I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel (25 page)

ELIZA EASED HER BODY INTO BED,
joints aching as if she had completed a marathon. She had, in a sense, run a marathon of mothering today. A biathlon, if one threw Trudy Tackett into the mix, only what would you call the second event?

Without saying a word, Peter reached for her shoulders and began to knead them. She was grateful he didn't want to talk further about the afternoon, that he knew to leave her in peace.

“You didn't call,” Trudy had said, almost accusingly. It seemed to be Eliza's day to face down older women who were disappointed in her, in her manners, in her parenting. “I waited, but when I didn't hear from you within the first few days, I knew you weren't going to call.”

“I didn't have anything to say.”

“To me. It's my understanding that you've been speaking quite a bit to another old acquaintance of ours.”

Eliza was almost grateful then for the humiliation of the trip to North Bethesda Middle School. It gave her a reason to speak to Iso, if not Albie, in the controlled measured tone she needed. “Iso, go to your room. I don't think you'll be surprised to find out that you're grounded again. We'll talk more about this later. Albie, Reba's been cooped up for a while, as have you. Why don't you take her into the backyard?”

Both children did as they were told, although Iso seemed puzzled, as if her mother's reactions were hard to fathom. Eliza waited for the whine of the back door, the slam of Iso's bedroom door. But the latter was actually closed with quiet decorum. It was so quiet that Eliza went halfway up the stairs to make sure the door was shut, then came back and closed off the dining room.

“What did you tell her?”

“She
told me. I'm the mother of a childhood friend—according to you. She has lovely manners. Is that the English education? She talked a great deal about London.”

“Yes, she misses it.”
Or so I just learned,
Eliza thought. Did Iso confide in everyone but her mother? Could Trudy tell her about this seventeen-year-old Simon with whom Iso had been exchanging texts and calls on her pilfered phone? “What did you tell her? What do you want, Mrs. Tackett?”

“I want to make sure that you're not up to anything.”

“Up to anything?”

“I know you're speaking to him. Don't deny that.”

“I didn't deny it. Not that I'm accountable to you.”

Trudy Tackett's composure was hard fought, which became apparent as it cracked. “You most certainly are. My daughter would be alive if it weren't for you.”

“No,” Eliza said. “No.” She cocked her head. Was that a door
opening in the hall? Had Albie and Reba returned to the house? She lowered her voice. “I couldn't save Holly. I'm sorry if it seems that way to you, but it's true.”

“Save her? You were an accomplice. You lured her into his truck. If it weren't for you, she never would have spoken to him. She knew better than to engage with some strange man. You made everything possible.”

“Mrs. Tackett—it's not my fault that I was there. It's not my fault that I had gotten used to doing what he told me to do. I was fifteen, not much older than your daughter.”

“Holly was young for her age. She was a child, no matter what she looked like, and you offered her up to that monster.”

Eliza held Iso's cooling mug of tea in her hands. The worst thing about this conversation was—she understood. She knew what Trudy Tackett felt, and she couldn't fault her for it. If Iso had been harmed under the same circumstances, Eliza would be inconsolable, desperate to find reasons, someone to blame. Where would her anger and rage go? It would cut a path to the sea.

“I'm sorry. You have to believe that. But you also have to believe that I was as much Walter's victim as anyone else.”

“Then why are you talking to him? And considering a visit, last I heard.”

She must know someone inside the prison. Certainly, neither Jefferson Blanding nor Barbara LaFortuny would confide in Trudy Tackett. “It's what he wants.”

“Why do you care about what Walter wants? You were his victim, as you said. What hold does he have on you?”

She was tempted, of course, to tell Mrs. Tackett what Walter had promised, to let her know that she was on the side of the angels, beyond reproach. She hadn't killed Holly, but she hadn't saved her, either. Was that the same thing? She had resolved to live. Was her decision to live the same as willing Holly to die? It was a question beyond psychology, beyond philosophy, beyond theology. She had
chosen to live, which she believed meant doing whatever Walter said. Holly was the one who had fought and run.

