All's Well That Ends (10 page)

72

with wire manufacturing, and her mother in a chemical factory. I knew she hadn’t had money, but I didn’t realize how poor they actually were. It was the kind of working poor where every penny counted, and there was never anything extra except, sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, bar tabs. But first among the missing extras was her father, including any idea of who he was. I hadn’t known about that.

“It’s not that big a deal nowadays, maybe, but back then, there was this incredible stigma, and it marked her for life.”

I didn’t need reminding of how things must have been. My mother, product of that generation, was still slack-jawed and aghast at how things worked these days. When I was still living at home, she’d read the latest headlines and say, “Movie stars pregnant and unmarried!” with shock and horror on her face. And she’d tell me again about how in her day, even a major star like Ingrid Bergman was about ruined when she became pregnant

“out of wedlock.”

She still talked about girls getting “in trouble,” and had told my sister and me many stories—warnings—about girls disappear-ing from school for a year, supposedly going to live with relatives elsewhere, but in reality, going into a home for unwed mothers.

“And everybody knew,” she’d say with a tsk and a frown. Scandal.

Shame. “Those girls’ reputations gone forever—right down the drain,” she would add with a meaningful look at her daughters.

All those phrases with no place to put them. Was there a home for reputations, scandals, trouble, and all the other out-of-date terminology?

“Kids made fun of Phoebe at school. ‘Bastard’ was one of the first words she learned. Some of her friends’ mothers wouldn’t let Phoebe play with their kids, like she had a contagious disease, or she’d be a bad influence.” Sasha’s words drifted off, and she looked as if she was seeing a fifty-year-old black-and-white school-yard snapshot.

“And that accounts for her collections in what way?” I prompted when the pause threatened to become permanent.

73

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS

She blinked, as if I’d startled her out of the reverie, then she nodded. “Apparently, her mother decided that giving her this illustrious, if mysterious and cloudy lineage, would make up for how the world was treating them. Her grandmother, who was admittedly losing it a little at that point, backed up the story and embellished it as she went along. So as if by magic, they were no longer common folk. They were the descendants of courtesans, and, her grandmother would say with a wink, ‘notice that the word
court
is part of that word. We were at court, child. Famous, independent women beloved by royalty.’ ”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

“It helped Phoebe hold her head up high.”

“Held up high and full of delusions,” I said. “Didn’t you mention any spare change going toward a bar tab? I take it Phoebe’s mother or grandmother drank?”

“I think both, a little. Maybe more than a little. Why?”

“Because they were so grandiose. I get it about giving her a sense of a past, of credentials if you will, but they could have done the same thing without stretching it to ridiculous lengths.

Why courtesans? Why not inventors, artists, poets—”

“Please! How would that play at recess? Somebody calls you a bastard and you say, ‘Maybe, but my great-grandpa was a poet, so how do you feel about that, mister?’ You think the ignorant bully would slink away, head down low?”

“Nonetheless, their kind of talk sounds like what must happen late at night at the neighborhood bar. Instead of ‘I could have been somebody,’ ‘I
was
somebody,’ or ‘
some
body was somebody.’ ”

Sasha stood up and walked in a tight circle. The room did not have enough clear space in which to pace. Aside from being overfilled with furniture, the shelves and surfaces were so covered with collections, nobody wanted to bump into anything. As she passed the bookcase, she paused, and lifted a zebra, holding it in her palm while she studied it. “I thought about that, too, before you got here. But what would it be?”

GILLIAN ROBERTS

74

“How about this? If you’re going to lie anyway, why not be simple and logical and say her father died. Even say you were married, but he died. We have enough wars. Make him a casualty of one of them. Wouldn’t that be logical?” I thought of two generations of women spinning ludicrous stories to cover their embarrassment about their unorthodox reproductive behavior, and I felt sorry for them.

“Logical and boring and suspect.”

“Right, and the idea of generations of New Jersey–factory workers being the irresistible inamoratas of royalty makes lots of sense. At least she could have come up with a lie that reflected a democratic country. Hadn’t she noticed we don’t have kings?”

“I agree it’s a stretch.”

“Stretch? Nothing’s that elastic. The logic in it snapped the first time her ma mentioned it. Anyway, how did they supposedly meet their princes?”

