Never Smile at Strangers (3 page)

FIVE MINUTES AFTER the phone call, Mrs. Perron climbed into Mac’s truck and thrust an ample hip into Haley’s side. Haley squeezed closer to Mac, and Mrs. Perron slammed the truck door closed.

“
Le bon dieu!
” she cried, mascara smeared into the deep recesses beneath her worried eyes. “It’s not like my Tiffany to run off like this!”

Mac threw the truck into gear and headed to Trespass Gardens, where Charles lived. Haley looked out at the dusty road watching the big cypress trees as they whizzed by, their branches seeming to reach for the truck. She folded her arms over her body and held herself tight.
Where could Tiffany be?

In the distance, a cottonmouth slithered across the blacktop. Mac skillfully eased the truck across the yellow dotted lines, sparing its life. As Haley glanced behind her, watching the reptile hurry into the unkempt grass at the edge of the woods, she thought again of what Tiffany had begun to tell her, wondering if the guy she’d been flirting with was someone she knew. If he could have had anything to do with her not returning home. But just as quickly as the thought had come, she dismissed it.

Tiffany was with Charles. She was okay.

A few minutes later, they pulled off the two-lane blacktop road and bounced their way into Trespass Gardens, a park on the opposite end of Trespass Bayou that housed trailers and small shack-like houses. Gravel crunched beneath the truck as they crawled past one old trailer after another, then several shack-like houses appeared. Haley took in the porches that sagged beneath tattered couches and disfigured toys. Trash barrels of all sizes and colors were lined up for collection.

Soiled-faced children played freeze tag in front of the homes, running through bent sprinklers and beneath clotheslines that groaned with drying wash. Old people rested on lawn chairs and regarded them suspiciously as they rode by. A boom box had been set on the dusty hood of a mud-splattered Ford Escort and the noise of accordions and the wailing voice of Cajun singer Wayne Toups blasted through the blistering air.

Mrs. Perron clicked her tongue, shaking her head disapprovingly as they rolled past the rows of battered homes.

“There,” Haley said, pointing to a small white house in the distance. “That’s Charles’ house.”

Mac pulled off the path and slowed the truck. As soon as he yanked the emergency brake, Mrs. Perron was out the truck door and hurrying up to the porch. At the top of the steps, she smoothed out her pink polo shirt and yanked open the screen door. She rapped loudly.

Mac’s engine popped and hissed as the two sat watching the older woman. “How many times have you been out here?” Mac asked.

“Just once,” Haley said, looking around. A tricycle lay on its side next to two crepe myrtles. Azalea bushes were in full bloom in rock gardens at either side of the concrete steps that led to the front door. Unlike most of the homes in Grand Trespass, Charles’ actually looked cared for.

He fumbled for his cigarettes. “This ain’t a good place for young girls to be hangin’ around.”

Haley had known Mac would comment about Trespass Gardens. He was always worrying over her. Had been for the whole year they’d been together.

He produced a cigarette. “Just want you to be safe is all.”

She looked into her boyfriend’s eyes. The boy who had stood by her side at her father’s funeral and afterward, taking care of the things her father had taken care of before he passed. The yard, the gutters, the siding, her tears.

“You worry about me too much.”

He grinned at her. “If I don’t, who will?”

Sticking the cigarette between his lips, he reached for the door. Before opening it, he glanced up at Mrs. Perron and shook his head. “The girl’s not right in the head. Making her mama worry like this is just plain wrong. A nice, wholesome girl like you would be better off with more upstanding friends. But you know where I stand on that subject,” he said and winked. Then he jumped out of the truck.

Mac had never liked Tiffany because he thought she was too promiscuous and self-centered. The more Haley tried to get him to change his mind about her, the more resistant he was. He was as polite to Tiffany as he was to everyone else, but it was more than obvious that he didn’t care for the girl and never would.

