Quantum Girl Theory, page 24
A funny taste on her lips, like sugar. Like cloves. Like kerosene.
Her nose now dry, Lois stood. There was something to be done.
She dressed, then held her heavy pocketbook in her hand as though weighing it. She reached to tuck it back beneath the mattress—no, in her suitcase—and started for the hallway. Then, no, she turned back and pulled out the stack of bills, wrapped like a cut of veal in the pink Met requisition sheet imprinted with her father’s name—remember that nightmare; the past forty-eight hours really were the longest year she’d ever lived—and pushed it into the deep pocket of her dress. It made a noticeable bulge, which she tried to camouflage with fists in both pockets.
At the bedroom door, she realized there was no lock. She had never before dared take a girl to bed without a locked door between her and the rest of the leering world.
In the hallway, Lois stumbled right into a man opening the front door. Solid, with a ripened-fruit face, he shook snow from his hat and overcoat before stomping his feet on the mat.
“Happy blasted Christmas,” he said. “It’s not even December.” He draped his coat over an empty chair and pulled off his shoes. He turned to Lois, a carton of eggs in his hand. “You are not my wife,” he said, shaking a finger.
“Darling!” M.J. said, and walked through the living room to reach arms up in his direction. He leaned over to accept kisses on both cheeks, then turned back.
“You must be Lois,” he said, and tipped his fingers to his hairline. “I am Gerald Hollander, man’s man, newsman, aspiring flâneur, and second sergeant honorably discharged.”
“A pleasure,” Lois said. “I’m Lois Kling, formerly Dwyer, formerly Jones and Alt, exploited woman, ersatz secretary, and houseguest on the lam.”
“A true scandal to have you in our home,” Gerald said, and raised an imaginary glass. “Alas,” he said, “something is wrong with this champagne.”
Ruth marched over and swung herself onto Gerald’s neck. “Hello, old so-and-so.” She left a wide red lip mark on his cheek. He patted at her hands.
“Getting taller, I see,” he said.
“Every day,” Ruth said, and reached over for Lois. It must have been from habit, because Ruth hesitated once she had Lois’s hand in hers, then loosely unlinked their fingers. “All right,” she called into the kitchen. “Will we ever be fed, or shall I set out in search of snow-buried apples in the yard?”
“Coffee?” Gerald asked.
“Translucent,” M.J. called back. “It’s a Charles Dickens winter.”
“Did it all go well?” Pinky asked. Her champagne-colored trousers swished as she crossed the room.
“Not as well as we hoped, but we weren’t robbed, either,” Gerald said. Noticing Lois’s interested expression, he shrugged. “Lightening our load of a few old family pieces. How many mirrors does one really need?” He turned toward the kitchen. “Eggs!”
“Skillet’s hot!” M.J. tilted into the living room and gestured for him.
As Lois and Ruth set the table, M.J. dropped into a dining chair and leaned elbows onto the tablecloth. “I’d been hoping we could have one of those breakfasts that bleed into lunch cocktails that swim into dinner and dancing, but I’m afraid there’s been a snag.”
Ruth froze, her hands in midair. “Did you get caught up in it?”
M.J. sighed and picked at the fabric. “Gerald received a letter at the office this morning. Green stationery.” Lois’s face flooded with heat.
“Sister, none of us is surprised. We all knew the risks. And Gerald thinks he can put the guy off for a few days.”
“What’s the demand?” Ruth asked. Her voice was as serious as Lois had ever heard it.
“A classified ad in Gerald’s paper,” M.J. said. “Something about domestic services available. Very cloak-and-dagger.”
Gerald walked into the dining room, tie tucked into his shirt, sleeves rolled to elbows. He set a dish heaped with scrambled eggs on the table. “With the war on, we’re all on alert for hidden codes. Obviously this gent isn’t trying to bag part-time work as a lady’s maid.”
“How did he find you?” Lois asked. Wasn’t this what everyone else wanted to know?
