Mother's Day (21 page)

As she dictated, Phyllis idly went into the bathroom and began to search for some tiny speck of overlooked evidence, some scrap of information the police might have missed.

“What were her thoughts?” She came out of the bathroom and placed the tiny tape recorder on the vanity. She crouched down and opened the vanity drawers, peering inside them. “How did she feel as she waited for her old lover, Gregory Newhall, to arrive at the door to room 173?” She took out the empty vanity drawers and shook them. She ran her hand into the empty space behind them. Nothing. “Was she girding herself for an argument? Preparing to defend her actions? Or maybe”—Phyllis straightened up and paused dramatically—“just maybe, there was a romantic streak in her that was hoping the spark between them might reignite, as it had so many years ago.”

The closet, she thought. There might be something there. Abruptly she turned, walked over to the closet, and pulled the door open. Her eyes locked with those of a man standing in the darkness.

Phyllis screamed and tried instinctively to cover her underclothes with her hands. The man turned and bolted back through the door behind the closet. Through the aperture, Phyllis could see the dim gray light of the room next door. “You son of a bitch,” she cried. Forgetting her modesty, she lunged after him.

Karen heated up a can of soup
and put two bowls on the table, along with a plate of corn muffins that she’d had in the freezer. She knew she would have to go to the grocery store tomorrow. They were running out of staples. She dreaded the public exposure, pushing her cart down the aisles, feeling as though all the shopping and shelving stopped as she went by. But there was no way around it.

Jenny and Karen ate in silence. All of a sudden Jenny said, “I’m thinking of going to school tonight. Will you drive me?”

Karen frowned at her. “What for?”

“It’s Thursday, Mom. I have choir practice. Just like I do every Thursday,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’m not going to be allowed to sing at graduation if I miss practice tonight.”

Karen got up from the table and went to the refrigerator. She pulled out a pitcher of iced tea and poured herself another glass, stalling for time. She felt as if Jenny were testing her, and she felt an undeniable flurry of panic in her chest. “I don’t see why they have graduations from junior high school. It seems silly to me,” she complained.

Jenny was not about to be put off or distracted. “Will you drive me?” she demanded.

“You didn’t even go to school today,” Karen protested.

“Because of the funeral.”

“Well, if you didn’t go to school, then you don’t belong at choir practice.”

“You’re the one who said I shouldn’t go to school. Or the funeral.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You were probably right,” Jenny conceded. “But I can’t miss this rehearsal. I called my music teacher. He said I should come. Besides, I am going to school tomorrow.”

Karen recognized the stubborn expression on her daughter’s face. She had no choice but to admit to her anxieties. “Look, if you go over there, people are going to be staring and talking behind your back.”

“I know it,” said Jenny. “But Dad said to hold your head up and ignore what people say—”

“If it weren’t for your father,” Karen snapped, “we’d have nothing to be ashamed about. We wouldn’t be the main subject of gossip in the entire town.”

“I’m not ashamed of my father,” said Jenny stoutly.

“Well, that’s great,” said Karen sarcastically. “I’m happy for you.”

Jenny got up and took her bowl to the sink, letting it drop with a clatter. “You’re just being a coward and blaming it on him. I’m not going to hide in the house and be afraid of what people say. This could go on for a long time. I have to get used to it. I’ve thought about it all day, and I’ve decided. Maybe you’re afraid of them, but I’m not. Now will you drive me or not?”

A weariness in Karen made her want to just get up and walk away. But, at the same time she felt amazed by Jenny’s attitude. She had expected her to be devastated, to be curled up in a ball after all the emotional blows of the last few days. But Jenny seemed to have some sort of inner strength that she lacked herself. Jenny’s accusation was right on the money. It was cowardice. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach, and there was no use in arguing that it was anything else. Still, if a child could face it, what choice did a mother have?

“If it’s that important to you,” said Karen.

“We’ve been practicing this for months. I want to be in the concert.”

Karen sighed and pushed her bowl away. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take you.”

It was all she could do to get her hair combed, to get some makeup applied. Jenny was ready, for once, before her mother.

