Amy and Isabelle (27 page)

I’m thinking of you
, she thought, closing her eyes tightly for a few seconds, her hand resting on the adding machine.
I’m waiting for you
.

He was there nearby. She could feel this, could feel his comings and goings, his solitary meals. She knew at night when he stretched out on his bed, removed his socks, took his glasses off, and lay in the dark thinking of her. This much she knew, and as the days went by she seemed to know it more.

BUT POOR ISABELLE knew nothing. Certainly not herself. She knew nothing except the aura of disbelief that surrounded her as the days rolled by. She had done that to Amy, grabbed her hair and cut it off.

It was like she had done a murder—it was like that.

You read about such a thing occasionally, an ordinary citizen murdering someone. A normal, pleasant, churchgoing man suddenly stabbing a knife through the chest of a wife, stabbing again and again, the knife hitting bone, blood spurting, sinewy sounds, pulling the knife out, plunging again—and then standing there—all of it unbelievable. But true, because you have just done that.

Only in Isabelle’s case the corpse got up and walked around, drove to work with her each morning, sat across from her at dinner each night, the red bloodstains still there in the form of that terrible hair, the changed face, its pale angularity, the stunned, naked-looking eyes. She had disfigured her daughter. But hadn’t she
intended
that when she walked into her bedroom, holding the shears?

It didn’t seem possible. Because who was Isabelle Goodrow? She was not a murderer. She was not one of those monstrous mothers you sometimes heard about who disfigured their children, putting them in tubs of scalding water, pressing burning cigarettes or hot irons onto their small, precious hands. And yet she had clutched the hair of Amy that night, had seized the yellow curls of her own daughter with a colossal desire to destroy bursting from within.

She didn’t know herself. She didn’t think this was Isabelle Goodrow.

The hot days passed. When she glanced at her daughter across the tired office room (the girl sitting hunched over the adding machine, her skinny neck, white as paper, seeming so long), Isabelle’s eyes would fill with abrupt hot tears and she would want to run across the room and throw her arms around the girl’s neck, to press the pale face against her own, and say, Amy, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Amy.

Oh, the girl was not going to let her do that. Not then, not ever. No sir. You could see in the blank, unforgiving eyes that something irrevocable had been snipped with those shears; the hair might grow back but not this other thing, whose loss Amy clamped down upon with absoluteness. Forget it, Amy’s blank eyes, never quite looking at her mother, said—forget it, you’re gone.

The hair, in fact, was growing back and within a few weeks’ time it didn’t seem quite as bad, as wild as it had at first. Still, it needed to be trimmed and shaped. But Isabelle could not bring herself to say this, could not imagine herself speaking to Amy the word “hair.” Arlene Tucker spoke it instead. “This heat,” she said in the lunchroom one day, “is hell on hair. Everyone looks like shit.” And whether she intended it or not, her eyes happened to pass fleetingly over the bent head of Amy Goodrow, who was sitting across the table with a peanut-butter sandwich lifted to her mouth.

“God Almighty,” Fat Bev responded, “speak for yourself, Arlene.” She shot Arlene a look. Isabelle’s face flushed red.

“I am speaking for myself, God Almighty,” retorted Arlene, putting her fingers into her own dark hair and plucking at it. “I went to have my roots done and the color came out wrong.” This was true enough, if anyone cared to look closely. The crown of Arlene’s head seemed a deep shade of orange while the rest of her hair remained chocolate-brown. “And the girl said she’d given someone a perm that morning that
didn’t take in this heat. Came out all wacky, sticking out in all directions on this woman’s head—”

“I read there’s a new beauty shop opened in Hennecock,” offered Isabelle, anxious to get off the subject, specifically, of hair. “They’re giving free makeovers for the month of July. I guess to drum up business.” And then, recklessly, “I sometimes think that would be fun. Walk in one person, walk out another.”

She thought she saw in the quiet drop of Amy’s eyes an expression of disgust.

“Those never work,” Arlene said dismissively. “They just paint you up like a dead person to sell you all the products.”

“All right, then,” Isabelle said. “So much for that. Forget I mentioned it.”