“Finding Ruth means finding us,” M.J. said matter-of-factly. “Maybe this gonif has eyes at Western Union, or maybe he’s had Ruth’s name longer than he let on. Doesn’t much matter. We’ve got it well in hand.”
“But it does mean we need to get you out of town on the double,” Gerald said. “If your man’s operation has already reached Baltimore, he could have people on the street, watching this house. I’ve got you two bus tickets to Raleigh for now. You’ll have to plan your route from there. I’ll pull around the block and you two will skip through the backyards to meet me there. Heads down until we get to the bus station, and then you’ll be on your way. We’ll handle getting the truck back to Freddie.”
“So eat quickly, pussycats,” M.J. said, and spooned eggs onto Lois’s plate.
Even with the tension and the looming getaway, the party ate merrily. Lois watched M.J. and Pinky tease Gerald, watched Ruth go pink at small jokes based on years of friendship, and, rather than jealousy, she felt something more like harbor. Like being offered shelter in another’s lap.
M.J. raised a toast—“To my basherts, all of you!” she said, swinging her coffee mug to acknowledge each in turn—and Lois took Ruth’s hand in her own, nearly shifting at the last second to pick up Ruth’s spoon before remembering that it was all right.
Almost all right. Ruth allowed her hand to be caught, but her expression was still guarded.
Pinky reached across the table for a cigarette packet. “No more smokes?” she said, shaking out confetti of tobacco.
“Not until payday,” Gerald said.
“Fuck,” said M.J.
“Don’t intimidate them with your piety, my darling,” Gerald said.
M.J. threw her leg over Pinky’s lap. “Oh, stop pretending to make love to me,” she said, over-enunciating as though onstage. Gerald reached out and pinched her cheek.
“Speaking of.” Gerald placed his billfold on the table and drew out four ten-dollar bills, straightening each as he built a slim pile.
“That’s all?” M.J. asked.
“For now, I’m afraid. Start collecting nuts.” He turned right away to Lois and Ruth. “Don’t you begin to refuse it. Teasing M.J. just gives me a thrill.”
The watered-down coffee, the missing mirrors. Even in all her isolation, Lois had been connected to this happy, frightening web of people who gave until it hurt.
“We’ll wire more in a month, when things have cooled down,” M.J. said.
Ruth clenched at Lois’s hand. “You’re champs…” Ruth said, and trailed off.
“Oh, don’t get suspicious just because something gets easy for a moment,” Pinky said. “There’s plenty of impossible coming your way. Both of you.”
Lois could see where the mirror must have been. An expanse of empty wall faced the dining table. Lois could imagine seeing her own reflection as she sat here, could imagine looking herself in the eye. Be better.
Lois met Ruth’s gaze and squeezed her hand. “It’s all right,” she said.
She turned to the rest. “It’s all right,” Lois said again. From her deep dress pocket, she pulled the stack of Krenshaw’s fifty-dollar bills and sat them in the center of the dining table.
They all gaped but for Pinky, who raised her juice glass. “Well, three cheers to the moneybags!”
“You shouldn’t suffer for your kindness,” Lois said. “It won’t take much to get us to Phoenix. And we’ll send help back to the Morningside ladies before we go.” She would get a job, join a circus, hustle for their bread. She could sell off her possessions—she looked down at Wise’s watch. Her only possession. She would fret about money and Raymond Schindler. That could just be her role in this. Everyone had a role.
She squeezed Ruth’s hand once more and nodded, then closed her eyes and for just a moment let herself return to that earlier memory: the colossal pink stone women disguised as mountains, the sky layered purple and blue, and the orangewhite sun winking at them from the horizon, bathing them in heat, setting them aflame, until the entire bus was a trundling ball of fire, everyone’s skin still smoldering as they arrived at their destination, each of them as someone altogether brand new.
SPELLS FOR SINNERS, PART SEVEN
Bladen County, North Carolina, 1961
The grocery boy’s toothpick must have been dipped in cinnamon oil. The smell peppered at Mary’s nose when she returned to the Sure Foods butcher case. She squatted before the milk-cooler door. She could see the outline of her own reflection there, layered like a pentimento over the red coat inside.