Haley climbed out of the truck to find him pulling down the tailgate. He sat and lit his cigarette. Several yards away, a bunch of kids were squealing, hopping over sprinklers and sliding across a faded Slip ‘n Slide.

Mrs. Perron was still knocking on the front door. “Anybody home?” she shouted, her voice becoming more and more agitated. “Anybody? Tiffany? You in there?”

Haley wandered around the house, into the backyard. A thick plume of smoke curled into the air, rising from a distant neighbor’s barbecue. Its tangy, mesquite scent filled her nostrils. Rotten figs, oversweet, lay at the base of a small tree and a lone pair of jeans swayed in the hot breeze on an otherwise empty clothesline.

She stopped at a tall anthill, slid off a flip flop, and pushed her foot into its soft center. In a matter of seconds, annoyed ants swarmed out and up her ankle. She watched as they slowly spread up her shin, past her knee. She savored the sting of their tiny bites. But once they reached mid-thigh, she pulled her throbbing leg to safety and gently brushed the insects off.

She glanced at the house and startled. Someone was peering out from behind a window shade, watching her. Quickly, the shade fell back against the window.

Someone was home.

She hurried back to the front yard. Mrs. Perron was still speaking to the front door. “Tiffany, if you’re in there, you’d better come out right now,” she threatened, her words shaky. “If you don’t, I’ll make sure your father knows everything. I mean
everything
. Bad heart or not!”

Mac flicked his cigarette ash into the grass as Haley walked up. He ground it with the heel of his shoe. “No one home?”

“Someone’s here. But whoever it is, isn’t answering,” she said, staring back at the house. “I saw someone at one of the windows out back.”

“Tiffany?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

“We can come on back here after we take her home,” he said, picking an ant off of Haley’s arm. “If she’s in there, she’ll open up if her mother ain’t around.”

THE LANDRY’S HOME was no different than most of the ranch-style homes the middle-class families had built in Grand Trespass in the ‘70s and ‘80s. At the front door, one would walk into a small room which connected to a nice-sized kitchen, then a relatively spacious living room. The bedrooms and one bathroom were located off the living room. Standing at the front door, one could see clear through the house to the back door and vice versa, the architecture not lending itself to much privacy. The women in Grand Trespass liked the floor plan because they were able to cook and still keep an eye on their children playing in the living room. Haley liked it because she could easily keep an eye on both Becky and her mother when they weren’t in their bedrooms.

“Who’s the kid?” Mac asked, letting the screen door snap shut behind them.

Cigarette smoke hung in the air. Haley had seen a bicycle leaning against the house when they pulled up but figured it was Sadie’s, her sister’s friend. Sadie’s mother was always buying Sadie things, trying to make up for the time she ran the child over in the driveway, leaving her with a lame right arm.

“I don’t know.” She walked past the kitchen and into the living room where Becky and a raven-haired teenage girl were watching television.

“Hey,” Haley said.

Fifteen-year-old Becky turned to her with a practiced look of boredom, an irritating expression she seemed to have mastered overnight. “Hey,” she answered, pulling her thin, mousy hair into a ponytail. She pointed to the girl. “Haley, this is my new friend, Seacrest. Seacrest, this is my sister, Haley, and her boyfriend, Mac.”

The girl blew out a steady stream of smoke and fixed her gray eyes on Haley’s. “Hey,” she muttered.

Haley watched the smoke spiral into the air.

“The Landrys don’t smoke in the house,” Mac said, his voice matter-of-fact, but polite, one of the many mannerisms Haley admired in him.

The girl smirked. “Well then, I’ll go on outside.” She stood and pulled at the hem of her short denim shorts. Then she sauntered out the back, carelessly letting the screen door slam shut behind her.

“Why’d you tell her she could smoke in the house?” Haley asked, exasperated.

“She didn’t ask,” Becky replied. Her feet, stained brown on the bottoms from walking around barefoot, dangled from the arm of the big recliner. She twisted in the chair, lowering them to the floor.