AT THE CHURCH a tall fan blew in the middle of the activities room, but it didn’t seem to be doing a bit of good. The room was stifling and smelled old, as though the heat had released years’ worth of people’s sweat that had previously settled into the floorboards and walls and wooden windowsills, as though the countless meetings held there in the past—troops of anxious, noisy prepubescent Girl Scouts (little Pammy Matthews, who had one day wet her pants, pee trickling down her leg and into her red shoe while hands were raised solemnly in pledge to God and country); the countless coffee hours after church, when deacons stood politely in dark gray trousers, eating doughnut holes as their wives chatted to one another; the many meetings of the Historical Society (Davinia Dayble had once given a talk on the first flush toilet in Shirley Falls, which according to her research had been on the Honorable Judge Crane’s estate)—all these past activities in the activities room seemed now in this heat to emit their own memorable scents of anxiety, and the effect was cloying, nostalgic, muffled.

Isabelle walked to the back of the room, the floor creaking beneath her black pumps, and took hold of a metal foldout chair. She stood for a moment, uncertain where to place it.

A few other women had already arrived. They stood by a card table that held a large thermos bottle with the word LEMONADE printed on it in black Magic Marker, a tilting column of Styrofoam cups placed
alongside. The women had nodded in Isabelle’s direction, wiggling their fingers in a casual hello, but they were engrossed in their conversation and no one said, “Oh Isabelle, come and get yourself something cold to drink.”

She unfolded her chair not far from them and sat down, arranging her face in what she hoped was a pleasant smile, although to her it felt strained, and she worried she might appear crinkle-eyed and foolish.

She had come here to change her life. She intended to be forthright and friendly, to make her way into the social world of the Congregational church; for it had occurred to her as she dwelled on this for the last number of days that in the past she had simply not tried hard enough. Having friends meant being friendly, her father used to say.

But as she sat on the metal chair, her perky smile feeling undirected, if not ridiculous in this awful heat, it seemed she suffered from some disability, for if only she could sail over to Peg Dunlap right now and say breezily, “Goodness, warm enough for you tonight, Peg?” these women would see how she was ordinary and pleasant like them.

But she was not like them. She worked in the mill, to begin with. And she lived in a small rented house, and she had no husband.

She crossed her ankles carefully. She didn’t fit in at the mill, either—that was the thing. Dottie Brown, Fat Bev, Arlene Tucker, Lenora Snibbens, they were all Catholic, of course, their backgrounds were French Canadian, and that was simply a whole different kettle of fish. She had nothing against them, but they were not women she wanted to mix with outside of work. She had gone every summer except this one (claiming illness, which was true enough—she was ill with life) to the Fourth of July barbecue at Fat Bev’s house, and watched the men drinking beer, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands, and listening to the jokes they told. “What do you get when you turn a blond bimbo upside down?”

Arlene Tucker might laugh and say to her husband, “Now, don’t go being disgusting,” but nobody really seemed to find it disgusting except for Isabelle. She tried to be accommodating; she didn’t want to be a spoilsport, but it simply wasn’t funny.
A brunette with bad breath
. That really was not funny. And another joke concerning flatulence and pantyhose that even right now brought color to Isabelle’s cheeks as she
remembered herself standing tense and anxious, eating Bea Brown’s potato salad off a paper plate.

She was absolutely certain these women here, Clara Wilcox and Peg Dunlap and the others, would never in a million years enjoy a joke like that. She thought, and not for the first time, that if she had become a teacher, the way she had planned, it would all be very different. These women here would know that she belonged. They would call her on the telephone, invite her to dinner, talk about books.

Although they weren’t talking about books now, Isabelle noted. They were talking about some person, she felt quite certain of this, the way their hands were held to their mouths, their voices low and confidential. Peg Dunlap caught Isabelle’s eye and stopped midsentence in her talk with Clara Wilcox to say, “Some lemonade, Isabelle?”

Gratefully Isabelle rose to her feet. “It’s really something, isn’t it,” she said, touching her perspiring forehead. “This heat.”

“Really something.”

She clutched her Styrofoam cup and the women smiled vacantly, their conversation interrupted. She sipped her lemonade, holding the cup to her lips, and glanced at the women with shy expectancy. But the women’s eyes remained averted, and Isabelle returned, rather awkwardly, to her seat.

