Site Unseen (29 page)

"I bought the coffee. Brian ate three biscotti. I found out that he was in the chemistry department and that he'd just finished his exams. I'd never met anyone so . . . happy. It's the only word. I don't mean in the ignorance-is-bliss way. Brian doesn't waste time worrying about things. It was a relief just to be with him--it made me feel as though life made
some sense, even though I hadn't ever thought it didn't. I guess he was intrigued by the fact that I was curious about lots of things, not just my work. But at the same time, I liked that he reminded me that there were things going on outside of academia . . ."

"It worked from the very beginning. The thing that scares me is that if it weren't for a stupid, ripped grocery bag, I might never have met Brian. There are accidents in life that send you down paths you've never imagined." Like a stupid photocopied map.

I shook myself a little as I finished, startled to find how vividly the details came back to me. I looked at Meg. She wasn't smirking or anything, she just nodded.

"Guys are funny," she blurted. "One minute you think you are right there with them, the next. . ." She shook her head in frustration. "The next, you realize you're a million miles off the mark. I gotta tell you something," she said abruptly.

"Okay," I said warily. Everyone had to tell me something lately.

"Alan's been saying some pretty horrible things about you to people. Did you know?"

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. "No, I didn't. Are you sure you should tell me?"

Meg nodded. "Pretty sure."

A long silence followed, and then she began in a rush. "Okay, here's the deal. I've been kind of seeing Neal for a while now. A couple of dates so far. Things were going good. At least, I thought they were."

Meg looked out the passenger side window as the scenery gradually shifted from college town to more rural landscapes. She began talking again, quickly, as if to get it out before she thought better of the idea. I just kept quiet.

"He cooked dinner for me last night, chili, real hot, you know, but that's okay. I like spicy food. We were talking and talking, and he was telling me about his huge family and I was telling him all about being an army brat, all the weird
things you grow up with, like a change of scenery every six months, learning how to shoot--"

"You shoot
guns?"
I asked incredulously.

"Firearms, yeah," she said, surprised at my surprise. "That's what he, Neal, said too. It's fine as long as you treat them with respect." She shook her head in disbelief. "Man, cross the Mississippi and people get silly on you. Anyway, we were getting along, having a great time. And this is good, okay, because I'm used to guys who are a little more gung ho or have something to prove because their parents are in the army or whatever, so this is just fine with me and I'm deciding that I'm going to give the kid a chance. And we eventually got around to, you know, kissing. Whatever. But that's when the trouble started.

"I guess Alan walked in on us, I don't know, neither of us heard right away. And when we did look up, he had this look on his face like someone kicked him."

I nodded, remembering what I'd seen on the site. Alan had a crush on Meg the size of all outdoors.

"It wasn't like we were doing it or anything, not even close," she said hurriedly. "I just didn't realize that Alan, well, that he kinda was getting ready to ask me out or something, and there I was, trading spit with his roommate. But I figured, cool, now he knows, no harm done, asked him how dinner was--you know he goes home to dinner with his folks every Friday?--and he said dinner was god-awful, but that he quit your class and if I knew what was good for me, I'd stay away from you too."

She looked over to see how I was taking this so far. I just stared out the windshield and nodded that I'd heard, keeping my face blank. I thought that he was having problems, but knew nothing about this. What was he telling people?

Meg continued. "So I tell him he's mental, of course. And then
he
says that his dad's been finding out that you were talking Pauline into changing her will and maybe you knew something about that guy Tichnor with the gun and maybe you and he were planning to kill her and it was just a matter
of time before everyone found out about it and he didn't want me getting dragged down if he could help it. So I told him he was out of his mind and he should get his head out of his ass and deal with his parental issues in therapy and not take them out on you, or words to that effect. I guess I was getting pretty pissed off. I've been told I have a temper. Well, Alan announced that he was sick of us all laughing at him-- which by the way, has been sort of a running refrain for him and is just number one pure horseshit--and then he stormed out after that." She began to run the zipper on her jacket up and down along its track, creating a little counterpoint to her narrative.

"And then Neal,
Neal
gets all quiet and serious and everything and says why did I have to go and get Alan riled, when he just managed to get him calmed down for the first time this semester and didn't I ever hear of agreeing to disagree and I didn't have to live with Alan anyway, and I've just undone about three months' worth of compromise? And I said, haven't you ever heard of standing up for what you think is right or standing up for your friends, even, and where was his spine, or words to that effect, and then I sorta decided to leave before I said worse."

She took a deep breath, and I found that I needed one too, having held mine through her whole long monologue. But Meg spoke again first.

"I mean, I suppose you didn't need to know all of that, but I think it kind of shows just how crazy people are starting to get, and you really ought to know that much," she ended suddenly and left us both feeling tremendously uncomfortable.

I tried to figure out where I should begin. "For one thing, to start with, if you have any doubts about me in this, you are under no obligation to defend me, or even be near me, out of some sense of loyalty."

"What other sense is there?" she demanded. "Besides, I know you had nothing to do with any of this."

No, you don't kiddo, I thought. We've known each other
less than three months. Out loud I said, "Well, thanks. And Alan, Alan's got a lot going on right now, so it's not real important to me whether he believes me, that's the least of his problems--"

"But he's wrong--" she protested.

"He's allowed to be wrong," I said, and could practically hear Brian snickering, asking me why I didn't always take my own good advice. Other people were allowed to be wrong, to ask for help, he'd say to me, so why aren't you?

"And I'm not running for a popularity contest or anything, I don't need everyone to like me." Again I heard Brian's imaginary hoots.

"Meg," I said slowly. "Is that why you hesitated about coming out here today? Alan's suspicions?" I was careful not to say Rick's suspicions.

