All The Pretty Dead Girls (18 page)

“Sue? We just had a call from the school nurse. Are you all right?”

“Oh, man, I can’t believe she called you,” Sue groaned. “Yes, I’m fine. I had a minor case of food poisoning. I think it was bad meat lasagna.”

“Was it served in the cafeteria?”

Sue couldn’t tell her grandmother about Billy. “No. A friend and I—we went off campus to see a movie and ate at an Italian restaurant.”

“Well, is she sick, too?”

“I don’t know. I called—
her
. And left a message.”

Gran sighed. “Well, I know what a healthy girl you are, Sue. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Hey, Gran, is it true I was never sick? Like I never had the flu or anything like that when I was really young and now I can’t remember?”

“Yes, it’s true, Sue. As I said, you’re a very healthy girl.”

“Come on. I’ve had colds…”

“Mere sniffles. Your grandfather and I took very good care of you. We made sure you never got sick. And your healthy constitution meant that you could fight off things that more average girls could not. Don’t you remember Brenda Upton’s birthday party?”

Brenda Upton’s birthday party.

Sue hadn’t thought about that in years.

“Right,” Sue said vaguely as recollection flooded her mind.

“Well, don’t eat at that restaurant again,” Gran was saying. “We want you to stay well. Don’t eat off campus anymore. Who knows what those backwoods restaurants are like?”

Sue made a grunt in response, then thanked her grandmother for calling.

She wished she hadn’t made her remember Brenda Upton’s birthday party.

Sue had been nine years old when Brenda invited her. Brenda’s father was one of Granpa’s junior partners at the firm. She didn’t like Brenda—a stuck-up little girl who was always throwing fits when she didn’t get her way. Sue stayed as far away from Brenda as she possibly could. She certainly didn’t want to go to her party.

But Granpa had insisted. “How would it look if the senior partner’s granddaughter didn’t go? Jim Upton would think I don’t appreciate his work, that’s how it would look, and we can’t have that now, can we?”

So Gran had taken Sue shopping and bought her a beautiful party dress of white satin and red velvet, with new stockings to match. “Your grandfather is senior partner,” Gran told her as she combed Sue’s hair. “You have to make a very good impression on them all, to show them how important your grandfather is.”

As soon as she arrived at the party, Sue knew she was overdressed. None of the other girls were wearing dresses; most of them were in jeans and T-shirts. Most of the girls at Brenda’s party were other little girls Sue didn’t like, so she spent most of the party sitting in a corner, just watching and hoping it would be over soon. She ate cake, drank punch, clapped politely as Brenda opened her presents, and wished fervently for the day to be over. Finally, it was, and when Gran asked her, Sue had lied and made it seem like she’d had a great time.

But unbeknownst to them all, one of the guests at Brenda’s party had been coming down with the chicken pox. Sue couldn’t remember which girl it was now, but there had been a frantic phone call, and Gran had come into Sue’s bedroom with a terribly pale look on her face. She seemed horribly distraught, as if she had failed Sue in some deep and profound way.

“If we had known, we wouldn’t have let you go,” she said. She stroked Sue’s hair, a rare gesture of affection, one of the few Sue remembered from her childhood. “Your grandfather thinks you’re so strong that you’ll be able to fight it off. But you might get sick, dear. And if so, we will nurse you through it. We’ll see that you get better.” She kept stroking Sue’s hair. She seemed to be reassuring herself as much as Sue. “I told all of them that you’d be fine, that we’d get you through it, that no one needed to worry.”

Remembering that now, Sue wondered whom Gran had meant—who the people were that her grandmother was so desperate to reassure. At the time, however, she had been too frightened to wonder—too scared that her face would soon be covered with the dreaded pox.

Only, she never got sick.

“I told you,” her grandfather had crowed. “I told you she was strong enough.”

Every other girl who’d been at the party got the chicken pox. Every one of them missed school the entire next week.

Except for Sue—the only one who didn’t come down with it.

That doesn’t prove anything is weird about me.
Sue shivered, rolling over onto her back to look up at the ceiling.
It just means I’m immune somehow to that, and to all the other stuff kids get. It’s not a big deal.

But it’s not
normal.

She’d never missed a day of school. At the end of the year, she always got a prize for perfect attendance. The only other times she’d ever thrown up, in fact, were a couple of episodes of motion sickness on Granpa’s boat out on Long Island Sound.

She felt like a freak.

“Hey!”

Sue looked up. Malika had come back. She came through the door with a large paper cup sealed tight with a lid.

“I brought you some chamomile tea,” she said. “How you feeling, girl?”

