Whispers and Lies (16 page)

“Terry,” Alison said, her gaze drifting toward the grass, the second time this afternoon she’d been too embarrassed to look me in the eyes, “I’d like you to meet Lance Palmay. My brother.”

“A
pleasure to meet you,” Lance said, his handshake surprisingly gentle.

“I called him after Thanksgiving. Remember?” Alison asked.

I nodded, recalling the one-sided conversation I’d overheard the morning I was so desperately sick.

Everything is going exactly as planned. You’re just going to have to trust that I know what I’m doing.

“Lance decided he needed to fly down and see for himself how I’m making out.”

“Looks like she’s managing just fine,” Lance pronounced.

“That’s why I came over before, to tell you about Lance,” Alison explained, inviting me inside the cottage with a sweep of her hand. “We got kind of sidetracked.…”

I’m not sure what I expected to see when I stepped
inside—a tinsel-covered wonderland, a veritable army of toys, a re-creation of the North Pole? But surprisingly, the cottage bore only a few traces of Christmas—a large red candle, surrounded by a few careless sprigs of holly, on the glass coffee table in front of the deep purple love seat, a lonely Santa Claus doll lying facedown on the bentwood rocker. That was it.

“Do you want a cold drink?” Alison offered.

I shook my head, watched as Lance flopped down on the large floral-print chair. He looks way too comfortable, I thought, masking the unkind thought with a clearing of my throat. “When did you get in?”

“Plane got into Fort Lauderdale around twelve-thirty.” He smiled at Alison. “I rented a car at the airport. White Lincoln Town Car, no less. It’s parked across the street. You must have seen it. Surprised old sleepyhead here as she was getting out of bed.”

Alison’s eyes narrowed as her shoulders tensed.

“Where are you staying?” I asked.

The two exchanged wary glances.

“We were just talking about that,” Alison began.

“I thought I could stay here for a few days,” Lance said as if the decision had already been made.

“Here?” I repeated when I could think of nothing else to say.

“Of course if you have any objections …,” Alison said quickly.

“Why would she object?” Lance asked, looking right at me.

“But where would you sleep?” The sofa was far too short for the elongated legs of a former high school basketball
player, the double bed way too small to accommodate a brother and sister comfortably.

“This is a pretty neat chair.” Lance pounded its oversize arms. “And I can always throw a pillow on the floor.”

“Is it all right?” Alison asked me again. “Because honestly, if it isn’t, Lance can find a motel.”

“At this time of year? Without a reservation? I wouldn’t count on it.”

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” Alison said.

“Absolutely not,” Lance concurred. “If my staying here would make you feel uncomfortable in any way …”

“It’s
your
comfort I’m concerned with.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll pay you extra,” Alison volunteered.

“Don’t be silly. That’s not the point.”

“Terry had a bad experience with her last tenant,” Alison told her brother.

“How so?”

“Too long a story.” I shook my head. “Well, okay then, I guess it’s okay. A few days, you said?”

“Absolutely,” Alison agreed.

“Christmas … New Year’s, tops,” Lance said, effortlessly stretching the few days to ten.

“Well …”

“Can I open my present now?” Alison asked eagerly. Without waiting for my reply, she tore off the silver wrapping paper, her eyes widening with delight when she saw what was inside. “A wallet! Oh, that’s so great. I need a wallet. How’d you know that?”

I laughed, picturing the loose bills that were always tumbling around inside her purse.

“We are just so tuned in to each other, don’t you think?” Alison stated more than asked, turning the honey-colored leather wallet over in her hands, caressing its smooth sides. “It’s amazing. Don’t you think?”

“I think it’s a very nice wallet,” Lance said. “Terry is obviously a woman of impeccable taste.”

Was he being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell.

“I should go.” I turned toward the door.

“You’ll come with us for dinner, won’t you?” Alison asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m not very hungry. You guys go, get reacquainted.”

“Okay,” Alison agreed reluctantly, “but only if you promise to spend the day with us tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I know you’re not working tomorrow, and I want to show Lance all around Delray.”

“You don’t need me for that.”

