Hard Case Crime: Witness To Myself (6 page)

“Take your pick,” he said. “Out to Bucks County? Amish country? Peru? Or none of the above.”

“Oh Peru, of course.”

“Then I’ll have to fill up the tank first.”

They both laughed, and then she said, “I have an idea. Are your dates allowed to have ideas?”

“Not really. What?”

“How about a nice ride to Jersey? A beach?”

He felt a slight sagging around his heart. He hadn’t been to any seashore since that summer; had avoided them as though all of the Atlantic Ocean and its beaches were part of that nightmare.

He said, “If you’d like. Sure.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“I mean it. Let’s go someplace else. Bucks County — New Hope — great.”

“No. I want the shore. Do you have a preference?”

“Well, have you ever been to Long Beach Island?”

“Yes. Once. Long ago.” That had been when he was ten and they’d stayed at a motel for a few days. It was about sixty miles from the city.

“I was only there once myself and I loved it. It’s so quiet compared to Atlantic City, Wildwood...”

He took the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over to New Jersey — Camden — and out past the city and finally to a two-lane road through country and woodland and then to another two-lane road that would lead to the island some thirty miles away.

Anna had started her new job the previous week and, incredibly to him, was finding not only the satisfaction she’d hoped to find working with the sick and crippled aged, but something more — actual joy.

“It’s hard to explain if someone doesn’t feel it. These people, even the ones with Alzheimer’s, have so much history to tell, if you just listen to them, have patience with them.”

“You’re remarkable, do you know that?”

“No, I’m not. Don’t say that.”

“Okay, I’ll keep it to myself.”

She looked at him and smiled and then reached over and squeezed his hand on the wheel.

They were approaching a causeway now that led over the bay to the island. And at the first sight of it, he felt a quick tightening in his chest and a rush of horrendous memories. This was so much like the approach to Sea Belle that it was as if Mrs. Devlin, dead now some five years, would be waiting for him there; and everything else that had followed seemed to be waiting there too.

The bay at that time had been alive with boats. Only two or three were out on its vastness now.

The road off the causeway ended at a traffic circle; they could go right or left on the street that cut through the narrow island. He turned left, having the vague memory that right was much busier.

Many of the shops still hadn’t opened for the summer, and there were only a few cars on the street and just a handful of people on the sidewalks. He opened a window; the air seemed so clean, held the smell of the ocean. He could feel his tension easing away. Huge houses, many of them mansions, had replaced what he remembered as cottages here. But somehow, despite that, there was still a feeling to the place of vast sandy emptiness.

He parked near the end of the island, in view of the lighthouse there. Anna immediately took off her sandals and started to open her door, then seemed surprised that he was still sitting there.

“Don’t you want to go out on the beach?”

“Yes. Sure.” But he almost had to force himself to take off his Docksiders.

She was waiting for him in front of the car, her hand out to him. They walked hand in hand along a narrow path to the beach, and then far out on the wide beach toward the ocean. There was no other person around. In the distance an empty lifeguard stand lay on its back, like a gigantic insect.

They sat down on the sand. His heart had begun pounding and just wouldn’t stop.

South Minton was over three hundred miles away, and yet it was as if that part of the ocean was bleeding into here.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

He almost wasn’t aware that the fingers of his right hand had been digging hard into the sand. He had dug deep, reaching damp sand.

“Just trying to reach China,” he said.

“You used to do that too?”

He managed a smile. “I’m still doing it.”

She leaned against him and put her arm around him. He put his around her and squeezed her to him.

“Hey,” she said after a few moments, “I can’t breathe.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He released her immediately.

“No, no. I forgot to tell you I love not breathing.”

They laughed. “You are something,” he said, looking at her. He touched her right cheek with his fingertips. She turned just enough to kiss his palm.

He suddenly wanted to cry out Oh Anna! But he was even afraid to say her name, as if that would bring out more.

“You look like you’re thinking,” she said.

“Me? Just how happy I am to be with you.”

She turned to him and they kissed. He felt that if he made them both naked and he lay with her here, everything would be perfect; he had no fear with her, only great need and desire. He touched her breasts and she pressed herself into his palms, kissing him hard. He started to unbutton her blouse on that wide empty beach but after a moment or two she shook her head.

“Please. Let’s not here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. No, not that. Don’t be sorry. Just not here.”

After a while they drove to the other end of the island, and later had dinner at a restaurant on the causeway whose long bar was filled largely with construction workers. On the drive back she reached out and placed her hand on his knee, and whenever he glanced at her she would be looking at him, smiling. It was only as they approached the city that her mood seemed to change. Then, staring straight ahead, she said, “Can I tell you something? It’s something I heard yesterday that has me upset.”

“Of course.”

“It’s about my sister. She’s pregnant. And she’s only a kid herself. Just fifteen.”

He didn’t say anything right away. “What about the father?”

“He’s a kid too. In fact she doesn’t even want to see him anymore. And my father, he’s so upset. Oh is he mad.”

“How’s your mother handling it?”

“Upset. Very upset. But —” She stopped. He said nothing, and then after a few moments she went on. “But she should be the last one to say anything. She had me when she was sixteen.”

“With your father?” Anna was so open that he felt free to ask.

She nodded. “Yeah. That’s why they got married, at least when they did. So, he’s not one to talk either.”

She became quiet again, and he drove on in silence. Then when he looked over at her she was looking at him. She said, “Are you upset with me?”

“Upset with you? Why?”

“Because of what I told you.”

“Now why would I be upset with you over that?”

“I don’t know. Because you might think I have a crazy family. I was just wondering.”

“Oh no.” And he reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it and held it to her lips.

