Beloved (76 page)

"
So? Who was it?
"

"
Some woman with a weird name,
"
he answered.
"
She said some kid won
'
t be signing up for preschool that you thought was going to.
"

"
I don
'
t suppose you
'
d happen to remember the child
'
s name either,
"
Helen said dryly.

"
Yeah
...
that one wasn
'
t weird
. 
Katherine, that
'
s it!
"
Russ said, lighting up in the kind of endearing grin that Helen so rarely saw anymore.

"
Oh-h
...
Katherine Byrne. So it must
'
ve been Peaches Bartholemew who called? Well, that
'
s too bad. Katherine
'
s a sweetie.
"
The sadness lingered in Helen
'
s voice as she said to her son,
"
Going out?
"

"
Yeah. Over to Mickey
'
s house. Him and Scott and me were thinking of going to a movie. Um
...
could I have
ten
dollars?
"

"
He and Scott and I. You spent your allowance?
"

"
Yeah.
"

It wasn
'
t all that easy to do, since Russ had had to stay home the previous weekend. Because of the grounding— not despite it—Helen decided to give him the money.
"
Hand me my purse,
"
she said, sighing.

She fished out a bill from her wallet and gave it to him.
"
I want you home by nine-fifteen.
"

"
Ma-a!
"

"
Nine. Fifteen.
"

"
That doesn
'
t even leave time for a Coke!
"

"
The fridge is full of Coke. Have your friends over after the show. I
'
ll be glad to drive them home.
"

He shrugged, which under the circumstances meant,
"
Naturally you must be insane,
"
and took off.

Broke again.
Russ was always out of money, which was a good-news, bad-news thing for a worrier like Helen. The good news was, he couldn
'
t be dealing drugs. The bad news was, she couldn
'
t be sure he wasn
'
t using them.

Don
'
t be dumb. Y
ou know the telltale signs; you'v
e memorized them from the public-service ads. Russell Evett is not on drugs. He wouldn
'
t betray his father
'
s memory that way.

Before she could run through the litany of symptoms again, she heard the front door slam. Russell had come back.

He poked his head into the family room.
"
I forgot. She said someone died.
"

Helen whipped the ice bag from her head and bolted up.
"
Died?
Who?
"

Russ frowned in concentration.
"
I forget.
"

"
Not—
"
But she knew the answer would be yes before she said the name.
"
Not Linda Byrne,
"
she said softly.

"
Yeah. That was it. Bye.
"
He pivoted on one Nike.

"
Hold
it. Miss Bartholemew didn
'
t say anything more than that? What exactly did she say? Think.
"

This was an utterly pointless demand, similar to many Helen had made of her son. He shrugged and said,
"
I dunno,
"
with a hapless look.
"
She died. That
'
s all. Or maybe she didn
'
t say
'
died.
'
Maybe she said
'
death.
'
I
'
m not sure.
"

Russ left his mother in a state of shock. Helen began pacing the room in her stockinged feet, wondering whether there was anything she could or should do at this point. Acting on her first impulse, she ran to the phone and dialed the number of the Byrne mansion. She got an answering machine, which she hadn
'
t expected; like a fool, she hung up.

Who should receive her condolences? Poor little Katie? Obviously not. But Helen didn
'
t know the husband. For that matter, she hardly knew Peaches—and anyway, there was something irreverent about offering one
'
s condolences to someone named Peaches.

Besides, the fact that Peaches had given the message directly to the first person to pick up the phone suggested that the call had been the merest courtesy rather than a social event.

Okay, so that was that. Helen Eve
t
t and Linda Byrne were simply two ships that had passed in the night. It was sad but hardly extraordinary. Helen picked up her ice bag from the floor and lay back down on the sofa. The pacing had made a horrendous headache worse.

Inevitably, her thoughts focused on her conversation with Linda Byrne. Helen regretted not having been able to satisfy the woman
'
s last request. Not that it was Helen
'
s fault, really. After all, she
'
d gone to see Linda Byrne the first chance she got. She
'
d been prepared to accept Katherine into the class. There was nothing more she could have done.

So where
'
s all this damn guilt coming from?

"
Oh, God
...
this hurts,
"
she said, interrupting her own reverie. She remembered that Hank had once had a sinus infection that had leveled him for two or three days—and Hank had been as big, as strong, and as stoic as they came.

Yeah, but this one
'
s lasted all week,
a voice kept prodding.

It was the headache, she decided, that was making her feel such deep remorse; before it, she hadn
'
t felt nearly enough sympathy for Linda Byrne. All that was different now.

