Reprisal (16 page)

"He can fix the window," Joanna said. "And he can keep the money, too. He won't bother me again."

"You hope.--Let me give you some advice. Don't adopt Bobby; don't try to help him. It's been tried before."

"Has not," Bobby said. "That's not true."

"Hell it isn't," Officer Lilburn said. "Bobby, didn't Mrs. Johnston let you stay free in her side-porch room?"

"No."

"Yes, she let you stay there. And you sold her floor lamp for money to drink with."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"Officer," Joanna said, "--thank you for coming up. And I would like it if you'd mention what Mr. Moffit said about somebody--a boy in a red baseball cap--sailing out with my husband."

Officer Lilburn sighed and stepped to the kitchen doorway. "I'll report that.

I'll report it, but you don't have ... you really don't have much of a witness here." She went out and down the steps, then called over her shoulder.

"--Bobby, you finish up that window and then be on your way. Don't you be bothering Mrs. Reed anymore. Did you know she just lost her dad, too? That her father was killed in a fire the other day?--And you come up here giving her this trouble."

Bobby Moffit sat unmoving, head bowed, for the few moments until the police car's door slammed, its engine started. Then he reached out for a square of cut glass again, and after two attempts, was able to fit it to the frame.

"Glue's got to dry," he said. "Then the glass is goin' to fit in there, put in new points an' glazin' compound. ... Sorry about your daddy."

Joanna stooped, to be more on Bobby's level. He smelled like a baby who hadn't been changed. "... Bobby, the police asked them, and none of the fishermen saw anybody in Bo-Peep with my husband. One of them saw the boat way out that day.

..."

"That's a laugh."

"What do you mean?"

""Fishermen." That's pretend fishin', is all that is. I know what I saw." He turned, tilted the glued window frame against the kitchen wall ... then dropped his glue bottle into the shopping bag and stood up with a grunt of effort, staggered a half-step. "--I'm goin' now. Glue dries, I'll come back an' putty tomorrow."

"Okay. And thank you for coming up to fix the window, Mr. Moffit."

"Hell, I was the one busted it. I busted it under the influence. ... But don't be scared; I'll be up here sober in the mornin'. I don't have to drink. People think I can't control myself, but I can. I just don't want to."

"I understand--and Mr. Moffit, I believe you did see someone out with my husband that morning. I believe you."

"Well, that makes two of us--you an' me. People say I'm just a lyin' drunk, when it's them that's doin' the big-time lyin' around here."

He went out the door, carefully down the kitchen steps, and walked away along the drive, swinging his shopping bag. He had an odd walk, a walk drifting at an angle, so he was facing slightly to the right as he went along. ... Joanna supposed that was due to damage from drinking.

Late in the evening, she sat at the kitchen table, eating a second slice of a small delivered pizza. A gentle sea breeze was drifting in through the broken window.--A more collected repairman would likely have left the window boarded up.

She'd asked the pizza delivery girl if she knew an island boy who went around wearing a red baseball cap.

"Baseball caps, sure," the girl had said. She hadn't seemed to think it was an odd question. Thin, dark, and very tall, so she already stooped slightly, she'd stood on the front steps, considering the question. "Baseball caps ...

but not red, particularly."

A boy in a red baseball cap. ... But seen by a sick man and from a distance, so perhaps not a boy. Perhaps a slight, slender man. A wiry, friendly person met down at the dock. An amiable, amusing man who talked sailing, who talked boats--and wanted one.

The pizza was very good ... good crust. But if ghosts might be fed, her father wouldn't be pleased with pizza.--Frank would; she'd ordered extra cheese and ripe olives. His favorite, not hers. So he could come into the kitchen out of the dining room's shadows--and come not as ashes; ashes had no appetite. ...

He could come in as she'd dreamed him, soaked, wetting the kitchen linoleum.

Come sauntering in, smelling of the sea, and sit down beside her.--All that would be allowed. Everything would be allowed except looking into his eyes.

Their color would have changed to a color never seen, a fourth primary color.

