Amy and Isabelle (39 page)

Amy nodded.

“Thought so. I’m going to be just a couple of minutes—I gotta go find a place to piss.” He started walking up the narrow road. “Don’t go anywhere,” he called back.

She watched as he stepped through ferns and undergrowth, holding back branches, ducking his head. She lit a cigarette, wondering where Mr. Robertson was, her desire for him rumbling through her as though she were, all of her, nothing more than an empty stomach. She closed her eyes, leaning her head back, thinking of her breasts bare before him that day in the car, her legs bare, the feel of being touched by his slow fingers. He must think about it too. She knew he did. She knew he had come back looking for her.

“Amy!”

She opened her eyes and looked toward the woods. In just these few minutes evening had arrived, the air cool with autumn smells.

“Hey,
Amy!
”

She got out of the car hurriedly, slamming a stalk of goldenrod in the door behind her.

“Amy!”

Paul came crashing through the branches, his face glistening. “Jesus, Amy.” His tanned arm had small fresh scratches across it as he reached for her wrist. “You gotta see this. Holy shit.”

“What,” she asked, following him. Her legs were being scratched by brambles, a branch of a fir tree snapped in her face.

“Holy shit,” Paul said again, ducking forward, his sneakers flattening two pale Indian pipes that had pressed up through the pine needles, “I found this car—come here, look.”

He pointed. They had reached a clearing, and a small blue car was on the edge of the field near the woods. Paul took her arm again, tugging her toward it. “I figure, abandoned car, you know, maybe tires or parts I can sell, so I pop the trunk and you won’t fucking believe it.”

She thought he had found money, maybe a suitcase of money.

They had almost reached the car when a smell rose up, something gone bad, like passing by a garbage bin that had been sitting for days in the sun. “It stinks,” she said, making a face at Paul.

His face was shiny with sweat as he motioned for her. He raised the trunk. “You won’t believe it, Amy. Look.”

ISABELLE HAD FINISHED washing the fruit. The plates were ready, the teacups out. The Belleek china creamer that had belonged to Isabelle’s mother, and that Isabelle loved so much (she gave it a quick intimate smile right now, as though its delicate shimmering were a whisper of good luck from her mother), sat complacently on a silver tray next to the sugar bowl. The cake was in the center of the table with the bowl of fruit beside it, the tulips nearby.

Lovely. Just lovely.

The Clarks would be here any minute. In the Oyster Point section of Shirley Falls people did not arrive late. At five past seven Isabelle filled the creamer; she had bought real cream for their tea. Or coffee, if they preferred. She was going to offer both.

At seven-fifteen her head ached. She took two aspirin and stood eating a cracker by the kitchen sink. Then she went into the living room and sat on the edge of the couch flipping through a magazine. Twice she thought she heard a car in the driveway and got up to peer cautiously through the kitchen window, not wanting to be seen looking out. But there was nothing.

It was getting dark now. She switched on another lamp in the living
room. She thought: I will go upstairs and turn on the lamp by my bed, and when I come back downstairs they will be here.

They were not. Descending the stairs, moving through the living room, the kitchen, she felt that the house itself was watching her like some expectant, well-behaved child waiting for a performance to begin. At quarter to eight Isabelle washed her hands and dried them carefully, then dialed the number of Avery Clark’s house. It rang four times, and in her legs she could feel the relief: they were on their way over, of course.

“Hello?” said Avery. In the background was the unmistakable sound of people talking.

“Oh,” said Isabelle. “Yes, hello. Ah, this is Isabelle.”

“Isabelle,” said Avery. “Hello.”

“I wondered if there might be a problem.” Isabelle looked around the kitchen, the teacups ready, the tray laid out, the tulips rising up behind the bowl of fruit.

“A problem?” Avery said.

“Perhaps I made a mistake.” Isabelle squeezed her eyes shut. “I thought you and Emma were going to drop by …”

“Tonight?” said Avery. “Oh, gosh, was that tonight?”

“I thought so,” Isabelle said, apologetically. “Perhaps I got mixed up.”

