Voices in the Dark (28 page)

• • •

Dudley had returned. He started to speak, but Mary Williams put a finger to his lips. “Just let me look at you.” She believed they had joined hands in a previous life and had reunited in this one. She stroked his hair. So much to be said, so much that needn’t be. Always they had divined the most important of each other’s thoughts, which now disquieted her.

“Who’s living here?” he asked.

She spoke quickly. “Soldier, you remember Soldier.”

They were in the kitchen. He looked about, as if something were missing. “The toaster belongs next to the bread box. He’s moved things around.”

“He won’t again. I promise.”

His smile was a thin glint. “Are you sleeping with him?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “I don’t mind.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know that,” he said and touched her cheek, warmed his whole hand against it. “I missed you.”

“I missed you more,” she said and made him sit down. “Where did you get those shoes?” Crouching, she loosened them and pulled them off, along with socks she didn’t recognize, and counted his toes like a mother fearful her newborn might not be sound. “You need a bath.”

Hot water steamed the bathroom and misted chrome and mirrors. When he eased into the tub, she scrutinized him, again like a mother, to make sure he was intact. She poured water over his head, put suds in his hair, and massaged his scalp. She cleaned an ear, the debris like the black chunk of seeds inside a poppy, and she soaped the back of his neck and shoulders. When he lifted an arm, she soaped him there. “I borrowed ten dollars,” he said. “Did you pay him back?”

“John? Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me where you’ve been all the rest of the time?”

He took the soap from her and used it on his chest. He straightened his back. Quite suddenly he was more his grown self. “I had many places to stay. One was a gazebo. Another was a chicken coop.”

“You’re fooling.”

“I’m not.” He soaped a sponge and squeezed it over his shoulders. “Mostly I was in a jail cell.”

“Now I
hope
you’re fooling,” she said with a shudder. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Yes, later,” he said. Alone, he soaked for a while and then dried himself in a luxurious towel. He dressed himself in the clothes she had laid out. A shirt that fitted him. Lightweight trousers that remembered him. Slippers that greeted him. He used a blower on his hair.

She smiled broadly when he returned to the kitchen. “You’re your old self, I can tell.” Her eyes went to him. “I want you to stay this way. No more of that awful business.”

“The money is important.”

“You pay a bigger price.” She moved closer. “Face it, Dudley, you go off the deep end.”

“No, I don’t.” His face was luminous from the repeating lights of his eyes. “I swim.”

• • •

Phoebe Yarbrough had been drinking, the best gin and tonic, more than enough to give her a glow. Wearing a silk shirt tucked into denim shorts, she stood tall and erect on legs that looked like bright spears. “Sure you won’t have one, Bev?”

“No, I need to be perfectly sober,” Beverly Gunner said from the depth of a large upholstered chair. “Are you sure Myles can’t hear us?”

“Positive.”

“Then please, Phoebe, tell me more about your life back then.”

Memories pelted her. She wore a bra under the silk but nothing under the denim. The fly was neglected, and feminine hair escaped like down from a milkweed pod. “You’ve heard, I’m sure, how the overbred Englishman pants for the blood of a fox. Well, that’s not a bad analogy.”

“That’s the way they were with you?”

“The older ones.”

“But they were good to you.”

“They had to be. That was a rule.” She took a sip of gin and settled in a wing chair, placing her feet on an ottoman. Her white canvas shoes were long and narrow. “I never tolerated vulgarity.” She took another sip. “Some wanted to videotape me. I never allowed that.”

“Then it wasn’t all fun.”

“It was work, that’s all it was. The challenge was to make the man think you enjoyed every minute of it.” Her head dropped back for a moment, with a random thought of her father, his hands weathered by coins, the constant traffic at his toll booth. She remembered the roughness of those hands on her arms, her legs.

“Most,” she continued, “came on too strong, wanted too much, as if money bought everything. But they were all manageable and predictable. Men who’d married virgins, more or less, far as they knew, wanted me in white lingerie. Repeat honeymoons. Guys long dissatisfied wanted me in black.”

“You must’ve learned so much.”