Karen emerged from the downstairs powder room to find Jenny waiting impatiently in the foyer. Karen picked up her car keys from the table in the hall. “Let’s go,” she said.

Driving to the school, Karen was painfully aware of the unmarked police car that was following them. It made her feel sick at heart, dirty almost, as if she were some sort of undesirable being watched.

She parked the car, and Jenny said, “Do you want me to call you when we’re done?”

Usually Karen waited for her during the evening choir rehearsal. It was a long drive back and forth, and it was easier, and more pleasant, just to stay. Many of the parents waited, either reading or doing needlework, scattered through the seats in the auditorium. It was pleasant to hear the young voices earnestly practicing the music. The time went quickly. Tonight, Karen did not want to go inside the school building, but she was being shamed into it by her daughter’s show of grit. “No, I’ll wait,” she said.

The bright fluorescent lights in the school vestibule gave their faces a sickly tone. Their steps echoed on the shining surface of the floors. A young boy who was entering the auditorium turned as they came up behind him. He started at the sight of Jenny. Behind them, at a discreet distance, Ted Ackerman, their police sentry, hovered.

“Hi, Dave,” said Jenny boldly.

“Hi, Jenny,” the boy said. He held the door open for Jenny and Karen, studying them both curiously as they entered the dimly lit auditorium. The burly cop relieved him of the door handle and ushered the boy in. A number of students were gathered on the stage. One plunked at the piano keys while others flirted and conversed on the apron of the stage.

“I’ll sit here,” Karen whispered, indicating a seat a few rows from the back. Jenny nodded and began the long walk down the sloping, carpeted aisle.

The teasing exchanges of the choir members stopped and they fell silent as Jenny marched toward them. Karen felt as if her heart were breaking inside her at the sight of her daughter’s straight back, the smile fixed on her face, as she greeted the people she knew. A few students returned her greeting as an excited buzz seemed to rise in the cavernous room.

Other parents, scattered throughout the rows of seats, turned and looked at Karen seated near the back. Out of the corner of her eye, Karen could see Ted Ackerman stationed at the double doors at the head of the aisle. She wanted to yell out, Stop looking at me. What do you expect to see? But she would not do that to Jenny. Instead she squirmed in her seat, trying not to meet any of their eyes.

The music teacher breezed in through the doors at the front, brandishing sheet music. “Everybody, places on the risers, please.”

The thunderous clumping of dozens of pairs of boots and running shoes drowned out the murmurings in the room as the students ascended the wooden risers, assembling by height. Karen forced herself to sit back and try to relax her tense posture as curious eyes around her gradually turned back to the front.

The teacher gestured to his student accompanist, and the bright young voices began to climb and descend the scales in warm-up exercises.

As the students began to practice “Amazing Grace,” the simple hymn that would open the concert, Karen felt a lump in her throat. The swell of those earnest voices pierced her. It was true that kids were much more sophisticated these days, more knowledgeable about life than when she had gone to school. But the purity in their voices seemed to say that they still had the innocent hearts, the righteous beliefs, of all children before they become disillusioned by life. Karen watched her daughter’s face, the concentration as she followed the conductor, as she gave her best to the music. Even in all this ugliness, cynicism had not won her yet.

Half an hour into the rehearsal, when she felt as if her presence had been accepted and she could safely leave her seat without causing a stir in the room, Karen walked up the aisle and opened the auditorium door. Officer Ackerman, who had taken a seat at the back, jumped up and followed her outside.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said angrily.

Ted Ackerman, not much more than a kid himself, accompanied her stiffly down the hall and pushed open the lavatory door, banging on it and calling out, “Anyone inside?” He went in, made a perfunctory check, and then stepped aside as Karen entered the lavatory. She almost wished that he had surprised some woman and sent her screaming from the bathroom, just so he could share some of this humiliation. But she said nothing. Ted glanced up and down the hall before returning to the auditorium.

