Authors: Andrew Coburn
The name meant nothing to him, and neither did the thumbnail picture until he looked at it closer. With a chill he scanned the story, which was scarcely more than an item. The woman, who was from Andover and believed to have been depressed over a recent divorce, had slashed her wrists the evening before. A neighbor had found her and summoned an ambulance. He pushed the paper away. He knew the color had left his face.
“Don’t feel guilty about anything,” the bartender said. “She was in here ‘most every night, fair game to any guy had an eye for her. Something was wrong with her, I knew that right away.”
“That’s the problem,” Clement said. “I did too.”
The bartender put the paper out of sight and ran a wet cloth over the bar. “A lot of these women come in here, they’re a button hanging from a thread.”
Clement left his beer untouched and returned to his room.
• • •
Calvin Poole sat with a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
in his lap. From his chair on the veranda he watched a cardinal flit like struck matches through the nervous leaves of a birch. When his wife appeared, he did his best to rearrange his face into a healthier mold. She said, “Anything wrong, Calvin?”
He shook his head. She had her exercise togs on. She always seemed to have them on now. She had not eaten all day, except for a graham cracker to take the nick out of her hunger.
“It’s the bank, isn’t it?” she said, dropping into the chair beside him. “How bad is it, exactly?”
“Not all that bad,” he said and wondered whether he might go to prison. Bowman wouldn’t, he was sure of that, but he himself might, and he wondered whether unconsciously he welcomed betrayal, whether his life were tailored into perfect fits for failures.
“I think you’re fibbing,” she said.
The cardinal flared up and away. It vanished into the blue in a bulletlike way only birds can do. Wondrous creatures, he had always felt that.
“You don’t have to worry about money,” she said. “We have plenty, you know that.”
“I’ve never touched yours,” he said. “I don’t intend to.”
“Don’t be foolish. It’s ours.”
“It was your husband’s.”
“You’re my husband.”
His head went back a bit, her voice a pinprick each time she spoke. He wondered whether she had ever truly loved him. Always the ghostly stuff of her first husband had littered their closets; even the outlandish orange skivvies might have been his. Though now he knew otherwise.
“What do they say about me behind my back?” he asked. “That you’re married to some white-haired old fart?”
“Hardly,” she said with surprise. “What makes you think that?”
Inside information, he wanted to say. Hot from a trader’s mouth. His hands were clasped in his lap, over the
Journal.
He said, “Perhaps I’m feeling my age. I’m no youngster, am I?”
“Nor are you doddering.”
“No complaints?” he asked.
“None, my dear.”
Now her voice lay gentle on the air. That was nice. “I golfed with Gerald Bowman this morning,” he said.
“Did he have anything positive to say?”
Poole shook his head. “Nothing worth repeating.”
• • •
It was nearly dark now, many shadows in the room. Clement Rayball had been mulling over what all along he had known he would do. He left the motor inn and drove to a hospital in Lawrence, where the receptionist asked whether he was a relative. A brother, he told her. He rode the elevator with a man holding flowers and wished he had brought some. In the corridor a heavy female patient with her gown open in back was a peep show. He averted his eyes. Seconds later he danced out of the way of a young black man maneuvering a gurney. His mind moving too quickly, he strode past the woman’s room and had to retrace his steps.
She lay quite still, her eyes closed, sharing the room with no one. Her wrists were bandaged big, but except for IV feeding she was not hooked up to anything, which he took as a good sign. She seemed sound asleep. When he moved to read the chart at the foot of the bed, her eyes opened. She looked at him clearly, starkly, and he could tell that she did not remember him, not at all. It should have relieved him of something, but it did not. He whispered, “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
Her eyes closed.
“Visiting hours are over.” The voice came from behind. A nurse, protective of her patient, edged him to the door. Her presence was commanding. “She shouldn’t be disturbed. Are you a relative?”
“A friend,” he said with a look at the plastic name tag pinned to her uniform. Even if he hadn’t looked he’d have remembered her. “You’re Lydia Lapham.”
She recognized him. “Clement Ray ball. You were a year behind me in school. You went into the army.”