“I don't, not really. I have my reasons to see him, but they're my reasons.”

“He's not to be trusted.”

“With all due respect, I don't need you to tell me that, Mrs. Tackett.”

“You're not to be trusted.”

That was unfair. At least, she thought it was unfair. She felt feverish, then all-over chills. The flu season had started early this year. Great, all she needed was the flu, when the visit to Walter was so near. Would a prison stop her from entering if it was determined that she was contagious?

“Mrs. Tackett, I don't know what you want, and I'm not sure I could provide it even if I did. I can't make Holly alive. I can't. Don't you think I've revisited, time and again, what I did. What I
didn't
do? But I was a victim, too. I was.”

Even to her own ears, she sounded unpersuasive.

“Your children—they don't know, do they?”

“No.”

“Is that because you're ashamed?”

“It's because I want them to feel safe.”

“No one is safe in this world, ever. I proved that to you today, didn't I? Your daughter let me into your home, simply because my name was familiar to her. I could have been anyone. I could have done anything. I could have hurt your child.”

A sudden memory. The Lerners were in a beach town where parking was at a premium and the street was crowded. Eliza couldn't have been more than seven. Her father started to back out of his parking place just as a little boy burst away from his mother and ran behind the Lerners' car. Her father stopped in time, but the mother turned on him, screaming. Later, as they crossed the main boulevard, the same woman leaned out of her
car and yelled: “I ought to run over your kids, see how you feel about it.”

“Your husband was an army surgeon, wasn't he? Assigned to hospitals where he treated casualties from Vietnam, as I recall. Was it only when your own daughter was killed that you figured out the world wasn't safe? Or was that simply when you began to care?”

“You think you care. You think you know. Believe me, you don't.”

“That's probably true.”

Mrs. Tackett bit her lip, apparently more offended by Eliza's concession than anything else she had said. She gathered her purse and stood to leave. “The book—the book said you might have been his girlfriend.”

“The book is wrong. He raped me.”

“But Holly and the other girl”—the other girl. Couldn't she hear herself? Was it asking too much that she know Maude's name? “They never found any proof of sexual assault.”

“He wore a condom. At least he did with me. I can't speak for the others.”

“A rapist who wore a condom. But we only have your say-so for that.”

“My say-so? Do you think I'm a liar, Mrs. Tackett?” She felt the color rising in her cheeks, a pulse pounding in her temples, her neck.

“I didn't trust you then, and I don't trust you now. I've waited a long time for justice, and it just seems terribly coincidental that you're talking to Walter now, when he's scheduled for execution.”

“What would be justice in your eyes?”

She steeled herself to hear:
For you to die and for my daughter to come back to life
. But Trudy Tackett was not that cruel.

“This. The execution. This is what Terry and I get. It's not enough, but it's all we get. Please don't interfere.”

“I assure you—”

“Your assurances don't carry much weight with me. I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but it's true. You've never been completely truthful about what happened. No one's ever called you on that. But now I have.”

“And do you feel better?”

Trudy Tackett had to think about this. “Never.”

 

LYING IN BED WITH PETER,
who had fallen asleep even as his hands worked her shoulders and stroked her hair, Eliza wondered if Mrs. Tackett—she could never call her Trudy, nor had she been asked to, she realized—was replaying the conversation in her head, in her bed. Was Dr. Tackett with her? Was he still alive? Yes, she had spoken of him in the present tense. Did he know what his wife had done today, what she had been doing? She had been to their house at least once before, delivering the note that Eliza had mistakenly ignored, and Eliza supposed she was the source of the off-hour calls on the Walter phone, as she thought of it.

