Lacy Eye (2 page)

Our town was the kind Joe never thought he'd move to. His family had been what he called “blue-collar Buffalo” for three generations before him, and even though he was proud to have left the bad parts of his heritage behind—his father's drinking and sarcasm, the dependence on food stamps when his father got fired, hand-me-downs that had already been through two cousins before him—he was also committed to not straying too far from his roots. For a year after we were married we lived in an apartment in Albany, but then Joe surprised me by saying he thought we should start looking for a house, and he named a few of the suburbs. When I asked why, he said it was because of the schools. “They're better out here,” he said, as we drove around Everton checking out For Sale and Open House signs. I wasn't even thinking of being a mother yet, but as it turned out, with Iris being born the following year, he was right to settle us into the four-bedroom Colonial at 17 Wildwood Lane.

The houses on our street lay in a staggered pattern across from each other, and Wildwood ended in a cul-de-sac bordering the conservation land known as Two Rivers. This was where my friend Claire and I had always met for our walks on Saturday mornings before that Thanksgiving weekend three years earlier, and where I still took Abby for her exercise twice a day. As the dog and I stepped out the back door and through the garage after Thornburgh and the reporters left, she headed automatically in that direction.

There was no denying it anymore—it was starting to get cold. We hadn't turned the clocks back yet, and technically the sun was still out, but the air held that distinct winter's-on-its-way feel. I was halfway down the block, pulling the hood of the sweatshirt over my ears, when I heard somebody's front door open behind me. I shut my eyes for a moment because I knew what was coming, and I hadn't decided yet how I wanted to feel about it.

Sure enough, Warren Goldman called my name in a low voice, then ran to catch up with me. He hadn't had time to put on sneakers, but came out instead in his moccasin slippers, the soles slapping softly on the sidewalk.

“Hanna,” he breathed, trying not to give away that the short sprint had winded him. He needed a haircut; little wings lifted away from his neck in the nippy breeze. He hadn't bothered to grab a jacket, and I could see goose bumps rising on his arms, which were bare beneath their tee-shirt sleeves. The shirt, faded and stretched over his stomach, said
THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE
. Reading it I smiled to myself, remembering the party he and his wife Maxine had thrown in celebration of Hillary Clinton's election to the Senate. Joe hadn't wanted to go, saying he wasn't a big fan of the Clintons, but I knew his resistance had more to do with the fact that parties made him uncomfortable, and he hated small talk. I let him think I believed his reason for declining, but I liked Hillary and didn't mind small talk, so I said I was just going over to show my face at the party to be polite, and then I didn't get home until midnight.

I reminded Warren of that party now, and he smiled. “That was a good one,” he said. His face sobered. “Remember Maxine got out her guitar?”

I felt guilty, even though I hadn't intended to cause him a painful memory. Warren reached down to scratch Abby behind the ears. Then he straightened quickly, giving out a mild exclamation at the sudden movement and putting a hand on his back, imitating an old man. “I've been meaning to ask you. Do you have plans for Thanksgiving? I was going to invite you over, if you didn't. Our son and his wife are coming.” Ever since Maxine died, two years before Joe, Warren had referred to his wife as if she were still alive. Joe considered it creepy, and I knew other people did, too, but I thought it was sweet. I thought it was touching that he honored her memory this way, even though he must have realized it sounded odd.

“I thought I'd try the ‘Small and sophisticated' dinner from
Bon Appétit
,” he added. “Celery bisque, turkey breast roulade, and pumpkin mousse.” He looked at me hopefully, as if he'd been afraid I might turn him down but would change my mind once I heard the menu.

Warren had taken up cooking after Maxine's death. He routinely invited people from the neighborhood to eat with him, and sometimes he brought meals to other people's houses. The sight of the rumpled man in the rumpled clothes carrying a casserole dish was a familiar one on our street. Joe and I had joined him a few times, and after I came home from rehab, Warren had more than once suggested our sharing a meal. I knew he figured it was only natural that two widowed people should do so, but I usually found some excuse to say no.

