Reprisal (12 page)

"We weren't. I suppose he finally just couldn't stand me--maybe didn't care for the aging alcoholic routine, the physical wreckage I represented for him.

He wouldn't even nod to me on the street, and we only met for our very minor business, since I'm his attorney.-Was his attorney, though he used other lawyers, too. ... But let me tell you--as I'm sure you're discovering for yourself--they don't have to be with you, to be with you."

Joanna, struck as if she'd never considered that, was embarrassed to find herself putting her hands up to her face to cry.

"Oh, honey," Wanda said, piped in her old lady's voice ... and Joanna forced her hands back down into her lap. Her eyes ached with tears that would not fall.

"Cried out?" Wanda said. "Me too." She picked up the glass, finished her drink, then reached down to pull out the side desk drawer and put the glass away. "... I just miss that old son of a bitch terribly. It just seems--I'll tell you this and then I'll shut up except for business. I'll just tell you this: Louis would have left your mother anyway. Your mother bored him stiff.

She was a nice woman and that's all she was. It's all I was, too, but I could tell that Louis didn't want a nice woman. He wanted a troublesome woman to keep his mind off how wrong his life had gone." Wanda puffed her cheeks, blew gently in and out. Joanna smelled scotch's smoky odor.

"--So, I gave him trouble. It was very funny, in a way. There I was--and what I really wanted was for your father to marry me and give me a child and a pretty house to live in ... and wait for him to come home and cook for him and all the common rest of it. Isn't that funny? ... And I suppose one of the reasons he finally got sick of me was he realized I'd been faking being the bad girl for all those years. ... Oh, I gave him hell. Scenes, and then I wouldn't talk to him for weeks at a time, and I'd go out with some fool so he'd see us in town. And then, if you'll pardon me for saying it, Joanna, I'd go back to him and screw his socks off."

Wanda sat for a moment with her eyes closed, resting, or remembering. "I suppose there was some anger there too, for his making me go through all that when I didn't want to. Because I didn't want to play that game at all.--But I was absolutely crazy about the man. He was the coldest, most unpleasant person--then he'd do something so sweet. So sweet. ... Just open himself up like a book, and then he was helpless, helpless and at my mercy. It just killed me."

"I'm sorry, Wanda."

"You're sorry. ..." Wanda sighed in her voice's high pitch. "--Well, that's enough travel down memory lane. And we do have some legal business to conduct." She opened a manila folder, took out a four-page document, and held it away to focus on. "Your father's will was in order, and I do not anticipate any problem with probate. No problem. As the only child, only surviving relative, you receive his real property, which is the cabin--now, the lake lot the cabin stood on. You will also receive, after probate and my fee, approximately thirty-three thousand dollars in cash, and a small portfolio of extremely mediocre stocks-Louis didn't believe in stock funds--and dubious corporate bonds."

"I see."

"Your father was not interested in investment strategy, and would not take advice." Wanda was sitting up straight now, alert while she dealt with business, professional matters.

"No surprise."

"No. ... Your father did have some expenses that lowered his estate's value.

There was a trust arrangement he undertook, and other expenses that are no part of his will--and legally speaking, are now none of our business."

"Trust arrangement. ..."

"Through another attorney in town--a man. From what I understand, your father decided to give some anonymous support to an individual in need of it. Which support, not a lot of money, ended two years ago when the trust arrangement wound up. And--so that attorney assured me--involved nothing discreditable. In fact, apparently a generous thing to have done."

"And nothing I should know?"

"No, nothing you need to know, and nothing I know details about. Your father's business, old business, and over with."

"All right. ... Is there anything I need to do?"

"Other than wait for probate--which shouldn't be delayed, at least not more than usual in this state --and to pay my fee when I bill you, no. As to taxes due on the estate--and they shouldn't be much --I'll let you know."

"Do I need to come up again?"

"No. I'll call you when it's through probate, and I'll send the papers down to White River."

"I'm out at Asconsett for the summer."

"You're staying out there?"

"Yes. For the summer. Forty-seven Slope Street."

