Orient (48 page)

“Mike Gilburn’s looking,” Beth ventured. “He told me he tried to buy a fixer-upper on the Sound from you a few months back.”

Sarakit winced at the reminder of a lost sale. “That was before I knew we’d need a police presence in the village. It looks like I can kiss those city buyers good-bye.” She shook her head futilely. “First the travel business goes bust, now it’s real estate. That mutant on the beach was poison enough. But now, with the fire . . .”

“Are you the one selling Magdalena’s house?” Beth wondered if the pant-suited woman she’d seen opening her neighbor’s cottage was a Pearl Farms agent.

Sarakit closed her eyes, and for a moment her features lost their pinched severity. Beth had inherited her mother’s annoying habit of applying imaginary makeup to women’s faces, painting them up and pushing them back out into the world, as if a fascist cosmetics counter existed deep in the department store of her mind. But Sarakit Herrig was beautiful without a drop of makeup.

“Pearl Farms is handling that property, yes,” Sarakit said patiently.

“Magdalena willed me her armoire and grandfather clock. I promise to come get them before you start showing the place. Cole Drake told me they’re still in there.”

Sarakit looked genuinely surprised. She tapped her nails on the counter, then swept a few crumbs into her palm.

“Well, that’s Lena’s right. Personally, whatever’s in that will I take with a grain of salt.” Beth leaned forward over a box of Hefty CinchSaks, imploring Sarakit to explain. “Cole Drake tricked her into removing the transfer of her property to OHB in her will. He convinced her that it would be easier taxwise if she waited until the trust received full nonprofit status. And she listened to him. In her last days, she listened to him. Outrageous.” Sarakit’s lips jutted. “A complete lie manufactured by a greedy lawyer who’s making a profit on the sale. Cole’s always hated the board because it has an ethic beyond the bottom line. And because we chose Arthur Cleaver for our counsel instead of him. Pure spite. Magdalena would have wanted that property preserved. Everyone knows that.”

“So Cole Drake is an enemy of the board?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sarakit said. She opened a drawer and started sorting silverware, seizing a chore to validate the time-suck of a conversation.

“Was Jeff Trader an enemy of the board, too? He and Magdalena were friends. I always thought it was strange they died right after each other.” Beth let the point settle in for a second. Sarakit scraped a bit of residue off a fork tine. “You know, Jeff warned Magdalena about OHB. She told me that a few days before she died. Maybe that’s why she changed her will.”

“Warned her? Jeff Trader?” Sarakit laughed as she dropped the fork in the drawer. “Jeff was probably saying that to distract her while he robbed her purse. He used to do repairs for us. He’d stand in this kitchen and ask me all kinds of ridiculous questions. But, yeah, he wasn’t on OHB’s side. Which is a shame, because we would have given him money for the development rights to his land. Think of all the alcohol he could have bought.” With that, she slammed the drawer with her hip.

The front door opened and Nhean and Ronald rushed to greet their father, rattling off a list of toys they’d just seen on TV. Ted carried a nylon briefcase into the kitchen, dropping it into one of the chairs. His orange hair was an unruly spray of hen wings. The skin
around his eyes was blotchy, as if he’d taken the five-minute drive from the school to cry for the Muldoons, or for his early retirement, or for his wife, who might divorce a husband who was no longer providing a stable paycheck. He smiled at Beth, straightening his hair with his freckled fingers.

“To what do we owe this visit?” he asked. “Did Sarakit offer you tea?”

“I was about to,” Sarakit said as she took the loaf of bread out of the refrigerator. Tea would require five minutes to boil the water, thirty seconds to find the bag and unwrap it, and ten minutes for Beth to sip it. Tea was not forthcoming.

“No need,” Beth replied. “I’m actually here because you asked me a question at the funeral, and I want to apologize for not answering.” For the first time, Sarakit looked at her with interest. She stopped untying the bread bag. “You were right, Mrs. Herrig, I was standing with Pam and Mills on their front lawn that afternoon.” Sarakit glanced at Ted when she mentioned Mills’s name. “And, yes, Pam was upset. Tommy and Mills had become friends, and Pam didn’t approve because she thought Tommy was too impressionable to hang out with a kid from the city. She got it into her head that he was some sort of juvenile delinquent. But I’ve become close with Mills, and I can tell you he isn’t like that. He’s very honest, and thoughtful, and—”

“Drugs,” Ted interrupted. “We heard from others that he was a drug addict.”