The thing was, Mrs. Tackett wasn't wrong. Eliza had never told everything. The part about McDonald's—Eliza had been forced to testify about that in open court, the prosecutor reasoning that it would seem far more damaging if the defense introduced it. Not that Walter's overmatched attorney knew what to do with the information. His only objective seemed to be to get Eliza off the stand as quickly as possible. But the fact was, after she had seen the prosecutor's reaction, not to mention her own parents' momentary dismay, Eliza had stopped being completely forthright about what had happened during her last forty-eight hours with Walter. She didn't lie. Even she knew she was no good at it. But, like the daughter she would one day have, she was exceptional at keeping secrets, and that was the path she had chosen.
Certain things would remain unsaid. No one was ever going to look at her that way again.

After their McDonald's supper, their unhappy meals, they had driven up a switchback in the mountains, near the national park, but not a part of it. Walter hadn't wanted to pay to enter the park, much less interact with the ranger at the gate. It was dark, and they had to move slowly, the headlights catching deer, who looked malevolent to Eliza. Holly was weeping openly, constantly by then. Eliza yearned to comfort her but didn't know how. She tried, at one point, to pat her shoulder, only to have Holly recoil as if Eliza intended harm.

Once he found a place to camp, Walter set up the tent he had bought at a Sunny's Surplus and unzipped one of the sleeping bags, telling the two girls to lie on it. The night was chilly, but Eliza understood that Holly wanted no contact with her. “I'd give you both sleeping bags,” Walter said, “but I need something to pad the bed of the truck, if I'm going to sleep there and give you your privacy.” Eliza curled up into a ball, shocked by the cold, wondering how much longer they could sleep outside at this rate. The tent was another one of Walter's big ideas. It had been expensive, but he had argued it would pay for itself quickly. Only, it hadn't, not by a long shot. He hadn't realized, when he bought the tent, that most camping sites, the ones with showers and restrooms, had charges, too. It had been days since he had landed any work. Holly's money was the first real cash they had known in a while. She wondered how much there was, if they might check into a motor court the next night—

“Elizabeth?” Walter had entered the tent and was standing over them.

“Yes?”

“Go sit in the truck for a bit. I want to talk to our new friend here.”

She did. She always did whatever Walter told her to do. She went and sat in the truck. Not in the bed, as Walter had probably intended, but in the cab, in her usual seat, the windows tightly rolled up. Still, she couldn't help hearing what happened next. Screams, sobs, a terrible bellow, like a lion's roar, then a streak of white, which must have been Holly's hair flying behind her as she ran, Walter not far behind her. She studied the keys in the ignition, which hung from a chunk of turquoise. Even if she could figure out the clutch, she could never drive back down that switchback. Still, she reached for it, flicked it, hoping to turn on the heater. No, you had to press the clutch in to turn the engine on, and Walter would be mad if she used just battery power. She slid behind the wheel, managed to turn it over after a few tries, then returned to her seat. Warm air filled the car, along with the sounds of a country song, “Have I Got a Deal for You.” She and Walter had worked out a compromise on the radio. He controlled it for forty-five minutes and then she got fifteen. He said that was fair because he was older and it was his truck. He said he really didn't have to let her listen to those pop stations at all, that he was a good guy. He told her they were bad girls, Madonna and Whitney Houston and the Mary Jane Girls and Annie Lennox, and even Aimee Mann, although all she did was let the world know that her boyfriend was hitting her. He didn't like any of the songs that Eliza liked except for one, “Every-y body Wants to Rule the World.” When that one came on, he would nod in agreement, say it was very true. He also liked—

“Why'd you turn the engine on?” Walter asked. His face was scratched, and he was breathing hard. “You know better than that. You're wasting gas.”

“I was cold.”

“Then why are you still shivering?”

She hadn't even noticed. But she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering so loudly it was amazing she could hear the music at all.

Released 1985
Reached no. 11 on Billboard Hot lid on June 8,. 1985
Spent 24 weeks on Billboard Hot 100

“DO YOU WANT TO STOP?”
Vonnie asked. “There are a bunch of places at the next exit, and we're making good time.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“There's a Dairy Queen.” She drew out the syllables, knowing what tempted Eliza. “And a Cracker Barrel.”

