What Strange Creatures (31 page)

I wanted to ask him why he had so little faith in my investigation. But it was easier to simply hit the ignition button and drive him on home.

Once we got on the highway, Jeff opened the second Twix package and offered me one. I shook my head. I’d bought him four packs altogether, in hopes it would help him bulk up.

“I think you would be a good mom,” he said after he’d gobbled down the candy. “If you ever wanted to be one.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because of this candy. I mean, because you know how to take care of people, when you’re interested enough.”

“Question is, would I be interested enough in a kid? I’d hate to get one and then discover that I wasn’t.”

“And because I know what happened with you and Brendan,” Jeff added.

I stayed quiet. Brendan—and all the things that had come with him—felt like the distant past now. Almost everything that came before this day, this trip with Jeff—Jeff’s eerie talk about “blackout drunk”—felt insignificant. How gentle—how folksy, even—my difficulties had been up till the last few hours.

“I saw Tish at Marshall’s, back then. I think I was buying expired peanut brittle or something. She was all excited, though. Because she was buying this pair of pajamas with duckies on them. Two pairs. Same pajamas.”

“Oh,” I said after a moment. I wished Jeff had said something back then, when it would’ve mattered, or not at all.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, Tish—twins?’ And she looked at me like I was crazy. Like it should be obvious why she was buying two.”

I shook my head. “It didn’t occur to her that not everybody makes an announcement the day they pee on a stick.”

“Why didn’t you tell her not to tell, then?” Jeff asked.

“I
did.
But she’s so close with her family, I think she must not have realized that I wouldn’t have—I mean, I’m not saying that we’re not . . . uh . . . close . . . but . . .”

“I’m not asking for an explanation. I just wanted to say that I thought you’d be a good—”

“You don’t need to say anything else.”

“I mean, just look how good you are with Boober and the cats.”

“I mean, you
really
don’t need to say anything else, Jeff.” I hated when children and pets were discussed in relation to one another. Little depressed me more.

“Sorry. I just—With all the time I had there in the prison by myself, I started thinking about what things I needed to say to people. Like, if something happened to me. Things I wouldn’t want to say through a glass partition.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I said, wishing I sounded more confident.

Jeff put his wrappers in the grocery-store bag and tucked it into the slot on the car door.

“If I go to maximum security, something might.”

Wayne chose that moment to begin whimpering for more Milk Bones. The sound was so pathetic that I felt the need to talk over it.

“I think people do okay if they decide to keep their heads down,” I said. “Not to get into any trouble or get involved in any gangs or whatever.”

Jeff snapped a Milk Bone and raised a skeptical eyebrow at me.

“Where are you getting your information from, sis?
Shawshank Redemption
?”

I began to tell Jeff what Zach had said, about wardens betting on prisoner fights.

“That sounds a lot like something that happened at Sing Sing,” Jeff said. “Just a couple of years ago. I saw it on CNN.”

“So it’s maybe more common than people realize,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jeff said, shoving half the broken biscuit into Wayne’s mouth. “Maximum-security prisons are bad motherfucking places. Now that we’ve established that, will you accept that I’m telling you I think you’d be a good mother? And that you should be one if you want to?”

“What? Why are we talking about this now?”

“It’s not too late for you, if you really want that. You don’t need to be married either. You have a house and you have a decent job. You have friends, like Tish, who’d be happy for you and who’d help you out.”

Jeff handed the second half of the treat to Wayne, more gently now. More pink crumbs collected on the front seat’s upholstery.

“Do you know something I don’t know?” I asked.

“No. I can just see you using me as an excuse not to get on with your life if I end up in jail. I’ll be your new Marge.”

“Marge doesn’t keep me from getting on with my life. Marge is
part
of my life.”

Jeff rolled his eyes. “You’re not really listening to me. I’m trying to tell you that if it doesn’t work out for me, you shouldn’t go to heroic efforts to try to get me out. You don’t need to be like that Hilary Swank movie. You don’t need to go to law school for me.”

“I don’t know that movie.”

