Quantum Girl Theory, page 12
“Adaline, you’re bleeding.” Mary looked up to see Bernice at the door of Polly’s room, a younger Bernice with the swollen chest and loose housedress of a new mother. She shuffled as though still pained from birth.
“I’m right as rain,” Mary heard herself say, and her voice was no-nonsense and sure.
“The baby’s all right? No, don’t get up.” Bernice peered over the edge of the crib. She reached in to rub at the baby’s back. “I think Gurnie wanted a boy. You think so? I wish she were a boy. I’ll never stop worrying about her. Girls bring so much trouble.” But Bernice didn’t look disappointed, didn’t look like she wished Polly were anything other than who she was right then.
Mary drew her finger up to her lips, where she sucked at the blood still dribbling.
“Boys bring many of their own troubles, Bernice.” The old lady’s voice was unwavering. “And they don’t end, neither.”
And Bernice nodded like she knew just what the woman was saying.
A clatter and a thump from the kitchen, and Bernice’s voice—older, and angry—called Gurnie’s name. Mary was back in the Starkings’ muggy and sad living room, alone now with Clarence as Gurnie went to answer Bernice’s call.
She continued to finger at the cloth rabbit. No fresh bloodstain, but she imagined that she might see a faded, nearly scrubbed-out spot on the rabbit’s ear.
“This was sewn for Polly by her grandmother? Adaline?” Mary looked up.
“Adaline was my grandmama. Mine and Gurnie’s. Polly’s great-grandmama. She died about ten years back.” Clarence stretched his fingers and laced his hands together.
“The same grandmama who had the—” What had Gurnie called it again? “Who had dreams? The angel on her shoulder?”
“At her back. Yes, ma’am.” He looked nearly liquid. Face neutral, eyes still shaded. And again Mary saw her vision from the truck, the old woman being shoved aside with a rough knock of the shoulder.
Gurnie came in with a forced nonchalance and a platter of celery smeared with cream cheese. “Bernice is fixing to join us. Begs us to go on have a seat at the table.”
How many of life’s secrets were found in the arrangements of human beings around a dinner table? Mary followed Gurnie to the oval table at the dining side of the room, keenly aware of not taking Polly’s seat. She allowed Clarence to select and pull out a chair for her, and she scooted close to the table. It was set with deliberation, but everything was in the wrong place. The lace tablecloth was upside down, the spoon where the fork ought to have been, and a stick of butter sat lopsided on a saucer. It was Mary’s intuition rather than her gifts that let her see that Bernice wasn’t too pleased to have her over and that Gurnie had tried to lift some of the burden by assisting in an arena he knew nothing about.
The first time Mary had set the table incorrectly, she’d taken a smack to the eye. The scar, carved by a corner of her mother’s diamond ring, was still visible just under Mary’s eyebrow. Her mother hadn’t even spoken to her or corrected her. Had just lifted her hand and struck, before pushing all the silverware to the middle of the table and saying, mouth corners cemented in place, “Again.” Paula Jean had been only eight or so then, and the littlest sister not even born, but Pamela and Stephanie, so small they shouldn’t even have been touching the knives, helped her start over. Mary can’t remember now if they’d gotten it right or what they even had eaten that night.
Conversation around the Starkings’ table was stilted as they waited for Bernice, and Mary steadily pushed celery into her mouth, holding one stick while chewing the piece in her mouth. Whatever happened next, she would face it with a full stomach and with strands of celery string between her back teeth.
Bernice carried a platter piled with pink meat and carrots to the table. She was red-faced and damp. “Gurnie, the potatoes,” she said. She was less of a husk than she’d been the last time Mary saw her; then again, she’d had no choice. Mary’s company had been foisted upon her.
But as Bernice began grabbing at plates and serving Mary and Clarence, Mary could see that Bernice was raging. Her arm movements might have zinged; she was sharp and impatient, thudding plates down the last few inches to the tabletop and dropping into her own chair before Gurnie returned with the bowl of mashed potatoes. He circled the table to spoon them out, apologizing for his sloppy serving.
