What Strange Creatures (16 page)

I was surprised by the question. “Um . . . kind of. But you might be thinking of Julian of Norwich. Sometimes people associate the two. She and Margery Kempe actually met once.”

“I’ve never heard of Julian of Norwich.”

“Oh. Well, she was an English mystic who lived at the same time as Margery Kempe. She was an anchoress—she lived in seclusion. But Marge—Margery Kempe, she was a married woman. More of an eccentric holy woman than a mystic.”

I was trying not to sound like a smarty-pants. Surely Nathan got tired of smarty-pantses around here. I knew the feeling.

“Huh. An eccentric holy woman. That sounds cool. But listen—what can I get you?”

“Do you have Blue Moon?”

“Absolutely,” Nathan said, and then dashed off to get it.

“But did she have, like, mystical visions?” he asked as he plunked down my beer.

“Well . . . yes . . . sort of. She was very controversial in her day. Some people thought she was a heretic. Her main expression of her relationship with God was through screaming and crying all the time. Some modern scholars think there was probably some sort of mental illness involved.”

“What do you think?”

I smiled—enigmatically, I hoped. Probably I ended up looking reptilian, but I figured that might help me in this particular case. “I’m still working that out. But I do think, crazy or not, she pulled off something very rare for her time—committing herself to a religious vocation as a married laywoman.”

Nathan nodded and then moved toward the back of the bar to wipe a counter.

“So it must be a sad time around here,” I said. “I heard about the girl who worked here.”

Nathan continued to clean. “Yeah. It’s been a shock.”

“Did you know her very well?”

He shrugged. “She was a nice girl. It’s a tragedy.”

“So you were friends?”

He tossed his rag into a bin under the counter. “Kind of, yeah. I’d rather not talk about it, though.”

I nodded. An older couple approached. The man busting out of an argyle sweater vest, the woman with lots of sparkles on her ears and wrists that nonetheless did nothing to improve her scowl. Undergrad parents, I guessed. Probably better tippers than I was. Maybe better conversationalists, too. Nathan went to them, and I wondered if I’d lost him.

Ten minutes later—after I’d finished my beer—he returned.

“Are you a div student?” he asked.

“English literature.”

I wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if he was a tiny bit disappointed.

“But I’m very spiritual,” I added.

Nathan hesitated. “Why are you smiling?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Am I smiling?”

“No. Not now, I guess. Anything else for you? Another Blue Moon?”

“Um . . . I was thinking maybe a cocktail.” I looked on the specials board. “Pomegranate mojito? Is that something you recommend?”

He lowered his voice. “Not really.”

“What
do
you recommend?”

God, this was so embarrassing. I wondered if I seemed as desperate as I was. First Margery Kempe, then cocktail recommendations. It had been a few months since I’d flirted with anyone, so I wasn’t sure if this was a step in the right direction.

“Ever had a Jasmine?” Nathan asked.

“Yes,” I said. Jeff had been on a Jasmine kick a few months before he was fired—back when he could afford to try fancy cocktail recipes. “Actually, that sounds pretty good right now.”

“All right, then. Any particular kind of gin?”

“No,” I said, since I wasn’t exactly up on my gins.

“So what
kind
of visions did she have?” Nathan asked as he mixed my drink.

If the way to this guy’s heart was—miracle of miracles—with Marge stories, I had this one in the bag. I started with Marge’s first vision. Right after the difficult birth of her first child, she went slightly insane—saw demons breathing fire and felt them clawing at her. She tore at her own skin and cursed everyone around her and wanted to kill herself. It may have been a very severe postpartum depression, perhaps postpartum dementia. She had to be tied to her bed for months. But in the middle of this, Jesus came to her in a purple silk robe, sat by her bed, and told her he had not forsaken her. This calmed her, and she made a sudden and miraculous recovery.

Nathan pressed his sexy George Michael butt against the back of the bar and listened carefully. I sipped my Jasmine as I spoke. It was so strong that I was light-headed by the time I got to the part about the purple robe. When I was done with that Marge story, Nathan asked for another.

