Stephen Peterson answered on the first ring. After I told him again, in a low voice, that the sentence was fine, he thanked me. “God bless you,” he said, and hung up. I didn’t reach for my cits then. I sat there wondering how many daughters Mrs. Peterson had, and what ambitions she’d
probably cast aside to raise them. And if, in the end, Mr. Peterson felt he’d been a good husband. I was still staring into empty space when Mona came to fetch me.
“I know it’s freezing today,” she whispered. “But didn’t we have a cit date or something?”
As we started down the company steps together, I told her about my phone call.
“What the fuck was that tombstone guy thinking?” Mona said, when I was finished. “Telling that family they’re wrong?”
“I think if you wanted to get technical about it,” I said, “you could say the sentence is vague, like she generally didn’t literally
ask
very much. Didn’t ask many questions, or whatever.”
“I know what the guy
meant
. But what the hell does he think his job is? He’s not writing word stumpers for a stupid newspaper. I mean, sure, if you want to be a pain in the ass, you could say that. But their meaning was clear enough. Thoughtful. Simple.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“That’s just so
wrong,”
she fumed. “What the hell kind of world are we living in? What kind of fucked-up priorities do people have that you’d tell a little old man just trying to honor his dead wife that he can’t put what he wants on her tombstone? Over some little bit of sophistry, no less? Is that what the rules of language
are for? To
keep people from expressing their deepest emotions? To make people feel
stupid?”
“It’s too bad Mr. Phillips is a bit of a chauvinist. Because otherwise, I think you two would really—”
“Is this the kind of thing people use our books for?” Mona’s voice had turned shrill. “Is this what we’re encouraging here? Do people really think this is what language is all about?”
We approached our barren little park spot, and headed for the bench.
“Language … eloquence,” Mona insisted, “is supposed to be one of the things that separates us from grunting primates. If you turn it into something you beat your chest over, something that only serves to make you better than someone else, or make you
insensitive
to other human beings—then you may as
well
be a grunting primate.”
“Yeah,” I said, opening my lunch bag.
“So you got the stuff?” she asked—referring, of course, to the citations.
Between the two of us, we’d uncovered quite a few new ones:
Everybody looked up. I think I saw a few glares. Maybe I was imagining it. Scout says that in my head I turn this place into a fairy-tale dungeon, exaggerating its darkness and its cold. Interpreting harmless social ineptitude as clammy, crooked-nosed villainy. (Why can’t you just call a
nerd a
nerd? he’d say.) Imagining towers and spires on the place. (Is that why you keep your hair so long?)
7
At the end of the day, the bag was still at my feet. It was moist inside, which made it more embarrassing. It seemed something that definitely should not be in my possession. A bloated, disembodied organ, full of shrapnel. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It didn’t seem appropriate to stuff it in my tiny wastepaper basket. The custodian wouldn’t be anticipating glass. He might cut himself. I took it with me instead. I’d find a Dumpster on the way home. Or just put it on the curb for the
trash man
, and then forget about it. To fling the bag onto a
curb or into a Dumpster would probably give me some satisfaction.
10
Besides. The shattering of that glass and the breaking of that anemic silence was enough violence for one day. No more seemed possible. I looked up from your book and there, all of a sudden, was a man. I thought he looked familiar, but from where I couldn’t say. The library, perhaps? He had scraggly gray hair, pulled into a
ponytail
. I smiled hello. He was wearing a black concert T-shirt with lightning flash letters. I don’t remember the name of the band. It must have been a band I’ve never heard of.
13
On the news, that evening’s top story was of the dead man found in Freeman Park. Not on the paved path where I had left him, but farther into the wooded area. Stabbed in the neck and bled to death under the evergreens. Derek Brownlow was 42 years old. It was
showtime
now. But oddly, I had a sudden craving for a cup of tea—sweet, milky, and warm. I put on a pot of water and watched it steam and bubble, trying to remember my last cup of tea. The exact temperature, the amount of sugar, how long it had steeped, the strength of the flavor. When I’d had that last sip, I had no idea I wouldn’t get another, I’d break my glass, I’d never experience the exact sensation of that cup of tea again. It had been, in retrospect, a particularly delicious cup of tea.