“Well, who is she?” It wasn’t every day that Becky brought a new friend to the house. In fact, she couldn’t think of the last time she had. Sadie was Becky’s
only
friend.

Becky shrugged, and smeared some lip balm on her cracked lips. “I don’t know. Just some girl.”

Mac took a seat on the couch. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I just met her. She was riding her bike out front and we just started talking. She’s pretty, huh?”

“Does she go to your school?” Haley asked.

She shook her head. “She lives in Weston.”

Mac frowned. “She rode her bike from Weston? That’s an awfully long way in this heat.”

“I guess.”

“I don’t like that she smokes,” Haley mumbled, trying Tiffany’s cell phone again. She’d grown anxious. She and Mac had just driven to Trespass Gardens for a second time, but again, no one had answered the door. She didn’t have Charles’s cell phone number and directory assistance said that his home number was unlisted.

“What’s wrong with smoking? Tiffany smokes,” Becky said. She lifted her chin in Mac’s direction. “So does Mac. He smokes.”

“Tiffany and Mac are
adults
,” Haley pointed out, checking the answering machine for messages. There were none. “Did Tiffany call?”

Becky shook her head.

Haley sighed.
Where the heck was she?

“And Mom. Has she come out of her room at all?”

“No.”

HE ROLLED A polished half dollar-sized stone around his palm. He’d found it on the bank of the pond and hoped it would remind him of the power he’d had with those who now rested at its bottom. Although it was only morning, it was already humid and it made his hand uncomfortably moist.

He dropped the stone in his pocket and rubbed his palm against his pant leg. Once it was dry, he studied the faint scars on the inside of both hands, an unpleasant reminder of the morning his mother held both palms against a hot burner on the stove. He was nine and she’d been in one of her moods. The seared skin had smelled awful. Her high-pitched laughter still rang in his ears.

He heard a scream. His head shot up. Trembling, he looked out at the pond, to the place where he’d let the girl sink. It was black, its surface unblemished.

He walked closer to the water’s edge and something in the tall grass plopped into the water. Stepping sideways, he tripped on a thick branch. He steadied himself, but the wetness from the pond’s edge had already seeped into his muddy rubber boots.

He heard it again. The cry of a human in agony. The sound was deafening. He shook harder.

Still staring at the pond, he covered his ears, and stumbled backwards. “It’s okay to be afraid,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’m afraid, too.”

He thought back to her face as he’d wrapped her in the first lawn bag. The pale lips and the pastiness of her skin. The dead had a rigid stare, unforgiving. He was relieved that he’d duct taped her eyes so he wouldn’t have to feel their blaring judgment.

He breathed freely after killing her, and felt an elation and blissful calm no other act that he knew of could bring. He would have kept her longer if it hadn’t been for his sister. If she found out, it would be all over for him. He finished wrapping the girl and, an hour before daybreak, he was done. Carrying the body in his arms, he felt a startling rush of power and had even begun smiling.

He took her to the very far end of the pond, the place where he docked the small boat. As the girl sank beneath the water, another scream rang out and echoed against the still sky.

He shuddered with joy.

ERICA DUVALL WAS a loner. She always had been. Her mother had been a loner as well. Not understood, not wanting or needing to be understood. Her mother had hated the people of Grand Trespass, and had wanted nothing more than to get away. Now she was gone.

After she finished the mystery novel she’d been writing, she left. In the middle of the night ten years earlier, with only a backpack, the clothes on her back, and a dream, she crept out of the house and fled Grand Trespass. But she made a mistake. She left Erica behind, the person who’d loved her most.

Still, to this day, Erica didn’t understand why she hadn’t taken her with her. Or why she hadn’t at least said goodbye.

Erica had always been different from the other kids, which had, on its own, been social suicide. The other children didn’t like her, and she loathed them. She always felt awkward and uncomfortable in
anyone’s
presence. But that rarely bothered her anymore. She didn’t need anyone in her life except for her mother.