“That's okay.”

“Who knows? Maybe we'll find a Stuckey's.”

Eliza began to laugh, almost in spite of herself. “The infamous peanut log, which you insisted on having—”

“We both wanted it.”

“And it was awful and Daddy copped one of those attitudes he had every now and then, said we had to eat it, because we had been adamant about wanting it, that it
would be our treat every day of the vacation until it was gone—”

Vonnie put on their mother's voice. “Oh, Manny, I'm sure the girls have learned their lesson.” She switched to a lower octave. “They must learn proportion in some things, to stop being so wasteful. Children are starving.”

“So, on the second night at the—what was it called?”

“The Martha Washington Inn. In Abingdon.” Vonnie's memory always amazed Eliza, but maybe it was just another facet of Vonnie's certainty about everything. She believed she was right, and no one called her on it. “They took us there because it had a good theater and they were going through one of those phases where they thought we were philistines.”

“Not you, never you.”

“Yes, me too. Daddy thought I had atrocious taste in my recreational reading, and you didn't read at all when you were young. So they took us to Abingdon to see
Of Mice and Men
. Which was pretty good, but what we all remember is what happened when you and I tried to flush that Stuckey's peanut log down the toilet in the Martha Washington Inn's quaint antique bathroom. If only we had used the ceramic bedpan that was provided for purely decorative reasons!”

Of course. That was why Eliza had started reading Steinbeck a few years later. Because the play had moved her, all of eleven years old at the time. It was 1981, the first year of the Reagan administration, and their parents felt like exiles in their own country, out of step with the times and the mores. Their father was prone to moods like this, a situational depression generated by the culture around him. It was as if he saw his children being borne away on a stream of cheap toys and stupid sentiment. As a parent, Eliza understood better now. She often felt the same way about the things that Iso and Albie coveted, their susceptibility to trends and advertising. But she was less inclined to counter as aggressively as her father had, to insist on trips to Gettysburg and Antietam and
the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The trip to Monticello notwithstanding, as that had been more of a cover for the need to go to Charlottesville.

If Eliza and Peter had been inclined, they could have married
this
trip to a visit to Williamsburg and Busch Gardens. Instead, they had claimed that Peter and Eliza were going on a getaway to Richmond, which had been written up in the
New York Times
as an ideal weekend retreat. They assumed the children could stay with their grandparents, but it turned out that Manny and Inez had their own plans for the weekend, a trip to the Greenbrier in West Virginia, and Eliza could not bear to disturb their genuine getaway for her fake one. Instead, she called Vonnie, who declared she would be happy to stay with her niece and nephew. But Peter countered that it might be better for the two women to hit the road together. “No knock on your sister,” he said, “but I would be distracted beyond all reason, wondering if she would remember to pick Albie up at school on time. Besides, Iso's still grounded, and she'll find a way to get around Vonnie. Your sister may be able to go toe-to-toe with most secretaries of state and the chairman of the Fed, but she'd be outwitted by a thirteen-year-old intent on making contact with some pimply boy in North London.”

Eliza was pretty sure that this
was
a knock on her sister, but she decided not to fight about it. The two hadn't been alone for a long time, perhaps not since Eliza's children were born. They had seen more of Vonnie in London than they had since they had moved back to the States because Vonnie's work brought her there more often than it did to Washington. Even then, their visits tended to be dinners at London restaurants where people were constantly swanning up to Vonnie and kissing both her cheeks. Vonnie always chose the restaurants, so presumably she preferred that kind of atmosphere. She found multiple excuses not to come out to Barnet for dinner—so very far, and the Underground didn't run that late, never mind that she could have spent the night in
their spare bedroom, but she always had early meetings the next day. No, she met Eliza and Peter in the trendy restaurant of her choice, then sent them home weighed down with expensive, but not-quite-right, gifts for the children.

