What It Was Like (35 page)

Nanci stood there, shaking in her bra and big, white panties.

“What?” Eleanor lashed into Nanci. “You lost your pea brain for a weekend?”

Nanci stammered back, “I'm sorry, it happened so fast.”

“I thought I could trust you,” Eleanor muttered. “You're as useless as she is!”

“Don't say that,” wept Nanci. “I was gonna tell you, but –”

“Just be quiet!” Eleanor snapped.

“Please, Eleanor,” said Nanci in a small voice, “I can't do this anymore.”

“Just shut up,” said Eleanor, taking two steps toward Nanci.

Nanci backed up, sniffing away her tears, “You were supposed to be gone all weekend. I try to do things right. I try to listen to you –”

“Shut up, Nanci!” implored Eleanor.

“I'm not perfect,” sniveled the big girl, heaving her weight from one leg to the other. “I can only do so much.”

“What are you talking about?” said Rachel to Nanci in a very steady voice.

Nanci cried in a tiny voice, “I try to do what you want –”

“Be quiet, Nanci!” ordered Eleanor. “Right now.”

“What is going on?” asked Rachel, looking back and forth between Eleanor and Nanci, sensing that they'd been concealing something from her.

Nanci sniffed up her tears and said, “You think you're so smart, Miss Rachel Prince. But you . . . simply . . . aren't.”

“Tell me what you're talking about, Nanci,” demanded Rachel.

“I'm sorry, Eleanor,” said Nanci, wiping off her cheeks. “But I can't do this anymore. It's been driving me absolutely crazy.”

“
What
has been driving you absolutely crazy?” shouted Rachel.

“Tell her, Eleanor,” said Nanci.

“You've already said too much, thank you very much,” huffed Eleanor.

“What are you two talking about??” demanded Rachel.

“Well, Rachel,” Nanci started, stifling a smile. “It's like this. You know how you and I hang out and talk all the time, and you tell me everything you do –”

“Well, not e
verything
,” Rachel interrupted.

“OK, not everything, maybe,” Nanci accepted. “But we talk a lot. And you tell me a lot.”

“Sooo . . . ?” asked Rachel fearfully. “So what exactly are you saying?”

Eleanor answered for her, “She's saying that she tells me everything you say. Nanci, you might say, works for me.” She smiled triumphantly, her arms crossed in front of her. “I pay her a little every week, and she tells me everything you're doing, everything you're thinking, everything you say. Ev-er-y-thing.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I could see that Rachel was completely dumbstruck. Things were spinning out of control, and yet I felt frozen and powerless to stop them. What was I going to say to them:
Stop being your true selves
?

“Rachel – ?” I called to her, but as she turned to me, Eleanor snapped – “YOU SHUT UP!” shocking the room into a moment of silence.

Then Nanci faced off against Rachel.

“It's so funny,” Nanci said with a cruel smile. “You said that you
let
me be in your life? Babe, I'm
paid
to be in your life! It's not a lot of money, fifty a week, but it helps. My parents can sometimes be real pissy about my expenses. So after you go to school, I come over here, or Ellie comes over to my house –”

“
Ellie?
” I thought.

“And we talk all about you
all morning
,” Nanci continued with savage delight. “I tell her every little detail about your life. Everything you tell me, I tell her. And we laugh about you. We make fun of you and all your antics. Your pretensions, your silly plans –”

“Not to mention your great love,” Eleanor interrupted eagerly. “For this grubby little social climber.” And she pointed to me.

Nanci rattled on with an almost ferocious glee, “We sit around my kitchen, drinking coffee, for
hours
. You might not know this, Rachel, but you are a source of amusement to a great many people. Even Pauline jokes about you!”

“What did she call Rachel?” Eleanor asked Nanci. “The Princess – The Princess of Pretend?”

Nanci and Eleanor laughed loudly at this memory.

“My favorite,” said Nanci, gulping her laughter. “Is when she said” – and this was in a grossly fake Southern accent – “‘
Mizz Rachel is about as deep as a puddle. But she think she's Niagara Falls
!'”