“Because knowing you and graduate programs . . .”

“Jeff.” I passed a car on the right, then got caught behind a pickup truck. “None of this is going to happen.”

“I hope not. But I’m just telling you, if it does . . .”

I got into the fast lane. “It
won’t.
”

“Slow down, Theresa,” Jeff said gently. I glanced at the speedometer. I was going well over eighty.

“I think I might have some holes from that night,” he said. “In my brain, I mean. Not enough to have done what they say, but enough not to know one hundred percent of what happened. I didn’t keep track of every minute. Even every hour. And I don’t know where that screwdriver came from. So how can I convince them I didn’t do anything wrong?”

“You
need
to.” I breathed deeply, resisting the urge to press harder on the gas pedal. “The fact that you can’t account for every minute doesn’t mean you deserve to go to prison for the rest of your life.
Does
it, Jeff?”

He closed his eyes. We were almost at our exit when he spoke again.

“What gets people in trouble,” he said, “is when they start convincing themselves of what they
deserve.
What do any of us really deserve anyhow?”

I didn’t know what this meant and wasn’t entirely sure I wished to.

“You don’t deserve to go to
prison,
Jeff,” I repeated, practically screaming now.

He was silent again.

“SAY SOMETHING,” I demanded, revving the engine as I turned off the ramp to Thompsonville.

Jeff was back to looking out the window, ignoring Wayne, who was nudging his elbow with his moist nose.

“You want me to say something, Theresa? After I told you that I don’t remember everything that happened that night, you want me to say something to reassure you?”

“I didn’t say anything about reassuring.”

“You didn’t need to,” Jeff murmured. “That’s how it’s always been. I’m the one with all the shit luck, but still
you
need
me
to cheer you up.”

“Shit luck, Jeff?
Shit luck?
” I sounded like our mother, repeating phrases back to him like a deranged parrot.

“Take me home, Theresa.”

I was out of questions and out of energy. I did as he asked and wept all the way home.

When I stepped into my kitchen, I found Sylvestress on the counter in the bread-loaf position, staring into nothingness.

“Sylvestress,” I whispered, sitting next to her and scratching her lower back. “Why don’t you like my brother?”

She turned to me and blinked her beautiful yellow-green eyes but didn’t offer so much as a purr. When I scratched more aggressively, she got up and left.

“That wasn’t actually a question,” I called after her, watching her feather-duster tail float away from me and disappear down the hall. “It was a cry for help.”

I poured myself a large glass of Shiraz, but after one sip I knew I didn’t really want it. All my brother’s talk of “blackout drunk” had ruined me for the stuff—maybe forever.

On the television there was nothing absorbing or stupid enough to meet my distraction needs. There was little to clean, and the notion of working on Marge was a joke. Desperation began to settle in. I tried to call Nathan but got no answer. I had no idea how I’d manage to justify myself to him anyway. There was probably no getting back into his home and office anytime soon.

I stared at my phone and prayed for it to ring—with a scared and willing Donald Wallace on the other end. Each second that it didn’t, my throat tightened a bit. After about ten minutes of this, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I called Tish.

“I’m glad you called,” she said. “I’ve been wondering how you’re holding up. And how’s Jeff?”

“Tish, why do you think I’ve been working on my Margery Kempe thing for so long?” I asked.

Tish was silent for a moment. “You really want to talk about that right now?”

“I’m your oldest friend, and this is a tough time. Why don’t you just indulge me?”

“Um. Okay. Why do
you
think you have?”

“Fuck that, Tish. Did you learn that trick in marriage counseling?”

“Fine. I think you can’t finish the damn thing because you’re flummoxed by anyone who has faith in anything.”

I’d never heard Tish say “flummoxed” before. I didn’t know how to feel about her saving it to describe me.

“That’s not true,” I protested.

“I think you think she’s silly. Amusing. For believing that God talks to her. For believing that she, a regular lady, is possibly saint material. For thinking her crying is connected to God. For believing in
anything.
”

“Have you actually
read
her book?”

