” In a mirror she was aware of the dead calm of her face, a perfect match for her voice.
When Chief Morgan called a few minutes later, she said, “I’m going back to work.” She sipped her coffee and heard him say that he thought that was a good idea. “I’m just a little uneasy about it,” she admitted. “People will probably hammer me with kindness.”
“For a while,” he said.
“Did you drive by the house last night?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Your car has its own sound.”
At nine, with another cup of coffee, she phoned the hospital and told her supervisor that she would be reporting in for the evening shift. Advised that she should take her time, she said, “It is time,” and asked about certain patients. Two had been discharged, one had died.
At the kitchen table she prepared a list, houseplants to replace those that had perished, fresh curtains for her bedroom, new locks for the doors, groceries of the convenient variety. Her mind wandered, first to Matt MacGregor and then to a man to whom she had not denied herself in nursing school. She had been nineteen. His name was Frank, a doctor, married. At the time it had seemed the tragic drama of her life. Now it seemed trivial.
In her bedroom she sorted through a dresser drawer of memorabilia, much of which she intended to throw out, but she found herself preserving the bulk of it. She read through high school test papers on Shakespeare. One question asked for the number of times Caesar’s assassins had stabbed him. Twenty-three. She had gotten it right. Her notebooks from nursing school revealed a hurried hand, in parts unreadable. The stakes of t’s were left uncrossed, the points of j’s and i’s undotted; n’s, u’s, and v’s were one and the same. Doodlings on the margins were hearts pierced with arrows. At the end she threw away only snapshots of her and Matt taken randomly through the years when she was trying to convince herself he meant everything to her.
She made herself lunch, ate half, and was clearing up when the doorbell rang. Surreptitiously she glimpsed Reverend Stottle through a window. Instantly she shrank back and let him ring and ring. Finally he ceased. His voice came through the door.
“No one feels his parents have the right to die.”
• • •
Matt MacGregor drove to Route 125 and followed it into Andover to the state police barracks, a brick building that flanked the entrance to a state forest. He parked in a visitor’s space and climbed out with a scowl. He was in casual dress except for his sturdy shoes and the police belt in his jeans. Inside, the young, crisp-looking trooper behind the desk gave him a cursory glance. “I’m expected,” he said and felt color rise into the pug of his nose. “The name’s MacGregor.”
“You the officer from Bensington?”
“That’s right.”
He was ushered along a corridor and around a corner to a secluded room, where a small man in a summer-weight civilian suit was waiting at a table, his feminine hands lightly clasped. MacGregor instantly disliked the look of him, too neat, too meticulous. He was like the cleanest of cats. MacGregor half expected him to lick himself.
Rising, the man proffered a hand. He was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His voice was treacle. “Sit down, Officer MacGregor. Relax.”
MacGregor sat down, but he did not relax. He did not like a room without windows. Nor did he like the machine he was looking at. It looked medical.
“Have you ever taken a polygraph before?”
MacGregor shook his head. “First fucking time.”
• • •
At the health spa at the country club Christine Poole stepped out of her frock and cringed at the sight of her flimsy underpants, which she never should have worn. They were much too small. The waistband had twirled itself into a cord well below the curve of her abdomen and the rest of the garment had shriveled into the crevice of her bottom. Quickly she donned a pink sweatsuit and hurried into the main area, where groups of women were exercising in a forceful atmosphere of good health. Arlene Bowman, a sweet figure in black tights, was waiting for her.
“Do only what you can,” Arlene advised in a way that sounded like a challenge, which she immediately accepted. Arlene sauntered off to an advanced group, and she joined a squall of wide-bodied women trying to touch their toes and settling for their knees. With supreme effort, outdoing them all, she reached her shins, which flushed her face and revved her up. She felt ready to run a mile, scale a small mountain. With great heaves she brushed her ankles and paid the price.
An hour later, girded by a towel, she sat in the sauna and tried to ignore what the weight of her head was doing to the knot in her neck. The twinge in her back forced her to sit ramrod straight. Arlene, enjoying the vapors, her eyes closed, said, “This was only your first day.”
