Voices in the Dark (23 page)

The stripper, high on coke, soon to be his wife, liked the naked look of him, thought he was a riot. He grinned at her. His thing saluted her.
I
do
, she said.

Mary was reaching over him again, replacing the receiver, then falling back, collapsing in what was almost a swoon. Her face waxed in the dim. They were less than a foot apart, but he might have been looking at her from another shore.

“That was Dudley,” she said.

“Where is he?”

“He didn’t say, but he’s coming home.”

“When?”

“He’ll let me know.”

She was crying, her face joyful.

10

IT WAS A BRIGHT PINK SUNDAY MORNING. ROLAND HUTCHINS, who had slept late and was still in his underwear, peered out the bedroom window and said, “Good! He’s gone!”

May, behind schedule for church, still in her gown, gave him a critical look. Fully clothed or buck naked, nothing about him was significant. Though she detested tattoos, she thought it too bad he didn’t have a few, evidence he’d had a life.

“I don’t want him back, May. I mean that.”

Her face flared up. “Don’t give me orders.”

He turned around with a listless move. “When, May, when have I ever been able to do that?”

“Then maybe that’s a message,” she said and wheeling about, showed contempt with the breadth of her backside.

She bathed and, stepping from the tub, used a rough towel that felt good on her skin. Stepping on a scale, she viewed the result with splendid indifference. At the mirror she spent ten minutes on her face and another ten on her hair, over which she
bounced a light hand. Five minutes were consumed choosing a dress.

Roland was in the other bathroom. Rapping on the door, she said, “We don’t have time for breakfast if we’re going to make church.”

“I don’t feel all that great,” he said. “For one thing, I didn’t get enough sleep.”

“Then stay home,” she said.

Arriving late, she slipped into a back pew and was unmoved by the resounding voice of the organ. A fair-sized crowd for a summer Sunday, she noted with a sweeping eye, though certainly no one from the Heights was in evidence. Noses in the air, they went, if they went at all, to places of worship in Andover.

Picking up a maroon hymn book, she sang with the rest of them, all the while aware of Dorothea Farnham’s high soprano, an irritant since school days. Dorothea, in her estimation, was a bitch who always got more than she deserved.

Choirboys accepted brimming collection plates, and Reverend Stottle began his sermon, which too often she found full of nonsense. She knew for a fact she wasn’t the only one who suspected that the waxing of the moon influenced his behavior.

“Time,” the reverend began resonantly, “contracts as you grow older. To a child, a year is enormous. To us, it’s nothing. A whole decade can slip away without our knowing it.”

“Tell me about it,” she muttered under her breath. “Every tick of the clock means less of me, I know that.”

“Human history represents only a few lines in the larger scheme of things. For some forms of life, a nanosecond is all they have.”

“I hope to hell they make the most of it,” she said without moving her mouth, her eyes down the front of her dress. She had, if she did say so herself, a nice set.

“When you’re young, your life is outward, stretching beyond you, but when you’re older, it’s inward, winding you together for the ultimate space you’ll occupy.”

“Christ, what a thing to say!” She ceased to listen. The hymn book wedged between her knees, she yawned, closed her eyes, and dozed. Fifteen minutes later, the sound of shuffling feet brought her to attention, just as the hymn book fell on her toe.

Outside in the hot sun, Reverend Stottle stationed himself to shake hands with the departing faithful, some of whom sported faces as gloriously bright and quietly hysterical as his own. She tried to avoid him, but his godly hand reached toward her and she stopped short, like an ax thrown into the ground.

“Where’s Roland?” the reverend asked.

Probably reading the papers, the funnies first. “Under the weather,” she replied.

The reverend’s throat quivered like a songbird’s. “We don’t see you much at our coffees.”

“The truth is, I have better things to do.”

He sidled close, spoke in confidence. “For that matter, so do I.”

At Minerva’s Tea Room, a favorite of women from the Heights, she ordered Belgian coffee and buttered scones, despite the outrageous price. Sitting alone at a corner table was a woman with a golden shell of hair that was breaking apart, tendrils glittering against both cheeks, the careless look that women from the Heights thought they could get away with. Try again, sister! The woman’s lips were pursed as if something were dissolving inside her overly painted mouth. A No Smoking sign was prominently posted, but she was smoking anyway. Some nerve! May looked at her watch, relished the last crumbs of the scone, paid her bill, and left.