Frank might come in for dinner, if she called him correctly. And her father drifting in behind him, gusting into the yellow kitchen light as swirling ash, as turning smoke that wanted no pizza ... that disdained his drowned son-in-law, eating pizza though dead.

"An amiable young man--is there anything more?" That question of her father's, after he met Frank.

"Love, and the strength of love," she should have answered. But she hadn't.

She had stood on the porch of the old Chaumette house with her father smiling down at her, and she'd been slightly embarrassed by Frank's revealed simplicity and sweetness.

"He's very kind," she'd said, knowing that was not enough, betraying Frank in complicity with her father on her father's porch. And that little treachery, that small betrayal, had lingered years afterward in Louis's courteous contempt for a man who only coached soccer--who had no fierce temper, no hard and adamant withholding in him, who suffered no considerable loss.

What else might she have said on the Chaumette house's porch? It had been evening, and warm, a summer evening like this summer evening. ... She might have said, "He's strong enough to take care of me. He's strong enough to take care of me without letting me become a tyrant and sicken. There's no poetry in him, and that's a great relief, and will help me not to kill myself if I discover too frightening a truth in poetry."

What if she'd said that to Louis Bernard?

The embarrassment then would have been his, and would have cost her his smile as he turned cold. ... It was that smile she'd paid for by betraying Frank while Frank was in the side yard, playing hardball catch with the neighbor's tomboy girl. What had that wild girl's name been? An unhappy child, nail-bitten, scabbed, and odd. ... Gloria. Absolutely the wrong name for her.

Gloria Dittmer. Gone, now, killed by a car. But she'd been, of course, one of the oyster seeds of the last poems. ... Odd to realize that so late, and prompted by the vision of Frank's ghost sitting down, soaked, to eat from the pizza's other side. He'd take the extra slice. Why did men eat so much more?

Was it only their size--or appetite unashamed?

... But no ghost came, actual enough for dinner. So when Joanna was finished, there were slices of pizza left to be plastic-wrapped and put in the refrigerator. And only one plate to wash.

That done, she turned out the kitchen light, walked down the hall and climbed the stairs. The bedroom, yellow in the bedside lamp's mild glow, was as empty as if no man had ever seen it, ever slept there, or ever would--as if it had been built for her to be alone in.

... But deep into night--interrupting drifting conversations with her mother--was a commencement of dreamed lovemaking so sudden, so specific, she heard their liquid noises, felt soaking at her sex --and so real she underwent the heave and buck, the oily delicious ache of penetration as she was fucked.

Joanna felt Frank and saw him braced above her in dim light, frowning in pleasure's concentration as he worked on her, into her.

"Oh, fuck me," she said to him, groaned and felt wonderfully relieved, so happy about something she'd misunderstood. ... She had almost come, but not quite. And being steadily driven, driven in bittersweet in-and-out from sleep to waking, had just said, "My darling"--when the blade of recalling, that shone as morning light, sliced between them and woke her, bereft.

Joanna groaned, kept her eyes closed, and reached under the sheet to finish with her fingers what was started. She managed, by insisting, a cramping conclusion that allowed her to say, "Ohhh ..." And finished, she drew the sheet away-slowly as if a lover watched her--and lay naked, knees up and apart, so the sunlight at least could discover her wet and openness. Not absolutely wasted.

Joanna waited almost three hours after breakfast--Cheerios and a tangerine--for Mr. Moffit to come up to finish glazing the broken window.

She waited ... waited a little longer, then took her purse off the entrance-hall table, went out the front door, and locked it behind her. A useless precaution, with the kitchen's door window out.

She went down Slope Street--her sandals uneasy on the cobbles--walking into a perfect summer morning, a summer's bright and rolling sun. A beautiful morning but still, with no breeze from the sea. Beach weather, walking weather, but not fine for sailing. ... A woman in T-shirt and jeans--a neighbor whose name she didn't know-was coming up the hill as Joanna walked down, and smiled as they passed. Shared pleasure in a sunny day.

The chief constable was in, and looking older, more tired than before--particularly in the island's summer light, pouring so perfectly cool and bright into his white-painted office.

Joanna supposed the light must make her look older, too.