“I did a short story about it for my writing class. The professor was one of my clients. Needless to say, I got an A.” Sitting with splayed knees, she glanced down and made a face. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She patted herself in and fixed the fly.

Beverly said, “There must’ve been some excitement, a certain glamour.”

“Sometimes a little fun.” Smiling over her gin, she told of strolling Fifth Avenue in high-heel suede boots, stark naked under a full-length mink, her arm linked to a man’s.

“The man wanted you to do that?”

“It was Myles. The evening he proposed.”

“Oh, Phoebe, that was romantic. Were you in love?”

“No, but I wanted a different life.”

“Has he been good to you?”

“He doesn’t know who I am. The problem is I know who he is.” She threw her feet off the ottoman and uncoiled from the chair to refill her glass. “Are you sure you don’t want one, Bev?”

“No, I must be clear-headed. I want you to know, Phoebe, I won’t repeat anything you’ve told me. Ever.”

“Don’t fret about it.” Phoebe returned to her chair with less energy, a smile locked into her bruised face. “I’m sure your husband has already let the story out.”

“Yes, that’s something he would do,” Beverly said after a small hesitation. “Was he a client?”

“It’s taken me awhile to place him, but I remember him quite clearly now.”

“Was he disgusting?”

“He wasn’t a gentleman.”

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

“Not your fault,” she said, her smile turning mysterious, as if there existed no situation from which she could not disengage herself, if not physically, then mentally. Her feet were back on the ottoman, her ankles crossed. A restful silence grew until Beverly broke it.

“I’ve come to a decision, Phoebe.”

“Have you? I’m glad.”

“I’ve decided to change my life, and I feel quite good about it.”

“Are you leaving Paul?”

“He’s leaving me.”

“Then make sure you have a good lawyer. I don’t recommend Myles. And remember, the only sure thing in a woman’s life is disappointment. Or worse.”

“I’ve had the worst,” Beverly said.

Regina Smith stepped into her daughter’s room. Patricia, watching television, ignored her until a commercial came on. Then she said, “I love him, Mom. You may as well know that.”

Regina bristled. “You think you love him. You’re enthralled with sex.”

“No, I’m enthralled with Tony.”

“The boy’s a fag.”

“No, he isn’t! Only
you
would say that.”

“But he could be. How do you know anything about anyone in today’s world? You’re a child, Patricia. You don’t have sense, you have whims.”

“I don’t care to discuss it, Mom. I really don’t.”

“Yes, you’re right. You’ll be going back to school soon. You won’t be seeing him, thank God.”

Patricia’s face shot up. “We’ll find ways.”

Regina reared back at the insolence and felt infinitely fatigued and betrayed by forces impinging on her daughter’s life and now on her own. She remembered imagining her uncle’s whole hand going up in flames when he lit wooden matches with a thumbnail. Now she imagined flames engulfing her flesh-and-blood child. “I love you, Patricia.”

“Then let me live.”

She retreated. Downstairs she wandered. Darkness shrouded one room, lamplight opened another. The silence pinged. At an open window a curtain billowed in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just sitting,” Ira said, one leg over the other. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. “Isn’t it time we went to bed?”

“You go ahead,” she said coolly. “I’m not tired.”

His brow wrinkled, as if all his thoughts were uneasy, which did not displease her. It seemed ages ago that she had loved him. He said, “Should I expect you within a reasonable time?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Rising, he attempted a smile, a joke, a poor one. “Punishing me for the sins of the son?”

“You may end up punishing yourself,” she said.

• • •

Soldier drank beer in a bar around the corner from Charles Street, near Massachusetts General Hospital. Part of the time he sat with the nurse he knew. The remote quality of her voice had always placed a distance between them and placed a greater one now that they no longer lived together. She asked how things were going for him with his new friend, and he said he wasn’t sure, too much was up in the air. “She’s complicated,” he said, “like you.”

The nurse, who didn’t intend to be unkind, said, “Maybe you should lower your sights.”

He walked back to Beacon Street, clinking coins in his pocket, passing a homeless man who had kenneled himself in a carton. The sight gave him a chill.

When he entered the apartment with a key he might soon have to surrender, he knew Dudley was back. The air told him. Then Mary Williams’s face did. He said, “Well, what about me?”

