Tony and Susan (7 page)

Susan Morrow reads to a stop, shocked. You killed them, Edward, she says, you went ahead and did it. What she thought she couldn’t bear. She feels stunned with Tony as if she had not seen it coming. A terrible sad crime, though she believes that if they had not died having come this far she would have been disappointed. Poor Tony, how much her pleasure depends on his distress. She has a notion that the pain the scene uncovers, incarnated in Tony, is really her own, which is alarming. Her own designated pain, old or new, past or future, she can’t tell which. It’s obscure because she knows that unlike Tony’s her pain is not here but somewhere else, and its absence, made so vivid, is what makes the moment thrilling. Not sure what she means by this, she resorts to critical appreciation. Appreciate the narrative, details of discovery, irrationality everywhere, denial of the obvious, appreciate that. Later you can criticize if you object to the victimization of women, for instance – but not yet, first submit, appreciate, horrible though it be.

Next page: PART TWO on a blank sheet. So it’s Part One we have been reading, putting Tony into a shape, like a bottle. Where do we go now? Whatever it is will be different, which makes a risk for Edward, like starting over. For that, she wishes him well.

Susan Morrow had intended to stop here but that’s impossible. Besides, someone is still taking a shower. She must take a look at Part Two.

The word in Tony Hastings’s mind was no!, denial slamming up against the hard fact his mind had prepared him for. They walked with him back to the police car, holding him by the arm like an old man. He sat in the back seat with the door open, looking back. He listened to the police radio, loud voices and the trooper talking into the microphone making a report which he did not understand. He looked at the bushes with the clothes draped on them. He looked at what was under the bushes, which did not change, every time he looked they were the same, like the trees. With grasshoppers buzzing in the tall grass and a flycatcher with faint whistle darting from a branch into the still air. He looked away, at the policeman leaning into the front seat to speak into the microphone, at the tops of the trees on the edge of the clearing where he saw a hawk’s nest, and he looked back at the bushes and saw them again, placed, established, a photograph.

There was only no! no!, his refusal to follow the movement of time through the intersection. End of future. Moment separated from moment, time moving away without his participation. No thought except no. Sorry, someone said, we can’t touch them, we can’t move anything until they come. Waiting, without wondering what they were waiting for, nor noticing how long, only looking again from time to time to the scene in the bushes, the same every time he looked. Bobby Andes and the policeman walked around the clearing, back and forth, looking at the ground, poking delicately into the brush, back to the car and out again. He could not remember afterwards if he walked around too.

The cars came as if there had been no wait at all, flashing their lights in the woods at midday, and the men jumped out
and tromped the clearing, measuring and taking pictures. They lined up with their backs blocking his view, chattering like sparrows, and he did remember thinking, they’re mine, my Laura, my Helen. He saw them working awkwardly with gray canvas, and when the view cleared, the clothes weren’t there and neither were they.

He saw the wrapped cocoon carried out of the broken bushes on a stretcher. Then he saw the other one. He wondered which was which, lying side by side. He thought he knew, then realized he did not, and no way to find out except by asking someone, who might get it wrong. Thinking he ought to know, his own Laura and Helen, the thought knocked something loose in his throat, leaking down his cheeks like a child.

A young policeman said, ‘Come, I’ll take you back.’

‘Where?’

He looked for Bobby Andes, the trooper, someone he knew.

‘I’ll take you to your motel.’

‘What can I do there?’

Bobby Andes was reading from his notebook into a tape recorder. He noticed Tony Hastings. He said, ‘You can go with George. I’ll talk to you this afternoon.’

Tony Hastings pulled the world together. He said, ‘Will my car be usable?’

‘Tomorrow. I want to examine it first.’

‘Can I have my suitcase?’

‘George will get it.’ Bobby Andes spoke to George: ‘Tell Max he needs his worldly goods.’

The one Bobby Andes called George drove him back, the long trip out the terrible woods track like a gash in his mind, and fast on the country roads to his motel across from the police station.