“Yes. Once you got me a copy of the modern-English version. Like five years ago. Because I said I was curious. You didn’t think I would care enough to read it, probably. Or that I’d have the attention span. You never asked what I thought.”

“And you read it?”

“About half of it. I couldn’t get all the way through. That Margery is a piece of work. I liked the part where the other pilgrims on her boat, like, short-sheeted her bed or something? Am I right? Did that happen? Because they found her so annoying?”

“Let me ask you a question. Do you believe Jeff is innocent?”

Tish took an audible breath. “I believe you need to be strong for your brother,” she said after a moment. “And that might require
you
to have faith in something.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Do you want me to come over, Theresa? I could bring Ben & Jerry’s. My neighbor Helen is always happy to come over as long as Penelope is sleeping. She likes to watch my HBO.”

“I haven’t had ice cream since my divorce,” I said.

It wasn’t true. But it
could
be true, as far as Tish was concerned.

“Or something else you’d like to eat.”

“I’m really not hungry at all these days.”

This was true. In fact, I couldn’t remember if I’d eaten anything after the coffee and apple I’d had this morning. Maybe I’d nibbled on some mixed nuts I had in my car.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” I whined.

“I’m saying I can come over, and we can talk.”

“But you’re trying to let me know gently that you can’t say the things I need you to say. You’re going to make me wait an hour and eat a pint of ice cream before you can work up the courage to say so.”

Tish was silent for so long I thought we had a bad connection.

“Tish?”

“Theresa, you know what I thought was interesting about Margery Kempe?”

“Tell me five years ago.”

“I thought it was interesting that she didn’t have any of what she
thought
she had. She thought she was going to be a saint. She thought she was so holy and so divinely gifted. You could tell reading it that that wasn’t exactly it. She was as annoying as hell, going on and on about how sinful and confused everyone else was, and how good she was because she had fantasies about being cut up into pieces and made into a stew for God’s love, if memory serves . . . do I have that right?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “She said that a few times.”

“And no one was ever going to reward that with sainthood. But she had a kind of religious hardiness to her. Nothing was going to kill her spirit. She was like a holy fucking cockroach.”

“That’s brilliant, Tish. I’m going to have to start my thesis all over again.”

“Absolutely. Select all. Delete.”

“Let me go get my laptop.”

“Seriously, Theresa. I’d like to come over. It’s not good for you to be by yourself right now.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Theresa?”

“Yes?”

“I love Jeff. You know that.”

“Yeah.”

“We both do.”

“Yeah.” I fell into a chair and closed my eyes.

“I’m here for you.”

“Good-bye, Tish,” I said, then threw the wineglass at my kitchen wall.

A
s I got out of the shower in the morning, I heard Wayne barking like a lunatic. Then I heard the
thunk
of my front door closing.

“Jeff?” I shouted through the bathroom door.

“It’s your mother!” my mom called back.

“I’ll be out in a second,” I said, feeling strangely relieved.

My mother rarely brought emotional surprises. I knew how this conversation would feel and vaguely how it would end. When I came into the kitchen, spiffy in my work clothes, Mom had already laid out an assortment of Dip doughnuts on a plate.

“You don’t get the
Courier,
do you?” she asked, so quietly I knew something grim was coming next. The
Courier
was the townie rag that came out only on weekdays.

“No. I don’t read newspapers.”

My mother nodded and pulled a folded
Courier
out of her purse. “I thought you ought to see this before you went to work,” she said, handing it to me.

Below the fold was the headline
GRABER MURDER SUSPECT OUT ON
$200,000
BAIL.
Beneath that was a photo of Jeff, my parents, and me in the county jail parking lot.

My mother was wearing her polar fleece with a dress covered in dusty purple roses.

My father was tilted sideways, scratching his knee. Jeff’s expression was neutral but tired. He was looking at me as I bit Boober’s ear. My lips were pulled up in a canine expression as Boober’s ear was falling out of my mouth. A blond tendril curled down the left side of my face, hiding my left eye. My right eye looked slightly crazed.