The Body in the Sleigh (16 page)

“Damn!” Davey said. They were walking toward the front porch. “Damn and double damn!”

“What's wrong?” Jake said from behind him. He'd been locking his car. He didn't want any couples using it as a love nest.

Before Davey could answer, the reason for the expletive blocked their path.

“What the hell are you two kindergarteners doing here?”

Davey's brother Larry was not only a few years older than he
was but also a few sizes larger. Maybe many sizes larger. He grabbed the back of his brother's collar and frog-marched him back toward Jake's car. “You come too, buddy, and turn this thing around.”

Jake didn't move.

“I said to get going!” Larry held his brother with one hand and reached for Jake with the other. Jake dodged away from him and ran toward the house.

“Sonofabitch! This is no place for you. Now get back here!” Jake stopped. “I'm not leaving until I speak to Norah.”

“Your Norah—or Zara, which is what all her lowlife friends call her—isn't here.”

“Then I'll wait.”

Larry looked from his brother, who was keeping his mouth shut, to Jake. “I can't do anything about you, but I'm taking Davey home. There's some heavy shit going down in there.”

“Well, you're here,” Jake said defensively.

“I'm buying a bike off one of them. Thought I'd get a deal with him nice and lubricated, but he's too wasted. Shoulda gotten it last night. Now I don't care to come back. Look,” he pleaded, “Norah's not here. When I saw her yesterday, she took off. She's probably not going to come back. She knows I'd tell Davey and Davey would tell you.”

“I don't care,” Jake said, his earlier euphoria gone. “I'll wait all night if I have to.”

“Suit yourself,” Larry said, and shoved his brother in the direction of his pickup. Davey made a halfhearted attempt to break free, but in truth he was glad to be on his way home. If the scene was too heavy for his brother, it must be pretty bad.

“Jake, maybe he's right,” Davey said. “Come on.”

In answer his friend gave him a wave, turned, and walked quickly up the front porch into the house. The warm temperatures of the last few days had turned the snow to slush. The crowd's comings and goings had further churned things up. He'd leave muddy foot-
prints since he didn't see a doormat, but he was certain the carousers wouldn't care.

A thorough search of the rooms upstairs and down plus out in the backyard and behind a decrepit shed revealed that Larry had been correct. Norah wasn't there. Jake found a Coke, popped it open, and sat on the arm of a ratty old couch. Nobody took any notice of him. He wasn't the only one sitting alone, but the others were in a world of their own, a world they'd constructed from a pipe or a syringe.

Someone had made a fire in the old fireplace. The chimney smoked, or maybe the flue hadn't been opened all the way. A girl was trying to toast marshmallows on the end of a coat hanger. They kept burning up and she'd laugh like crazy and try again. The room was a fug of smoke—the wood, cigarettes, and pot. Opened pizza boxes were strewn around, and half-eaten slices decorated what little furniture there was. Someone had once cared about this place. The walls had been covered with floral striped wallpaper that was now peeling off. There were large holes in the plaster and most of the baseboards were missing. It occurred to Jake that this might be what was burning in the fireplace.

In contrast to the temperature outdoors, the room was like an oven. People had peeled off their outer garments—and in some cases, a lot of their inner ones—piling them in the corners of the room. He inched over and opened the window a crack. The last thing he wanted was a contact high. He wasn't about to leave, though, and the spot he'd chosen gave him a view of the stairs to the second floor, the front door, and the door to the kitchen, which he'd noted had a back door when he went to get his Coke. The kitchen was where the action was taking place. As Jake watched, people flowed steadily from one room to the other. There was nothing beautiful about them. He figured he could outrun anybody there—both sexes were seriously overweight with the exception of a few girls who looked like skeletons. Bodies were pierced wherever holes could be made, including ear gauging—stretching the holes to grotesque proportions to ac-
commodate what looked like bolts or tire lugs. And everybody had tatties. He'd thought about getting one—just Norah's name—but he hated needles, and besides, the guys in the locker room would see it. How he felt was none of their business.

The music—Nine Inch Nails—which had been blaring from somebody's boom box since he arrived, was giving him a headache and his body was starting to get cramped from sitting in one position. He got up and went into the kitchen for another Coke. He was hungry but didn't want to chance the 'shrooms on the pizza. On the way back to his spot, he passed a couple of older guys from the island coming in the front door. They headed straight for the kitchen.

She walked in at midnight.

Jake jumped from the couch and stood in front of her. She looked beautiful. Her hair was white and she had on a white parka with fur trim. It was unzipped. Underneath he could see she was wearing jeans and a silky-looking flowered blouse. She wasn't wearing boots, but shiny red leather high heels. She'd always loved shoes—the more outrageous the better. It had been one of their jokes.

“Oh, Jake, what are you doing here? No, don't say anything, and get away from me quick. There's a path behind a shed in the backyard that leads to the shore. Go down and wait for me there.”

The happy glow returned. She wasn't running away; her speech and eyes were clear. His Norah was back.

He gave a slight nod and headed for the front door, making it seem like he was leaving. He even took his keys from his pocket and jiggled them up and down. Norah's words, and tone of voice, had made him cautious about his movements. Clearly there was some need for secrecy—and he didn't want to be followed. Didn't want anything, or anyone, to mess things up now when the prize was so close at hand.

The path wasn't hard to find, and just when Jake was starting to think he might have to return to the house and see if Norah had pulled a fast one, she slipped from behind the trees lining the shore,
one of the white birches come to life. He waited, and when she was a few steps away, he walked over and gently took her in his arms. She didn't struggle and they stood there in the starlight like survivors of a shipwreck who have found dry land at last.

“Norah,” he said, kissing her hair, her face, finding her mouth.