“Oh my goodness,” said Avery, “this is my fault. I’m afraid I clean forgot. We have some friends in tonight.”

Isabelle opened her eyes. “Well, another night,” she said. “That’s quite all right.”

“I apologize,” Avery said. “Boy, I’m awful sorry. There’s been so much going on. Church get-togethers and whatnot.”

“That’s quite all right,” Isabelle repeated. She had not heard of any church get-togethers. “Really. No problem at all. We’ll try some other time.”

“Some other time,” said Avery. “Absolutely. And Isabelle, I’m very sorry.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Please don’t even think about it. It was hardly anything. Hardly a big event.” She tried to make a sound like laughter, but she felt disoriented. “Good night.”

She put the teacups away, the plates, the silverware, feeling as though her eyesight had been affected by the moisture that was springing out over her face.

The tulips mocked her.

Everything did; the cake seemed to sag in its heavy roundness, the fruit bowl gazed with dry superiority. She took a brown grocery bag from beneath the sink and into this she dumped the cake, its frosting smearing down the side, and then the contents of the fruit bowl. Quickly she twisted the tulips, hearing their stems snap, and the sugar cubes from the sugar bowl as well, because they had been bought specially.

Everything had to be put away, put out of sight. She poured the cream down the sink and washed the Belleek creamer and sugar bowl. She was drying the creamer—her gestures were jerky and quick—when she heard a car pull into the driveway, its headlights momentarily lighting up the front porch.

“Oh
no
,” she said out loud, thinking Emma and Avery, in their embarrassment, had decided to arrive after all, and here every single thing had been thrown out. How could she explain this? How could she possibly say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I just threw the cake away”?

Two car doors slammed, one right after the other, and she realized immediately that it was not Emma Clark out there slamming her door with such heftiness. Then Isabelle’s heart pounded even faster, for this was some nightmare coming true: she was to be attacked in her own home, in the dark, with no neighbors in sight.

Moving quickly to push a chair against the door, her elbow swept the Belleek creamer to the floor, where it shattered with one quick, light sound. It lay like little broken seashells on the linoleum floor.

A strong knock on the door actually caused the blind that was drawn over its window to move, and Isabelle called out shrilly, “Who is it? Go away! I’m going to call the police!”

“We are the police, ma’am,” came a deep, steady voice from behind the door, sounding both authoritative and slightly bored. “The state police, ma’am. We’re looking for a girl named Amy Goodrow.”

FOR AMY, WHAT happened that evening remained for a long time a dark compression of scattered images and sensations: the acrid,
salty taste in her mouth, for example, which she could not get rid of; even stepping into the alley behind the Laundromat to thrust her head forward and spit, to gather saliva and spit again. No, the peculiar saltiness of what (emptying her mouth in a fist of toilet paper in Paul’s tiny dark bathroom) had appeared as some kind of globular pus had seemed to find its way into the tiniest, farthest-back crevices of the soft membranes of her mouth. She had not been prepared for that, for that especially, and later, spitting behind the Laundromat, smoking a cigarette there, she could not rid herself of this taste, or how it mingled in her mind with the image (much of it immediately forgotten except for the kneesock, and the teeth, and one gold earring) of a small dead person in the trunk of a car, only not a person anymore—she wouldn’t have known, right away, what it was if Paul hadn’t pointed to the teeth lined up that way; and then the oddness that followed, the silent escalation of—of what?

Climbing the stairs to his apartment behind Paul (the dark calves of his jeans moving up the stairs), she knew she would ask him for money, because she needed money now—there was something she suddenly realized she had to do. He would have given it to her regardless, she was almost sure of that. But she was desperate for money, and he, in some queer, agitated state, was desperate for her (not
her
, she knew, but for her mouth, her hands), and how could she say no and then ask him for money?

In the dark he unzipped his pants and then held her head, one large hand on either side, and she had liked it, the way he held her head, but when her face, her mouth, was pressed up to him there, she smelled how he was unclean, the pungency of those secret smells, fetid, sweaty. She was certain she could smell in this the faint and cloying smell of his latest crap—small streaks left, maybe, from when he had last wiped himself—and it was this that made her want to cry, how her face was pressed into that part of him that went to the bathroom, and how hard the thing was in her mouth; she was uncertain exactly what to do.