“Yeah, I do. Please. It won’t be the same without you.”

“You know it’s pointless to argue,” Lance said with a laugh.

He was right, and we all knew it.

“You have to come,” Alison persisted. “Please. It’ll be so fun. Please. Please. Say you’ll at least think about it.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

O
F COURSE
, in the end I agreed to go. What other choice did I have? It’s pointless to say that I was being dangerously naive, even reckless, that I was deluding myself into thinking that everything was going to be all right, that Alison and her brother were exactly the people they
represented themselves to be. I’ve said all these things to myself, and much more besides. But I continued to rationalize my doubts away. I convinced myself Alison was sincere in her reasons for not telling me she’d been fired, and that, of course, she’d had nothing to do with any money that might be missing from the gallery.

And what of the conversation I’d overheard at the cottage door?

I told you to let me handle this.

Handle what?

I’m just here to help.

I don’t need your help. I know what I’m doing.

What did it mean?

Nothing, I assured myself that night. Alison and her brother could have been talking about anything. What self-conscious paranoia made me think their conversation had anything to do with me? Not everything was about me, as my mother might have said. Whatever Alison and her brother had been arguing about probably didn’t concern me at all.

Handle what?

I was too tired to try figuring it out. And the truth was, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to believe that Alison was anything other than the beautiful free spirit who’d brought magic into my otherwise mundane existence. Why would I assume she had ulterior motives or that she might be planning anything sinister? Why couldn’t her brother’s visit be as unexpected and spontaneous as they claimed?

So I made a conscious decision to ignore the warning bells that were jingling like mad in my head, much like the bells Alison had hung from our doors. I rationalized
away my instincts, reminded myself that Lance Palmay would be gone in a few days, scolded myself for being so suspicious, so uptight. Then I made a cup of tea and carried it into the living room, where I curled up on the sofa with a new book, the white lights of the Christmas tree winking behind me, the smell of pine needles competing with the aroma of white oleander. I took a sip of the soothingly hot liquid, read a few pages, read them again when they failed to register, then slowly drifted off to sleep, the book slipping from my hands to the floor, as old ghosts rushed toward me from the darkness and distant voices whispered in my ears.

In my dream I was kissing Roger Stillman in the backseat of his old red Thunderbird, his hands groping me under my sweater and skirt. A succession of increasingly loud moans escaped his lips as he triumphantly rolled my panties down over my hips and climbed on top of me. “Are you wearing a rubber?” I asked him, feeling my flesh tear as he pushed his way roughly inside me. I cried out, opening my eyes, eyes that had been tightly closed throughout most of our encounter, and that’s when I saw the policeman staring at us through the car window, his flashlight illuminating the careless sprinkling of dark hairs across the top of Roger’s bare buttocks. I screamed, but Roger continued humping away, like an unwelcome dog on a human leg. Any leg, any human, I realized, pushing him off me, watching him effortlessly morph into Alison’s brother, Lance Palmay.

“Could you step out of the car, please?” the police officer directed, and Roger/Lance complied with an easy smile.

I struggled with my clothing, trying to push my skirt down over the panties twisted around my knees, but the policeman was already climbing into the backseat, assuming Roger’s former position on top of me, his flashlight directed at my eyes so that I couldn’t see his face, his large penis pushing its way toward my mouth. “You’ve been a bad girl,” he was saying in Josh Wylie’s soothing baritone. “I’m going to have to tell your mother.”

“Please don’t do that,” I begged as his monstrous organ forced my lips apart. “Please don’t tell my mother.”

“Tell me what?” my mother asked, suddenly materializing on the seat beside me.

Which is when I woke up.

“Well, that was fun,” I muttered, my heart pounding as I looked around the room, dark except for the flickering white lights of the tree behind me. I checked my watch, discovered I’d been sleeping for several hours, which meant I’d probably be up half the night. I rolled my head back, letting it drop lazily from one shoulder to the other, and waited for my heartbeat to return to normal. I realized, with equal amounts of shame and surprise, that the dream had excited me in spite of its peculiarities. In spite of my mother.

Or maybe because of her.