Her apartment was on the second floor. He was feeling a rush of anxiety now, had first begun feeling it long before he turned into her street. Still, he led her over to the sofa and put his arms around her and kissed her. Her hands grew tight on his back. Lips open, they took in each other’s breathing, and now his tongue was tangled with hers. Soon his hand moved to one of her breasts, held its fullness. But within a few seconds she sat up straight.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Just don’t. Please.”

“I’m not.”

“I can’t,” she said.

Then she lowered her head and began to cry. He watched her, then heard her say, as if to herself as much as to him: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Driving away from the truck stop, Alan could still remember just looking at her and thinking again of those words “nutcase,” “wifty.”

Here he was, the thought went through him, scared of what lay ahead and yet a part of him was back there on that sofa, hearing her saying, “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel well, please don’t be mad.” And then holding her but thinking this was the end of anything between them.

The snow was beginning to come down even harder now but he could see that the sky ahead was almost a summer blue. He began looking on the weather more and more as the proper crazy setting for what he was doing. And the questions he’d been trying to suppress ever since he started this drive were coming back like hammer blows.

What if I find out I did kill her? What then?

He almost closed his eyes to the splattering snow and the sweeping wipers.

But it can’t be!

Then why are you going back there?

To clear his head of it once and for all, he kept telling himself. To be free in a way he hadn’t been since that day.

But then why did a part of him want to turn the car around?

He was aware all at once of how slowly he’d begun to drive, as if to make this last hundred and fifty miles stretch on forever. And, even though reluctantly, he stepped a little harder on the gas.

Although he had told himself he would never call Anna again after that incident, his mind kept going back to her so many times during the next several days, even while he was writing a brief or having lunch with a client. She was a nutcase, she came from a family that seemed straight out of the old Ozarks, yet he couldn’t shake her from his thoughts. Still, he didn’t know if he would ever call her again. He would never get to find out: She called him the following week at his office, and from her voice it was as if nothing had gone wrong between them. She asked if he was free to come over for dinner that night. “Or any night.”

“Oh, tonight’s fine. I’d love to.”

He got there at seven, with a bottle of merlot that he brought from his apartment. She was wearing a T-shirt and had an apron around her skirt. Her hair, which she often wore pulled back, was down. She smiled and took his hand and lifted her face for a kiss.

“Hon, make yourself comfortable. I just want to finish something.”

The kitchen, with a small table to one side, was separated from the living room by a counter. He walked over to a photo that stood on a lamp table. It was her LPN graduation picture, a head shot, showing her smiling and wearing a nurse’s cap; the last time he’d seen a nurse wearing one was in an old movie. Nearby was a picture of her and her family, the four of them standing stiff, formal.

She’d made steaks and French fries and a salad, but felt it necessary to explain that she had come home at six and hadn’t been able to make anything else.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “This is fine, more than fine. In fact you didn’t have to make anything at all. We could have gone out.”

“I wanted to make something for you.”

After dinner, as he was walking to the sink with a couple of plates, she took them from him and set them down and, looking up at him, put her arms around him. They kissed each other hard, then softly, then hard again, their arms tight around each other. Then she took his hand and they walked into the bedroom. There she started to unbutton his shirt, then stopped as though her fingers had gotten too clumsy in her hurry. Instead she lifted her T-shirt over her head and then came close again in bra and skirt.

She looked up at him and kissed him as he unhooked her bra.

In bed he was aware of almost nothing but the feel and good smell of her and then almost miraculously the wondrous rhythm, slow at first and then faster, of their bodies.

“Oh Anna.” Only the rhythm and just wanting to say her name.

“Yes, sweetheart, yes darling.”

And then wanting only to hold her even tighter, longer, forever.

But it was only afterward, after they fell back and lay gently in each other’s arms, their legs entangled, that he sensed something from her face that told him she hadn’t really joined him at the end.

They saw each other almost every night that week. And on Saturday she asked if he would like to drive her home to Tamaqua the next day, that she had a few things there she wanted to bring back to her apartment. He was happy to do it, was curious to meet her family.

When he went to pick her up she said, “Alan, don’t be mad at me but I’ve got to stop at the nursing home. I forgot something completely. One of the patients is having a birthday and I bought something for her, and here I simply forgot.”

“So why would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know. It’ll be about an hour.”

“Oh my, my life is ruined. The big thing is, am I invited?”

“Of course.” She laughed and gave him a kiss.

The nursing home was a white, pillared building set on several acres of greenery near the outskirts of the city. He watched as Anna walked among the patients in the lounge, most of them in wheelchairs, sitting staring down at their laps. She paused to kiss a cheek here and there, or to urge a smile, or clasp a thin hand, or just to kneel and make a try at conversation. The birthday girl was a woman of ninety-one, and Anna’s gift, among several others around the wheelchair, was a blouse, which she lifted from its box to the slight, quickly fading smile of the woman and the applause of a nurse and an attendant standing by.

Afterward, driving away, Alan said, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“How I do what?” She was frowning slightly as she turned to him.

“Everything you do. You have a magic touch.”

“Ah.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

He started noticing a change in her as they began driving through the old anthracite region, with its fields of green grass and occasional contrasting piles of black slag, the debris of long-abandoned mines. He wasn’t going to mention anything to her, but she said, instead, “I’m nervous.”

“Why? Because of my two noses?”

She laughed. “That would be all right. I’m thinking of my father. He can be very nice or else he can be tough.”

“How does he respond to being slapped around?”

She laughed. “Oh you two will get along great.”

Soon after they entered the town, she pointed to an auto repair shop, a closed sign on the door, that had something of the look of a junkyard.

“That’s my dad’s place. We live a couple blocks away.”