It had been almost a year since he'd asked, and because I'd been trying to forget how soon Thanksgiving was, his invitation took me aback. I coughed, stalling, trying to figure out how to respond. “I'm not sure,” I managed to stammer, as Abby started to whine on the sidewalk between us. I recognized that my answer was what the kids would call “lame,” but I couldn't think how to improve it. Just the word
Thanksgiving
was enough to speed up my breath. That and the fact that I'd wondered, over the past couple of years, whether the conversations Warren always initiated—when we were both outside getting mail from our boxes, or unloading groceries—were an effort to, as the kids would say, “hit on me.” I couldn't quite bring myself to believe this was the case, because, well, why would he? I'd never been pretty to begin with, and since the attack, I was even less so. I wasn't particularly smart or accomplished, and I didn't have an impressive or lucrative job. Not to mention what had happened in our house three years earlier. Unless Warren was one of those people who got turned on by catastrophe, what could he possibly see in me?

And even if he
could
see something, did I want him to?

“I'll let you guys go,” he said, nodding at Abby, who was straining against the leash. “Will you think about it, Hanna? You don't have to give me any notice—we'll be here either way.” He put his hand out to touch my arm in good-bye, but I pretended I didn't feel it and turned away.

After our usual loop of the brook at Two Rivers, Abby trotted me back toward home. But halfway down the street she paused, making the low growl in her throat that meant she was scared of something. “It's okay, girl,” I told her, trying to sound convincing even though I had no way of knowing if it was really okay or not. Then we heard the familiar sound of Emmett Furth's motorcycle revving up in his driveway, and he sped past the dog and me, coming so close we could feel the wind and hear him whoop as he rushed by us.

“Goddammit,” I breathed as he moved down the street, but it must have come out louder than I thought, because Pam, his mother, heard me from the curb where she had dragged out her trash barrel.

“You know he can't help it, Hanna,” she chided me.

She'd been saying this for years, that Emmett couldn't help it. When he was an eight-year-old getting into trouble for kinking people's sprinkler hoses and chasing cats up trees, all of us on the block tried to buy Pam's explanation that Emmett had an “auditory processing problem,” which was the source of all his troublemaking.

But as he grew older, we became more and more aware that he just chose not to listen to people, including his mother, when they were telling him what not to do. And he couldn't have cared less whether he ruined your yard or terrorized your pet or caused water to back up into your basement. In fact, he always seemed happier leaving destruction in his wake. This was why some people seemed to believe that Emmett, and not Rud Petty, had been responsible for the attack on Joe and me.

I used to talk back to Pam, and let her know when I was angry about her son tormenting Dawn or charging on his bicycle through my garden. But after he set fire to our tree house when he was in tenth grade, I became afraid of him.

During the trial, when Rud's lawyer proposed Emmett as a possible alternative perpetrator, he cited the fact that Joe had refused to provide a reference for Emmett after he graduated from high school the same year as Dawn and, instead of going on to college, applied for a job at Home Depot. I remember telling Joe he should just go ahead and do it, for the sake of peace with the neighbors. He didn't have to make Emmett sound like a saint, but couldn't he just say the kid would probably show up on time and not make any trouble? It had been three years since the tree house, I reminded him. Didn't he deserve a second chance?

When I suggested this, Joe said, “He
burned down
our property, Hanna. Do you realize how easily that fire could have spread to our house? If I'd had my way, we would have pressed charges. What possible reason would I have to recommend him for a job?” I quit trying to persuade him, because he was right.

The jury didn't buy the notion of Emmett as a possible culprit, probably because the defense also suggested that Joe might have been targeted by someone associated with Marc Sedgwick, the former superintendent of schools over in Shelby Falls, whom Joe had helped expose for embezzlement and whose case was scheduled to go to trial a few months after Joe got killed. The defense had no evidence of this, and everyone could tell it was just a Hail Mary pass attempting to put doubt in the minds of the jurors. According to Gail Nazarian, Rud Petty's legal team “royally fucked up” by floating both scenarios as possible motives for Joe's murder. She said, “Emmett Furth probably tipped the scales. Without him, we might have ended up with a hung jury.”