“Much better, thanks,” Sue told her, accepting the tea. She took a sip. It was too hot to drink, so she set it on her bedside table.

“I thought I’d pop back between classes to check on you,” her roommate said. “What did the nurse say?”

“She agreed it was food poisoning.” Sue decided not to tell her about the appointment with Dr. Bauer. “But I’m fine now.”

“Will you be able to make it to Marshall’s class for the test?”

“Oh, sure. I was just doing some last-minute cramming for it now.”

“We should probably call that restaurant—”

Malika was interrupted by a rap at the door. “Miss Barlow?” said a voice from the other side. A male voice.

Sue and Malika exchanged a curious glance. Sue nodded to her roommate that she should open the door. Malika peered out through the peephole and then quickly pulled the door open.

It was Dean Gregory.

“May I see Miss Barlow?” he was asking Malika.

“Here I am,” Sue said, standing.

The dean rushed into the room, followed by Mrs. Oosterhouse. He was a tall man with a small, pinched face. He seemed to have been in a hurry to get to Bentley Hall, as he wore no jacket and his white shirt and blue tie were speckled with raindrops. Mud covered his Bass Weejuns and had splashed up on his wool pants. Oostie waddled close behind him, a little out of breath. Had no one answered the door, Sue assumed Oostie would have used her master key to let the dean inside.

“What’s wrong?” Sue asked.

“Nothing, we hope,” Gregory said, smiling at her. “I heard you weren’t feeling well today, Miss Barlow.”

Sue and Malika exchanged quizzical looks. “I had a headache,” Sue said.

“Bad enough that you went to the infirmary.”

Sue was astounded. “Do you check up on every girl who goes to see the nurse?”

Gregory’s smile stretched across his small, weasely face. “Your grandfather called me,” he explained. “I was just making sure you were all right.”

“My grandfather? You know my grandfather?”

“Well, of course,” Gregory told her. “He’s one of Wilbourne’s best supporters.”

Sue gave a little laugh. “By supporter, you mean benefactor?”

Gregory nodded. “Mr. Barlow has always been extremely generous to Wilbourne.”

“So that explains it,” Sue said, turning to Malika. “Why they sent me here. They were so clever, pretending they wished I was attending a school closer to home. They wanted me to come here all along.”

“And we’re glad you did,” Gregory said. He laughed. “Excuse me, but we haven’t officially met.” He extended his hand to Sue, who reluctantly shook it. “Let me welcome you to Wilbourne, Miss Barlow. I would have gotten around to meet you sooner—I was looking forward to it, in fact—but when I got the news that you might be ill, I knew it was long past time to come by and see you.”

“Thanks,” Sue said, terribly uncomfortable.

“Nurse Cochrane said you have an appointment with Dr. Bauer,” the dean said. “Please let me know what he says. And if you need anything from us, please don’t hesitate to call on me or Mrs. Oosterhouse.”

Oostie gave Sue a cheeky grin.

“I’m sure I’m going to be fine,” Sue said.

Gregory beamed. When he smiled, he looked less like a weasel and more like a bat—beady little eyes and a mouthful of teeth. There was a faint cheeselike odor hovering around him—perspiration meets wool and rain. Sue found him utterly repulsive.

“Well, you rest up today,” Gregory told her. “Don’t exert yourself.”

“I have a test today I need to study for,” Sue said. “Dr. Marshall’s class.”

Gregory shook his head. “I’ve already spoken to Dr. Marshall, and asked her to excuse you from the test. You can make it up later.”

Sue felt herself getting angry. “That’s not necessary! I’ll take the test today!”

“Tut, tut, Miss Barlow. The most important thing is that you get better.” He turned to Malika. “Please see to it that she does nothing but rest today.”

“This is ridiculous and totally unnecessary,” Sue objected.

“Please take my card, Miss Barlow,” the dean was saying. “If, in the future, you should need anything, please don’t hesitate to call. It’s my private number.”

He placed the card on Sue’s desk, then turned to head out the door, Oostie following obediently behind. “Rest, Miss Barlow,” he ordered her. “I assured your grandfather you’d get nothing but rest.”

He shook his finger at her and smiled. Then he was gone.

“God
damn,
” Malika said.

Sue sat down hard on her bed. “What the fuck was that?”

“I’ve never once had Dean Gregory come looking for me,” Malika said. “I don’t even think he knows my name.”

“My grandmother was so smooth on the phone. She knew my grandfather was calling the dean.”

“You had no idea that Granddaddy was bankrolling Wilbourne?”

Sue shook her head. “None.”