But it was like he couldn’t help it. It was like this thing had to be done, and she, being there, assisted him. He was nice. He even apologized afterward. And then he kept saying that if you found a dead body you had to call the police, that he was going to call the police.

But she just wanted money. He gave it to her and she left.

She had gone into the Laundromat because it had a change machine; whether other people had been there she was never able to remember; she only remembered standing there with her hands trembling as she fed dollar bills into a small conveyor belt that made a whining noise and hesitated, drew back, went forward, finally tumbling out coins for her. Then spitting in the alleyway, trying to get that taste from her mouth.

And then there had been the desperate long walk to the college, because the library at the college would still be open on a Saturday night and she had to get there, and the car that had pulled up, offering her a ride; in the mottled darkness she saw the face of a heavy older man who did not smile. No, Amy shook her head, No thank you; still, he had not driven away, his car creeping slowly along beside her.
No thank you!
She had screamed the words, started to run, briefly seen on his shadowy face how her scream had made him nervous; he pulled back onto the road, drove away.

In the quiet, high-ceilinged library at the college she felt that people watched her. Silent faces above the wooden tables watched her carefully, their expressions the crest of a silent wave of disapproval; she ducked her head.

The man behind the reference desk had that watchfulness too—he had warned her that the library was closing soon. But he had helped her with a politeness she was to remember for years, and when he presented her with a huge atlas, finding on one of the huge pages a map of Massachusetts, she thanked him three times in a row. She needed paper and a pen; this sudden realization brought tears, and the reference man helped her out again.

And then finally she was in the telephone booth on the basement floor. It was a closet, really, with nasty things written on the walls. SUCK MY COCK was written there, and this made her start to cry, sitting in the telephone closet of varnished wood that gleamed almost golden from the light, holding the list in her hand of towns in Massachusetts that began with the letter
P
, because he was from a town that started with
P
—she remembered that, dialing Information.

How many numbers did she call asking for Mr. Robertson? Maybe five? More than that. Ten? But then: an older woman’s voice, her hello delivered not very pleasantly, it seemed to poor Amy, exhausted, almost out of her head.

“I’d like to speak with a Thomas Robertson,” Amy said. “Is this the right number?” And when the woman didn’t answer, when there was that momentary silence, Amy knew she had found him. “Please,” she begged. “It’s very important.”

“Who’s this.”

“A friend. It’s really important I talk to him.” Amy closed her eyes; was this the alcoholic mother?

“Hold on.” A muffled clatter, murmuring, then a presence drawing nearer to the phone, the murmuring sounds of a man’s very deep voice coming close; a sound Amy recognized. Tears of relief slipping from her eyes, she leaned her head against the wooden wall of the telephone closet; finally, finally, finally, she had found him.

The phone picked up: “Hello?”

“Oh, Mr. Robertson. It’s me. It’s Amy Goodrow.”

A pause. “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Robertson in his lovely deep voice, “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

“No, I don’t. It’s me, it’s
Amy
. In Shirley Falls.
You
know.”

“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Robertson said slowly. “You have the wrong number.” He hesitated before adding firmly, in a slightly different tone, almost southern-sounding, it seemed, “I don’t know who you are. And there is no need for you to call me here again.”

Chapter

24

BY MIDNIGHT THE house was quiet. A small lamp on the kitchen table cast a glow through the downstairs hallway, but the living room was dark, and the dining room, and it was dark on the stairs except for where a strip of light fell across the landing. The light, dim enough to make the darkness nearby seem a deep-green hue, came from Isabelle’s bedroom, where a towel had been placed over the lampshade in order to keep the light low. Beneath the folds of a loose blanket lay the figure of Amy, sprawled on her back like some oblivious sunbather, fast asleep. In the muted light her face appeared neither peaceful nor distressed—a result, probably, of the sedative now moving through her bloodstream. Still, there was in the way her lips were parted, her nose thrust slightly upward on the pillow, a look somehow of tender openheartedness.