22
So I opted for silence. Since the only other option was explicit speech, and all the inevitables that would follow: drama, crying, comforting, fingerprints, uncomfortable questions, men in matching blue shirts, photographers outside the police station. I
opted out
of all of that. Because his quiet beckoned me like a warm bed, a soft pillow, a good book, a hot cup of tea.
25
“The glass.” There was awe in Mona’s voice. “That’s why she’s so fixated on the glass.”
“Stabbed in the neck?”
I said. “She stabbed him in the
neck
with it?”
Mona lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Looks that way.”
I skimmed the first cit again.
“And it’s looking more and more like self-defense,” I said.
“How so?”
“In ‘ponytail’ she’s taken by surprise by a sleazy-looking guy and by ‘showtime’ she’s left somebody for dead. And in one of the cits Mr. Phillips found—I think it was ‘ball of wax’—she was trying to make some vague point about self-defense. But yet she didn’t want to talk to the police. That’s the funny thing about it.”
“Well, maybe not so funny. Can you ever be totally confident that you’re gonna get off on self-defense?”
“Not sure,” I said. “I can’t claim any expertise on the self-defense plea. Outside of what I’ve seen on
Law and Order
. Do you think that’s all it is? Maybe she’s still culpable in some way.”
“Maybe,” Mona said, absently taking out a yogurt container.
“But it makes me sad, the way she’s telling this story. You have to wonder … did she tell anyone? Or were these little papers like her confessional? Do you think she was raped or something? It seems so lonely. I mean, can you imagine?”
“It’s that final sip of tea that kinda gets me, actually,” I said.
“‘Particularly delicious.’”
I held the “showtime” cit in my hand and felt my fingers grow raw from the cold.
“It’s sort of funny how she puts it,” I mused. “What you remember from before. The moment before things went terribly wrong.”
Mona stirred her pink yogurt.
“With all due respect,” she pointed out, “I think the tea is really the least of the revelations here.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, you’re just being contrary now. Maybe you don’t want to see how very sad this story has become.”
“Maybe,” I said.
I gobbled my sandwich quickly, wishing I’d remembered mustard. Then I blew on my hands to warm them and tried to think of something to lighten the mood.
“I’m glad she managed to fit ‘nerd’ into her narrative. Seems appropriate, considering the setting.”
Mona smiled just slightly. “Did you know that they don’t really know the origin of ‘nerd’?”
I shrugged. “Like most teenage slang, seems like.”
“Yeah, but ‘nerd’ … the first print appearance is in a Dr. Seuss book. And I don’t think it’s entirely clear if that’s where it started.”
“Did you answer a letter about this?”
“No,” Mona said sheepishly. “I looked it up on my first day at Samuelson. I finished the front matter really early, and
just spent the rest of the day looking up ‘nerd,’ ‘dork,’ ‘geek,’ ‘dweeb’….”
“Trying to identify which one you’d officially become?”
“Something like that.” Mona looked down at her purple mittens and pressed her hands together carefully.
“Everything all right?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I wanted to ask you something, actually, Billy. I’d been meaning to ask you …”
“Yeah?” I said, prompting her.
“Are you gonna be home in Connecticut for the whole holiday?”
“Christmas Day, you mean?”
“Or Christmas Eve. Either one. I was going to offer to make us a Christmas dinner of some kind.”
“Christmas Eve dinner?”
“Christmas Eve or whenever. Post-family Christmas night, perhaps. I’ll be by myself the whole holiday. I thought it might be nice to—”
“But you don’t know how to cook,” I said.
Mona rolled her eyes. “Are you sure that’s how you want to respond? To my rather pathetic request for holiday company?”
“You’re right,” I replied. “That actually sounds really nice. Maybe I could just do Christmas Day with my family. That’d probably be enough.”
“Never mind. I don’t want to mess up your family plans.”
“We actually don’t have any plans yet. Our holiday plans are usually silent, assumed. Therefore breakable. I think this could work.”
“Really, Billy. It was a stupid idea.”