I happily told him about the time, years later, when Marge was on her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Along the way all her fellow pilgrims got so annoyed with her weeping and self-righteous lectures that they abandoned her. But she forgot all these troubles—at least temporarily—once she arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey. When she caught sight of her destination, she thanked God for granting her desire to see the city and asked that he also one day grant her desire to see heaven. He promised her fulfillment of that wish as well. So happy was she with this exchange that she nearly fell off her ass.

“That’s practically a direct translation of the original Middle English,” I added when Nathan looked skeptical.

Soon after that, I told him, as Margery looked upon the Mount of Calvary, she had such powerful visions of Christ’s suffering that she fell to the ground and rolled around and flung her arms about and gave out loud, shrill cries. These cries were different from the weeping she’d been prone to already in her life. This was the first time she experienced a great wailing scream that she could not control—and that would be her trademark for many years to come. It was a turning point for Marge. After that, Marge was no longer simply annoying to the people around her. She was insufferable.

By the time I was finished with my Jasmine, I had Nathan’s number. And we had a date for the following night.

I
managed to doze for a couple of hours, but I woke up around 4:00
A.M.
and couldn’t go back to sleep. Once a little daylight started to glow around the edges of my blinds, I knew it was hopeless. My eyes stung with exhaustion as I made a pot of coffee.

The half-and-half was slightly curdled, but I fished out the biggest chunks with my spoon and drank the coffee anyway. I wondered if coffee was served in jail. Then I wondered about breakfast in jail generally. Did they serve eggs and meat? Or more of a Continental spread?

My stomach was starting to develop a sour feeling. I buttered a piece of toast, took a single bite, then pushed it aside. I couldn’t do this for a whole day more—sit around wondering. I needed to get out and talk to people about Kim. Who else would know about her project? There was Nathan. I was working on him, of course. And there were those guys Dustin and Trenton Halliday. But closer to Kim’s history was Missy.

According to Kim’s roommate, Melissa Bailey probably lived in Folston—if Bailey was still her last name, which it probably wasn’t. I popped onto Facebook for the first time in months. I found Kim’s account quickly through Jeff’s list of friends, then looked at her list. There was a Melissa Bailey Corbett, married to a Tanner Corbett. A quick search online confirmed that Tanner Corbett lived in Folston, on West Street.

I got up from the kitchen table and found Wayne sleeping in his L.L.Bean bed. Next to him sat my Tupperware butter dish, mangled with bite marks on one corner. I thought I’d put the butter back in the fridge after I made my toast, but it appeared I had not.

“Get the hell up, Wayne,” I said. “We’re going to see a friend of yours.”

When I started the car, Wayne was sitting in the backseat, tongue reservedly hanging one-quarter out. He sighed when I put on my Brandi Carlile CD, then set his paws up on the door’s armrest and snuffled at the window.

“Good boy, Wayne,” I said. “You like the car?”

“Uff-uff-uff,” he said, noncommittally.

By the time I was on the highway, I could no longer see him in the rearview mirror and assumed he’d fallen asleep. Just as I was getting off on Missy’s exit, though, Wayne came bounding over the front seat console, slapping me with his heavy tail.

“I really don’t appreciate that, Wayne!” I yelled, pushing his behind into the passenger seat as the GPS ordered me to get into the left lane. I steadied the wheel as I approached the light at the end of the ramp.

Wayne put his front paws on my leg, puffed up his chest, and glanced around the intersection—as if he’d just caught sight or scent of a squirrel. I pushed him away again and took a left. Wayne kept trying to get onto my lap and look out the driver’s-side window, scratching up my corduroy skirt with his long black nails. I’d thought Missy would be more likely to talk to me if I looked nice. But it would backfire if I had ripped tights and bloody knees.

I managed to push Wayne away until we reached the Corbetts’ address. The house was an old tan saltbox with a spooky black metal eagle hanging over the door. Folston was known for these sorts of homes—small Colonial houses near the charming downtown full of yarn shops and bakeries. Brendan had once suggested we look at houses here, but I could never figure out what people did in Folston, aside from knitting, eating muffins, and going to its famed annual Shakespeare in the Park.

“Don’t blow this for me, Wayne,” I said, gripping his leash as I locked my car door.