Afterwards, Tony Hastings remembered him only vaguely, like a blond high school football player in a policeman’s uniform. They did not speak. Tony Hastings stared at the repeating woods, two times in each direction, backdrop to dizzy thought. Afterwards he remembered the display of his thought upon the big deciduous trunks, the fallen branches, the rock outcrops with the radio police voices. The word No. He did not know what he was thinking, except that what had happened was the worst and the world was over. Nor what he was feeling, if he was feeling anything. Fatigue and lethargy. He wondered what he should do. He guessed there would be no point in going to Maine. Of course there would be no point, what was he thinking about? What would he do with August and the rest of the summer? What would he do with his car? What when the policeman left him at the motel? He wondered if his emotions required him to skip lunch, but he was hungry, whatever his emotions were, which he didn’t know anyway. He wondered where he could eat lunch and what it would be like. He wondered what to do in the afternoon, and looked forward to his interview with Bobby Andes, which would be something, anyway. Then there would be dinner to think about. After dinner, the evening.

He knew his loss was heavy even if he didn’t feel its weight, and he ought to tell someone. Of course he should, it was his privilege as one bereaved. Bereaved. He thought of his friends and wondered who to tell, intimates who would gather around in your hour of need. He could not think of anyone who would want to gather around, yet someone should be notified. Who? Probably his sister and brother. Of course his sister and brother. He was glad he remembered his sister. He was not so sure about his brother. But when he thought what to tell her, he didn’t want to break the news, he did not want to deal with her shock, he did not want to listen to it.

Thinking about grief made him remember the wrapped cocoons, which was which, and the memory released his tears a second time.

He said, ‘Would it be possible for someone to call my sister and tell her? Give her my number so she can call back.’

The look on George’s face could not understand why if Tony wanted his sister to call him, he couldn’t call her himself. But it was only his face, and he said, ‘I guess so, sure.’ He took the numbers which Tony had written on a slip from his notebook.

He began to wonder if he had made a mistake. The possibility that, distraught as he was and expecting the worst, he had not taken sufficient care in identifying them, had jumped to his conclusion too quickly. He realized he had looked only once. Long enough only to see what he had expected to see. The possibility of error grew like a fountain. Try it on George. ‘I’m afraid I’m not absolutely sure of my identification.’

It took George a moment to understand. ‘Yeah?’ Annoyed. Tony was embarrassed. ‘You’ll have to look again in the morgue, anyway,’ George said.

At the motel before leaving, George said, ‘You want to cancel that call to your sister?’

‘What for?’

‘Until you’re sure?’

Though he already knew this was a futile hope, the slightest possibility he had made a mistake, that his sister might be given false news he would later have to retract, paralyzed him. He didn’t know what to say. The policeman waited.

‘No. Yes. No.’

‘Which?’

Wait, then yield.

‘Go ahead and notify her.’

‘You’re sure?’ ‘Yes.’

In the afternoon he fell asleep on the motel bed in his clothes. Later a man from the police office took him to the morgue to identify the bodies again. Bodies. They were in a cold room with white tiles on the walls. Each on a separate table. The man pulled back a sheet to disclose the head. They were either wax busts, gray and green, or his dear ones, Laura depicted in an ironic angry smile and Helen in a pout that could have been playful but was not. No doubt about it.

They took him back to the station, where he had a talk with Bobby Andes. ‘News,’ he said. ‘Report from Topping, someone else harassed on the Interstate last night just like you.’

‘Same guys, probably.’

‘Got a license plate.’ Tony Hastings looked at him. ‘Unfortunately, it’s stolen from a car that had been junked.’ Suddenly Tony Hastings realized that Bobby Andes wanted to catch the three guys. For him that would be the logical next step.

He apologized. ‘If you don’t mind, we’d like your fingerprints too,’ he said.

‘Mine?’

‘No offense. We found some prints on the trunk of your car, which was sticking out of the water.’

He was pleased with that. He asked Tony to go over his story again. The highway harassing, the stopping and the flat tire, the separation of the family, the drive into the woods, the walk out, the whole thing. Bobby Andes was sympathetic, he kept shaking his head, and his sympathy grew angry as they talked. ‘The rotten bastards,’ he said. ‘The filthy sons of bitches.’

He threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair. ‘Your whole goddamn family. Can you imagine such a thing?’

Tony Hastings didn’t have to imagine it. He was grateful for Bobby Andes’s sympathy, though it surprised him, and he didn’t know what to make of the anger.

‘Beasts,’ Bobby Andes said.

He said, ‘I had a wife and kid, she divorced me. That makes no difference.’ He took his hands and made a neck-twisting motion. His face was mottled. ‘We’ll get em,’ he said. ‘Count on me.’ His hands went snap!

I appreciate your interest, Tony thought, but what good will it do?

Bobby Andes became businesslike. ‘I’d like you to stay till tomorrow afternoon,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a warrant to check out the trailer, and we’re going over your car for evidence. We might need you.’

‘Okay.’

‘We’ll put out a call for witnesses on TV. Might fetch your old deaf man in the pickup.’

‘What could he do?

‘Witness. Who knows what he seen, if he’s not too scared. You all right for tonight?’

‘I think so.’

‘You got a place to eat?’

‘Motel, probably.’

‘You like Italian food? Try Julio’s.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh yes. Hawk wants to know what arrangements you want. Disposal. Funeral. You know.’

You know. Tony Hastings did not know. Funeral.

‘Do I have to manage that?’

‘Take your time, no rush.’

‘I don’t know any funeral people.’

‘You could have it done here, then ship them out. I can recommend you somebody.’

Ship them out.

He took a taxi to Julio’s and ate an Italian dinner alone, preceded by a drink. The drink reminded him of loneliness, and the dinner was good, which made it worse. He bought magazines to get through the evening and went back to the motel.

He got a call from Paula, his sister. She was upset. ‘Oh Tony. How awful.’ When he heard her say how awful, some old habit wanted to say, ‘It’s not that bad.’ Catching himself, he said nothing. She invited him to come at once and stay at the Cape. He said he had to take care of the arrangements first. The arrangements. She said she would come for the funeral. Then he must come back to the Cape with her. Funeral. He was grateful. She asked how he intended to get home. He said he would drive, as soon as he got his car back. Funeral.

‘Drive at a time like this? Do you think that’s safe?’

He wondered about that. He said, ‘I’m all right. You don’t have to worry about me.’

She wished he wouldn’t drive that long trip all by himself. She had an idea. She’d send Merton, send him tomorrow to keep you company on your trip back. She’d do it herself if it weren’t for whatever it was.

No, he didn’t want Merton. He didn’t want anybody. He was all right, he could drive by himself. She mustn’t worry.

Well if you’re sure, she said. She would see him at the funeral. She would fly there and pick him up and they could fly back to the Cape together. Funeral. She promised to call his brother Alex in Chicago, as well as someone in Cincinnati to tell whoever needed to be notified. So I’ll see you Thursday,
she said. Notified. He spent the rest of the evening in the motel reading magazines, and when it was time to sleep, he slept.

Tony Hastings picked up his car at the police station the next afternoon. It had been dried out and cleaned. It was full of memory, but never mind that. Bobby Andes had more news.

‘We got the cause of death.’

Tony sat down, waited for it. Andes not looking at him.

‘Your wife had a fractured skull. She appears to have been struck, hammer or baseball bat. Only once or twice. Your daughter had a harder time. She was strangled. Suffocated.’

He waited for Tony to think about it, with more to say.

‘She also had a broken arm.’

‘You mean there was a struggle?’

‘Looks like it.’

He was watching Tony. ‘Something else,’ he said. Tony waited. ‘They were raped.’ He made this sound like the worst news yet, though Tony was not surprised to hear it. He was surprised to hear it, though.

Bobby Andes brightened. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. Seems you were right about that trailer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your friends took your folks there just like you said.’

‘How do you know that?’

Hammer.

‘We found your wife’s fingerprint on the bedpost.’ As if that were good news.

‘Oh my God. What about Helen?’

‘Not hers, just your wife’s.’

‘Well, whose trailer is it?’

Rape.

‘Oh that.’ Bobby Andes, knowing his business. ‘He’s clear. He lives in Poleville, uses it for the hunting season. The place had been broken into. Someone’s been living in it.’