Smithereens, page 25
“Michelle, there’s something I have to say. Just to … well, just to say it. I am innocent. I’ve never shot anybody.”
“No, Mom, you didn’t have to say it,” Michelle said gently. “There’s no way anyone could make me believe that you’d do anything like that.”
Terri found she was out of words at that point, and several silent moments passed, that low long-distance hum the only thing being transmitted over the connection between Georgia and New Mexico. Finally Michelle said:
“What are you going to do now?”
Terri’s first reaction to the question was simply that she didn’t know. But in the next instant she realized there was only one thing she could do. “I’m going to look for another job.”
“Do you have enough money? I mean, how are you going to pay your lawyer?”
“I’ve got the money from the sale of the house and the furniture. It’ll be enough for a while.” At least she hoped it would. She didn’t even know yet how much Kathleen Nystrom was going to charge—although the attorney had mentioned something about sitting down to “iron out the details.”
“Mom, I—hang on.”
For a moment, Terri heard Michelle’s subdued sobs; then the sound became muffled, as if the girl had put her hand over the mouthpiece. More silence was transmitted between Meadowview and Albuquerque.
“Hi,” Michelle said shakily. “I’m back.”
“I love you,” Terri said suddenly, and then she had to hold back her own tears.
“I love you, too, Mom. I think that’s about all we’ve got left, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Terri said, and they both fell silent again. This time the silence was broken by someone knocking at the door. Terri told Michelle someone was there. Michelle said she’d call back this evening. When Terri opened the door, Nettie Cownars rushed into the room.
“What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “I called that lawyer you asked me to, and then I called the police, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Terri was uncertain what to say. She didn’t want everyone in the apartment building to know that she’d been charged with three murders. And yet she didn’t want to lie to Nettie, who seemed so genuinely concerned about her welfare. Besides, the woman already knew she’d been arrested for something.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to let anyone else find out?” Terri asked. It sounded silly, as if she were about to reveal some hot gossip. Betty’s been sleeping around. Sarah’s getting a divorce. But then she was going to tell some hot gossip. Terri’s been charged with three murders.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Nettie said. “Nobody’ll learn a thing from me.”
It was the statement Nettie would have been expected to make, and yet there was something trustworthy about this woman from Louisiana. Terri told her why she had been arrested.
Nettie looked shocked. “Sweet Jesus! What’s wrong with that cop anyway? Any judge of character at all could tell that you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I’m afraid Sergeant Stark doesn’t think much of my character. He thinks I’m a psycho.”
“Pooh,” Nettie said. “Shows you what Sergeant Stark knows.”
“Would you like to sit down?” Terri asked.
“Depends on you. Would you like to be alone right now, or could you use someone to talk to?”
“I think I’d like someone to talk to.”
Terri told her about her night in jail, about the woman who’d attacked her, about the DA asking for a million-dollar bond.
“Sweet Jesus,” Nettie said again.
After a while, after Terri had said all there was to say about her troubles, the conversation began to change. They started talking about things like the weather and TV shows, avoiding subjects like cops, jail, murder charges.
“Why did you come to Meadowview?” Terri asked.
“It’s a compromise. I got divorced a couple of years ago, and ever since then I’ve been working as a secretary in a place that sells plumbing supplies, making barely enough money to live on. Basically, I decided to get out to make my fortune, I guess you could say. There wasn’t squat in that little town in Louisiana, so I decided to head for the city. The trouble is I don’t really like big cities very much, so I decided to try the suburbs, thinking maybe I could find the opportunities of the city without actually having to live in one.”
“How’s it been working out?”
“Don’t know yet. Check with me in a few weeks.” When Nettie left, saying she had a job interview to go to, Terri felt much better about things. Although her problems were far from over, having someone to talk to helped. At least she wasn’t totally alone in the world. Terri was looking into the refrigerator, trying to decide whether she wanted to eat lunch when the phone rang. She sat down on the couch as she answered it.
“I’m coming home, Mom.”
“Michelle?”
“I’m coming home. Can you meet me at the airport at three-forty-seven tomorrow afternoon?”
“Michelle, what are you talking about? The school year’s almost over.”
“I’ve got to go home, Mom. You need me.”
“No, Michelle. It’s only a few more—”
“If I take finals now, I’ll flunk every last one of them. I’ve talked to my advisor. He says I can take incompletes for now and work out what to do about them later on.”
“Oh, Michelle, I wish you’d think about this. You may never get back there to get it straightened out. You could be throwing away a whole semester.”
“No, Mom, you’re wrong. I’m not throwing it away. I’m doing the only thing I can to save it. If I stay, I’ll flunk everything. I can’t concentrate. I can’t study. All I do is cry all the time. One night I even went out and got drunk, but that just made me feel even worse. At least if I take incompletes I’ve got a shot at straightening it all out someday.” She choked back a sob.
“Michelle, I didn’t know you were having so much trouble coping. I thought—”
“You had enough to worry about without hearing about me,” Terri’s daughter said weakly. Then she added, “I’m coming home, Mom. I’ve got to. I’ve just got to.”