She tried to siphon off some of the pain with a low, prolonged sound deep in her throat. It was neither moan nor whimper, but a kind of pleading pant—as if she were begging for mercy. After a moment, the sound came out again.

But this time it wasn
'
t coming from her.

Instantly Helen held her breath, listening. There it was again: a soft pant, with something like a shiver underlying it. Someone crying? But no one else was in the house.

She sat up on the denim-covered sofa, trying to track the source of the sound. It seemed to evolve into another, sharper noise—as if someone were trying to jiggle a locked door.

Helen turned off the light, tiptoed to the big bay window, and peeked through the lace curtain on the side window nearest the front stone steps. The night was inky black: a streetlight had gone out the day before, leaving the house in a big black hole. She thought of flipping on the porch light, but it was obvious that no one was jimmying the lock of her front door. Unsure now whether she
'
d dreamed the whole thing, Helen lay back down on the sofa. And listened.

Again the panting
...
again the jiggling.

She sat back up. Someone was in the house. God in heaven. Someone was in the house.

"
Helen? Dear? Are you home?
"

Ah.
"
In here, Aunt Mary,
"
Helen said, relieved. Of course someone was in the house. When you give your key to a kindly old aunt who lives in the apartment in the back bumpout, you can reasonably expect the aunt, sooner or later, to be in the house.

With soup. Into the room walked Helen
's seventy-three-
year-old relation, a gentle, gray-haired bundle of quirks and good intentions.
"
How
'
re you feeling, dear?
"
the old woman asked, sitting next to Helen and patting her hand with her own veiny, wrinkled one.
"
I brought you something to clear your sinuses. It
'
s on the stove, on low. You want me to bring you a bowl, dear?
"

The soup fumes—aroma seemed too kind a word—were turning the corner just about then.
"
Gee, Aunt Mary, I don
'
t know
...
,
"
Helen said feebly.
"
What
'
s in it?
"

"
This and that. Sauerkraut
...
pigs
'
feet
...
I fiddled with the recipe your Uncle Tadeusz taught me.
"

Tadeusz Grzybylek, a member of
Salem
'
s spirited Polish community, had wooed Helen
'
s spinster aunt late in her life. No kids, but plenty of amazing food, had come out of the union.

Helen smiled wanly.
"
Only a taste. It doesn
'
t have the blood of anything in it, does it?
"

Her aunt gave her a little laughing pinch and said,
"
No, no, you
'
re thinking of
czarnina—
duck
soup. You just lie there, dear. I
'
ll be right back.
"

With a mixture of affection and dread, Helen watched the elderly woman scurry out of the room for a bowl of her brew. Aunt Mary had given up a life of her own to raise Helen after Helen
'
s mother—Aunt Mary
'
s sister—had died; Helen owed her everything. Now that Uncle Tadeusz was gone, it gave Helen great pleasure to give her aunt the back apartment and let her have the run of the house.

Nonetheless, she could do without the soup.

Helen sighed. It came out in a shudder, and that reminded her of the deeply distressing sound of panting that she thought she
'
d heard. The jiggling—okay, that was because Aunt Mary
'
s cataracts made the back-door keyhole hard for her to find. But the sound of panting—that, Helen couldn
'
t explain.

Ironically, the panting could just as easily have been of someone in the throes of passion as someone in the throes of distress. Helen ought to know. In bed with Hank, she used to make the sound regularly. And yet. . . no. This sound had been too full of pain. Something deep inside Helen had responded the way a mother would
....

Becky!
Had something happened to Becky? Helen jumped up, terrified that she
'
d had some kind of premonition. At that instant the phone rang.

It was Becky, calling to ask whether her mother was interested in a set of Liz Claiborne sweats at seventy-five off.

"
Thanks, no, I
'
m all set,
"
said Helen, buckling with relief onto the sofa.
"
And, Becky? Please drive carefully. You know how intense you get when you
'
re yakking with your pals.
"

"
Yes,
Mother,
"
Becky said in an exaggerated way.

Obviously her girlfriends were near the phone: Helen heard giggling. Becky said good-bye and Helen, reassured, was left waiting for her medicine.

Aunt Mary came bearing a galleried brass tray on which a bowl of
kapusniak
sat like a queen
'
s coronet. Helen made herself sit up straight to receive the tray across her lap, then took the round-shaped spoon, part of the old set her aunt had foisted on her when she moved in, and skimmed a bit of clear liquid into it.
"
Here goes nothing,
"
she said with a game smile.