“Shh,” she said, “he’s asleep.” She took his arm, ignored the beer on his breath, and edged him into the kitchen. “I’ll make you a nice supper. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

He laid out dishes in the dining room. She lit candles, instant jewels, then served him and herself an omelette shot with bits of onion, the way he liked it. He said, “You haven’t answered my question.”

“He says you can stay.”

“
He
says. What do you say?”

“I want you to.”

“The three of us, huh? That what you want?”

“It’ll work,” she said, “if you make the effort.”

He felt he had cards to play. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s your decision.”

He threw his hand in fast. For the first time in his life he feared old age, feared shrinking into a half-life of sicknesses, detested the ugly thought of death. The famous live on in books and movies. The ordinary dead, grunts like himself, just get deader. “We can try it,” he said.

The omelette was delicious, the coffee a choice blend, and he began to relax. She had gone out of her way for him. The nurse never had, had never even pretended to care for him, and had kicked him out unceremoniously. Mary had feelings for him.

She said, “I’ve made a bed up for you on the sofa.”

His face fell. “What?”

“It has to be that way, Soldier.”

“Where’s he sleeping?”

“In his own bed. I’ll be in mine.”

In the dark he lay under a blanket on the sofa, unable to sleep, unable to control his thoughts, every sound from the street an irritation, sometimes a jolt. The anger grew until he could not cope with it.

He stole through the dark, a soldier on a mission, a certain cadence in his creep, armed only with what God had given him.

Over Mary’s bed, he deepened his voice. “This isn’t right.”

“I know,” she said, and made room for him.

• • •

Beverly Gunner entered her house without a sound and turned on only necessary lights, her resolve steeled with the strength of pure purpose. Ascending stairs, she pictured herself as a series of arrangements, of which her breasts were the fiercest, her hips the heaviest, her thighs the meanest. In her bedroom she did her eyes, poked red on her lips, and dabbed scent behind each ear. Her hair, returned to its perfect shell, gleamed gold. In the bathroom she sought something useful, efficient.

Letting light leak in after her, she entered her husband’s bedroom, which smelled both of him and the outdoors. His snores were flutters; moths buffeted the screens. He had kicked half out of the covers, and she saw not the flesh and fat of a man but the near hairless body of a beast ready to be skinned. She had scissors in hand, the kind for cutting hair. When she stabbed him, parts of him jumped. He chomped for air.

She struck again, but he seemed to feel no pain, only surprise, then shock. He couldn’t breathe. Wonderful. He was a man drowning.

He gaped at her in disbelief, tangling a frantic arm in the sheet.

“A woman bleeds,” she said, “why shouldn’t you?”

She smelled blood but couldn’t see any, which was frustrating. A knee on the bed, she made another hit, like piercing butter, no positive strike, which was more frustration.

They fought. His lurid face was heated up the way water boils, and hers was merely determined. The clenched scissors again found flesh. She was too large for him. Her hair was a helmet, her thighs were expansive, her hips explosive. Her knee dug in.

“You killed my daughter.”

His fist shot up. It knocked her back but left him with no strength to raise his head.

“Now I’ve killed you,” she said.

13

BEVERLY GUNNER WENT OUT INTO THE DARK, WHERE SHE WAS met by phantom breezes and the restlessness of trees. The night was a symphony. Every insect and tree frog for miles around was making music. The dark air, which would have chilled another woman, warmed her.

She dragged a deck chair along with her and some distance from the house erected it on open ground. A beautiful night, many stars, a chunk of the moon remaining. She sat with her head tipped back and under the spread of the sky viewed history, though all that was visible was the punctuation. A little later, she closed her eyes with a smile, no longer obliged to think deeply about anything, her mind uncluttered, her conscience spotless.

In his bedroom Paul Gunner lay without movement. His mind worked, but his body didn’t. Every muscle was tightening, his universe regressing, contracting. Somehow he moved an arm, found the phone, and straightened a thick finger. His memory for numbers did not desert him. He called the Stoneham home
of a doctor in whose health clinic he had a substantial investment. He spoke quickly, his mind moving faster than his words, which tended to grip his tongue.