The Book of James (24 page)

so sweet they erode the enamel on your teeth. I’d seen an almost-

empty bag on her dresser when I was here before and had made

a mental note to bring her some on my next visit. El a looked at

me and then at the bag and then at me again. I wasn’t sure if she was going to throw me out or grab the bag and run. Maybe circus peanuts were her absolute favorites. Then she just shrugged

and walked over to the sink. Ginny appeared oblivious during the

entire exchange. I sat down at the table and waited until she put the last brownish overcooked noodle in her mouth. El a moved in and

grabbed the plate, taking it to the sink.

Ginny continued to look straight ahead. She ran her twisted

fingers over the tablecloth in front of her, tracing a small pattern of flowers. I reached out and took her hand. She barely noticed.

I realized that if I wanted to get anything out of this visit, I was going to have to lead. I pulled at her arm, and she stood with me.

I continued to move her along to the living room. El a was still in the kitchen, cleaning, and seemed, at least for the moment, too

preoccupied to notice us.

Ginny sat in a wine-colored wing-back chair. I sat in a match-

ing one and pulled it up close to her.

196

ELLEN J. GREEN

“Ginny?” I said it as loud as I dared without drawing El a to

our side. Our eyes met, and I saw that her pupils were so large they looked like big black disks floating in tiny blue pools. “Ginny, I brought you something.” I took the circus peanuts out and handed

them to her. She held the plastic-wrapped package in her hand and looked at it. “Do you know who I am?”

Her eyes narrowed to a squint. “Nick’s wife,” she said softly.

I touched her arm. “That’s right. Nick’s wife. I was here before.”

I watched the slowness of her movement, the obvious confusion.

“What medication do they have you on?”

“Harrison says I need it,” she answered.

“I’m not going to stay long. I just have something I want to

ask you, if you can try and think real y hard.” I waited, but she said nothing and gave no indication she’d even heard me. “Ginny, what

did the gardener, Ralph Simpson, find in the dirt that day?”

Her head snapped up as if I’d reached through the fog and

smacked her face. “What?” she said.

“Was it a green coin like the one I showed you the other day?”

She put her head in her hands. I looked at the huge purply

veins that ran down them into her thin white arms. “Green coin?

Yes.”“So why did Cora let him go? Just because of that green coin?

What got her so upset?”

“Nick must have lost it.” She seemed to be struggling to put her

words together. “Bradford got him another one.”

“But why did that upset Cora? That Ralph found the first one

in the dirt?”

Her white hair was set in curls around her head, but her hair

was so thin you could see her scalp in between the clumps. “She

was upset.”

I struggled to keep my voice low and calm. “Why?”

THE BOOK
of
JAMES

197

“It reminded her of Nick. It wasn’t easy for her. She hadn’t seen that coin since he left.” Even in her confusion she seemed to be on guard, filtering the information. Trying not to say the wrong thing.

“So she fired the gardener?” I turned and looked over my

shoulder. El a was still in the kitchen. She had a fork and was eating the leftover mush from the pot on the stove.

“Cora reacts sometimes . . . doesn’t make sense. Her anger . . .”

Ginny ran her hands over her face and shook her head. “I made a

mistake. I never should’ve showed it to her. I never should have . . .

I should have left it alone.” She was crying, and I was afraid that I’d be physical y thrown from the house if I couldn’t calm her a little. I took the plastic package from her lap and ripped it open. I put two of the orange peanuts in her hand. She put them in her mouth and

chewed mindlessly, focusing on a picture on the wal . She seemed

to forget where we were in the conversation, so I sat, saying nothing, for a few minutes.

El a came into the room, and at that moment it appeared as

if we were just having a nice visit. Ginny’s agitation had subsided.

She was focused on the sugar in her mouth. I patted her hand and

stood.

“Good-bye, and thank you, Ginny.” I was afraid for a minute

that she was going to say something, giving El a an indication of our conversation, so I exited the room quickly without turning

around.