Sunday hours at the library were from noon to four. Fred Fossey wasn’t at the tables, but she heard a shuffle in the stacks and found him in Biography, a book about Eisenhower in his hands. He twisted around. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

She leaned past him to scan the shelves. “I had nothing better to do.”

He sniffed her hair. His questioning eyes were full of excitement; indeed, downright lust. His hand was on her hip.

“Careful, Fred.”

“Don’t you know, May? Don’t you have any idea?”

“Of course I do.” She glanced down at him. “I’m not blind.”

“One of these days, May? Please? Promise?”

Until Dudley — that childlike, questionable man whom she didn’t understand and didn’t need to — there had been no strong urge in her toward life. She had weeded her garden more than she had watered it. “I’m in the autumn of my life, Fred.”

“We could be dead tomorrow, May.”

“The whole world could cave in.”

“The sun could explode.”

Her mouth was set in a receptive way. “Do you want to kiss me, Fred?”

“God, yes!”

She shot a look over her shoulder. “Then do it quick.”

• • •

Sunstruck, Paget’s Pond was a shimmer of prisms. Dudley, who had just washed his face and hands, stood where floating flowers rimmed the water. Chief Morgan, keeping his distance, said, “Don’t run.”

“Have you been looking for me?”

“Now and then.” Morgan took no solid steps, only tentative ones.

“Please, stop right there,” Dudley said, and Morgan did, tilting his head when the sun threw a beam straight into his eyes. “I heard the bells,” Dudley said. “Why aren’t you in church?”

“It must be over by now.”

“I’m an Episcopalian.”

“I’m something less,” Morgan said, relaxing. Dudley stood straight, soft, and peaceful, and Morgan read gentle madness in the friendly smile.

“I like your town, Chief, I really do.”

“Are you thinking of staying?”

“Not forever.”

“Right. You have to be born here to do that.” Morgan shaded his eyes. “You’re beginning to look seedy again.”

“You’re not so neat yourself.”

Morgan passed a hand over his stubble, stepping sideways for the firmer ground. “There’s someone who wants to meet you, Dudley. It won’t take long.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t think you know her, though you may know her husband. That’s a guess.”

“I see.”

“I wonder. Will you come with me?”

“I’ll wait here.”

Morgan considered the weight of mistakes made during his career, some of which had left him feeling inadequate and besmirched. He remembered a dream in which he raced in full uniform onto a frozen pond and fell through weak ice. “You won’t run away?”

Dudley nodded.

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

• • •

Harley Bodine phoned first, arrived ten minutes later, and stared at her so intently she became singular, a being apart from all others. She looked beautiful in an austere white shirt tucked into a straight skirt, her black hair as glossy as the pelt of a panther. He was not all that certain she was glad to see him and felt his presence was provisional, dependent upon her mood. Her voice was casual, simply tossed at him.

“Do you want coffee?”

She served it in the sunroom, which overlooked small squares, cones, and spheres of evergreens. The house was abnormally quiet. Every little noise he made stood out. They sat in precisely facing chairs of white wicker.

“I’ve had only one other affair,” she said. “He was quite handsome, exciting, an assistant district attorney with political ambitions. For a while he was my pagan god.”

Bodine felt a rush of jealousy he would not have thought possible. “Was he married?”

“Yes.”

“Did Ira ever find out?”

“Not Ira. My first husband, a liar and a cheat. Yes, inevitably he found out. I wanted him to. It hurt him deeply.”

“You took revenge.”

“Call it what you like.”

He put his coffee cup aside because his hands were trembling, which was unlike him. Usually he had a strong hold on his emotions. “Where’s your assistant D.A. now?”

“In Washington. He’s a senator. Ira will doubtless run into him. They were at Harvard together.”

Yes, Harvard. Of course. He brooded for a moment, then reminded himself what he had had from her, more than he had ever expected. “I think Kate plans to leave me,” he said.

“I hope that has nothing to do with me.”

“No, nothing.”

“Will you try to stop her?”