“That was a while ago.” His voice deepened. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
“Thank you,” she said with no inflection. She was, he noted, much more attractive now than in high school, where they had had little to do with each other. They had passed in the corridors and on the stairs, that was about it. Matt MacGregor, he remembered, had been her boyfriend even then, or at least he had assumed so. She said, “How long have you known my patient?”
“Not long,” he replied.
“We’ve had her here before. Pills, I remember. I try not to be emotional over patients, but I’m not always successful.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“No one can answer that. But is she going to live? Yes.”
He felt the release now, the burden sliding from his shoulders. “Thank God,” he said.
She said, “If there is one.”
• • •
Randolph Jackson’s stomach was upset. He brought a tumbler of warm milk to bed with him, propped his pillows, and sat erect with his legs stretched deep under the covers. A sultry night breeze blew in on him. His wife lay with her back to him. His light was on, hers was off. He sipped his milk and tried to lift his mind clear of emotions that would keep him awake. “Suzy,” he said but did not get an answer. “Not asleep, are you?”
“I will be, soon as you turn off the light.” She liked her eight hours, which she frequently stretched to ten. She felt it kept her young. “How long are you going to be?”
He polished off the milk, scratched his scalp, and switched off the lamp, which put the bed in a pale swash of moonlight. As he sank under the covers, she shifted about with a rumble. She was facing him now, half her head buried. He lay still a number of moments and then, abruptly, said, “Jim Morgan has been having an affair with Calvin Poole’s wife.”
Her voice came awake. “Who’s Calvin Poole?”
“A banker who lives in the Heights.”
“Heck, that’s not news. Jim Morgan bangs all the women over there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know he doesn’t.” She pressed a big, warm foot against his ankle. “All I have to say is, lucky gals. He’s a hunk, you know.”
A terrible thought occurred to him, which almost brought the milk up on him. “Has he ever banged you?”
“No, damn it.”
He lay quietly, listening to the peepers. He wished now he hadn’t drunk the milk. “I may have to get rid of him.”
She was nearly asleep. “You know best, dear.”
• • •
Lydia Lapham stayed well past her shift, for late in the evening the woman with the cut wrists had wanted to talk, and she sat by the bed for nearly an hour and listened to things that did not necessarily make sense. When she stepped out into the night, her head felt like a balloon. She drove out of Lawrence incautiously, striking potholes, running lights. Earlier there had been a moon, but now clouds covered it. Entering Bensington, she heard stupendous thunderclaps. No rain fell. Approaching her street, she told herself she did not care whether Morgan’s car was there or not, better that it not be. It was.
She parked behind him and strode past him without a word. At the front door she took her time fitting the latchkey into the lock. When she did not hear his footsteps, she swung around and called out, “Do you need an engraved invitation?”
She left the door open behind her, and within minutes she had heaved off her uniform and was in a big sloppy robe, her most comfortable one, which was in need of laundering. When she stepped into the kitchen, he was sitting at the table.
“I won’t be staying long,” he said. “I’m going home and make myself something to eat.”
Her feet were bare. She scratched one foot with the other. “Didn’t you have supper?”
“I missed it.”
She beat up an omelet and fed him. When he finished, he carried his plate to the sink and began rinsing it. She rose up. When he turned around, she put her arms around him.
“Guess what?” she said, half in anger. “I think I love you.”
“I know,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Cops know everything.”
9
Sunday broke hotter than Saturday and was more humid. The red maples flanking the Congregational church were resplendent in the sun. Inside the church, the pews mostly full, the air was close, and men were removing their jackets. May Hutchins and her husband sat two pews away from Fred Fossey and his wife. Eugene Avery, a bachelor, sat with his sister, who had a tic. Few people from Oakcrest Heights were there. They went to Andover, where there was a variety, where Catholics had two houses of worship, Jews a temple, and Episcopalians held their noses up.
“Good morning,” said Reverend Stottle from his place of authority. He appeared badly shaven, a noticeable cut on his chin, and his austere suit, neat yesterday, was less so today, as if the heat had wilted it. “We have lost a sister,” he said with resonance and an eye that seemed to sweep in everybody. “Ida Dugdale has gone. But for the aged and sick, life becomes an indignity. Worse, a mockery. How easy, then, to leave it.”