"I have that address. College called back and gave it to me." Wanda picked up a three-by-five card, examined it, and put it down. "--Do you mind if I ask if you need money, Joanna? I mean, with Frank gone. If you need money, I could advance you a sum, personally."

"That's very nice of you, Wanda. No ... no, I don't need money."

"You get a portion of Rebecca's tuition off as a faculty member?"

"Yes, a percentage. Which is why she's going to White River instead of over to Dartmouth--where she was accepted and where she'd dearly love to be going, because it's a campus where her mother, for God's sake, doesn't teach."

"I don't blame her. I would have considered it a nightmare to have my mother at my school."

"I don't blame her, either. But frankly, Wanda, she's a very young nineteen.

Dartmouth is pretty fast-paced."

"Party school."

"That, too."

"And how is she handling Frank's death--do you mind if I ask?"

"No, I don't mind. It hit her very hard. I don't think even the possibility of such a loss had occurred to her, and it's ... hit her very hard. We babied her. She was always carefully protected, and she loved Frank. Loved him even more than horses."

"Oh, dear."

"Yes. ... I've been very worried about her. She couldn't wait--we couldn't wait to get away from each other."

"Reminders."

"Exactly right. Wanda, we remind each other about Frank. We see each other and say, "Where is he?"

"Of course.--What happened to your hands?"

"What? Oh ... I've done some caving."

"They're cut."

"Some little cuts." Joanna got up to go, picked up her purse. "Thank you very much, Wanda, for being so helpful. ... And if it makes any difference at all--though I hated you when I was a little girl, and wished you were dead--now I think my father was a fool not to have grabbed you and held on."

"That's sweet. ... Oh, hell, who knows." Wanda stood up behind her desk, slightly unsteady, and supported herself with a hand on the desktop. "Probably wouldn't have worked out at all. And you've been very patient, listening to my boozy nonsense. ..." She came around the desk, small and very thin, and stood tall to peck Joanna dryly on the cheek, leave a hint of scotch. "This getting-old thing is just sickening ... sickening. It means there's no God; that's what makes it so sickening."

At the office door, the door already open, Joanna paused and closed it again.

"Wanda, I don't ... I don't really believe that Frank's death was an accident.

I want you to know that. I want somebody to know that.--I don't believe it was an accident at all, because an accident out there required two things that Frank just didn't do. He always wore his life jacket-always. And he did not fall out of boats-particularly in calm seas and good weather. I just want you--"

"Honey ... honey." Wanda stared up at her, an elderly cat, startled. "--But that's why they call them accidents."

"I know ... I know. I've already been given that line."

"Well ... God. Well, let me ask you, Joanna, aside from the pain of it, the loss just because of something stupid, what reason would there be for anyone to do such a thing? Who would benefit ...?"

"I don't know."

"Did you go to the police?"

"Yes."

"And they said ...?"

"They said they see odd accidents at sea all the time--and no one would benefit in Frank's case, and besides, they checked it out."

"And nothing?"

"And nothing."

"Honey, it's easy for me to say, but I'll say it anyway. A loss is a loss."

Wanda, unsteady, went back to her desk and sat down. "You don't want to be imagining it even worse than it was."

"Wanda, I have to tell you I think exactly the same about Louis's death.--I don't believe he ever in his life went to bed and left a stove door open with a fire burning in it. That is the last thing my father would ever have done."

"Louis was almost eighty, Joanna." Wanda seemed weary, shrunken behind her desk.

"I don't give a damn! Do you believe it?"

"I have to believe it, honey, because it happened."

"--And did you know that the firemen found a stain burned into the floorboards? They thought maybe Daddy put kerosene on the fire to restart it."

"Never."

"That's right.--Never. Then they said it wasn't an accelerant, at least not kerosene or gas. It was something that disappeared in the heat. They think he may have thrown some water on the fire."

"Oh, dear. ..."

"I'm sorry, Wanda; I shouldn't even have mentioned this to you. I know it sounds ridiculous."

"No, it's just one more thing. ... But Joanna, you know there's nothing to it.