I glanced backward briefly before opening the door. Ginny

was staring out the window. I could only see her profile, but in

the light her expression was remarkably similar to the one I had

seen on Klara Heinz’s face the other day. Etched with sadness and worry, but mostly fear.

I had to talk to Cora about Samantha coming to visit. I’d over-

stayed her original invitation, but I was hoping she wasn’t going to remind me of it. I’d been grinding my teeth, and my jaw was

sore. As I went through the tunnel in search of Cora, I was reliving the dread I’d felt as a kid sitting in the principal’s office. My steps were slow and heavy. I ran my hands along the damp wal s of the

tunnels. The little penlight I kept stowed in my pocket now il uminated a bit of the wal . I was developing a fear of being trapped in these passageways with no light. This time, instead of taking the left path, I turned right when the passages forked.

I stopped a few feet in and held my breath. The wal s them-

selves looked the same. Rough dirt and rock, smoothed with time,

damp. I wondered if it ever flooded down here when it rained real y hard. The passages were narrow and, at times, just wide enough to walk through without having to turn sideways. An image popped

into my mind of Cora stuck in one of these passageways in one of

her shapeless dresses, unable to move, wedged between the narrow

wal s, screaming for help. It made me smile.

THE BOOK
of
JAMES

199

The tunnel ended at a heavy metal door. The rusted hinges

screeched when I opened it. I cringed, then shined my light inside.

A storage space. It was small and square in shape, maybe twenty

feet across. Dirt floor, dirt wal s. No windows. A single lightbulb hung from a chain in the middle of the room with a string attached.

I pulled it. The bulb let off enough light for me to see that there was old gardening equipment strewn about the floor. A cracked hose,

some bags of lime and peat moss, a post-hole digger, a shovel. All were rusted and beyond use. There was another door on the other

side of the room. I pulled at the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. I had no idea where it led; my entire knowledge of the tunnel system in this house was of the one that led from my room to the marble

stair, and now this. Ralph Simpson had told me about this room

only yesterday.

My hands touched the cold, damp rock wal . I shuddered and

drew back, the urge to leave overwhelming. The door was as hard

to close as it had been to open. The rust from the metal flaked off on my skin. I rubbed my hands on my pants. Now I had to conquer

an even bigger fear. Find Cora.

The search ended at the bottom of the marble stairway. Cora

stood at the top, looking down at me. Her presence startled me. I wasn’t sure if she had been on her way down the stairs or up. Her hand rested on the banister.

“Cora, I was just coming to look for you.” I walked up the stairs one by one, waiting for a response. She stared at me but said nothing. “I wanted to talk to you, if I could.”

“Good.” Her simple response.

The gray in her dress almost matched her hair. If she had shoes

and a bag to match, she’d be all color-coordinated: a solid wall of gray. I had reached the landing, and we stood side by side. She

had at least five inches on me. I hadn’t noticed it so much before.

I glanced down. She was wearing flat black shoes. That put her

somewhere around five eight or nine.

200

ELLEN J. GREEN

She led me to the room we’d used for Bible study and pointed

to one of the leather club chairs. “Sit,” she said, lowering herself into the other one.

She had an intimidating presence, but what made it worse was

that I kept thinking about those checks that went through the wash cycle. She was calm, revealing no expression on her face. I tried to relax myself as her tiny green eyes studied my own face, feature by feature. “What is it that you wanted?”

My hands rested on the thick arms of the chair. My palms were

moist with sweat and I moved them, afraid they’d leave a mark on

the expensive leather. The missing checks, those pages from my

journal fluttering in the wind, and the thought of digging up my

husband, of him decomposing in the navy-blue suit I’d chosen for

his burial, made me feel il . “Yesterday the week was up. You know, the week we agreed on?”

She tilted her head toward me. “And you’re ready to go?”