Before Wayne and I reached the steps, a tiny redhead came to the door with a baby in her arms. The woman was thin-limbed and freckly, with little color behind the freckles. I couldn’t see the baby’s face—only swirls of soft red hair around the back of its perfectly round head.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, before the young woman said anything. “I’m a friend of Kim Graber’s. I was hoping you’d be willing to talk with me. I wasn’t sure how to get your number. . . .”

“You’ve got Wayne, I see. I saw you from the window.” The woman bounced the baby gently. Her expression remained neutral.

“Yeah. Kim actually left him with me the weekend she . . . disappeared. I’ve had him since. You’ve met Wayne before?”

“Yeah. We all took a couple of walks together once. Me and Zoe and Wayne and Kim. Now, what’s your name?”

“Theresa,” I said. “And are you Missy?”

“Yes,” Missy said. The baby turned and stared at me. She had a thinnish face for a baby and blue eyes like her mother’s. Everything was like her mother’s, in fact. I tried to guess her age—probably about six months.

“I’m sorry, too,” Missy said. “I don’t know what she told you. But she and I weren’t really close. I mean, I’m still in shock about what happened. I assume you were close friends, since you’ve got Wayne here.”

I glanced down at Wayne, who was pulling out all the stops: tilting his head, arranging his eyebrows in a contemplative expression. Missy cracked a hint of a smile.

“I was wondering,” I said slowly, “if you would be willing to talk to me about this Donald Wallace thing she had going on.”

Missy didn’t take her eyes off Wayne.

“Would Wayne like to take a walk now?” she asked. “I could put Zoe here in her stroller.”

I was surprised how game she was. “It’s not too cold?” I asked.

“Zoe and I walk every day,” she said. “Unless it’s raining hard or something. She might be getting tired soon, but we can try.”

Missy disappeared into the house for a couple of minutes. When she came out, she had on a stylish black double-breasted coat. Clutching the now-bundled baby in one arm, she dragged an enormous stroller down the steps with the other.

“Can I help you?” I said, as the carriage landed on the sidewalk with a plastic crunch.

“I’m fine,” Missy said, buckling Zoe into the stroller. “I assume you know how Kim and I knew each other?”

“I know that you were friends when you were kids.” I took a breath. “I know about Jenny.”

“Yeah.” Missy pointed in the direction she wanted to go. “Well, we grew apart after Jenny Spicer died. Like in high school. Kim was sort of a drama queen. I was more a nerd. I kind of hid from any kind of attention. Especially attention that came from the Jenny thing. Now, you know about Kyle, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “But how long were he and Kim together?”

“Like forever. Like since Kim was old enough to say she was ‘going out’ with someone. When she was around twelve. I guess he’d have been around fourteen. They were together from then until just a couple of years ago. The only reason I know this is because Kim and I were back in touch just recently. Facebook, you know? And then her Donald Wallace project.”

Wayne stopped to sniff a garbage can at the end of a driveway. We both watched him for a few moments before I spoke again.

“So she was doing interviews with people who were involved with Jenny’s case. I know that much.”

“Yeah.” Missy frowned. “She was, like,
so
sure some newspaper reporter was going to be all over it and give her all this publicity. I had my doubts, but I did agree to be interviewed. I didn’t really want to, but . . . I felt bad for her.”

“Why?” I asked.

Missy paused to adjust Zoe’s knit hat, pulling it to cover an exposed ear. Zoe smiled at her mother’s touch. “Because it seemed like she thought this would make her feel better about everything that had happened with Andrew Abbott. Like this would somehow redeem her. Like if she somehow helped defeat the guy who prosecuted him, that would absolve her a little bit. It was kind of twisted, but . . .”

Wayne stopped again, this time to sniff a dark spot on the sidewalk. We all stopped with him.

Missy sighed. “It’s a pretty hard thing to have in your history, that you helped put a poor kid in jail for twelve years because he was on the weird side. Now, I tried to be as honest as possible at the hearing in 2006. I did the best I could with that. I tell myself I was a kid in 1992, but I was basically an adult in 2006. I did the right thing when I was old enough to know better. Kim—I don’t think she felt that way. Because when you look at what she said at that hearing, it was like she didn’t want to completely stop believing what she’d said as a kid. Or to
start
believing she could’ve been lying as a kid. Or she wasn’t sure how to testify in a way that didn’t upset Kyle. So for her that hearing wasn’t maybe as cathartic as it was for me.”