Beth shook her head. “Not the case. He came to a party at my house, and he wouldn’t even touch the liquor.”

“You invited a minor to a party serving liquor?” Sarakit shot a look at Ted.
See. I told you. Just like her mother
.

“All I want to say is that, with everything going on, it would be easy to get the wrong impression. The three of us know what Orient can be like. And once one person wrongly accuses an innocent kid of something as awful as arson”—she looked at Sarakit—“his reputation is basically ruined. Soon everyone suspects him, and then there’s no end to it.”

Ted waited out the speech like a teacher enduring a student’s botched recitation of history, nodding thoughtfully, raising a finger only when she finished.

“Beth,” he said, “I made a vow to Bryan that I’d take care of his children if anything were to happen.” His eyes grew starry under the track lighting. “And I can’t even do that now, because the two boys who would have needed us were killed. But I do know that Pam was a wonderful mother. And if she had a problem with your young friend, it wasn’t for nothing. I’m not saying he had anything to do with the fire. But it’s something the police should consider. Just as they’re considering everyone else who knew the Muldoons. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

That was fair. Sort of. But Beth knew the flaw in that logic. Mills wouldn’t be considered the same way she would be considered, or Ted, or Sarakit.

“He didn’t do it,” she said. “I’m telling you, Mills had nothing to do with the fire.”

Sarakit took a step toward her. “Those detectives came into
our
house,” she wailed, “and had the audacity to ask us where
we
were the night of the fire.” She tapped her chest. “We, who have been close friends of the Muldoons for twenty years. And we were forced to tell Mike Gilburn that we were in bed when we heard the sirens, and I reached over and held Ted’s hand and told him it was
nothing
. Nothing, because I could never have imagined, I could never have known—” She turned to the sink, her fists bracing the counter. “And if we have to be asked those kinds of questions, I don’t see why
he
shouldn’t have to be.”

Ted walked over to his wife and hugged her from behind.

“We couldn’t have known,” he whispered. “And we couldn’t have done anything, even if we had rushed over.” He glanced at Beth. “We won’t set foot on Youngs Road. Neither of us can handle seeing the remains of that house. It’s too much. I was supposed to take care of Tommy and Theo, as well as Lisa.”

Sarakit wiped her eyes, fought off her husband’s arms, and
walked into the hallway without looking back at Beth. Ted stood at the counter, peering out the window. Beth looked past him and saw his hunting bow lying on the patio table, broken in half.

Beth stepped out of the kitchen. She found Sarakit standing by the front door, waving it open.

“Lisa’s coming to dinner tonight,” Sarakit said. “Think about what she’s going through.”

“Did you see Lisa in Orient the last few weeks?” Beth asked. “Before the fire?”

Sarakit snorted, as if realizing she’d been entertaining an idiot.

“Lisa’s been away at school.” Sarakit pulled the band from her hair, releasing a drape of black that reached her elbows. When she looked at Beth again, the harshness had left her face, replaced with the first gentle expression she’d given Beth in six months.

“Look, I’m sorry if I seem callous,” she said. “This week hasn’t been easy on us. But I can’t help wondering why you’re so determined to protect a kid from the city at the expense of the neighbors who have known you since you were a child. You need to think about what’s right for this community before there’s nothing left of it. And if you don’t want to, then maybe you’d be better off in the city.” Sarakit reached toward the end table and picked up one of her business cards. “I know your mother’s been thinking of selling. She won’t let the board buy her development rights, but I hope, when the time comes, you’ll at least support me in trying to convince the next buyers to join us. It’s simple, Beth. If you don’t like how we live out here, you don’t have to stay.” Sarakit pressed the card in her hand.

“Gavril and I are happy in the house,” Beth replied. “We’re not interested in moving yet.”

Sarakit sighed. “Karen Norgen told me that she’s seen your husband walking on the street late at night with some friend of his. Strangers walking the streets after midnight isn’t exactly comforting after what’s gone on. You might want to tell him that.”

Beth accepted the cold air of the porch. She was too busy thinking of Gavril to turn around as she said goodbye.

By the time
Beth got home—late, at quarter after two—she expected to find Mills waiting at the back door. At 2:25 she called Paul’s house, but no one answered.

She leaned on the kitchen table, her head bent and her eyes closed. Today was the day she’d hoped to resolve the fate of the mass inside her. Instead she’d gone into Greenport to photocopy a dead man’s journal and buy a birthday cake. The decision to be a mother wasn’t something you were supposed to schedule between tasks. Beth knew that what she should do was interrupt Gavril in his studio and have a talk—or
the talk
, since they hadn’t really talked for a week. Gavril already thought she was losing her mind—if he even found time to think of her at all, between his tarring and sculpting and all his alleged late-night walks through Orient.

She looked out the window at the garage, just twenty feet from the house—such a small distance between them, but the kitchen door was shut and locked, and it seemed beyond her strength to open it. She was porous, and the wall was solid, and a million distractions blew through her and left her leaning on the table. How could her body possess one brain so scattered and another so willful and concentrated, so sure of its fetal course?

She had always done her clearest thinking while she was painting. Outside her studio in Brooklyn, her mind was a radio of jumbled frequencies, one irritating song exchanged for another, and here in Orient it was the same: a birthday cake, aisle three at Dooley’s, the money-troubled Herrigs, Luz and her dinner, all sidetracking her in jumbled succession. She had hoped that her brain would attune itself as her hands and eyes were busy painting Mills, and that the decision would arrive as uncomplicatedly as spring weather: to choose a path and take it, to say yes or no and stick to her choice.

But so many thoughts were coursing through her brain, disrupting any chance of solid focus. What was Gavril doing walking around late at night with a friend when he should have been home in bed? Who had moved the furniture around in her living room? What was the connection between Jeff, Magdalena, and the Muldoons?

Her thoughts were interrupted when Mills knocked on the window and opened the door, bringing the day in with him, wet and cold and reeking of fish. He had two wounds above his lip and a red scratch trailing down his left cheek.

“Jesus,” she said, lifting up from the table. “Were you in a fight?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry I’m late. You probably don’t want to paint me. I’m not looking too good.”

“You look fine,” she said, and for no reason other than that she wanted to, she hugged him. The fish stink emanated from his coat. Mills pressed his forehead against her shoulder, and his words vibrated through her chest.

“They found another one of those Plum mutants. Or I did. Some guys that work for Adam chased me. They were going to beat me up, and I fell onto this pile of fur and bone. Right on the beach by your friends’ house, Luz and Nathan.”

Beth let go of him. “What do you mean they were going to beat you up?” She couldn’t open the door to speak to Gavril, but she had half a mind to confront Adam Pruitt and threaten him into leaving Mills alone.

“You should have seen it,” he said. “It might have been on the shore for days. It had a head like a deer and long yellow nails and hooves and two spinal cords twisted together like conjoined twins, except the second head never developed. I’ve never seen anything so horrible up close. It was all mixed up. How does an animal like that even live? I can’t imagine what thing gave birth to it, or what those Plum scientists did.”

Her stomach fluttered. She fought the urge to rush to the sink. She tried not to think of the mass inside her, now much larger than a chestnut, growing limbs and eyes—maybe two spinal cords,
twisting and forking like a road. Surely the ultrasound would have captured any disfiguration. Surely the doctor would have warned her if it weren’t developing right.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said.

Mills tapped his toe on the floor.

“Okay,” he said. “It was just horrib—”

“Please.” She tried to smile. “Come upstairs. I don’t have much time this afternoon. I have to go to”—she steered away from the word
dinner
, repelled by any associations with food—“a party tonight.” She assumed the mutant creature on the beach wouldn’t cause the Wilson-Crimps to cancel. Nathan probably loved the mutant spectacle, she thought. She turned around at the top of the stairs and by some miracle of trust or obligation she found Mills trailing behind, eyes like diamonds in the coal-darkness between floors.

She sat before
the white canvas, legs spread on either side. Her thigh muscles would have to readjust to the position, after all the months she’d stayed away from painting. She had posed Mills in a chair by the door, one shoulder up and one down to stagger his neckline, a painterly trick for irregular lines. He sat impressively still, concentrating on a snag in the window netting, only his eyes moving occasionally from the window to her, in approval or doubt, the rest of him petrified. She dabbed the thin brush into the ocher on her palette, focusing first on the eyes, and from those twin axis points she’d map out the rest of his face and body. It took two points to create the perception of space. One eye could suggest any number of possibilities: up, down, a speck in a void. Two eyes and the image was fixed.