They exploded with guffaws as Rachel stood there, stunned and humiliated by what they were revealing. She still had the fireplace poker in her hand, and I could see her gripping it by the horse-head handle tighter and tighter as she became more and more overwhelmed by the twin attacks from her mother and her friend.

“What else did she call her?” asked Eleanor, her face merry with malice. “Miss –”

“Miss Easy Pants.”

“MISS EASY PANTS!” shrieked Eleanor, laughing and swaying.

Nanci closed in on Rachel, saying, “Everything you ever told me about what you and he do in bed, every time he got to second base, and third base, when you were
late
,
everything
–
she
knew about it.”

“You little tramp,” sneered Eleanor. “I always knew you couldn't keep your legs together.”

My whole body started to tense up.

Nanci got real close to Rachel and said, “I've had to listen to you condescend to me all these years. You don't hear how you sound, Rachel, but you really are a horrible little person. It's good you're seeing that therapist. Though I doubt that you'll ever become a truly
 
nice
 
person.
No offense
.”

I didn't know if Rachel was going to cry or going to hit one of them, or both. I should have reached for the fireplace poker earlier, and gotten it out of her hands, but I didn't.

“To tell the absolute truth, dear,” said Eleanor. “
Nanci
is the daughter I should have had, she's the one I deserve. She is so smart and so talented.”

“You don't have to say that, Ellie,” murmured Nanci with what was clearly false modesty.

“Oh, and one more thing,” said Eleanor sharply to Rachel. “Next year, you're going to Nassau Community, and staying right here with me, where I can keep an eye on you. Nanci even helped me fill out the application for you. She can forge your signature almost perfectly.”

“Thank you,” gloated Nanci.

Rachel was starting to breathe deeply, trying to hold back tears.

“More therapy will help you, Rachel,” said Eleanor.

Rachel stood there, shaking. She sobbed, “I wish I had never been born.”

Eleanor snapped back at her, “Well, that makes two of us, baby.”

Rachel answered back harshly, “Anything that came out of your body would have to be evil.”

With an instantaneous flash of her hand, Eleanor slapped Rachel across the face, hitting her across the cheek almost like it was a tennis forehand, swiveling Rachel's head straight around.

And that's when it happened: in a flash of rage and pent-up revenge, Rachel swung the fireplace poker,
whack
, right across the side of Eleanor's head, hard. And, in one motion, giving out this deep, almost animalistic cry, she struck her again on the back of the head as she fell to the floor.

Eleanor crashed face down,
wham
, onto the hard wood and didn't move a muscle. Not even a twitch. She just lay there where she fell. One last choking sound gurgled from her throat, then total silence.

No one said anything for a long, horrible moment.

Rachel, breathing hard, sobbed, “She asked for it. . . . She really did.”

All three of us looked down at Eleanor in the purple pantsuit on the floor, not moving. We were afraid to do anything.

Nanci finally moved. She walked slowly, silently over to Eleanor and knelt down next to her. She tried to listen for some sign of breathing, then put her ear to Eleanor's back for a moment. Then she reached around to feel by her nose and face.

“I don't think she's breathing,” said Nanci in a scared voice. She moved around the body and scrunched down on the floor to look into Eleanor's face.

“She's not breathing!” Nanci said, shaking Eleanor's body a little by the shoulder. There was no response.

Nanci shook her again, but Eleanor did not move at all. Nothing.

“You killed her,” said Nanci.

I looked at Rachel. She was still holding the poker. It seemed as if it had become part of her arm or something.

“Rachel?” I whispered.

She said nothing. I think she was in shock, or something. She was licking a scratch on the edge of her hand.

“She – she was a good woman,” Nanci wept. “And you killed her.”

Silently I thought,
No, she wasn't
, but that was neither the time nor place to say it, now that there was this strange, new presence in the room: Death. Actual, real Death. And it froze us all. But only for a moment.

“You . . . you . . . evil, little –” Nanci raged, suddenly springing up from the floor, straight at Rachel.