“They were courtesans. That would make any babies born to them very possibly the children of the royals, or something like that, wouldn’t it?”

“Courtesan’s a fancy word for—”

“I know it and you know it, and so what?”

“I just think that you have an illegitimate kid in New Jersey in the forties, there are easier stories to weave than one involving a royal court. I mean sooner or later your kid’s going to think it through and know it’s completely insane and that your mother still wasn’t married to your father, no matter who he was.”

She shrugged. “I think Phoebe was torn between wanting to believe their stories, and knowing they weren’t real. And I think that’s why she was so obsessed with finding her roots—a totally impossible task, once her mother was dead—and finding out everybody else’s as well.”

“And the tchotchkes?”

“That part’s from the poverty, I guess. Simply wanting nice things, even if she didn’t have a clear concept of what that meant.

75

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS

There was apparently also a lot of talk about treasures they’d had, or lost, or didn’t recognize or—”

Life was too short for drunken old wives’ tales. “What’s for me to do?”

“There’s a carton there for you with everything from her desk, including her laptop and backup files. I couldn’t see anything interesting, but I’m not the trained investigator, and I didn’t look very hard. Maybe there’s more somewhere else, but I went through the house opening drawers and doors and looking under beds, and in the garage, and I think that’s about it for paper and electronic records. Except for old tax forms, but I can’t see how they’d help find out who poisoned her that night.”

“Nobody knows that somebody—”

“Okay, the alleged—”

“—by you alone—”

“—poisoner.” And then she stood up straighter and squinted at me. Her face darkened, as if a light had been turned off.

“You’re humoring me, aren’t you? You’re just going through the motions.”

“I—no—I—”

“You think I’m crazy. Deluded the way her mother and grandmother were.”

“Of course not, Sasha, but in truth, aside from the discomfort of sitting on spike heels, which you have to admit is a pretty weak piece of evidence, I don’t get the sense—”

“How long have you known me?”

“For Pete’s sake, you know precisely the day, the year. Seventh grade. You were still Susan, having not yet discovered your inner Sasha. Do the math yourself. If we’re thirty-two—how old are seventh graders, and really, who cares? A very long time is the answer.”

“And has this friendship endured despite my being incredibly stupid about people?”

GILLIAN ROBERTS

76

“Honestly? Yes.”

Her eyes widened, then she furrowed her brow. I couldn’t believe she’d asked me that question or been surprised by my response. “You’re talking about my taste in
men,
” she finally said.

I nodded.

Her mouth turned up at one side in a crooked grin. “Point taken. I am incredibly stupid about sexy men. But I’m not stupid in general, am I?”

I shook my head.

“I
knew
her. She was not suicidal. She wasn’t the type.”

“Anybody can be pushed to—”

Sasha’s turn at head-shaking. “Even if that’s true, nothing was pushing her that way. She was sad about her husband, but she was also one of the most resilient people I ever knew. She was looking forward to online dating, to trying new things. She was not in a place where she’d up and off herself.”

“How about the whole fracas about the business? The charges of embezzling or stealing?”

“That was ridiculous! She knew it was, and Merilee knew it was, too. They would have made peace if she’d had a little more time. It’s what she expected. They were in a bad patch because of Merilee’s divorce.”

I must not have looked convinced.

“Listen, Manda, I know a dozen people I’d believe might commit suicide. They’re moody, they sink into long depressions.

They have constant, mind-grinding stress. Phoebe wasn’t like that.”

I must still not have looked convinced.

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what I mean. It’s my gut impres-sion that you’re pretty much okay right now. Maybe it’s bugging you to be here, helping me with something you don’t believe happened, maybe you’re stressed with two jobs and Mackenzie with years of school to go, and maybe you’re really worried about his family, and the floods and what’s going to be—and even with his stress over it all.”

77

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS

I was feeling worse and worse as she enumerated my woes.

“But you’re not devastated. So if you died tonight, and tomorrow somebody told me that you’d committed suicide, and the evidence pointed that way, could I believe them? Would it be rational of me to insist, kicking and screaming, that you were not suicidal when I saw you today? That it was not your personality to solve something that way, that I did not believe you’d done it?”