Though I knew it was silly, I almost felt I owed Emmett a favor for contributing in this dubious way to the fact that there had been a conviction in my husband's death. So when Pam told me now that her son couldn't help it, I only waved at her, and gave her a nod excusing Emmett again, as she turned away from her trash cans and I followed Abby back to our door. I'd fed her but not myself yet, so I settled down in front of the TV to eat a dinner I hadn't had the patience to heat properly in the microwave.

I wasn't nearly as particular about what I ate, after Joe died, as I was when he was alive. After certain things have happened to you, you start to feel as if it doesn't make any difference. No matter how much you want to believe what they tell you, you realize you can't really keep yourself safe.

The news was about to come on—pirates, suicide bombs, drunk drivers, and stocks going down the drain. Before I could hit the Mute button, I heard the teaser to the top local story: “New trial on tap for so-called Croquet Killer.” Even though I warned myself not to, I found myself peering at the screen, squinting to distort the image a little, when Rud Petty's photograph came on.

How was it possible that after all he'd done to destroy me and my family, my instinct at seeing his picture was to think
That's a good-looking man
?

And could I really blame my daughter, who was so much younger than I, who considered herself ugly and who'd had no romantic experience before him, for wanting to believe that he was in love with her?

After finishing the tepid mess its package called a stroganoff, I picked up the phone to listen to my messages, already knowing, because of what Thornburgh had told me, that at least one of them would be from Gail Nazarian. And there it was, along with requests from still more reporters. I ignored those, and was jotting myself a note to call the prosecutor back (maybe the following week, after I'd figured out how to say, once again, that I couldn't help her), when I heard a rap at the back door and saw her standing there, peering at me through the pane. It was too late to hide and pretend I wasn't home. I had no choice but to go over and let her in.

“Ow, shit!” she said, reacting as the door I held open gave off a static spark. She shook her hand a little and added, “I know you don't want to see me.” In her other arm she clutched a leather briefcase to her side so tightly it might have been a tourniquet preventing her from bleeding all over my floor. “I came by because I thought you might hang up on me if I just called.” She tried to say it in a joking way, but humor was not one of her strengths.

I resisted the temptation to tell her she was right. Once she'd failed in her effort to persuade the grand jury to indict Dawn in the attack against Joe and me, I tried to warm up to her because she was working to send Rud Petty away. But I couldn't, mainly because I knew Gail believed Dawn was guilty. She did everything she could to get her bound over for trial, but there wasn't any physical evidence against Dawn, and she had an alibi.

I tried to make my voice light, so she could take what I said as a joke, too, if she wanted. “Don't you have anything better to do on a Friday night than harass crime victims?”

“Sorry,” she said, sweeping past me into the kitchen, but of course she was not sorry at all. “You really should give me your cell phone number. I might need to get in touch with you immediately sometime, like I did today.”

“I don't have a cell phone,” I told her. I knew she'd think I was lying, but I didn't care.

Most of my friends just thought I was a technophobe. The truth was that I didn't have a cell phone because I grew up with a father who flinched every time the phone rang in our house. Later, after he was convicted of fraud and a few other “legal infelicities” (his lawyer's words), I understood that this behavior was related to the fact that he lived in constant fear of being found out. Though all of that was a long time ago, I never got over the impulse to cringe at the sound of a ringing phone. So I stuck to my old-fashioned landline at home and used caller ID to screen any calls that came in.

But I wasn't about to explain any of this to Gail Nazarian. “I know why you're here,” I continued. “Ken Thornburgh just came by to tell me about the appeal.”

“I was surprised you weren't there in the courtroom to hear it yourself.” Though Abby was sniffing at the hem of her brown skirt, the prosecutor didn't reach down to pet her. Gail Nazarian had always looked like my idea of a female lieutenant, with her severe style of dress—always the same cut of dark-colored suit—and the way she didn't let her hair, which I noticed had grayed somewhat since the end of Rud Petty's trial, wave around her face as it wanted to. She was short and plump, with stubby limbs and a lean in her walk that made me think one leg might be longer than the other. Her eyes appeared black, and they moved in her face the way a bird's eyes move, darting sharply to both sides above a beak poised to sense the slightest threat at any distance.