“Maybe my last.” Her hot skin was moist and pink, reminiscent of a shrimp peeled of its glassy pane.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
Arlene opened her eyes and smiled. “If our friend could see us now.”
She did not want to respond but did. “Why would he want to?”
“It would make him wonder.”
“Why should we care?”
“No man has the right to take advantage.”
“I’m not sure he did.”
They kept their voices low because other women, barely visible in the clouds of steam, were sitting beyond them, acquiescing to the wet heat rolling against them. Arlene mopped her face with a towel smaller than the one wrapped around her. Her eyes stood out. “Actually, it was his attitude. The son of a bitch thought he was saving me from something.”
“Such as what?”
“Myself, I imagine. The arrogance of him.”
Christine experienced a small inward shudder, for she had entertained somewhat similar thoughts about him, a man on a mission, a cop protecting marriages by seeing women through trying times. Always, when he was taking his leave, she had felt fully serviced but only half understood. Yes, the gall of him!
Arlene said, “This may come as a surprise to you, but he was my first extramarital affair. I wanted adventure. I wanted a lover who’d do anything for me, take all kinds of risks to be with me, but his biggest concern was that my husband would find out.”
Floating through Christine’s mind was a memory of lying in his arms and vaguely suspecting that she could have been anybody, any mock damsel in distress. “It was not that way with me,” she lied.
“Maybe you expected less. By the way, are you still seeing him?”
“I broke it off, I told you that.”
“He won’t be grieving,” Arlene said and swabbed the back of her narrow neck and the tops of her straight shoulders. Peering through the vapors, she discreetly directed attention to a woman who was sitting by herself. “Do you know who that is?”
Christine glimpsed a topknot of blond hair and scathingly white thighs that were beautifully big. “I have no idea.”
“Sissy Alexander. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Should it?” she asked and then got the drift. “I don’t need to know all his women.” The pain in her back streaked into her shoulders when she inadvertently moved. Her neck throbbed. With panic she said, “I don’t think I can get up.”
Arlene rose, breasts visible in the top of her towel, and extended a slim hand. “Do it slow.”
She made it to her feet and out of the sauna and then into the privacy of a shower, where she found some relief under the needle spray, which she was reluctant to leave. Afterward, wincing with each wipe, she used the towel on herself but left her hair to dry on its own. The trial was getting into her underwear and dress, a slow and tormenting struggle. In her white pumps her feet were tippy. When she emerged in public she saw Arlene near the water cooler, waiting for her, ready for travel.
“Feeling better?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got just the thing for you. His name is Pierre.”
• • •
When Thurman Wetherfield had worked for the fire department, he had smelled of smoke even when he had not been near a blaze in months. Now he smelled of hard drinking. His breathing was a wheel sharpening a knife, and his hair, most of it a memory, was the color of cold ash. Perched at the bar of a Lawrence tavern he punched out his cigarette and ignored the man seating himself nearby. His eyes were on pictures on the wall behind the bar, poster-bright drawings of contemporary Boston ball players. Rattling the ice in his empty glass, he felt the man smiling at him.
“Remember me, Thurman?”
He gave a slow look. “Yeah, you’re the Rayball went away. Army, wasn’t it?”
“Special Forces.”
“Yeah, but there wasn’t a war.”
“None we were supposed to be fighting,” Clement said and, peeling a bill from a roll, motioned to the bartender. “Give my friend whatever he’s drinking, a Miller for me.”
Thurman lit another cigarette and said, “You still in those Special Forces?”
“I’ve been out awhile.”
“You look like you done well. Nice watch. Those alligator shoes you’re wearing?”
“You can get them handmade in Florida.”
The bartender brought their drinks, and Thurman took his without thanks. “I’m doing all right too. I got a gal here in Lawrence. We live together.” He rattled his rye and took a solid taste. There was a shaker of salt on the bar. He sprinkled some in his palm and licked it. “You better not flash that roll of yours on the street, you’ll get knifed. City’s half spic.”
“They won’t bother me. I speak the language.”
