B004XTKFZ4 EBOK (15 page)

The night clerk, a pimply kid, maybe twenty, tall, gawky-thin, standing there at the counter the night before, around one in the morning. The place silent, tomblike. I’d just returned from my unsuccessful hunt for Mike McCoy’s old shack—my hunt for Lucy Sparrow’s ghost—and felt cut off from the world, completely alone. Somewhere my life had gone wrong, I knew, and I’d never been able to get it turned right again. The closest had been the early years with Donald and Jess, when those shadows of the past had seemed furthest from me, as far away as they’d ever been. But they all came roaring back, finally, and left me overwhelmed, almost unable to walk or even stand. There were times that I pictured myself driving off a cliff somewhere, crashing into the Pacific Ocean and sinking away to cold airless darkness. There were times I pictured climbing the stairs of a tall building—any building would do—and leaping from it, spiraling, rolling down through the air and most assuredly dead when I hit the ground.

A conversation with the pimply kid. Alone with him in the hotel lobby, not a soul anywhere near. I was half drunk. Stupid small talk, stupid flirting talk. At some point I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said no, though it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d said yes. I’d done this before. I asked him to come to my room when he was off work. I was old to him, old enough to be his mother, yet not unattractive in my way, slender, a good face, and of course my dimples, those accidents of birth that have always been my main claim to cuteness.

Heading up to the room alone, knowing he’d follow me when he closed the office. And he did. There he was in the doorway, nervous, perspiring, yet I felt no nerves at all. I brought him in, pulled off his jacket, gave him a glass of wine.

I have one condition,
I told him.

What?

That you stay until morning. That you be here when I wake up in the morning.

Of course he said he would.

Stay until I wake in the morning.

Of course he didn’t.

I felt desolate again, emptied-out, ruined, as I always did after these sorts of encounters. A few hours of touch, of grasping and holding, of having someone, anyone, close—was it worth it? I could almost hear the tales he would tell his young pals, the old story every young male hotel clerk probably told about the liquored-up lady who’d invited him to her room, doffed her clothes, splashed into bed with him. Only in this case the story was actually true. I would be the object of jokes, of course. But that was nothing new for me.

The sex was just something to be endured—it didn’t last long, anyway; it never did with very young men—for the rest, the caressing afterward, the soft meaningless love words. And he’d been nice enough in that way. But of course he was gone now. He might come to a pathetic middle-aged woman’s bed in the middle of the night, but he certainly wouldn’t want to be caught there the next morning, in the harsh glare of daylight.

In my mind I could hear Lucy and me talking, these unvisited memories from thirty years ago that were crashing over me again so astonishingly:

I could get married. I think I could. Someday.

To a
man?
And—and you’d have
sex
with him?

To my surprise, my cell phone chirped.

“Hello?”

“Mom?”

I inhaled sharply, sat up in the bed.

“Jess?”

“Yeah.”

“I—I’m so glad to hear from you, honey. What’s…?”

“Dad said I should call you. I’m not doing it because I want to.”

“Well, okay,” I said, trying to control my breathing, which had suddenly become quick and shallow. I wanted to reach through the phone, to take her in my arms, hold on. “I understand, honey.”

“Anyway, happy birthday. That’s what I called to say.”

“Happy…? But it’s not my birthday.”

“Well, Dad says it is.”

“Well, Dad is…” And then I realized: It
was
my birthday. “Oh my God,” I said, “I completely forgot. Can you believe that? I just got up, and…”

“Just got
up
?
It’s almost lunchtime.”

“I—” And I realized that she was right about that, too. “Well, I—I haven’t been feeling well. I’m traveling, you know, and I’m kind of tired. I’m in California.”

“Why?” Her voice was bored, but it was a voice, it was
her
voice.

“I had a book festival in Santa Barbara,” I said. “It’s a beautiful place, Jess. Right on the ocean. I’d like to take you there sometime.”

“Mm.”

“Why—Jess, why are you calling now? Aren’t you in school?”

“It’s Sunday, Mom. Jesus, you’re really spaced out, you know?”

I laughed, a little. “You’re right, honey. I forgot. I’m—I’m not in Santa Barbara right now, actually. I drove north a ways, to a little town called Quiet. Isn’t that a funny name? Quiet?”

“Why?”

“I used to live here when I was young. When I was your age, actually.” I could picture her on the other end of the phone lying on her father and stepmother’s couch, baseball cap on her head, twirling her hair in her fingers, blowing bubblegum bubbles. “I’ve been…just visiting places I used to know.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Oh, well…It would be, honey, probably, to you. But it’s interesting to me.”

“Well, okay. Whatever. Happy birthday. I’m going to hang up now.”

“Jess?” I clutched the phone tightly, tightly. “Jess, honey, I—could we talk for a couple of minutes? Please?”

“I’m kind of busy, Mom.”

“I—I know, but…Just for a minute or two. I just…”

“What?” I heard a light popping noise on the line that might have been her gum bubble bursting next to the receiver.

“I—” But suddenly I knew that I couldn’t just tell her I was sorry again. I couldn’t just tell her how much I loved her or how I wanted us to be close again. She’d heard all that. It meant nothing to her. She was a kid who’d been hurt, betrayed over and over, and it amazed me to realize that I was the one who had done it, just as it had been done to me all those years before.

“Honey, I—” I tried to start again. I felt that what I would say was terribly important and yet I was weak, confused. I was naked in a hotel room bed, disheveled, bleary-headed, yet I was supposed to be a parent now, somehow, I was supposed to say something that would have meaning to the person I’d hurt the most, the very person I’d never meant to hurt at all.

“Mom, just forget it, whatever it is.”