It must have been the tension of the moment that kept thrusting Mary back into her own childhood, the frisson of family arguments around the dining room table under flickering bulbs. After a childhood lost to raising her mother’s children, Mary would have been happy never to spend another moment at a family table, happy to eat French fries and watery soup from bus-depot diners for the rest of her life. When Paula was twelve, Mother had come to the table with red eyes and a bottle of sparkling wine, and she had sloshed the foam into all three girls’ water glasses. Paula lifted the whispering glass to watch the bubbles break the surface, and Mother announced, winging the bottle around by the neck, “Make room for one more, my darlings. Mother is expecting!”
The news had hit Paula like a bottle on the nose, and she looked up at Mother just as a small red drop rolled to the edge of her own upper lip and splashed to the tablecloth. She had thought that her job of raising her sisters was getting closer to ending, that finally they were all learning to become friends, that they would help her with the meaningless tasks Mother constantly threw her way, and now suddenly she was facing years of diaper pails and spit-up and Mother under the covers for days at a time. Paula tucked her index finger beneath her nostrils, and Mother sneered and tossed the wine bottle aside, where it bounced onto the carpet.
“You always get a goddamn bloody nose when you don’t get your way,” Mother had said. “You are always set on ruining everything.”
Mary was still the great ruiner, it seemed. Here, at the Starkings’, the discomfort in this dining room emanated from Bernice, a woman who looked to be past her breaking point. If Mary could have made her exit smoothly, she would have. With fistfuls of celery in her stomach, a meal seemed far less urgent than it had an hour earlier.
Gurnie sat down, and Bernice reached out to grasp Mary’s hand. Were they to pray? But Bernice just squeezed Mary’s fist and rocked their wrists back and forth like they were schoolchildren.
“I suppose Gurnie has already told you that Rusty and them have called off the search,” Bernice said. “I expect the mother is always the last to know anything. Suppose I should have gotten out there myself, but now they say with this rain everything will be washed away.” Her anger seemed to grow as she spoke, and she thudded Mary’s knuckles against the table.
A hiccuping vision overlaid Mary’s sight, a downpour pounding at the surface of a lake, a river, swelling and breaching its banks.
And then it faded and she was just staring at Bernice’s anguished face, telegraphing helplessness and fury and despair.
Gurnie and Clarence wouldn’t look at Bernice; they both scraped at their plates and pressed slivers of ham into their mouths.
Mary said, “Giving up the search seems to be a habit with Rusty.” Damn dangerous ground, he’d said. Well, here she was, stomping across it.
“What’s that?” Bernice said. She released Mary’s hand and stood to root around in a nearby china cabinet. She emerged with a half-empty brandy bottle.
Mary shoveled a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth. “I’ve heard that the sheriff’s office has cut short a few other searches for missing girls in Bladen County.”
Still only the scraping of forks on china, the pop of Bernice’s brandy-bottle cork.
“Two Black girls,” Mary said, and took another bite. The food was bland, but it was food, and warm.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Gurnie said, and leaned back in his chair. “But Rusty’s been a good friend to this family. I regret that he’s made this decision here, and Clarence and I and some others will be out searching regardless, but I don’t see any reason for the disrespect.”
Echoes of the speech Mary had given to Martha last night. Less convincing even than when she’d said it, especially now that she could picture Evie’s red coat, the way Jack’s slick fingers caressed her sweetheart’s cheeks as they treaded water in the lake.
The rest of the meal passed without conversation. Bernice made no move to clear the dishes; Gurnie and Clarence ambled back and forth from the table into the kitchen with lost expressions on their faces, as though never before had they been expected to clean up after themselves. Bernice sipped at the same small pour of brandy and propped her head on a palm. The rage was still there, but she was slipping inside herself again; Mary could feel it.
“Bernice.” Mary smoothed at her napkin. “Did Polly know these two missing girls? Jack and Evie?”
Mary felt exposed here, having said their names, having taken a swipe at Rusty without knowing the consequences. And likely for little good—her own mother wouldn’t have known where Paula spent her afternoons, impressionistic and hungover as her mother’s days usually were. Even after all that had happened, all the wreckage Paula’s mother had caused, she hadn’t been able to remember Marjorie Ann Wise’s name. I wonder whatever happened to that girl, Mother had said over the morning paper one day, after Paula had already spent weeks searching.