The coffee cup was back in his hands, the ear almost too narrow for his finger. The saucer had a wavy edge. “I don’t know, too many variables. The only certainties are death, taxes, and ragweed in August.”

“Do you suffer from it?”

“Ragweed? I take medication.” An unwanted emotion pushed at him, took control. “Tell me more about the assistant D.A. The senator. Was he a good lover?”

“I thought so.”

A hot flush coloring his face lessened him, the way it did when he failed to catch a waiter’s eye. “How about me?”

The telephone rang in the next room. She rose with her coffee cup in hand and glanced down at him. “Let’s put it this way, Harley. You surprised me.”

• • •

Elbows on the table, Beverly Gunner sat silent and still, like a cup of tea gone cold. She watched the clock, she smoked, she waited and waited, and finally he came. He had not shaved. He was wearing, she noticed, the same clothes he’d had on at Rembrandt’s. He did not look like a policeman of any sort, but she trusted him.

“You found him?”

“Yes,” he said.

Leaving Minerva’s, she clung to his sleeve like a child. He opened a door of his car, and she climbed in with her heart racing and her confidence evaporating. She gave a start when the radio crackled, but nothing came on. She clutched her chest.

“What’s the matter?”

“Some things the heart can’t stand,” she said. He was alarmed. “I’m all right,” she assured him.

They drove up Summer Street and onto Fieldstone Road, which she knew well, too well, and soon her senses eddied. The poultry farm on the left was where an old woman in rubber boots had let Fay cuddle a newborn chick. On the right was an ice cream stand where Fay’s choice had invariably been black raspberry, a single scoop in a sugar cone, the drippings on her dress.

When they stopped, she looked out at a picnic bench and a No Swimming sign and said, “I don’t know where we are.”

Then she was out of the car, with the sun hot on her face. Walking into woods seemed a wrong thing to do, but she did it without question, along a path that ran rough and hurt her heels. She should have worn flats. Snagged in the pine tops was a blue tissue of sky she needed to know was there. The path wandered into a clearing, where she saw the flash of the pond and the figure of a man joyously naked. She turned her head.

Chief Morgan yelled, “Put your clothes on, Dudley.”

“Do we know what we’re doing?” she asked.

“Not entirely,” Morgan replied.

She shivered. “Can I call you something other than Chief?”

“James.”

The man, who had gotten into jeans and a roomy shirt, called back in a happy voice, “I’ve been swimming.”

The voice was in no way familiar, yet it gnawed at her ear. James, dear James, her strength, looked at her.

“Are you afraid?”

“I’m beyond that,” she said, though the man’s look, even from a distance, was unnerving. His eyes absorbed whatever they rested on, and they were resting on her.

“This is Mrs. Gunner, Dudley.”

“How do you do.”

Alone, aware of the endless threat of water, she went to him and felt the world retreating. Flat moments of silence spread between them as they stared at each other, as if they were relatives meeting for the first time, strangers sharing blood. Her voice came gradually.

“Do you know my husband?”

“Some people I’ve forgotten.”

“He’s a fat man.”

“But not a burden, I hope.”

A butterfly floated between them. As a girl she had fancied that delicate Japanese hands patterned the colors, that factories in Tokyo existed for that single purpose. She took a snapshot of Fay from her bag. “Did you know my daughter?”

He would not take the picture from her hand. He merely looked at it. “Was she sweet?”

“Very.”

“Some things I can’t talk about.”

“About this you have to.” Trembling, she had spoken loud enough for James, wise James, to hear.

“You mustn’t gang up on me.”

“I’m doing what a mother has to do,” she said.

His eyes were sympathetic, his smile collusive. “You’re not right in the head, are you?”

“I haven’t been for a long while.”

“You get used to it, you must believe me.”

She experienced a blast of visual sensations, none of them in sync, each carrying its own coloring noise. She recalled dreams in which sums on a blackboard never totaled correctly and written words failed to correspond.

“We may have been fed from the same spoon,” he said.

“No, I don’t believe that.” Her look communicated urgency. “Help me.”

“Yes, I should do something.” Words, kindly spoken, welled out of him. “I know a place you could go. You could rest, read, forget.”