She pulled slightly away. “We can't stay here out in the open. Someone might see us. Come back by the trees.”

He followed her and said, “I have my own car now. I can take you home or someplace else. Anywhere you want. Let's go.”

He wanted to get away fast—but also wanted to stay under the sheltering boughs forever, just the two of them in the cold winter night, clinging together for warmth and much, much more. It was like a dream. A dream he'd been having over and over again since she'd left him.

“I can't leave yet. I'm waiting for someone.” Seeing the expression on his face, she quickly added, “Nothing like that. There's never been anybody”—her voice caught in a sob—“never anybody but you.” She took a deep breath. “I've done some things I'm ashamed of, but not that.”

“I can wait.”

She nodded. “It's too cold to stay here or in your car, but you have to pretend not to know me at the house. You don't know what these people are like. If they think I've told you anything, there's no telling what they'd do to you.”

“Norah!” Jake cried in alarm. “Let's get out of here now! What's so important about this guy?”

She didn't answer right away, but seemed to be trying to figure out what she wanted to say, and how she could say it.

“When things were really bad. When I left for good and was really into the stuff, I started dealing in exchange for what I needed. I've been clean for a while and it was rough. Why I decided to stop is complicated.” She paused, and when she started to speak again, the words came out in a rush. “You have to believe me! I never stopped
thinking about you—and Grandpa Freeman and Grandma Nan. Even my mother. What happened wasn't her fault, although I believed it was for a long time. That's why I kept leaving. Whenever I saw her, it all came back and I couldn't stand to be with her.”

“When all what happened?” Jake was cradling Norah against his chest. She'd tucked her bare hands into his jacket pockets.

Her voice sank to almost a whisper. “You can't tell anybody. Promise. Promise you'll never say a word! Ever!”

“I promise,” Jake said—and braced himself for what was to come. He knew it was going to be bad. Had always known whatever had happened to drive her from him had to have been bad.

“That summer. That summer Cousin Florence was dying, I was alone with my father. He was drinking a lot after work and one night he got crazy, told me I wasn't his kid. That my mother had been pregnant by somebody else when he'd married her. That she'd tricked him. I didn't know what to believe. He said since I wasn't his daughter, what he was going to do wasn't breaking any of God's laws.”

Jake felt bile rise in his throat. He clutched her tightly and waited for the words he now expected.

“When he did it to me, he laughed and said he knew I was a whore just like my mother. ‘You're no virgin,' he said. ‘Who was it? Your little friend Jake up on Sanpere?'”

“You should have gotten away. Come up here,” Jake said.

“I couldn't. When he started in on me, he told me if I tried to run off or told anybody, my mother would have an accident. A serious accident. And he would have done it, Jake. I always thought he hated me. That's partly why my summers away were so special—I didn't have to see the way he looked at me. But that summer—the summer with him—he took his hate out almost every night, even when he was sober. Every morning he left for work just like nothing had happened, getting me up to make his breakfast, as usual. I started sneaking his booze to try to forget, but he found out and
made me pay. Nothing where anybody could see, but he'd take off his belt and not stop until there was blood.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“When Mom called to say Florence had passed, she said we could get up to Sanpere for the rest of the summer. That's when I sent you the postcard. I didn't tell him that Mom had called, and when she got home later that week, he was on me and didn't hear her car. She must have thought something was going on, because she didn't call out, but came right upstairs to my bedroom and saw him.”

Jake watched Norah squeeze her eyes shut tight, trying to obliterate the memory of the scene.

“That's enough,” he said. “You can tell me all you want later. We have forever together, but no more tonight. I want to get you home.”

“Yeah. Home. Mom called the police and had him arrested. It was horrible. I had to keep talking to people and pretty soon I was sneaking booze again, just to zone out. When I got back here to Sanpere I realized I couldn't go back to the way things had been. I wanted to be a little girl again, but that wasn't going to happen, so I decided to be Zara. But I want to be Norah now.”

“You've always been Norah, my Norah. Now let's go,” Jake begged. He pulled her arm through his and started up the path. She stumbled and one of her shoes came off. He grabbed it and put it back on her foot.

“I can't leave yet. You don't understand and I can't tell you. They don't know I'm clean. They think I'm the wasted chick I was and I've seen stuff straight I shouldn't have. One thing in particular when I was sleeping and they thought I was passed out. Oh, Jake, it was terrible. You can't believe what they did to this person, but I don't want you to know. Know anything at all. Ever. Tonight I'm supposed to meet this guy—he's been supplying me—and give him the money I scored from a deal I did last week. My last deal, but
they don't know that. I have the money on me. He said he was going away until New Year's, so I'd better be here. I'll tell him I'm going back to Sanpere and back to school. That I'm going to try to get my act together, because the last high scared me. That I was wicked afraid I was ODing. That part is true enough. Anyway, if I don't give him the money and just take off, he or some of the rest of them will come looking for me. And there's no place I can hide where they won't find me, even on Sanpere.”

Jake had a sudden vision of driving to the Bangor airport and taking the next flight to someplace far away. They could change their names. He'd get word to his parents somehow that he was okay. He almost suggested it when she kissed him hard and began to walk quickly toward the house.

“When you see me with a can of tonic in my hand, leave and wait in your car. You can show me where it is on the way back. Then I'll go in first.”

“I don't want to do it this way; I don't want to split up. Isn't there someone else you can give the money to? Someone who's here?”

Norah shook her head. “No, it has to be—wait, I don't want you to know any names. Trust me, this is the only way I can get out of this and be safe. People are always coming and going in this business. They don't care, but if they don't get their money, that's different. If I give it to one of these guys, they can say I never did.”