If she could meet her own eye, what would she tell herself?
Mary’s throat tightened at the saltless air inside the cooler as she opened the door. The gabardine was stiff from the chill. She shook the red parka out onto her lap, and the fur-trimmed hood fell limp to the ground.
Mary’s shoulders and head were propelled back against the glass of the door by a sudden vision: elbows grabbed from behind, pressed toward each other in a way her body wouldn’t allow. The shocking pop of shoulder joint and tearing pain. The rough yank of suitcase from fist so that the handle tore, too. She heard fabric unstitch itself at the shoulder seam. The trilling of a hundred small birds scattering upward to the tree branches above. Then she heard hoarse screaming, felt the tautness of muscle over rib, the shortness of breath, a body slammed into a green metal door. A soft face smashed into its own reflection in the window, a face Mary had seen in Martha’s well-loved photographs.
Evie’s eyes stared back at her, and then the vision ended like a hand releasing Mary’s throat. She tasted kerosene. She tasted pennies.
But no. Not pennies. On her tongue, Polly’s medal, still on the chain around Mary’s neck. Given to Polly by her uncle Clarence. The medal Polly’s gauzy bedroom apparition had led her to take. The same one that had gleamed white in the camera flash in the photograph of Polly that Mary found in her yearbook. The answer Mary had been looking for was there all along. Something else Mary hadn’t seen.
The butcher boy leaned over the top of the counter, shoulders loose and arms draped, the toothpick still working its way around his tongue. “You all right, ma’am?” he said. “Can I get you a glass of water?”
Mary let the medal drop from her lips back to its chain. She nodded, as much as anything to break the spell of his gaze on her.
What are you going to do now? she goaded herself. You going to just turn your back on Martha and Bernice and everyone else who loved these girls? You going to put on Evie’s bright-red parka and walk out of this town, disappear again?
But she just might. She knew herself well enough to predict that. Of all the people Mary had looked at with suspicion and fear, all those hands and faces she could imagine doing unspeakable things, Mary feared herself the most. All the things she had failed to do.
The girl she had abandoned. The suffering she had caused.
If Mary vanished with Evie’s coat, there’d be no evidence that Evie had died in this town. People, those who even paid attention, would still say Evie had just run away. As though that absolved everyone else.
Mary’s ribs and shoulder still throbbed from the violence in the vision. My shoulder, she thought. Evie’s shoulder. The porous partition between her body and the other girls’ had been so frightening to her for years. In this moment, she was reassured to be feeling anything at all.
The boy appeared with water in a stained mug, and when it rushed down her throat to her stomach, Mary was reminded of how long it had been since she’d eaten, aside from that little out-of-season berry now somersaulting inside her belly. She tilted her head back against the cooler door.
“Ma’am, miss. Ma’am, you’re bleeding.” The boy recoiled from Mary and pointed to her face. She could feel it, the warmth of the blood pooling in the divot of her upper lip, the tightness of the muscles behind her eye sockets. She made no move to touch her nose, to cup a palm to catch the drops.
The boy pulled off his pink apron and held it in a ball to her face. She could smell the rotty sweetness of animal blood, the oiliness of lard. Like a butchered animal, Mary bled into the boy’s apron, Evie’s red parka tented over her knees.
From halfway across the market, Rusty’s voice boomed. “Now, Mrs. Garrett,” the sheriff said. “Will wonders never cease.” He leaned against the butcher counter and pushed a fist into his trouser pocket. His white shirt was speckled a grayed peach along the collarbone, where spots of perspiration rendered it translucent.
“I’m obliged, Edward,” Rusty said in a tone of dismissal. The boy lingered before plodding through the swinging door.
“What’s this?” Rusty gestured at Mary, now pressing the boy’s apron to her own face. She could feel the heat of the accumulating blood, the light-headedness starting to creep up the back of her neck. She tipped her head forward and pressed at the end of her nose. She didn’t look at Rusty, didn’t answer him. He didn’t appear to give a damn, picking at the cuticle on the thumb of his free hand.