Now, spread across the living room floor were magazine clippings, a thesaurus, balled up scraps of paper and scribbled-on receipts. She sat on the leather couch staring into a notebook. For the last three days she hadn’t been able to string more than two sentences together. She was stuck between chapters five and six, and she wasn’t even sure the first five chapters were good enough. The short stories hadn’t been this difficult. In fact, they had come easily and her teachers had always marveled at them.

The trouble was, she had to write a novel. Not just any novel, but a great one. One her mother would be proud of. If she were proud, she wouldn’t be able to help but love her again, right?

She wondered if her mother had ever fought the demon of writer’s block. Every time Erica had watched her write, the writing seemed to come so naturally. She had her routines. In the mornings, she’d pace for a half hour or so in her satin pajamas with her favorite mug between her hands. An Ole Miss mug she carried everywhere. She called it her muse. She drank coffee or jasmine tea from that mug and tried to get the rhythm she needed for her writing by swaying to a Janis Joplin album—sometimes even Fleetwood Mac or Meatloaf, depending on her mood or the material she was writing.

She never listened to the Cajun music Erica’s father listened to, full of its whining accordions and muddy soul, the music that often blared when he was passed out drunk on the couch or the kitchen floor.

Her mother had despised that music and everything it stood for. She was a native of San Francisco, not a Podunk southerner from a town that barely existed on a U.S. map. She often told Erica that her greatest mistake had been following her father to Grand Trespass. She said she’d been blinded by love. A mistake she seemed to work night and day for over a year to fix.

After finishing her writing, her mother would dress and they’d make a snack together, usually pan-fried
beignets
. Then they’d sprawl on either end of the couch, eat, and watch old movies together.

But those days were over, at least for now.

Erica had been nine and her mother twenty-six the year she left. That was ten years ago, around the time her father began coming home late from work. For the long months leading up to her departure, the writing was all her mother could think about. She tackled it as though she was making up for ten years of wasted life.

Erica sighed and tossed her notebook aside. She flipped off the lamp and closed her eyes.

***

AN HOUR LATER, the front door swung open. Disoriented, Erica opened her eyes. The overhead light flooded the room, and she sat up. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

It was her father, and he was talking to someone.

A musky odor filled her nose and she sneezed. She watched her father scan the room.

“Oh, hi hon.”

He carried a paper bag in his left hand and held the hand of a busty, blonde woman with his right. The source of the atrocious smell.

Erica sized up the woman’s long red fingernails, a color her mother would never stoop to wearing. It sent men the wrong message. Or, maybe in this woman’s case with her father, the right one.

Erica scrambled to pick up her things on the floor. Her things were private. Not for her father to see, much less some blonde bimbo.

“Erica, this is Pamela.”

Pamela took a step toward Erica and extended her hand. The woman wasn’t much older than she was.

“Hi. It’s so nice to finally meet yooooh!” she squealed.

A mixture of anger and confusion washed over Erica.
Finally?
Erica shoved everything into her backpack and stood, not accepting the woman’s hand.

Her father cleared his throat. “Erica’s a writer,” he said, smiling. A fake smile. The type he used when he was selling used cars at the lot or when there were strange women in the house, though she’d never seen one quite this young. “She’s working on a book.”

“You are?” Pamela asked, apparently unaffected, her voice still annoyingly cheerful.

Erica groaned and marched across the living room, past the aquarium that was once full of her mother’s guppies. She had tried to keep them alive after her mother left, but one by one, they’d all bellied up. She’d mourned every one as though she were grieving her mother.

“Have you eaten dinner, honey?” her father asked.

Without bothering to answer, Erica escaped to her room.

***

NINETEEN TEA CANDLES lit Erica’s room. She’d dumped the twentieth candle into her bedside garbage can, part of a ceremonial act she’d seen her mother perform several times. Nineteen flames now twisted on their wicks, swaying against the air conditioner that had just kicked on in the small room.