In this dining room, Bernice lifted her hands to shade her eyes from the chandelier. She stared at the brandy bottle, then said, “I just can’t, Mrs. Garrett. Until my girl is home safe, I just don’t have it in me to feel for some other girl’s mama.”
Until my girl is home safe—Bernice still clung to the idea that Polly could walk back into this dining room, naked and reborn. Mary flashed again on the churning river, and she yanked at the hair close to her scalp, yanked herself from the vision before the Sight could compel her to see some destroyed version of Polly rising from that water.
From the entryway, the sound of the front door opening wide and bouncing against the wall. Mary tensed and thought: The wind has picked up. Then the scratch of feet on the welcome mat and Rusty’s big voice taking dominion over the entire house. “Nasty night for it,” he called out, and must have made his way into the kitchen. Cold dread lodged somewhere near her shoulders, Mary listened for his movements, squinting her eyes with the effort. Near silence from the other side of the house, whispers or meaningful expressions among the men that didn’t carry to the dining table. Mary glanced at Bernice, who still sat with one hand shielding her eyes; with a fingertip on her other hand, Bernice traced a lily on the lace tablecloth.
In strode the man Mary’d been avoiding all day for fear of she wasn’t sure what.
Rusty entered the room with both arms open, as though welcoming Mary into his own home. “Mrs. Garrett, I could have sworn you said you were on your way out of town. Here I’ve been mourning your absence all day.” He took Clarence’s chair at the table. “How relieved I am to see we’ve not yet been deprived of your company.”
Gurnie followed him in. “Sheriff just stopped by to check in,” he said, and leaned a hand onto Rusty’s wide shoulder. “Mrs. Garrett was kind enough to join us for dinner and spend some time with Polly’s things. In case if she might could see anything that leads us to Paul.”
“And did you meet with success?” Rusty asked.
“Excuse me,” Bernice said, and she dropped her napkin onto the table as she rose. She shouldered away from Gurnie as he reached to touch her back and marched up the entryway stairs toward the second floor of the house.
“Mrs. Garrett will correct me if I’m wrong,” Gurnie said, looking right at her, “but I believe our session was not fruitful in the way we’d hoped.”
Truth was that Mary longed for the opportunity to tempt the Sight by pawing through the Starkings’ home, digging deeper into the family’s closets. To find out whether Martha was right and Evie and Jack’s disappearances were related to Polly’s. Mary still needed the reward money. But at this moment she was driven just as much by spite. Besides, now that Rusty had seen her, she had no incentive to scurry away like a cockroach under daylight.
“I’d like to try again,” Mary said. And she did feel better now that she’d eaten, now that her head was temporarily quiet.
“I’m afraid that’s a bad idea,” Rusty said, and pressed himself to standing with his palms on the table, tilting it off its far legs as he did. “Storm doesn’t show a sign of breaking tonight, and there’s already flooding along Broad Street. I should probably see you home now if you plan to get out of here at all.”
“Ah, well, ain’t that a shame,” Gurnie said. He sounded sincere, but Mary hated how malleable he was, how deferential. He was letting go too easily, giving up on Polly in the face of the mildest resistance. Unless he was the culprit, unless he’d orchestrated this entire evening just to see what she knew.
A chill rang up Mary’s back to her shoulders.
“You’d best skedaddle now, too, Clarence, unless you’re fixing to sleep on your brother’s sofa tonight,” Rusty said. “No family needs two tragedies, and anything that gets lost out there tonight ain’t bound to be found for weeks.”
Mary stood from the table. She could take a bum’s rush with dignity. “Maybe I’d best take a taxi. I can imagine you might be needed this evening, given the storm.”
Rusty adjusted his belt. “Too late to catch Sigsbee tonight, I’m afraid. And foolish to try to walk in this sort of downpour. Lucky thing I’m here to escort you.” He snorted.
Clarence’s voice rolled into motion. “I’m happy to run her on back to the Safe Lodge,” he said.