It was 9
A.M
. and they had been on the road since seven, anticipating a fearful journey past the famous Capital Beltway knot called the Mixing Bowl. Although Eliza knew it only by its reputation, as delineated in the “on the eights” traffic reports on WTOP, she feared it. The Mixing Bowl was like the soulless killer in one of those serial horror films. It rested at times, but it never died. Eliza decided they should leave as early as possible in order to avoid rush hour. To her amazement, traffic in D.C. was quite heavy at seven, but they were going against the flow and sailed through the dreaded Mixing Bowl with such ease that she almost felt a twinge of disappointment. They would reach Richmond well before lunchtime, hours before they could check into their room. They could have left Saturday morning, but visiting hours were relatively early. Eliza, advised by Barbara LaFortuny, had decided it was better to arrive a day early, then make the short trip from Richmond, past a town amusingly known as Disputana and into Waverly, home to Sussex.

Not that Barbara had ever been allowed to visit Walter, she told Eliza. But she knew other men at Sussex I and II, and she was familiar with the procedure. Her voice had sounded wistful, actually, when she spoke of Eliza's trip. “I've never met him. Can you imagine? All these years and I've never seen him, face-to-face. Yet I know him as well as I know anyone.”

It had been hard not to ask: “And just how well do you know anyone, Barbara?”

“Did we ever come to Richmond when we were young?” Eliza asked Vonnie now. The city that was coming into view seemed vaguely familiar.

“I don't think so. We drove through, on one of my college trips, when I went to check out Duke.”

“I'd forgotten about your college trips, how the whole family went along.”

“That was because both Mother and Father wanted to go, and they couldn't leave you at home alone.”

“Really? I didn't remember that part. I thought you insisted they both go, said you needed their input.”

Vonnie laughed. “Does that sound like me? I didn't even want to go on college trips. I knew Northwestern was the right place for me, but they said I had to apply to at least five schools and visit each one. I picked the other four knowing I wouldn't like them as much as Northwestern—UNC, Duke, Bennington, and NYU. A big state school, an idiosyncratic almost-Ivy, a private school on a par with Northwestern, and a big-city school. It made me look open-minded. But I wanted a strong journalism program and a strong theater department, and only Northwestern had both.”

“So you went through that whole charade and put them through all those trips, your mind made up the entire time?” It was all too easy to imagine Iso doing something similar.

“Why not?”

“Wouldn't it have been simpler to tell them how you felt?”

“No, it would have been simpler for
you
. I broke them in, Elizabeth.” Vonnie was prone to use the old name when discussing their childhood. “All the privileges that you took for granted—I won them for you. I bet you weren't told that you had to apply to at least five colleges and visit all of them.”

“No, but I didn't have your grades, your opportunities. I had to have a safety school. A safety-safety, even. I still don't know how I got into Wesleyan.”

Vonnie coughed-laughed.

“What?”

“Oh, seriously, Eliza. You can't be that naive.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Your essay. I helped you punch it up, remember? You all but told them what happened to you.”

“I did
not
.”

“Yes you did.”

“My essay was about Anne Frank.”

“And your personal connection to her. It was subtle—especially after I helped you revise it—but there could have been no doubt in the minds of the admissions officers that you had firsthand knowledge of what it was to be held captive. That you were a victim of a brutal crime, with that hard-earned knowledge that people are not basically good.”

“That's just not true.”

Vonnie shrugged, fiddled with the radio, probably looking for the local NPR affiliate or even, God help them, C-SPAN. The prime minister's “question time” was one of the highlights of Vonnie's week, although Eliza knew that was usually broadcast on Sundays. “I'm not criticizing you,” she said. “You're entitled to use your experience.”

“I've never
used
it.”