“No, I—I want to tell you. I—”

“Goddamn it, Mom, you always do this.”

“No, honey…”

“Happy birthday, that’s all I have to say. Goodbye.”

“No—”

But she was gone.

I started to call her back, but I knew it was no use. After a moment I put the phone down again, sat up. I looked at the bottle of wine that was still sitting on the table. It was half full. I was about to reach to it when my phone chirped again. I grabbed it.

“Jess?”

“It’s Donald, Frances.”

“Oh.” I hoped my disappointment wasn’t too obvious in my voice.

“I just wanted you to know—I overheard the call, Jess has turned on the TV now, she can’t hear me—I just wanted you to know that she lied about something.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t tell her to call you. I’ll admit that I reminded her it was your birthday—happy birthday, by the way—but I didn’t tell her to call you. I didn’t say a thing about it.”

I breathed shakily. “Donald—is that the truth?”

“Yes. I—look, we’re getting ready to go out, but I wanted you to know that. Okay?”

“Yes,” I said. I clenched my eyes shut, felt myself trembling. “Yes, Donald, okay. Thank you for telling me.”

Blackstone Road leads northeast out of Quiet past isolated homes with long driveways and big front yards, SUVs and speedboats before them. But after a few miles the houses vanish; the road narrows and pine trees and wild grasses seem to close in. It’s a lovely semi-rural drive, if rather a lonely one.

Sarah Shaw’s address had been easy to find on the Internet; what hadn’t been so easy was figuring out what I would say to her, or how. I’d considered phoning her, even writing her a letter, but in the end I decided to just drive to her home and knock on the door.

Different plans had bounced through my mind. I might pretend to be someone else—I could certainly say I was a writer, which was true enough. I could claim I was writing a book on serial killers and would like to speak to her about her brother. Were they close? Did she hear from him? How had she reacted when she’d learned of the crimes?

And where was he now?

But of course it wasn’t Sarah Shaw to whom I really wanted to speak. Yet I suspected she would be highly protective of her brother, shielding him from inquiries like mine—which must, after all, come along now and then; Mike McCoy was not among the notorious elite of serial killers, but surely a few researchers or would-be true crime bestseller writers had been out here over the years, trying to find him. Probably it would prove impossible. And what, after all, did I want with him?

Even now I wasn’t sure. But something, something had gone wrong in my life all those years before, and in retracing my steps I felt that I might somehow put it right, readjust myself so that I might live the remainder of my days in some kind of peace. My parents were long dead; there was no peace available there. But when I was twelve—that was when everything collapsed, when I was hurled wailing into a black tunnel from which I’d never, I realized now, quite escaped. I didn’t know what I sought. But I was compelled to seek it.

I considered the call from Jess. A lifeline, I thought. It hadn’t gone that well, but she’d called. She’d wished me a happy birthday, called me
Mom
when, for a very long time, she’d called me nothing at all. It was some kind of start. But I knew that I had no more chances left with her after this one. Her father was wonderful to her and her stepmother had proven herself a gifted parent. Jess had no use for me, not really; the only thread that kept us together was the fact that I was her mother. But that thread could snap, I knew. It
would
snap if I screwed up again. And what’s more, if I did, it should: Jess deserved better than me.

I thought of the pimply-faced boy the night before, no doubt believing he was getting something special with me; quite possibly I took his virginity. How sad, I thought, to have only me as a memory of that. How little he understood what he’d had in that bed, how quickly he would have run away instead of jabbing himself into me with his quick, anxious thrusts. I thought of the poor saps who had stood in the book-signing lines to meet me: not the children (who were too young to really understand where books came from anyway), but their parents, who would smile and compliment me and tell me what a difference Flat-Head Fred and Mary the Motor Scooter had made for their kids. I would smile right back, show my dimples, sign the books, think:
If you only knew.

At last I began to see the occasional mailbox at the edge of the road. The houses were still far back, but now there were no SUVs or speedboats: a few miles made an obvious difference in social class. These were older, smaller, run-down homes with dirt driveways holding old dented cars and pickups.

At last I saw the box:
Shaw.

I pulled in. The yard and house reminded me strangely of the Sparrows’ place, all those years ago: grime, disorder, garbage in the yard (though it was mostly weeds, hardly a yard at all). I felt my heart beating as I stopped the car and stepped out. I inhaled. I had my story: researcher, true crime, serial killers, could we talk? I could even tell her, quite honestly, that I had a contract with a major publisher in New York. I wouldn’t mention that it was for the next two Fred and Mary titles.

Their house had an old but serviceable front porch and a crumpled screen door hanging on rusty hinges. Rather than pausing, rather than thinking about anything, I just knocked.

I had no idea who would answer the door. Did she even live here anymore? Yes, she must—the name
Shaw
was on the mailbox, after all. There was only one Sarah Shaw anywhere in the area. And yet what if the librarian had been wrong? What if Sarah Shaw wasn’t Mike McCoy’s sister at all? What if—

The door opened a crack and I saw an eye, very dark, very suspicious, peering out at me.

“Yes?”

“I—um, Mrs. Shaw?”

“Yes?”

“My—my name is Frances Pastan,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m a writer and I’m doing…doing research on, well, serial—serial killers…”

“Christ,” I heard the voice say.

“And I’m wondering—that is, I’m hoping that—”

“I haven’t talked to the son of a bitch in twenty years.”

“I—excuse me, Mrs. Shaw, you mean—?”

“My brother. That’s who you want, isn’t it? I haven’t talked to him in twenty years. Son of a bitch was living around Vegas somewhere, last I heard. I can’t tell you anything else. Goodbye.”

And the door shut. I heard the dead bolt being turned.