Peg Dunlap said something to Clara Wilcox and Isabelle heard the words “straight for a mammogram” and felt so relieved to know at least they hadn’t been talking about
her
that she almost got up to rejoin the group and tell them whoever it was that had to go straight for a mammogram shouldn’t worry too awfully much because nine out of ten lumps were benign. She thought that’s what the
Reader’s Digest
had said anyway. (Suddenly remembering Amy’s voice: “You never read anything except that stupid
Reader’s Digest
.”)

She took a rather large swallow of her lemonade. Perhaps if she finished it she could return to the card table for more and mention then the business of nine out of ten. Still, she didn’t want to appear piggish with the lemonade, the thermos was not that big. While she contemplated this dilemma, Barbara Rawley, the deacon’s wife who had made the unpleasant remarks last fall about Isabelle’s choice of colored leaves and bittersweet in decorating the altar, now
walked into the room and began to clap her hands. “Okay, girls. Let’s begin.”

It did seem preposterous to be discussing the Christmas bazaar in such heat. But, as Peg Dunlap reminded them, the bazaar was their biggest event, and there was no getting started too soon. The women nodded, touching their brows with tissues and fanning themselves with church programs that had been left on the windowsills the Sunday before. Volunteers were needed for the baked-goods stall, and Isabelle raised her hand; her telephone number was written down on a list. “I’d be happy to make a few chocolate cakes,” Isabelle said, smiling. “A wonderful recipe of my mother’s. Sour milk, you know.”

No one smiled back. Clara Wilcox vaguely nodded her head, and Peg Dunlap, in charge of the list, simply said, “Isabelle Goodrow, two cakes. ”

Isabelle pretended to look through her pocketbook for something, finally snapping it shut. Picking a piece of lint from her skirt, she bobbed her foot.

“Paper goods,” said Barbara Rawley, who in this heat did not look quite as pretty as usual, a grayness showing beneath her eyes. “Last year we forgot that entirely.” She and Peg Dunlap discussed briefly in low tones the need for subcommittees.

“Oh,” said Clara Wilcox,” extending her hand toward them. “I spoke to Emma Clark. She wasn’t able to come tonight, but she’s ready to sign on for wreaths again.”

Peg Dunlap nodded. “I spoke to her,” she said, and Isabelle, who had experienced some feeling of agitation at hearing the name Emma Clark, now saw Peg Dunlap look up quickly and glance into her eyes—an involuntary glance—then just as quickly look away.

Peg Dunlap knew. Isabelle saw this instantly: in that one quick, reflexive glance, she saw that Peg Dunlap knew.

IT WAS DARK when she drove home. Through the open windows came the sound of crickets; passing over the wooden bridge by the marsh, she heard a bullfrog, throaty, deep. The night air was just beginning to seem cool as it moved through the open car windows, and passing by a farm the smell of mowed field filled Isabelle with some
tremor that was almost erotic, some confluence of different longings; and then tears came down her face, dripping steadily off her chin, and she just let them come, steering the car slowly through the dark with both hands on the wheel.

She thought how Avery Clark had told his wife, after all, what he had discovered in the woods that day, even though he had promised Isabelle he would not tell anyone. She thought of her daughter, and of her mother, who was dead, and her father, who had died when she was a young girl, and her father’s friend, Jake Cunningham, who was also now dead. She wondered when it had been determined that her life would turn out this way.

“Belle, Belle, the miracle,” her father used to say, opening his arms for her as she sat on the couch. He meant it: Isabelle’s mother, having been told by doctors she would most likely not be having children (for what reasons Isabelle never learned), had therefore, producing Isabelle, produced a miracle; but there were responsibilities in being a miracle, and some little stone—smooth, dark, heavy for its size—had sat inside Isabelle from early on. She had never given it the name of fear, but fear is what it was. Because her parents’ joy, it seemed, rested in her hands alone. As a result, they seemed awfully vulnerable to her and required, without knowing it, the same kind of dotingness they offered.

Isabelle was twelve years old when her father sat behind the wheel at a gas station one morning and died while his car’s tank was getting filled. Her mother cried easily after that. Sometimes her mother would cry just because the toast got burned, and Isabelle felt sorry and would scrape the burned edges into the garbage with a knife. Her mother cried every time the roof leaked, and Isabelle would scurry around the living room with pails, watching through the window for a letup in the rain.