“No, it’s not. But why aren’t you going home?”
“I can’t afford to fly home for both Thanksgiving
and
Christmas,” Mona explained, “in vacation time or cash. My
stepdad wanted to try and get me a ticket for just two nights, but I said no. I don’t like spending other people’s money. And I’ve already decided to go to the movies on Christmas Day. Maybe do a double feature.”
“That settles it,” I said. “I’ll bring dessert.”
Mona stood up from the bench.
“You looking forward to your first office Christmas party?” she asked as we approached the Samuelson building.
“When?”
“In just a few days. On the twenty-third. You didn’t get the memo?”
“I guess not. Certain parts of this job seem to fly pretty regularly over my head.”
“We get half the afternoon off. They decorate the lunchroom and serve wine and fancy hors d’oeuvres.”
“Does anyone get plastered?” I asked.
“No. Dimly lit, perhaps. But not plastered. It’s all about the respectable appearance of holiday cheer. But if you want to get wasted, Billy, feel free. By all means, put the ‘ass’ back in ‘editorial assistant.’”
“I already have, I think.”
Mona shook her head.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Billy boy.”
Tom was carrying a hibachi out
onto the porch when I got out of my car. He waved and I waved back.
“You’re gonna barbecue in this weather?” I asked him.
“Sure. Barb just got her Christmas bonus. Brought home a few nice steaks.”
“Good for you guys,” I said. “Enjoy it.”
“We will.”
I hesitated before unlocking my door. “Hey, Tom?”
“What?”
“Jimmy says you’ve got a pretty good memory—”
“Excellent, in fact,” Tom interrupted.
“Okay. Then maybe you can fill me in on something. You’ve lived in Claxton your whole life, right?”
“Yeah. Shoot.”
“Do you remember a murder happening here in the eighties? Of a guy named Brownlow?”
“Brownlow?” Tom ripped open his bag of charcoal, frowning. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“He was murdered in Freeman Park, I believe.”
“Oh. You mean the Glass Girl business. Of course.”
“Glass Girl?” I croaked.
“Yeah. That was so stupid. I like to think it was some les-bionic feminist vigilante justice group. Then the idiotic local news starts calling ’em ‘The Glass Girl.’ Lame.”
“Vigilante justice?”
“Sure. They figured out the bastard was a sicko.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s where the whole Glass Girl theory came from. This sicko had been in jail for beating the crap outta some girl. And there was some other shit he probably did. Some real sicko shit. At first everybody thought he was just some poor sucker who’d gotten knifed or something. Took them a while to figure out about him, but when they did … turned out he was a real psycho.
“Figure he had it coming one way or another. But there were inconsistencies in that Glass Girl theory. Didn’t sound to me like it could be some teenage girl taking that big guy on.
The Daily
did a great series about five years ago, about the city’s cold cases. And there were definitely some big holes in that Glass Girl case.”
I fumbled to find the right key, then dropped the whole keychain on the porch.
“Why do you ask?” Tom said. “Glass Girl’s pretty old news these days.”
I stooped for my keys. “Oh, someone at work just referred to it, that’s all. It sounded kind of interesting. When did they actually do that cold case series?”
“Oh, I don’t know … ’98 or so?”
“Huh. Sure sounds interesting.”
“Yeah. If it interests you, you should check it out sometime.”
“Yeah, maybe I will.”
• • •
When I got up to my
apartment, I sank into a kitchen chair to consider this new take on Mary Anne. Mary Anne as everyone’s mystery, not just mine and Mona’s.
Why had I begun to think of Mary Anne as ours? Dan had spent his nights with her. Mr. Phillips had sat in the sun with her, telling her war stories. But what was left of her here, the cits, her story—that was
ours
, because we had found it. But now that it was shaping up, it was clear that whoever the story really belonged to, there were certainly people who had a greater claim to it than us.
How strong was Claxton’s interest in the story? I wondered. And how accurate was Tom’s take on Derek Brownlow? It sounded like Mona hadn’t gone far enough in her newspaper search. I decided I’d try to get to the library before it closed for the holidays.