“You've never really had to. It's always there, like…like…some huge dog, sitting at your side. A big dog, that never barks or growls or shows its fangs, but it's so huge, who would dare? You've effectively been spared from criticism for twenty years now. You're untouchable. Like—to use a reference from your world—Beth in
Little Women.
So good, so sweet and with that horrible destiny hanging over her head.”

“Spared by whom? Only you, our parents, and Peter know about me. And our grandparents, but they're gone. No one else can see this dog. If you want to talk about how you feel, have at it. But don't put it on me.”

“Okay, fine. I'll own my feelings.” Vonnie paused. She was
going to say something difficult, Eliza realized, the kind of thing that could never be unsaid. “From the day you were taken, I've always felt that our parents became less interested in me, and my achievements. They almost lost you, so you're more precious to them. They can't help it. They try, because they're smart and compassionate people, but nothing I do can compare to what you give them simply by existing. And, no offense, Eliza, but existing is pretty much all you do.”

It was the last bit that stung. Until then, she had been okay.

“I'm a mother and a wife. You probably couldn't survive a day in my life. In fact, the reason we're making this trip is because Peter didn't think you could handle a day in my life.” That was cruel and would only damage the already tenuous bond between her sister and her husband, but Eliza was too angry to fight fair.

“Don't twist this into some mommy-war argument. You know I'm not that simplistic. You…float through life. You let life happen to you. I think you're a great mother, and I know you put a lot of energy into what you do. But you live the most reactive life of anyone I know, Eliza. Jesus, if there's one thing I would have learned from your experience, I think it would be to never let anyone else take control of my life. Instead, you've handed yours over. To Peter, to the children. And now you're giving it back to Walter Bowman.”

“I'm going there because he's agreed to tell me what he's never told anyone else. How many girls he killed, where they are.”

Vonnie was silent for a few minutes, and Eliza focused on the car's GPS, which was narrating their way to the B and B, not having an alternate location to offer. She hated the GPS voice. It always sounded a little smug to her. She rather enjoyed it when construction or some other unanticipated problem put the GPS in the wrong, not that the voice ever admitted that she had screwed up.

“And then what?” Vonnie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He confesses to you. So what? Has it occurred to you that it won't be considered valid if his lawyer isn't present? That it might not settle anything, just stir things up? It's occurred to Peter, I can tell you that much.”

So Peter and Vonnie had discussed this, outside her hearing.

“When did you and Peter hash this out?”

“Last night. He was up late, working. As was I. I went downstairs to scare up a glass of wine. You know, someone should tell Peter that just because wine is expensive and French, doesn't mean it's good.”

Oddly, that offhanded criticism softened Eliza's anger. It, at least, was classic Vonnie, careless and thoughtless.

“Back when we were teenagers, you once said that everything would be about me from now on. Isn't it possible that your own perceptions became reality? That you see what you look for?”

“Yes,” Vonnie said. “But isn't it also possible that I'm right? That I've lived my entire life in my sister's shadow?”

“Not in the world at large.”

“Fuck the world at large. It's the family I care about.”

That was news. “Are you worried that what I'm doing will become public? That all the old stuff will be dredged up again?”

“No. I know that's not what you want.”

“So why are we talking about this?”

“I don't know. Maybe we're talking about it because it's always there and yet we never have. Maybe it's not a big dog but just the old clichéd elephant in the room. I've always understood that what happened to you happened to you. But it happened to the rest of us, too. To Mom and Dad. To me. We were there. Not Peter. Yet it's Peter whom you trust, more than any of us. It's Peter who shapes your life. You follow him wherever his job leads him, make the sacrifices necessary to make his career possible, even as you give up on your own.”

“Vonnie, this may be the hardest thing for you to understand, but I never considered dropping out of graduate school a sacrifice. If I hadn't withdrawn, I'd probably still be there, trying to write a thesis on the children's literature of the 1970s, and bored to tears. I learned a long time ago that I just didn't have that much to say about Judy Blume's
Forever
and why a boy would name his penis Ralph, given its associations to vomiting. Talk about semiotics.”