Karen checked herself in the mirror as she washed up and felt defeated by the dismal sight of her face—gray circles around her eyes and a lifeless complexion. The patches of blusher on her cheek looked like clown makeup. It’s almost over, she thought. Tonight’s ordeal, anyway. There was still tomorrow to dread.

She tossed away the paper towel, opened the lavatory door, and sighed. Back to the fray. She started back down the empty hall to the auditorium, her footsteps echoing as she walked. The words of “Amazing Grace” ran through her head. A wretch like me, she thought. That’s about right. As she reached the classroom three doors and a corridor away from the assembly hall, she heard the creak of a door opening behind her. She started to turn, startled by the sound in the lonely hallway, when she felt herself suddenly grasped from behind and a hand clapped over her mouth before she had a chance to scream.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice whispered
as she was pulled backward into one of the dark classrooms. She bumped up against a desk as he hauled her inside and shut the door.

Only the moonlight illuminated the desks, chairs, and blackboards, the pictures and projects pinned haphazardly to bulletin boards. Karen stared into the haggard eyes of her husband, feeling the pressure of his hands gripping her arms.

Her relief at the sight of him was immediate, complete. She sagged against him with a groan, and he enveloped her. She pressed her face against his chest, her fingers clutching handfuls of his shirt and arms the way a gasping shipwreck survivor might claw at a blessed, sandy shore. She could hear his heart beating madly. You’re alive, she thought. You’re all right. My life can go on. There’s still hope. She had not admitted, even to herself, how afraid she had been for him. The feeling of his arms around her again was the most comforting sensation she had ever known.

And after a moment of blissful solace, it made her furious.

She jerked away from him suddenly, remembering everything. “Let go of me,” she cried.

“Please, honey,” he said. “Don’t scream.”

“Get your hands off me.”

He let her go abruptly and held his outstretched hands wide apart, like someone who had just pushed off an unsteady child on a two-wheeler, as if willing the bike to balance in the space between his arms.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please listen to me.”

Her arms felt hot where his hands had been. She could not sort out the raging confusion of her feelings at the sight of him.

“You bastard,” she said. She didn’t know where to start. Which betrayal. She was like someone drowning in anger. “God, I hate you,” she said.

Greg did not flinch. He looked at her steadily, his dark eyes shining like onyx in the dim moonlight. A kind of desperate resignation was etched in the lines of his face. Instinctively she expected him to beg her forgiveness. His next words brought her around like a slap in the face. “Karen,” he said, “I don’t have time for apologies. I don’t have time to feel anything. There’s a cop who’s going to come looking for you in a few minutes. I need you to listen to me.”

She was stunned, amazed at his audacity.

Seeing that he had captured her attention, he hurried on. “We can’t talk about Jenny now, or what happened back then.”

“How dare you—”

“I did not kill Linda,” he said, refusing to allow her to interrupt. “I need to tell you what happened right now, so listen to me. Someone has framed me. Someone who knew about me and Linda. Our past history. I did go to her room that night. I pleaded with her to keep our secret, and she agreed. I asked her if she wanted money. She said she did not intend to blackmail me. She told me that she thought Jenny was a lovely girl, that we had raised her well, that she had made the right decision in giving her to us.”

“Isn’t that great!” Karen exclaimed. “Jenny and I were like little checkers that you and Linda moved around the board at will. And she made the right move. That’s wonderful. That’s…that’s so…gratifying to know.”

“I said I can’t talk about that right now, and I won’t,” he insisted. There was a furious urgency in his voice that silenced her again.

Greg put his face close to hers and searched her flinty eyes. “Karen,” he said, “I know there are a million things you want to say to me. And you have the right. If I were you…I don’t know…the urge to kill would probably be putting it mildly.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m thinking,” she growled. “You’ve stuffed words back in my throat before I get a chance to speak them. What are we doing here, anyway?”

“It’s Jenny’s choir night. I took a chance that you would come.”

“I didn’t mean that, and you know it.”

“I need your help,” he said.

Karen looked at him incredulously. “I can’t help you.”

“You’re the only one who can. You are my best friend in this world,” he said.