"Hesitated?"

"Back when I asked you, after class, you didn't seem too keen at first."

Her face cleared. "No, nothing like that." Then Meg looked guilty and stammered a bit. "No, I just wasn't certain how you'd be, being on the site and all, after, you know ..." She turned to me and said, with more than a trace of defiance. "So now you know."

I bit my lip and looked out the window, trying not to smile. Meg was funny; not the least problem in the world with revealing the details of her private life, but start dipping into someone else's emotions, and she turned as shy as a rabbit.

"I'll be fine. Here we are," was all I said, as we pulled down the driveway.

"Do you, you know, want a moment alone first?" she asked a little too offhandedly. "Before we get started?"

I wouldn't have thought that she would have dared to suggest such a thing, but she looked a little edgy herself, and I thought that I'd give her a moment to collect herself. She was pretty ruthless with herself. "Thanks. I'll just be a minute."

It was harder than I thought to go over to the ruined part
of the foundation and look around. "I'm still looking, Pauline. I don't know what's going on, but I'll find out."

A little breeze moved the pines that stood behind where the house had been, but nothing more. I noticed that the roses had been trampled by the emergency vehicles, but one was still hanging on, blooms persisting on broken stems. I pulled a piece of string out of my pocket and tried to prop up the stalk against a stake, and a thorn raked the back of my hand for all my good intentions. I returned, feeling calm, and got Meg.

The site, as it turned out, had been very thoroughly picked over; there was virtually nothing for us to salvage from the vandalized units, and we spent most of the morning mapping and making notes where we could about the ruined contexts, and making lists of tasks for backfilling day, when all of our hard work would be carefully buried until the next season. We finished shortly after lunch, when I remembered the dive shop and asked Meg if she could spare the time for a side trip before we headed back.

"I've got nothing waiting for me now," Meg said. That sounded suggestive, but I didn't pry further. Presumably getting ready for the date she'd had was no longer an issue.

"I won't take long," I promised, "and you're on the clock until we get back." I figured nosing around the dive shop wouldn't give me anything, and the sheriff would probably be too busy to see me again. "I'm thirsty, how about you?"

We pulled up outside a convenience store for a couple of Cokes, when an impulse seized me. Noticing that we were right across the street from one of the longer-lived antiques stores on the road to the Point, I decided to find out if Tichnor had been stupid enough to try selling the materials recovered through his looting activities, maybe even something of Pauline's, if he'd been the one in her house.

The store was set up by a pro; there were a few good pieces placed strategically in the window and in the case by
the cash register. The rest of the shop was full of stuff that would have been better suited to the last garage sale of the summer, ratty but not priced to move. All carefully designed to lure the unsuspecting, unschooled vacation antiquer into thinking that there would be treasures hidden behind that pile of tiled ashtrays.

I glanced around as I navigated the jumble of rusting fire irons and umbrella stands, wondering what the owner would be like. He was obviously skillful in business because the place had survived a dozen other similar shops over the past ten years; he possibly had a love for the past or at least a love for the idealized image of the past that could be constructed from the nostalgic geegaws that lined the shelves.

The owner appeared to be the woman who walked with her hand outstretched from behind the beaded curtain that separated the shop front from a back room. Stunned, I watched as she marched up and removed the can of soda from my hand, placing it carefully in the wastebasket next to the till.

"I'm afraid that soda is not allowed in the store. We can't have you spilling on any of our items." The owner's voice snapped out briskly, a voice that plainly traced its lineage across generations of schoolmarms who had no other source of pleasure but the authority they wielded over other people.

"Frannie Maggers. Are you looking for something special, or just browsing today?" Her querulous voice suggested a suspicion that I had already pocketed the best of the shop's wares.

"I suppose I am just looking around. I'm really trying to get a feel for the folks at Penitence Point..." I trailed off, not quite sure what form my tale should take.

Mrs. Maggers supplied the rest of my story for me. "Oh, a writer. We get a lot of them," She made it sound as though that corner of Maine had to be sprayed for the infestation of writers every year. "Well, we're good people here, most of us, that is. Not that you could tell from this summer, but there you are. Perhaps you might find a little piece of the past here
to inspire you with your writing. Take this for example."

She held up a small brass object. "I don't like to part with any of Grandfather's belongings, but times being what they are, well, you can't eat sentiment. This was his grandfather's pipe tamper, very rare. It dates back to the early nineteenth century. When gentlemen smoked pipes--"

"Oh, I know what a tamper is--" I nodded, confident that this is where I could connect with her. We had artifacts in common.

Frannie continued on, like a steamroller barreling through a Monet landscape. "They needed to tamp down the tobacco before lighting. It was a present from his pretty young bride, who died in childbirth, very sad, and he was never the same person again. I'd be willing to sell it to you for fifty dollars. Cash."

I looked at the object, immediately deciding that great-great grandfather probably wouldn't have tamped anything with a lamp finial from about 1940, and his descendant knew it full well. I said nothing about this, figuring that some folks would be happy to pay for the object just for the story that went along with it. She continued on through the store.

I decided that the other woman's skinniness was not from financial hardship. Where anyone else would have been plump from the pickings of unwary tourists that she was obviously raking in, Fran was all knobby bones and parsimony. And by the end of Fran's tour through the rest of the shop, I had counted ten great-grandmothers, five grandfathers, and far more than the usual complement of great-aunts and uncles. High mortality, bigamy, or divorce must have run rampant in her pedigree for such a collection of relatives to have truly existed.

Fran, sensing that none of her engaging and entirely fictitious anecdotes was likely to bring her a sale, made as if to take up her position on a stool behind the counter, but I stopped her, mindful that Meg was waiting outside.