“Some new divination to share, then? Your time at the Starkings’ yield any new insight?” He knuckled at the brim of his hat.
“What are you doing here?” Mary asked, her voice venomous at the last syllable, muffled by the boy’s apron.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” the sheriff said, blending the syllables into one long melodic word.
Mary dropped the apron to her lap. “It’s a jacket.” She slid the uneven weight of the parka up her arms and onto her shoulders, and so climbed into an old memory: lifting the coat from ivory tissue paper on a Christmas morning in 1944 in Connecticut, pulling it on over her pajamas, swinging her middle sister by the hands in her matching navy version, the magnesium snap of her father’s flashbulb and ready flare of her mother’s hangover.
In one movement, Rusty reached a hand down and took Mary by the crook of her arm, pulling her up and out of the market as quick as she could keep up. She tried to twist backward toward her shopping carriage, to her suitcase and handbag. Rusty’s grip didn’t give, and Mary’s ribs felt like ice.
He hadn’t ever put his hands on her before. Somehow, she hadn’t expected that he would.
“I’m on my way out of town,” she said. “I have a bus ticket in my handbag.”
“How you gonna catch a bus if you can’t tell what time it is?” he said, and tapped his thick finger on her bare wrist.
Well, there was that mystery solved. It didn’t really matter how Rusty had gotten her watch; he’d gotten it, gotten her, all the same.
Outside, through the front entrance, the white clouds had rolled to velvet gray. Mary pulled away from Rusty, scraping the side of her shoe on the asphalt.
He grabbed her again with a grip like a vise. His vaguely pleasant expression didn’t change; he only lowered his voice slightly as he kept smiling at the few patrons now stopping to watch.
“Sugar, you just walked right on out of that store without paying for merchandise, and I’m going to have to place you under arrest for petty larceny.”
“What merchandise?” Her hands were empty.
“Produce. Consumed while on the premises.”
The strawberry seeds still between her teeth.
There wasn’t a moment she was unobserved.
Rusty walked her to a black-and-white finned squad car, and he opened the back door. “As I recall, you get carsick in the front seat.” He pushed her roughly into the car. As she dropped against the stinking seat, he shut the door, closing out the ambient street noise.
He disappeared into the market and returned with Mary’s suitcase and handbag. He loaded them into the car’s trunk while holding court outside, loudly announcing to the rubbernecking shoppers that he had apprehended the shoplifter and the situation was well in hand. “I managed to persuade the market to withhold charges if I promised to escort the thief to Fayetteville and put her right on an out-of-state bus.”
Rusty glanced over his shoulder, making eye contact with Mary. “A strict husband’s hand might could set her straight,” he said. “No business running around on her own, anyway. Not safe.”
Mary pounded on the car window like she was pounding on his contemptible face. She didn’t care what these people thought. She scanned the crowd for Bernice, for the Starking brothers. But then she stilled her fist, thinking, maybe, that she saw Martha. That Martha had followed her here. Had come on her own to investigate. A squinting group of white people kept shifting on their feet, blocking Mary’s view of the few Black people scattered behind the crowd. She banged on the window again, pointed at the red parka sleeve.
“Evie,” she shouted. “Evie.”
Rusty walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat. Mary didn’t even know for sure whom she’d been yelling at.
Her scalp prickled and she got a replay of the vision she’d had the first morning in this godforsaken town. The innkeeper, rough, grabbing at Martha, looking about ready to take advantage of her.
Martha must have been desperate, entirely at her wits’ end, to risk angering that innkeeper just to keep Mary around long enough to offer the feeble help that she had.
It took effort to not see these things.
“Don’t stop hollering on my account,” Rusty said as he backed out of the lot. “Better out than in.”
Mary’s hand dropped to her lap. She looked down at her arms sleeved in the red parka, and then at the car door—where there were no interior handles.