She leaned against her headboard listening to one of her mother’s Janis Joplin tapes. A bottle of white wine she’d bought from the young clerk at the general store rested between her legs. She took a sip, watching the flames’ shadows dance across the walls and the splintering bookshelves in her room.

Her mother had believed the candles gave her
creative energy
. Erica sipped as she waited to feel some of her own. But she was distracted. Images of the new hussy’s young face and long red nails had her preoccupied. She shook the images from her mind and took a longer sip, then another.

Sometimes during the candle ceremonies she swore she could feel the energy. Other times, she felt nothing, and only ended up falling asleep with the candles lit.

There was a knock on her door.

“What?” she seethed.

Her father opened the door. “Honey...” he started, coming in and sitting on her bed.

She moved to the chair by her window.

“Honey, we need to talk.”

“About?” she asked, trying to sound as indignant as possible. Her mother had been indignant with him, especially after his late nights at the car lot.

“It’s about your manners. Your attitude.”

She raised an eyebrow and studied the floor. She hated people’s eyes, they made her anxious. She didn’t like what she saw in them. Judgment, indifference, hate, ignorance. She couldn’t even bear to look into her own father’s eyes most times. He was as ignorant as all of them.

Her words were an angry hiss. “Excuse me?”

He glanced at her nightstand and saw the wine bottle, but when he spoke next, he said nothing about the alcohol. Instead of being relieved, it infuriated her more.

“You were very rude to Pamela tonight. I don’t—”

“She’s still here, isn’t she?” Erica interrupted. It was already ten o’clock. There was no reason for that strange woman to still be in the house.

“Well, yeah. Pamela’s still here. And she’ll be here a while. She’s. . . staying over.” He pointed to the candles on the windowsill. “You need to be careful with those. Make sure to blow them out before you go to—”

“Sleeping over? Where? Where will she
sleep
?”

“Erica, how many times do we need to—”

Her head was spinning from the alcohol. “In your bed?”

“I’m a grown man, honey. If Pamela—”

“You’re still married!” Erica shouted. Tears swelled behind her eyes and she turned so that he couldn’t see her face. She was disappointed that she’d raised her voice. He’d mistake it for her caring, which she didn’t.

The muscles in her stomach knotted when she thought of her father sleeping with another woman. She wasn’t sure why. She
knew
her mother would never return to him or Grand Trespass. So it shouldn’t even matter.

Often she’d fantasize about sneaking into her father’s bedroom in the middle of the night and ending both him and the whore he was laid up with. That would show him. It would be so easy. But she had too much to lose. Namely, her mother.

The voice behind her softened. “Your mother hasn’t contacted us in ten years. I looked very, very hard for her. We all did. We couldn’t find her, honey. I’m not sure what happened. . . or why she hasn’t tried to get in touch with you, kiddo. I know she loves you.”

Erica remained silent, not wanting to believe him. She wanted to believe that her mother
had
contacted her father; that she
had
tried to get in touch with her, but her father had in some way come between them. Her mother was perfect, something her father definitely wasn’t.

“Erica, I don’t understand why you have to make things so difficult. I try. I really do.”

He tried? She hadn’t seen him try. Did he think that the last several years of courting loose women and working late most evenings at the dealership was trying? How about giving her a rickety decade-old Ford F-150 that broke down twice a month, or caring nothing about her life? Was that trying?

Her father stood. “I’m sorry you feel this way. I really am. But I have a life, too. And I’m going to live it, honey.”

He walked to her bedroom door, then turned. “You’ll like Pamela. She’s a great lady. She’s different than the others. You’ll see.”

With that, he closed the door.

Now alone, the tears skidded down her cheeks. She wanted to scream at the door and say things that would hurt him. She wanted to hurl the wine bottle. She hated him. He was the reason her mother left her.