I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure.” I was being honest. “Some

part of my husband is here. Though he’s gone, and being in this

house doesn’t change that. It’s just—”

Her brow furrowed. “What?”

“It’s just that Nick seemed to want me here. In this house.

That’s what he was saying right before they took him into surgery.

And I don’t understand why. Do you?”

Cora put her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know

what he was thinking.”

“You know, the morning of the accident, he got a letter. I saw

the envelope but didn’t pay attention. The only thing I do know is that it upset him.”

I could see her wheels turning, but she gave nothing away.

“Maybe a bill collector?”

I put my head down and smiled. It was her attempt to crit-

icize her son for not taking the money. “No. I know what those

letters look like. This was a plain white envelope. Hand addressed.

THE BOOK
of
JAMES

201

Whatever it was, Nick was a mess. He ran up into his office and

slammed the door. He was still upset later, when we left for Boston.

Angry, touchy. So upset that he was on edge when I was driving.”

My words were calculated. Had the letter been from Cora? If it had still been in the house after the accident, Samantha would have

found it.

Cora’s mouth was tight. “Are you saying this letter might have

indirectly caused the accident? Hearing about my son right before he died is upsetting. Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not sure. And maybe the letter was nothing. Maybe it

was from the architecture firm. You know, when new construction

slowed down, the firm took a hit. Projects came to a halt. The last few years weren’t great. So maybe it was about health coverage or a salary cut. But his reaction seemed more personal. You know?”

“And maybe a good wife would have found out what was

upsetting him before just jumping in the car and driving off.”

“I asked what was wrong; he wouldn’t tell me.”

Her eyes were as large as I’d ever seen them. “Aren’t you some-

one who was trained to talk to people? Yes? You understand them.

Read their minds? Bring them out?” I put my head down; my hair

flopped into my face. She was twisting this around, and I couldn’t stop her. “You were trained so well that you couldn’t even get your husband to tell you about a piece of mail? A simple letter? And you get paid to do this?”

She leaned in so close to me I wanted to get up. Her hand

touched mine. It was rough and cold. “I think we need to get on

with the real things at hand here. Nick’s father is buried in the Whitfield plot. In the cemetery at Saint Martin-in-the-Fields. You will not bury Nick there. He needs to be with the Monroes, my

family. I told you there’s a spot in our cemetery.” I wanted to shake her hand off of mine, but I forced myself to sit unmoving. “It’s

where Nick belongs. With my father and mother, and my brother.”

“Your brother?” It piqued my curiosity.

202

ELLEN J. GREEN

“My mother died with him in childbirth. But it’s where Nick

belongs.” She was repeating herself. “Not in Maine. With some

other name on his headstone. He’s a Monroe.”

“Oh” was all that came out of my mouth. I wanted to tell her

that he belonged in Maine, with the name Weichmann on his

tombstone. It was how he chose to live. But I didn’t. “While I have you, Cora, I wanted to ask you something else.”

She dropped my hand and sat back in her chair. “Yes?”

“I have a friend coming from Portland, and I wanted to know

if she might be able to stay with me, here, only for a few days, and then the two of us’ll drive back to Maine together. I mean after we take care of the burial.”

“As much as I’d like to, the answer is no. I don’t entertain vis-

itors.” Her eyes seethed, but her face was devoid of any hint of it.

Bad move. “Of course she can stay in a hotel.”

“It is for the best. I’m sorry. I open my home to very few peo-

ple. You are . . . family, so I made an exception. The only exception I will ever make.”

I felt like I was playing poker. I’d asked Cora about the letter, thinking I might get a reaction, prove that she’d found Nick before he died, that that was why he’d been so agitated that day. But she’d twisted my words around and blamed me.

My anger toward Nick softened. His childhood had no doubt

been a nightmare, and he’d had the strength to leave at a young age and try and make it on his own. That counted for something. That

counted for a lot. Even more than before, I needed to do what he’d asked of me before he died.