Because of just what the police told you. No one benefited from Frank's death--and sure as heck no one benefits from Louis's. You're the only beneficiary in each case, and for peanuts. So why? Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"I don't know."

"--Because there is no reason. Have you mentioned any of this to Rebecca?"

"No, not yet."

"Well, Joanna, please don't do that."

"I don't want to, but we're talking about her father. Hers--and now mine."

"Oh, God. ..."

"But I'm sorry I troubled you with it." Joanna opened the office door again.

"--Maybe I am just being stupid. Maybe I've lost too much, too quickly. ..."

"I'd say that's probably so."

"Well ... bye-bye."

"Bye-bye. ..."

As she left the office, closing the door behind her, Joanna heard Wanda's desk drawer slide open.

The plump girl looked up from her keyboard and mouthed, spoke softly. "Is she okay ...?"

"I think so."

The girl shook her head. "I'm really worried about her," she said, barely above a whisper.

Joanna went out to the island on the late-evening ferry. She sat in the cabin for the trip--not yet ready, she supposed, to see a lot of Atlantic Ocean.

They were mainly older people in the cabin, going out to the islands. Oteague, first. Then Parkers Island. Then Shell, then Asconsett. Older people, looking tired and staying in the cabin, perhaps also not ready to see more ocean.

The rhythmic grumbling of the ferry's engine, its vibration through the bench's weather-faded oak, were soothing ... so Joanna sat with her eyes closed and tried to think of nothing, tried to think of no loss at all.--She thought of an empty space where nothing was, nothing had ever been, so nothing and no one could be missing from it. It would be pearl gray, a space with no horizon, a room with no walls, a room of emptiness. ...

Such a pleasant place to be. Heaven, she supposed, might be a perfect vacancy.-Only its gray was bound to become darker, shade to black as loneliness grew to fill it. Heaven becoming hell, she supposed, and perhaps that simple.

She sat relaxed, drifting almost to sleep. What vibrations soothed travelers before the internal combustion engine? Steam engines ... trains, of course.

And before that, the less reliable beat of horses' hooves. Men and women pulled by horses, carried by horses, plowing with horses ... depending on those innocents for all civilization. And betting on their speed.

Even now, it seemed to her, people had what they had from foundations built by the sweat of horses. Their hoofbeats should echo in human hearts. But what statues had been placed in their honor? What horse-named streets and counties?

What volumes of poetry ...?

The ferry came in fourteen minutes late, delayed by crosscurrents. Joanna drove off its ramp, along Bollard to Strand, then up Slope Street to the cottage as a crescent moon rose over ocean.

... She carefully thought only of horses, then tomato soup, tea, and toast.

She did the dishes, then went upstairs, undressed, and took a shower--where other thoughts, memories crept in. She couldn't keep them out. They waited in the bedroom closet among Frank's summer clothes--time and past time to go through them, give them away.

The memories were there, hanging among seersucker sports jackets and slacks, a summer suit--light blue--and several pairs of jeans. His shoes, old Top-Siders, sneakers, and a pair of soccer shoes--for what, out here on the island? Why had he packed soccer shoes? Why did men do the things they do? ...

What sweet confusion in their minds obscured practicality? What different determination vaulted instead to inventions, to change, to long-term plans, to organization and the hunt? To possibly useful war?--It was odd that men and women could live together at all, and bear, long-term, such difference. Her father--wanting to be an artillery officer, of all strange things! And Frank

... what had Frank wanted that he never had?

Joanna took off her robe, and looked at herself in the closet door's long mirror. It seemed to her she didn't look quite as she had even a few weeks ago. Her breast didn't appear perfectly the same--it seemed slightly smaller, shrunken, as if it were winter fruit, shriveled in storage ... no longer a perfect match for the prosthesis. And her belly looked softer ... her legs thinner, muscle showing wiry under the skin.

Death, coming once and then again, had touched her with age, lightly, as it passed by.

Joanna looked at her face in the mirror, saw concern there, shadowed by the closet's single bulb, and certainly the commencement of an older woman's face, a face from which youth's innocence was gone. A face that once suggested by her mirror, even hinted at, would become inevitable.