Malika sat down beside her on the bed. “Hey, there are worse things than having the dean of students on your side.”

“But I don’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else. I want to take that test today!”

Malika sighed. “You didn’t tell me about that doctor’s appointment. Maybe it is better for you to just rest up today. Why stress yourself?”

“Dr. Marshall probably thinks I’m some snotty rich girl now, getting the dean to do me favors.” Sue flopped back down on the bed. “I’m really fine. It was just a headache.”

But she couldn’t lie to herself. It had been more than that. Something had happened in her head this morning—something she didn’t want to think about.

Nor did she want to think about her grandfather’s involvement in Wilbourne. Why did it trouble her so?

When Billy called a half hour later to say that no, he hadn’t gotten sick, Sue felt even worse. She gave in to Malika’s insistence that she get back in bed and watch reruns of
The Golden Girls
. But her mind was far, far away from the antics of Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose.

She was thinking again about her dream…and about all the dead girls she had seen.

Every small town has its secrets.

People in Lebanon liked to joke that there were no secrets in their town—that everyone knew everyone else’s business. Gossip could be mined pretty much anywhere in town. People talked at the Yellow Bird, at Earl’s Tavern, at the A&P. They shook their heads over tragedies, clapped their hands when beaming moms revealed their studious offspring had made the honor roll. They’d never admit, however, to being secretly gleeful when someone flew a little too close to the sun and fell to earth—the people of Lebanon were good people, above all else.

Yet despite all the talk, there were still secrets in Lebanon, dark things people definitely didn’t want their neighbors to know.

Everyone in town knew that brawny Bud Tomlin, who owned Bud’s Shell, was catcher on his slow-pitch softball team and led the county league in home runs. But no one knew—least of all his wife Bettie—that Bud’s real reason for staying up late some nights after Bettie and the kids were sound asleep was to cruise Web sites for pictures of naked girls under the age of thirteen, masturbating two or three times before erasing all traces of where he’d been. No one knew that sometimes, when he was finished, Bud wept with guilt—and that some nights he would put a gun to his head and consider pulling the trigger.

Everyone knew that Barbara Schoenfeld was a great cook and that her cakes and pies always brought the highest dollar amount at the Methodist Church’s bake sales. Everyone knew she spent three or four hours a week in aerobics classes at Lebanon Fitness Center trying to keep her trim figure—and most thought her husband Nate was one lucky man. What no one knew was that every Sunday after church, while her husband was off haunting garage sales and flea markets for things to sell in their secondhand shop, Barbara would meet nineteen-year-old Tim Westlake in the back room at Schoenfeld Antiques. No one knew that Barbara would undress him and have sex with him on her husband’s desk—sometimes on top of unpaid bills and invoices. No one knew she kept Tim’s underwear every time as a trophy, locking the briefs away in a drawer in her kitchen. No one knew that sometimes when she was baking, Barbara would take out the most recent pair and hold them up to her face, inhaling the boy’s scent deeply as she thought about what she’d do with him the next Sunday afternoon.

Everyone knew and liked Wally Bingham. Everyone knew he worked hard and missed his wife. Everyone knew Millie Carter—the devout, bereaved widow of former First Selectman Jesse Carter, who wore a locket around her neck with Jesse’s photo inside, who played the organ at the Episcopalian Church and sang sweetly with the choir. But no one knew that on those rare nights when Wally took a night off, he’d give Millie a call, and off would come the locket and on would come some sexy fishnet stockings, and the two would meet down by Earl’s Tavern. Making sure no one saw her, Millie would sneak down the alley and let herself into Wally’s apartment with her own key.

Everybody knew Ken Von Stein had turned the fortunes of Lebanon High football around in the seven years he’d been head coach. Everybody knew and liked his wife Evie, and his adorable and smart three children who were in the grammar school. Everyone looked at the Von Steins as shining examples of everything that was right with Lebanon. Everybody was proud of the four conference championship banners that hung in the high school gym, won by Ken’s teams in the last five years. But nobody knew that when making love to his wife, Ken was actually thinking about the boys on his football team walking around naked in the locker room after practice. Nobody knew that sometimes some of the football players were mystified to discover that their dirty jocks had disappeared from their lockers overnight. Nobody knew that every Tuesday night, after the other players had gone home, David Hemingway, the fullback, would slip into Ken’s office and drop his jeans, letting the coach service him. Nobody knew how much Coach Von Stein hated himself every time he did this, yet somehow he couldn’t stop himself, even though he knew he could lose his job and his family and go to jail if anyone ever found out.