She grabbed Rachel around the throat with both hands and slammed her straight up against the wall. Rachel's head made a thudding sound against the tropical wallpaper. In a crying frenzy, Nanci stood Rachel up hard against the wall and started to strangle her.

“You killed her!” screamed Nanci into Rachel's face, just a few inches away. “YOU KILLED HER!!!”

Rachel's face started to turn red as she tore at Nanci's hands, trying to pull them off of her throat. But Nanci, while not that much taller than Rachel, was about twice her weight, and she used it all to press against her neck.

“You stupid, evil – !” Nanci growled as she forced her hands tighter around Rachel's throat, standing her up higher and higher against the wall.

I have to admit, to no honor on my part (and do I really have to say that now, again, for the millionth time?), that I stood there virtually paralyzed through all this madness. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, almost from the moment that Eleanor had come in. It was all a living nightmare. On the one hand, it was mostly
their
fight; on the other hand, I should have done
something
.

Anyway, finally, I snapped back to the moment, found my legs, and ran to try to break them up just as Nanci heaved and took a big, asthmatic gasp, letting up momentarily on Rachel's neck.

Rachel instantly sprang back at Nanci, grabbing
her
around the throat and forcing her back across the room. Rachel lunged at Nanci and bit her hard on the cheek. Nanci screamed in pain, as they grabbed at each other's throats, struggling and spinning across the room. I jumped aside as they whipped around twice, then both of them fell to the floor, with Rachel on top of Nanci. They landed hard, very hard, onto the flagstone hearth by the fireplace. The back of Nanci's head cracked audibly against the sharp edge of rough flagstone. The sound was loud, juicy, and final.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, Rachel pulled herself up off of Nanci's body.

Nanci was lying on her back, her head at an odd angle up against the edge of the stone. Her eyes were open, but she didn't seem to be seeing anything. Her mouth was partly open, but she didn't seem to be breathing. There was a big bite mark on her cheek where Rachel had bitten her when they were fighting, and her arms were up over her head, palms facing up, as if she had surrendered to someone. There was a little trickle of blood that had started flowing slowly out from under her head. And she wasn't moving at all.

Rachel stood over her, looking down.

“I think she's really hurt,” Rachel said.

“What should we do?” I asked, my mind blank.

Rachel thought for a very long moment, and then said, “I think we. . . let her die.”

She turned to me and explained, “She betrayed me. And you. She was with Eleanor all along. Can you believe it? . . . This fat, disloyal pig . . . I was her only friend, and she betrayed me.”

I looked at Nanci's body . . . and Eleanor's body, not more than twenty feet away from hers. It felt unreal. I had never seen a dead person before, much less two. Much less one killed by my girlfriend, and the other by Fate or Bad Luck or My Own Inexplicable Inaction.

I don't think I've ever heard “silence” like the silence that was in that room, at that moment.

Then Rachel spoke again.

“Why didn't you help me before,” she asked. “When she was trying to strangle me?”

“What?” I said, a beat behind things; my mind still on the floor, with the bodies and the blood trickling, inch by inch away from Nanci's head.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know: I just froze. I just . . . couldn't move.”

Rachel suddenly bent over from the waist, gasping for air. I thought that she was going to throw up or something, but it was like she was choking.

I rushed over to her – at first, my legs felt powerless and slow – but I got there just in time to catch her as she pitched forward. I caught her arm as she slumped, and held her up, pulling her into my chest.

I held her tight. She was trembling, and so was I.

“What are we going to do?” I muttered into her dark hair, holding onto her so that we both didn't collapse.

We held each other for a very long time. Rachel felt small in my arms, as if she were trying to turn herself inside out and somehow vanish. Then, her whole body seemed to be become harder, more concentrated, in my embrace.

“‘What are we going to do?' . . . I know what we're going to do,” she said in a very even voice. “We're going to do what we
have
to do. To save ourselves.”

I held her away from me, at arms' length. She was looking down; then she looked up at me directly.

“We're going to take their bodies out of here, and we're going to get rid of them,” she said as if she were seeing the future. “And we're going to save our own lives.”