“I want her to stay.” Bernice’s voice, cracked and exhausted, came from the threshold. She stood with one palm to the doorframe, for once not worrying at anything. “She’ll stay the night. You go on home, Clarence.”
“Seems you’ve gained quite a following, Mrs. Garrett.” Rusty shifted his hips in a manner that Mary read as discomfort. He didn’t want her to stay. “Do you have a preference?”
To answer that question would require Mary to pin down some understanding of the circumstances and oblique motivations that hurricaned around her. What Clarence or Rusty might do to her alone in a car, what Gurnie might do to her while Bernice slept, what slow madness might creep over Mary with another night in that motel room, what prompted Bernice’s sudden about-face, whether there was safety or peril to be found deep in the overnight of the Starking house. Just a few days ago she’d been so desperate for such an invitation.
Mary could hear the storm blustering, the rain drumming the windows.
Bernice’s eyes were red-rimmed, and she met Mary’s gaze full-on for the first time. She moved her head in one of her slight, nearly perceptible nods.
“I’ll stay,” Mary said.
Bernice escorted Mary upstairs to Polly’s room. It was not even gone nine o’clock, but the thundering storm gave the evening a midnight feel. Gurnie walked out onto the porch with Clarence and Rusty, and from the stairs Mary could feel the gust of clammy wind that shouldered in when they passed through the door.
In the days since Mary was last here, Bernice had returned to Polly’s room to smooth the rumples Mary had left in the bedspread. The louvered closet doors were closed, and the tall lingerie chest stood tidy and shut tight.
“Sheets are clean. I just changed them this morning.” Bernice wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against one of the bedposts. “I want it to be nice for her, when she gets back.”
Mary kept her pocketbook tucked under her arm; it felt indecorous to put it down here on any of Polly’s furniture with Bernice watching her like this.
“Mrs. Starking, why did you change your mind, about me, about my trying again?”
Bernice stared at an invisible spot on the carpet, then straightened her back and walked toward the door. “What makes you think I did?” she said, and shut the door behind her.
That woman was so determined to keep Mary out. This whole family with its mental privacy fences and its come-here-go-away posture. If Mary had twenty goddamn dollars to her name, she would sneak out of town at midnight and forget she’d ever heard the name Polly Starking. Mary dropped her pocketbook to the carpet and wedged open the window sash.
Polly’s room occupied the front right corner of the house, and the window overlooked the street. Mary couldn’t see the front porch, but the indistinct rumble of Rusty’s gusty voice carried even through the rush of wind and cars sheeting water. She pressed her ear to the screen.
A low and somber voice that Mary couldn’t pick up, couldn’t identify.
“Eh—” Rusty interrupted with a syllable of disgust, and Mary could imagine him waving an arm in dismissal. She heard the tink of raindrops, an alto plop of water hitting the brim of Rusty’s hat. The crunch of gravel beneath shoes, the bassoon creak of his car door. She listened next for the sounds that would indicate which of the Starking brothers stood on the porch, but Bernice breezed back in then with a glass of water and a folded garment. She stopped short.
“I’m sorry. I suppose I never have knocked on Polly’s door. She slept in here as a baby, you know.” Bernice placed the glass of water on the side table and held out the fabric object. “A nightgown. One of mine. Not sure anything of Polly’s would fit you, and to be honest I don’t want anyone else wearing any of her things.”
Mary’s position at the window seemed to have escaped Bernice’s notice. Mary stepped forward to accept the nightgown. She slept in her slip most of the time. “Thank you, Mrs. Starking.” She tried hard to catch and hold the woman’s gaze.
“Good enough,” Bernice said, and turned to go. “ ’Night.”
Whatever had been going on outside was over when Mary returned to the window. She left it open a few inches and enjoyed how the wet wind danced the lightweight curtains toward the bed. Mary slid open Polly’s drawers, leafed past the pleated skirts and camp shirts hanging in the closet, riffled through the two or three carbons tucked under the typewriter. Nothing more revealing than that medal Mary had found when she was here last. It was still in her pocketbook, and she pulled it out and fastened it around her neck. In Polly’s bed, in Bernice’s nightgown, Mary felt like anyone but herself.