“Okay, honey,” Terri said softly. “You know your situation, and you know what you have to do.”
Michelle sniffed. Terri could picture the tears running down her daughter’s cheeks. She began crying herself, softly so Michelle wouldn’t know. A sob came over the phone all the way from New Mexico.
After several moments, Michelle said: “We can’t afford this. Let’s wait until tomorrow afternoon, and we can cry together all we want without having to pay the phone company for the privilege.”
Terri agreed that was a good idea. She got Michelle’s flight number. After hanging up, she stared at the floor for a long time, just staring, not thinking. And then, all at once, she found herself pondering the unthinkable. A few months from now, she could go to trial. The jury foreman would rise, say: Your Honor, we find the defendant guilty.
Khaki-uniformed guards would handcuff her, lead her back to the cell in which the crazy blonde woman had tried to strangle her. She’d be there with people who puked on the floor and fought over the bunks, not leaving until the judge was ready to sentence her.
You are to be incarcerated at the women’s correctional facility at …
Terri realized she had no idea where women prisoners were sent. What was it like? Was it an old dungeon of a place, damp and musty, surrounded by high walls of brick and cement? Or was it new, like a campus that just happened to be surrounded by a tall fence? And what kind of people would she find in prison? There would be robbers and burglars, murderers—real murderers, not mistakenly convicted ones like her. How many of them would be like Tyleen? And how many like the blonde woman?
The rules that matter are the rules of the people in the jail, Tyleen had said. What would their rules be? Would they murder each other, beat up on the weaker ones, force the new inmates to submit sexually? An image of herself being forced to commit an unnatural act with the blonde woman who’d attacked her in the county jail started to form in Terri’s mind, and she forced it from her consciousness.
How many years would she get? Ten? Twenty? Life? But then there was an even worse possibility, one even more terrifying than being in prison with the blonde woman. Georgia had the death penalty.
I sentence you to die in the—
Terri refused to complete the thought. She was trembling. It seemed she trembled a lot lately. She went through stages in which she was unable to cry and stages in which she could cry at the least provocation. Maybe this was her trembling stage.
“Oh, God,” she said aloud. “I just can’t sit here like this. I have to do something.”
Grabbing her purse, Terri hurried from the apartment. There was a small convenience store at the corner. She’d buy a newspaper, read the help wanted ads. Terri walked down the hall, stepped into the midday sunshine.
One- and two-story brick apartment buildings lined the side of the street on which she was walking. Small white frame houses occupied the other side. It wasn’t a slum, it wasn’t even close, but it looked shabby compared to the rest of Meadowview, an enclave of the working class in a community of affluence.
Terri bought a newspaper, walked back to her apartment building. As she started down the hallway, a chubby little girl emerged from apartment 104. Her head was a mass of blonde curls, and she smiled up at Terri, displaying two missing front teeth and dimples. She reminded Terri of Shirley Temple.
“Hi,” the girl said. “Do you live here?”
“I sure do,” Terri replied. “I live in apartment 108. My name’s Terri. What’s yours?”
“Crystal,” the child answered shyly.
“I’m glad to meet you, Crystal.”
The door to apartment 104 opened again, and a thin young woman with dishwater hair stepped into the hallway. Her pale blue eyes casually focused on Terri, then opened wide in shock. The woman yanked Crystal back into the apartment and slammed the door, as if she’d been afraid Terri would give the child some horrible disease. Terri stared at the closed door, confused.
A part of her wanted to knock on the door, ask the thin young woman what that was all about. But the urge quickly passed. Maybe the child had been breaking some rule by being in the hall. Maybe she’d broken her mother’s favorite sugar bowl. Maybe. But that wasn’t how it had looked. It had seemed as though the woman was getting the girl away from something vile, threatening.
Inside her own apartment, Terri sat down on the couch and opened the paper, looking for the classified ads. The story was on the front page of the metropolitan section, and she nearly missed it. Terri stared at the headline, transfixed, almost afraid to read on.
WIDOW CHARGED WITH SLAYING FERGUSON, TWO OTHERS
The story recounted details of the deaths of Stanley, Marlene, and Ellen Farley, stated that she had been charged with all three. And it gave her address—her new address. Now Terri knew why the woman had yanked the little girl who looked like Shirley Temple away from her. The woman thought Terri was a crazed killer, thought she might harm the child.
And then Terri put herself in the woman’s place. How would she feel living two doors down the hall from a murderer? She’d feel threatened, afraid for her family, just as Crystal’s mother did. The person accused of murder could be innocent, of course, but Terri wouldn’t know that. She’d only know what it said in the paper. Arrested. Charged. Murder.
Terri dropped the newspaper on the floor. Looking at the employment ads would be pointless. Who would hire her? She was trembling again.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Connie penciled in the answer to the anagram she’d been working. She had a whole book of them. Although they supposedly grew more difficult as you went along, Connie was three-quarters of the way through the book, and it hadn’t taken her more than a few moments to work any of them. But then she’d always been a whiz at anagrams. It was like a lot of things. Some people had natural talent, got real good at doing something, but there was no money in it. Not a marketable skill, as her father would say.