I marveled at the appearance of Roger Stillman in my dream. I didn’t think I’d ever dreamed about him before, even during the heat of what might have been described, rather generously, as our relationship. And why the link to Alison’s brother? Yes, they were both tall and good-looking, but so what? My subconscious had obviously intuited a deeper connection, even if my conscious mind
had yet to determine what that connection might be.

I wiped a trickle of perspiration from the side of my neck, massaged the tenderness at my shoulders, my hand falling across my breast, the way Roger Stillman’s hand had done, my nipples hardening at the memory of his fingers reaching underneath my blouse to unhook the clasp at the front of my bra. I felt my bare breasts rush into his waiting hands, recalled the way he fumbled with my pliant flesh, manipulating it like cookie dough, his eager mouth sucking on my nipples, as ferociously as a starving infant.

I remembered my mother’s barely concealed disgust each time she looked at my maturing body, as if my breasts were a deliberate act of rebellion on my part, something for which I should be duly ashamed.

“Go away, Mother,” I whispered now, lying back on the sofa, recalling how clumsily Roger had pulled on the zipper of my pants before pushing his hand down the front of my panties. I thought of Josh’s hands, imagined his fingers in place of Roger’s, felt them dancing around my most secret folds before disappearing inside me.

I cried out, my own fingers unable to follow my mind’s lead, to provide my body the relief it craved. Instead I flipped onto my stomach and pressed myself against the hard edge of the sofa, its soft pillows muffling my embarrassed cries, my body shaking with a series of mild convulsions.

Instantly, my mother’s shame swept over me.

I pushed myself to my feet and looked around, half-expecting my mother to be sitting in one of the Queen Anne chairs, watching me, as she had watched me in my
dream. But the room was mercifully empty of ghosts.

I walked to the window, stared out at the street, watched large palm leaves dance in the shadows of the tall streetlight. I pressed my head against the glass, clasping my hands tightly behind my back. I caught a flicker of movement across the street, a shadow where before had been nothing. Was someone there? Dear God, had anyone seen me?

Someone’s always watching
, my mother admonished as I rushed to the front door, threw it open, and stared into the night.

Bettye McCoy and her two idiot dogs were rounding the corner and coming this way. I watched them approach, totally oblivious to my presence in the darkened doorway. She was wearing a pair of tight blue jeans and a cropped red sweater, with matching red heels. A red headband held her thick blond hair in place. Like an aging and surgically enhanced Alice in Wonderland, I thought cruelly, listening to her heels click against the pavement as she was pulled along by her two dogs. Of course the dogs stopped every few seconds to sniff at each and every bush, repeatedly lifting their legs to mark their territory. Just do your business and move on, I thought, watching in growing dismay as one of the dogs suddenly spun around and lifted his rump into the air, dropping several unwelcome deposits in the middle of the sidewalk at the end of my walkway. I waited for Bettye McCoy to scoop the droppings into her waiting plastic bag, but instead she only smirked, then tucked the empty bag back inside her jeans pocket before walking away.

I reacted without thinking. “Excuse me!” I ran down the front path, stopping just short of the neat pile of fresh
excrement. “Excuse me,” I called again when Bettye McCoy failed to take notice.

Her dogs began to bark and pull at their leashes. “I’m sorry,” Bettye McCoy said, reluctantly turning around. “Were you addressing me?”

“Do you see anyone else?”

“Is there something I can do for you?” Bettye McCoy arched one disdainful eyebrow.

“You can clean up after your dogs.”

“I always clean up after my dogs.”

“Not tonight, you didn’t.” I pointed at the small pile of dog feces by my feet.

“My dogs didn’t do that.”

I could scarcely believe my ears. “What are you talking about? I watched him do it.” I pointed at the smaller of the two white dogs, who looked as if he were in danger of strangling on his leash.

“It’s not Corky’s,” Bettye McCoy insisted. “Corky didn’t do it.”

“I was standing right in the doorway. I saw the whole thing.”

“Corky didn’t do it.”

“Look. Why don’t you just admit your dog did it, clean it up, and be on your way. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”