“Far as I’m concerned, that’s against the Constitution, but each to his own. I’m broad-minded.”
Clement ran a thumb around the rim of his beer glass, then decided to drink from the bottle. “I heard you left the fire department.”
“Wasn’t never much of a department. Six permanents, the rest volunteers. I got out on disability.”
“I helped you put out a fire once. I think it was one you set.”
Thurman tossed him a suspicious look, which quickly broke into a smile. “Never no proof of that, and it don’t matter anyhow. Too much time gone by.” He shook more salt in his hand and gave it a good lick. “You just wander in here, or was it on purpose?”
“I asked at the firehouse. Fellow there mentioned a few places you might be. Before that, I saw your wife. She didn’t know where you were.”
He winked, man to man. “That’s how I want to keep it.”
“She says she sews for a living.”
“Good money in that.”
“She didn’t look like she was living in luxury.”
Thurman’s noisy breath came out crooked. “She’s got her life, I got mine.”
“I can understand that,” Clement said, glancing away. There were only two other customers, both sitting half hidden around the curve of the bar. The bartender was making himself an Alka-Seltzer. “I’ve been away a long time, Thurman, I need someone to fill me in. You’ve always had a handle on things, right?”
“Sure,” he said importantly. “Firehouse you hear everything, but I don’t get there much anymore. What do you want to know — something about the shooting?”
“That doesn’t interest me. We’ve got a police chief to take care of it.”
“Morgan’s too busy chasing ass,” he snorted with gravel in his voice. The cigarette burned his fingers, and he put it out. “He goes after the rich bitches in the Heights.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hell I am,” he said and used hot fingers to tick off the names of women, here a rumor, there a fact. Then he pointed to the pictures on the wall and singled out the ball player with the biggest smile. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
“I saw him play exhibition in Florida,” Clement said with only mild interest. Something had altered in his face.
“He lives in Bensington. While he’s shagging flies, Morgan’s scoring on him at home.”
“One of those other names you mentioned, was it Bowman?”
“Yeah, wife of some big shot. She’s a real looker, kind you see in magazines.”
“You know the husband’s first name?”
“No, but I heard he’s rich as God. He runs corporations.” Lifting his glass, Thurman drank up. Lowering it, he was surprised to see Clement slipping off the high chair, leaving behind a couple of small bills on the bar. “You going? Is that all you wanted to know?”
“It’s enough,” Clement said, turning away. Then he swung back with a queer smile. His hand shot out and gripped Thurman’s wrist, unpared nails digging in. “A man should take care of his woman.”
The grip was steel. Clement let go, still smiling, and left. The bartender came over and said, “What the hell was that all about?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” Thurman said, nursing his wrist. Skin was torn, the bone felt bruised, perhaps cracked. “Better put something on it.”
“Whole Rayball family’s crazy,” he muttered to himself and reached for the salt.
• • •
May Hutchins did a washing, mostly her own things, and then, instead of using the dryer, hung the clothes outside on the line for the hot, fresh smell of sunshine. An hour later from the kitchen window she glimpsed a stunted figure in the yard, which held her attention until she distinguished the face, an echo of the father’s. She got on the phone without moving from the window. “Meg, this is May Hutchins,” she said and explained the problem with less alarm than the day before when the wasp had nearly stung her. Twisting the cord around her finger, she said, “Don’t send Eugene, all right?”
Outside, Junior Rayball was oblivious of May Hutchins’s eyes upon him, and he did not hear the screen door open a few minutes later. He was drifting among her clothes, avoiding the float of an apron, which was too large and emotional for him, though he could not fathom the reason. It was another mystery to knock about inside his head. Instead, face first, he was driven to a frayed oyster white slip, the sight, feel, and taste of which was immensely satisfying, a hit to his senses. “Mama,” he said.
“I’m not your mother,” May Hutchins said.
He could have run; he didn’t. May’s helmet of metal curlers glinted. With her hand on her hip, she fed his eye while a memory in his mouth melted before he could taste it. “I was talkin’ to myself,” he said.