Connie hated her father.
It was true; she did. But she still hadn’t reconciled herself to it. Every time she stated the obvious fact that she hated him, a wave of guilt would rush over her. You weren’t supposed to hate your father. It was a no-no, forbidden.
And yet she had spent her life doing things that were forbidden. For most of them she felt no guilt. The world didn’t like what she did, the world could shove it. Her father could shove it—especially her father.
When I’m through with Terri Ferguson, maybe I’ll shoot him, she thought. But the thought didn’t charge her with any emotion; it left her with an empty feeling. Connie dropped the book of anagrams on the floor, lay back on the bed, closed her eyes.
“I saw the story in the newspaper,” Stanley said. “You managed to get Terri Ferguson charged with all three murders.”
“It was just luck. Except for the first one, I just did them at times Terri was unlikely to have an alibi.”
“No, darling, it was much more than just luck. You pulled it off beautifully. I’m impressed.”
“I’m sorry I killed you, Stanley.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m back now.”
“I love you, Stanley. Never leave me, all right?”
“Never, my love. Never.”
They lay on the bed not speaking for a few moments, then Connie said, “Stanley, let’s go away together and forget about Terri.”
“I think she should suffer some more. Look at what she did to us.”
“Why don’t I just kill her?”
“The suffering would end too soon.”
“How much longer should she suffer?”
“Not long. Another week or two should do it.”
“And then?”
“And then you should kill her.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I think that’s how we should do it.”
“We can go away together.”
“And be together forever.”
“Yes, darling. Forever.”
Connie felt Stanley’s hand unbuttoning her blouse, caressing her breasts. He unfastened her pants, pulled them down, then her panties. With one hand he stroked her bare thigh; with the other he teased her erect nipples.
And then he was making love to her.
TWENTY-THREE
Terri and her daughter stood by the gate at which Michelle’s plane had arrived, hugging each other, saying nothing. Terri was uncertain whether they were trying to draw strength from each other or give it, but just this physical contact between them seemed to be all the communication that was needed.
After a few moments, Michelle said, “Has anything else happened, with the police and everything?”
“No. Not yet anyway.”
“Mom … I just don’t know what to say. It’s all so unbelievable.”
They hugged each other for another moment or two, then walked silently to the baggage area. Michelle was no longer the exuberant girl Terri had always known. Now she seemed silent, morose, and Terri wondered whether her daughter would ever be happy again. A part of her said, It’s my fault. I’ve done this to her. But it was just a mother’s guilt, the compulsion to assume blame for all the bad things that happen to your children no matter how foolish doing so might be. Terri was every bit as much a victim as Michelle. She had brought none of this on her daughter.
And yet the guilt hung there, refusing to be reasoned away by mere facts.
As they were driving home, Michelle said, “Do you have a newspaper at home? “
“No.” She’d thrown away the one she got yesterday. She’d carried it out of the building, put it in the dumpster.
“I want to check out the want ads,” Michelle said. “I’m going to look for a job.”
Terri just nodded.
“I don’t know what kind of a job to look for. I need to find out what’s available.”
From college in New Mexico to being a waitress or maybe a counter girl at a fast food place, Terri thought glumly. What’s going to happen to you, Michelle? What’s going to happen to us?
“We’ve got a nice neighbor,” Terri said. “Her name’s Nettie Cownars. I told her you were arriving today, and she’s real anxious to meet you. She’s looking for a job, too. Maybe the two of you can go together.”
Michelle shrugged.
Terri was driving along a two-lane thoroughfare, passing side streets that led into the gently rolling hills, big houses, and immaculate lawns that were the splendor of Meadowview. She had taken living here for granted most of the years she’d been a Meadowview resident, never considering even for a moment what it must be like to be an economic outsider surrounded by so much affluence, a have-not in the world of the haves. Suddenly she felt as though she’d been unfeeling and greedy most of her life, and now she was paying the price.
But Meadowview was full of people who would never pay the price, people who would never know anything but the comforts of being well off. Why me? she wondered, and then she pushed the thought away, for it had no answer.
“Why don’t you stop at that drugstore,” Michelle said. “I’ll run in and get a newspaper.”
It was on the other side of the street, a small brick building with a sign identifying it as Draper Pharmacy. Because there were no unoccupied spaces in the drugstore’s small parking area, Terri pulled to the curb on her side of the street. “Want anything?” Michelle asked, getting out of the car.
“No,” Terri answered, wondering absently whether it was possible to take enough aspirins to make Sergeant Simon P. Stark go away. She sighed. It was a stupid thought.
Michelle waited for a car to pass, then hurried across the street and disappeared into Draper Pharmacy, leaving Terri to think about things like lawyers, prison, the death penalty. And Connie. Had Stanley had a lover? Was he having an affair with someone named Connie? Did he die as a result of a lover’s quarrel? Terri shook her head. Stanley’s mistress had been Ferguson’s Furniture City. There had been no other women in his life. She would have known.