Everybody knew that Cat Marsden was overprotective and smothering of her thirteen-year-old son Jimmy. That wasn’t a secret to anyone—that had had been going on ever since Cat’s husband had run off when Jimmy was just a baby. What nobody knew was that Hank Marsden hadn’t really run off on his wife. He’d meant to, but Cat had shot him twice in the head before he could get out the door, and had buried his body in the basement of the Marsden house.

Everybody knew that Claire Holland had died a slow and painful death from a cancer that had rotted her from the inside out. Everyone had liked Claire—she’d been head cheerleader and Homecoming Queen at the high school and had never had a bad thing to say about anyone. Everyone knew that her husband, Sheriff Miles Holland, was still mourning her death three years later, and it was beginning to look like he’d never get over it. They didn’t know that when she had finally died he was relieved—and not just because her suffering was over. He was also relieved because his own suffering had ended as well. They didn’t know how often he’d prayed for Claire to die, and how incredibly guilty he felt about it. No matter how much he tried to convince himself he prayed for her death just so she’d be released from her pain, he knew that he’d prayed so fervently because he wanted to be freed of the burden of taking care of her. People didn’t know that every time Miles went to lay flowers on his wife’s grave, he asked her to forgive him. They didn’t know the guilt was slowly starting to take a toll on his own sanity. They didn’t know how often Miles wished he were in the grave with her.

Everyone knew that Dean Theodore “Ted” Gregory ran Wilbourne College like a small personal fiefdom, an autocracy he’d been granted by an obliging board of trustees, nearly all of whom had been specifically selected by Gregory. There was a nominal president of the college, of course, Mrs. Marion Edwards Taft, but she was over eighty now, and her duties had gradually devolved to Ted Gregory. It seemed to most people in Lebanon that Gregory had always been at Wilbourne; his father had been on the board, and Ted had been made a professor of English right out of college. Everyone knew that Gregory had an intense dislike of being contradicted; he sometimes overruled fellow committee members when organizing fund-raisers for Lebanon’s St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. Few ever objected; Ted Gregory knew how to get things done. He and his wife Mona were pillars of St. Mark’s, and the other church members understood how very committed Ted was to spreading “the word of the Lord,” as he called it. If that sometimes meant he had to run roughshod over people—usually secular-minded people who had no appreciation for the word of the Lord—then so be it.

Except for those who attended St. Mark’s, not a lot of people in Lebanon knew Ted and Mona Gregory. They were, after all, “Wilbournians.” But they knew their two twin sons, Bruce and Bryce, who’d been straight A students and star athletes at Lebanon High. Such good-looking boys they were, and so filled with promise for the future. People sometimes asked Ted and Mona how the boys were making out at college, and they’d be told, “Marvelous, just marvelous.” But what they didn’t know was that Bruce had dropped out of Ohio State midway through his first semester and disappeared; Bryce had left the University of Michigan a heroin addict, and was now a male prostitute on the streets of Detroit.

There was, in fact, a great deal that the people of Lebanon didn’t know about the Gregorys. They didn’t know that late at night, in the Dean’s House on campus, Ted and Mona locked their doors tight and closed all the curtains, and then sat on the floor chanting strange words and singing queer rhymes. They didn’t know that spilled between them on a marble altar was blood—and that more blood was stored in vials hidden in their dining room cabinet, behind the fine china and crystal. They didn’t know about the secret room that the Gregorys had built in the basement of the dean’s house. No one knew about that room—except for Bruce and Bryce, and it was that room that had sealed their tragic fates.

Everyone knew the history of the town of Lebanon—how in 1687, a group of people had left Boston and forged a new village out of the wilderness in upstate New York. Every schoolchild read that story of Lebanon’s beginnings, how the town’s founders had been a sect even more conservative than the rigid Puritans, and how they’d been forced to practice their religion in secret. Everyone knew there was a memorial to the patriarchs of the first four families of Lebanon in the Town Square, and that every June 20, Founder’s Day, the town celebrated the bravery and commitment of these pious men. The original faith of Lebanon’s founders had not lasted long beyond that first generation, but still these good men had endowed the town with a deep commitment to God, family, and neighbor, and for that, every year, they were hailed.

What people didn’t know–what had been erased from history books—was that the “good founders” of Lebanon had left Boston just one step ahead of an angry mob that torched their houses, and that, had they been caught before they fled, they would have been hanged. Nobody knew that the religious expression the town fathers sought had nothing to do with worshipping God. They also didn’t know that the original faith of Lebanon’s founders had not, in fact, died out—but that it was still alive, thriving in fact, on the campus of Wilbourne College.