“You feel it that strongly?”

She nodded.

“Then I’ll believe it, too.” I tried my best to truly mean it.

“On your side of the ledger, I now know that she was expecting a visitor the night she died. A surprise visitor. That’s why she wouldn’t have told you.”

“All right! You’re good. How did you find that out so quickly?

Who knew that?”

“Next door—”

“Oh, Lord—Ramona Not-That-I’m-Prying-But? I should have known. Phoebe used to laugh about her. She said that all Ramona lacked was a periscope aimed at the bedroom and a phone tap, but she wasn’t so sure about the phone tap.”

I settled on the sofa with the carton of papers and ancient-looking floppy disks nearby. “For all her snooping, the only thing that registered, or that she was willing to share, was a parade of mostly men coming in and out of this house. Ditto for the woman who lives behind this house.”

“The problem is that while Ramona loves to pry, she’s so self-involved she barely sees what’s in front of her. Her ideal situation would be spying on herself, because that’s what interests her most. Or so Phoebe said. Basically, Ramona was horrified that Phoebe was socializing after her widowhood. She’d thought Phoebe would quit her job, join Ramona’s Bible-study group, play Bingo, all those sorts of things. She was disappointed and disapproving that Phoebe wasn’t interested.”

“Except the woman in the back said Ramona was also jeal-GILLIAN ROBERTS

78

ous, because another neighbor fixed Phoebe up with a date, and Ramona apparently thought she was ahead of Phoebe in line for men.”

“Would she kill her perceived rival? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I have no idea what I’m saying. But do you know anything about that man? That’s the most specific information I’ve gotten about anybody so far.”

Sasha looked into some middle distance. I imagined a small Rolodex file spinning card by card in her mind, name after possible name, the memory of conversations long gone searched for names, and found wanting. “Nothing,” she said. “Can’t we go ask the neighbor who fixed her up?”

“Tomorrow. She’s not home today.”

Sasha’s features softened, the muscles in her face relaxed.

“Good,” she said. “Besides, if she was still interested in doing some hunting online, he couldn’t have been Mr. Perfect. She was a serial monogamist. If she’d found him, she wouldn’t have looked any further. Until she decided to lose him again, that is.

But there’d be a marriage in between. So that fix-up date probably fizzled pretty quickly, or she’d have been engaged again.

Unless, of course, she rejected him and he was the surprise visitor-killer that night.” She looked concerned for a moment, then sighed, and shook her head. “Hungry yet?”

“Well, I guess . . . I was going to look through those papers, and it’s early, but . . .”

“Then, if you can hold off a minute, look at this.” She turned and lifted a clear glass bowl of matchbooks and handed it to me with a flourish.

“Matchbooks,” I said. “Just what I always wanted.”

“For the case!”

“Did Phoebe smoke?”

“Not really. But matchbooks mean something, don’t they?”

“They mean she collected them, too, Sash.”

79

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS

“In the movies, they’re always a clue.” She was actually serious. Nobody in the movies found three dozen matchbooks in a glass bowl. “They could lead you to where she maybe picked up a date,” Sasha said. “The one who was here that night.”

“There was only one glass of wine,” I said.

“Sure, but maybe he was AA, or . . .”

“I promise to follow up with the matchbooks.” I emptied the bowl into the carton. If Sasha weren’t so desperate, she’d recognize they were no more than another of Phoebe’s acquisitions, like the rows of tiny glass bells, or the flowers made of woven horsehair, and whatever else was on the tables, shelves, and win-dowsills of this house.

“I picked up a barbecued chicken and salads,” Sasha said.

“You can look at things and eat at the same time, can’t you?”

I could indeed multitask. We relocated to the kitchen, which looked less used and functional than Neva’s had. In addition to cooking necessities, Phoebe had another collection on the countertops: roosters and chickens made of china, tin, painted wood, and plastic. I peered inside the refrigerator, a better clue to its owner than a matchbook, but Phoebe’s had been cleaned out, except for the eternal half-filled bottles of condiments. I didn’t know who’d cleaned the fridge out, or why those bottles were left. What was to become of an inch and a half of teriyaki sauce, a small bottle of horseradish in cream, six bread-and-butter pickles, and nearly empty containers of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise?