River Road (11 page)

“I wanted to make sure she wasn't bothering you. I had a word with her . . . I thought she'd stopped.”

“She had . . . until yesterday. Did she say why she was doing it?”

“She didn't have to,” he said, turning to me at last, his eyes full of sympathy but whether for Hannah or me I didn't know. “She was obviously looking for forgiveness. A person takes a child's life, they've destroyed their own life. They'll never be free of that.”

*  *  *

Joe McAffrey's words rang in my head as I entered the house and the image of Hannah's desolate living room rose before my eyes. My halfhearted efforts to clean up last night hadn't made a dent in the mess that was my life. The clutter might have been made up of books and teacups instead of tabloid newspapers and beer cans, but at least half those teacups had held bourbon and in the gray light of dawn it was clear that the inhabitant of this mess was as broken as Hannah Mulder. The idea that I'd hoped to get out of my own mess by blaming Leia's death on Hannah seemed now as pathetic a delusion as Hannah's quest to gain my forgiveness.

I walked over to the desk below the window and looked down at the paper I'd been reading—Leia's paper—and read where I'd left off.

When I look up from my sewing I don't see a criminal, an addict, a killer—I see myself.

I turned the page and saw there was one more line to the story—

And I know that by forgiving them I have forgiven myself.

*  *  *

I took a shower and changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. When I lay down in my bed, though, I kept thinking about Leia's paper. What had she done that needed forgiving? Unable to sleep I got up and went back to cleaning the house, working until the sun came up, trying to solve the puzzle of what Leia had to forgive herself for. What could Leia
Dawson—honors student, vegetarian, prison volunteer—have done that made her compare herself to the inmates of the Fishkill Correctional Facility? Handed in a library book late? Cheated on a test? Eaten factory-farmed chicken? But then I remembered what Ross had said about Leia—that she was volatile, liable to outbursts, that she didn't care who got in her way—

Then I thought about Ross and wondered how he was doing. He must feel terrible about Hannah—

Hannah. With a guilty start I realized I hadn't given a thought to her condition. Could I call the hospital and find out? But they were unlikely to tell me anything over the phone. Dottie knew all the nurses there, though, one was even a cousin. She'd be able to find out. I could call her—

But then I remembered how Dottie had looked at me yesterday and I knew I couldn't face her. I sat down on the couch, feeling like I'd just spun around in a circle. Whatever path my thoughts took I ended up someplace bad. Even sitting here on the couch next to Oolong reminded me of the cat lying on Hannah's couch. Was there anyone to feed it?

If I sat here on the couch doing nothing I would think about McAffrey's prophecy that I was turning into Hannah Mulder. He was wrong, of course. I was an English professor who had a few drinks in the evening while grading papers. That didn't make me the town drunk. Only, as I sat there I remembered the bottle of Four Roses in my coat pocket. I didn't think about drinking it.
That
would be pathetic. But I thought about it. And that was enough to get me off the couch and moving. I'd go to the hospital and check on Hannah, then I'd go to Ross's to let him know how she was. I got up, fed Oolong, and took the bottle of Four Roses out of my pocket. I poured its contents down the drain and put two cans of Fancy Feast in my pocket instead. The next time I saw McAffrey I could tell him I'd graduated from drunk to crazy cat lady.

*  *  *

I was outside before I remembered I didn't have a car. But I could hear the squealing brakes of the Loop bus coming from River Road. I ran down the hill, following the sunken footsteps from last night's pursuit, noticing that my own footprints were as wild and erratic as Hannah's, and reached the road just as the bus lumbered around the curve.

The Loop bus was free for SUNY Acheron students and faculty but local residents rode it too. This early, with classes over, most of the passengers looked like townspeople who worked at the college—I recognized Nilda, who cleaned the classrooms in the Humanities building, and a security guard—and some locals. One young man in a leather jacket, scruffy goatee, Ray-Bans, and porkpie hat looked like he'd partied at the college last night and was only now heading back home. He appeared to be college age, only when he took off his glasses to clean them I saw that his eyes were surrounded by a net of fine lines and when the morning sun hit his hair it lit up flecks of gray. An older student, maybe, or an aging hipster who preyed on college girls. I glared at him but he only smirked back and I realized that in my jeans and down coat I probably looked less like a college professor than one of the custodial workers—who, I remembered, had a better right to be protective of the college. At least they still had futures there.

I got off in town, stepping ankle deep into a puddle of icy slush. The temperature had risen above freezing and the sun was out. The owner of the village diner was pushing slush from the sidewalk with a broom. The local Boy Scout troop was selling wreaths in the town square. I was startled to realize that Christmas was only two days away. I had planned to go down to my mother's house in Tarrytown but the thought of spending the holiday with her husband—and his grown children and their children—was unimaginable. I'd call my mother later and tell her about Leia's death and explain that I had to stay at the college over the holiday. I didn't have to tell her that the police thought
I was the one who hit Leia or that I hadn't gotten tenure. Why ruin her holiday? She would act annoyed but I knew she would be secretly relieved. My stepsisters were uncomfortable around me. Without me there they would be free to bemoan my inability to move on—I could have married and had more children, I'd heard my stepsister Amy saying at Thanksgiving—and revel in the soccer trophies and good grades of their own children.

I stopped in the hospital gift shop to buy flowers—a plastic sheaf of red carnations and holiday ivy that looked too festive for Hannah. Remembering her bleak trailer I was betting she didn't celebrate the holidays much either. It didn't matter, though, because the volunteer at the front desk told me that Hannah Mulder wasn't available for visitors. I walked back to the gift shop, only a few steps away, to buy a card so I could leave the flowers. As she was ringing me up the gift shop clerk said, “I couldn't help overhearing that you were here to see Hannah Mulder. Are you a relative? I didn't think Hannah Mulder had any relations.”

“No,” I admitted, although it felt like a lie. We
were
related, by Emmy's blood and now Leia's. “I saw the accident and I just wanted to know how she was doing.”

The salesclerk looked around to make sure no one else was in the store and leaned over the counter to whisper. “I heard the nurses talking . . . they say it doesn't look like she'll recover. But between you and me don't you think it would be a blessing if she didn't? You know what she did, right? Killed a little girl while driving drunk. How does anybody live with that?”

I shook my head, speechless. I'd often thought the same thing and even wondered why Hannah didn't kill herself, but to hear it put so nakedly made me go cold all over, as if I'd stepped back into that puddle of ice water.

“I suppose I should hold my tongue,” the salesclerk said, seeing the shock on my face. “But this girl getting killed over by the college has
brought it all up again.” She held up a computer tablet and I recognized a Facebook page called “Overheard at Acheron,” which I'd seen my students reading. “Even if they catch who did it they'll only put them away for a couple of years. I think there should be the death penalty for taking a child's life and I'm not ashamed to say it!” She thumped the tablet down against the counter and I recognized Hannah's face alongside another photo. I stared at it, the blood rushing to my face. When I looked up I saw that the salesclerk was staring at me.

“Why, she looks just like—”

I turned away before she could finish and blundered through the revolving door, which spit me out onto the sidewalk where I stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight. The photograph next to Hannah's was of me.
It's because Hannah ran over Emmy
, I told myself.
It can't be because of Leia.
I hadn't been arrested—

But then I remembered Kelsey Manning whispering to Sue Bennet at the vigil last night. Had Kelsey posted a story about me on the college site? I pulled out my phone, tucking the flowers I'd forgotten to leave for Hannah under my arm, and keyed
Overheard at Acheron
into the search engine. A spoked wheel revolved lazily on my phone's screen. My server got lousy service in the village. I had to get home to check my computer. I walked back to the bus stop and sat down on a bench next to a girl who was wearing earbuds and looking at her phone—as most of my students spent their lives doing, I reminded myself. It didn't mean she was reading about me. I glanced at her screen and saw orange and blue text bubbles. She moved an inch away from me.
Great
, I'd become a creepy stalker, no better than the aging hipster in Ray-Bans partying with college girls.

I looked at my phone. The page had loaded but I had to join a group to read it. I hesitated a moment, wondering what the page's administrator would make of my request, but then decided I had to chance it. I keyed in my request and looked nervously around while I waited for a response. A group of students came out of the diner clutching paper
coffee cups and shuffled to the bus stop in a zombie-like trance. Why hadn't they gone home already? I wanted to demand, but I recognized one of the girls, Young Kim, from Intro Lit, an exchange student from Korea, who had written a smart, sensitive paper on James Baldwin's story “Sonny's Blues.” “I understand the narrator's frustration with his brother because my family sacrificed so I could come to America to study and I feel I must live up to their expectations,” she had written. She probably couldn't afford to fly home for the holidays. I thought of her and the other exchange students staying in the dorms over the holiday, heating up ramen noodles and ordering in pizza, and thought of asking Dottie if some of the professors couldn't get together and have them over—

Young Kim looked up, met my gaze, started to smile, and then looked nervously away. She ducked her head and whispered something to the girl she was with and they both moved a few feet away. Maybe they were just shy around professors, I thought, or embarrassed to see me out in casual clothes, a ridiculous bouquet of crushed carnations under my arm—

—or maybe they'd read that I was a suspect in Leia Dawson's death.

When the bus came I got on and moved quickly to the back. I sat down in the last row behind a familiar-looking porkpie hat. It was the aging hipster. What was he doing riding back toward the college? Maybe he'd forgotten something in some girl's dorm room.

I checked my phone to see if I'd been given access to the site, but my request hadn't been granted yet. Maybe I wasn't being allowed on the site because of the story about me.

Just before the bus started another student got on. I recognized Troy Van Donk despite his sunglasses and hoodie pulled low over his head. He headed toward the back of the bus but when he saw me changed his mind and took a seat in the middle, next to Young Kim, who moved over to make room for him. Was even Troy avoiding me? Well, I'd had enough of being a social pariah. I got up and took a seat on the other side of Troy.

“How are you doing, Troy?” I asked. “I was worried about you after I saw you coming out of Professor Janowicz's office. And then I didn't see you at Leia's vigil.”

“I'd had enough of people singing praises to Saint Leia.”

“I thought you were friends with Leia. I saw you with her at the faculty party.”

He turned to me but I couldn't see his expression behind his dark sunglasses. “Sure, Leia was all right, but people are making her out to be a saint and she wasn't that. She was . . .”

His gaze drifted over my shoulder. I turned and saw that the aging hipster had gotten up and taken a seat closer to us.

“Human?” I asked, looking back at Troy.

He stared at me as if he'd lost track of what we'd been talking about. I wondered if he was stoned, but when I breathed in, trying to sniff for pot without being too obvious, all I smelled was woodsmoke and motor oil.

“It's not just that she had flaws,” he said, “it's that she put on a different face for different people. She told me once that every time her folks moved she'd try out being a different person. She said it was like practicing to be a writer, making herself into a new character to fit her surroundings.”

I remembered Ross saying that Leia was volatile. “Don't we all do that to some extent?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Troy said, “but that doesn't make it hurt any less when you realize you've been lied to.”

I was taken aback by his bitterness but when I started to ask what Leia had lied to him about the bus came to a stop and I saw we were at Orchard Drive.

“I think this is where you get off, Prof,” Troy said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

“Yes,” I said, getting up, “but if you want to talk more . . . I know what it's like to lose someone.”

For a second the hardness in Troy's face seemed to soften. There was a quiver in his chin that I thought might be a prelude to tears, but then he swiped angrily at his face and leaned back, his arms spread over the back of the seat, his ankle crossed indolently over his knee. “Sure, Prof, I'll come by. I know where you live.”