"Sorry about your father," the constable said from the other side of his gray steel desk. Looking very tired, and wearing a different suit today. Sharkskin

--but cream, not blue.

"Yes, I left a message with your deputy."

"I got that message, Mrs. Reed. And I have to tell you, I really didn't care for the language."

"Too bad." Tough talk; it startled Joanna's heart into thumping.

"... Mrs. Reed, I take into account that you have had two tragedies in your life, one right after the other--this ... your father's death--but let me tell you, it is not a good idea to try to harass law officers, talk like that."

Tired, and angry. It didn't hurt the old man's looks.

"Language is my business, Chief Constable. I say what I mean. And I mean to have you check again into my husband's death--and my father's death. You may be used to people being afraid of you out here, impressed by your professionalism--"

"Now--"

"But I can tell you that I'm not afraid of the police--and I am not impressed, so far, by your professionalism."

"I don't think we have anything more to talk about, Mrs. Reed." And he stood up, cold ... coldly angry. Really was a handsome old man. A tall, cold, tough beauty--and when young, must certainly have been every woman's dream and nightmare. His poor wife. ...

Joanna stayed sitting. "Yes, we do. I'm not going to run out of here, Constable!" Heart calming ... getting used to confrontation. "I want to know what you think about what Mr. Moffit told me. And ... and I want to know what you know about the fire that killed my father--who, by the way, was a very careful man, a neurotically careful man, who had used that woodstove for almost forty years! How many very improbable accidents must my family suffer before the police get interested? I'm ... worried about my daughter."

The chief constable made a suffering face and sat back down behind his desk, apparently a gift sitting, an example of heroic patience. "... I did call up to Chaumette, and spoke with the fire chief there. He said they do not regard that cabin fire as suspicious. They do not regard that wood staining they found as very suspicious, since there was no accelerator residue, as there would be with gasoline or kerosene."

"Not very suspicious."

"Not suspicious, period."

"Just another accident. ..."

"Mrs. Reed, that's exactly right."

"And Mr. Moffit--"

"Please, please, don't take Bobby Moffit seriously. Bobby is a sick man, and we have dealt with him for many years out here. He's been an alcoholic since he was sixteen years old--and for quite a while was a violent offender, a brawler very lucky to stay out of prison."

"He--"

"He is not the man you want as a witness, when you've had a tragedy like yours."

"Constable, he was very specific, very specific. A boy--or perhaps a young man-definitely out sailing with my husband the day he died! A boy wearing a red baseball cap."

"Oh, Lord. ..." The chief, exasperated, was looking less perfect. "Of course he was specific. How else was he going to get some money out of you? ...

Listen, I had Bobby brought in here first thing this morning, very first thing. I went over that testimony--and he initially denied breaking your window, denied everything. Then he said that was right; he did see some kid out with your husband that particular day--and let me tell you, Bobby Moffit doesn't know what the hell year it is."

"So he made all that up, just for a few dollars."

"That's right, so you'd give him some money--which I understand you did. He took advantage of your loss."

"Even so--"

"Just the same, just the same, we looked into that ... we're still looking into that. We're talking to some local people; we'll talk with kids. And we'll also check with the ferry crews to see if by some very unlikely chance they recall a particular boy in a baseball cap coming onto the island, or leaving, within a couple of days before and after your husband's death."

"Well ... I do appreciate your doing that--"

"And let me tell you, Mrs. Reed, I consider all this a complete waste of time.

Complete waste. It is time and effort that my people could use on other cases, other duties."

""A waste of time.""

"That's exactly right. Because, Mrs. Reed, you have given us no motive--not one--for any person wishing to injure your husband. And let me ask you this: Do you know any motive a person would have to cause your father's death? Do you?"

"... No, I don't."

"You bet you don't." The chief constable stood up, a conclusive standing up.

"--And for a very good reason. Both of those deaths were accidents." He walked over to the door, stood waiting for Joanna to get up and get out of his office. "Now, we'll look into this boy ... this kid thing. And that's going to be it, you understand?"

"Yes, I understand, and I appreciate your efforts ... your people doing this."