Fred and Ethel Fossey traded glances. Everett Drinkwater, sitting erect with his wife, did not move a muscle. He had made arrangements for Mrs. Dugdale at a crematorium in New Hampshire, her written wish.
“A greater loss, however, still hangs heavy on us,” Reverend Stottle continued after a significant pause. “The loss of a man and wife, a cherished mother and father, our dear friends the Laphams.”
May Hutchins’s lace hankie went to her eyes, and nearby Fred Fossey bowed his head while Ethel, fanning her face, noticed that Matilda Farnham had on the same dotted dress she had worn the previous Sunday. The reverend was taking long pauses, and Ethel used the opportunity to let her eyes roam. “I don’t see Lydia Lapham here.”
Fred whispered, “You don’t see Matt MacGregor either.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He never comes to church much. And the chief, he never does.”
Reverend Stottle said, “Some time soon, next Sunday perhaps, we must ask ourselves why God endows some women with beauty and denies it to others. This morning we will simply note that to Florence Lapham God gave much beauty and to Earl the privilege of serving her.”
Doris Wetherfield, sitting with four of her five children, looked confused. Malcolm Crandall, the town clerk, mopped his high forehead with the cuff of a sleeve. May Hutchins returned her sodden handkerchief to her eyes.
“I believe that when our sister Florence was struck dead, her husband Earl chose to follow her. In light of this, sisters and brothers, I say that when the killer is caught he must be charged with only one crime, not two. We must be fair.”
Feet shuffled in every pew. Lydia Lapham’s aunt, Miss Westerly, appeared to faint. Randolph Jackson, sitting in his usual prominent place in the front pew, turned to his wife, who whispered, “Maybe the chief’s not the only one you have to get rid of.”
Reverend Stottle raised his arms. “God bless you all. I’m cutting the service short.”
There was a silence as he strode down the aisle to the doors. Then pews began to rock as people struggled to their feet. Miss Westerly needed help, and old Dr. Skinner was there to provide it. Bertha Skagg, whose ankles had swollen in the heat, required the arm of Doris Wetherfield’s eldest son. Fred Fossey spoke out of a red face to Ethel. “What the hell was that man raving about?”
Outside the doors in a blaze of sunlight, Reverend Stottle waited to shake people’s hands, but many pushed to one side to avoid him.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Randolph Jackson said to him in a stern tone for others to hear, but the reverend’s eyes were fixed on Suzy Jackson, on all that well-fed goodness and bigness. His eyes waxed. She was another one whom God had favored. “Soon,” Randolph Jackson added strongly.
He smiled. “Yes, Randolph, soon. God willing.”
• • •
Eunice Rayball placed bread on the table, a warm loaf, and with a popping sound opened a jar of raspberry preserve. With a gleaming butcher knife she sliced two slabs from the loaf, one for him and one for her. She smeared jam onto both slabs, more on his than hers. Then they ate, mother and son.
Junior woke from the dream with a cry, with anger, for he wanted it never to end. It was a dream he had never had before, and it was the first dream in which he had clearly seen her face. It was pretty.
He got out of bed and in the hot sunshine pouring through the open window slipped into his worn jeans. He put on a fresh T-shirt but the same socks, for he had run out of clean ones. It was his job to do his and Papa’s washing, but he did that on Mondays, not Sundays, and afterward draped everything on berry bushes. Sunday, Papa said, was the Lord’s day of rest — and his too. Papa always slept late on Sunday, sometimes until noon. He did not disturb him. He did not even use the toilet. He put his sneakers on and tiptoed out the house and peed in the woods.
Then, taking his time, he followed footpaths through pine-wood that gave way to hardwood and then back to pine and brush. When they had been boys, Clement had told him that these were Indian trails, but later Papa told him they were made by people with nothing better to do than spy on birds. Some even picked up owl shit and saved it as if it were packed with secrets. All it did, Papa said, was tell you what the damn old owl ate.
He picked up his pace. He could walk anywhere, anytime, and never get lost. He always knew where he was by the sun, which Clement had taught him, and even when the sun wasn’t out he had a sense of things. And always he felt safe because Clement had told him there was nothing in the woods that could hurt him, except maybe poison ivy. But even that didn’t bother him.