Woman in Red (7 page)

Ryan shrugged. “He’s working for some landscaper, I think. That’s all I know.”

“You two don’t hang out together?” she asked, surprised. There was a time they’d been practically joined at the hip.

“Not really.” Her nephew kept his gaze on the pool of melting ice cream he was slowly stirring in his bowl. “I see him around, sure, but the guys he hangs with . . .” He caught himself, as if to keep from saying something that might worry her. “I don’t have much in common with them.”

“When you do see him, does he . . .” Alice paused, not wanting to appear any more pathetic than she already did; someone who, like Old Man McGinty, didn’t know her own child. But in the end, desperation won out over pride. “Does he ever talk about me?”

The silence that ensued burned its way into her flesh. Then Ryan lifted his head and his eyes met hers. In them, she read the answer she’d been both seeking and dreading, one as bleak as the gray walls behind which she’d spent the past nine years.

“What was it like being in jail?” Taylor piped just then, as if she’d read Alice’s mind. She’d been mostly silent throughout the meal, as if taking Alice’s measure, or perhaps wondering
what it would do to her social status having a jailbird for an aunt in addition to having her mother as her teacher. Now, her voicing what had to be on everyone else’s mind came as a rude shock, immediately plunging the table into silence.

Denise was the first to speak. She shot Taylor an admonishing look. “Honey, I don’t think—”

“It was hard.” Alice cut her sister off, meeting her niece’s intent, clear-eyed gaze. “The worst part was being away from my family. Jeremy and . . .” Her throat tightened, and she took a small sip of breath. “Your mom and dad, and grandma. And you guys.” She darted a glance at Gary, whose lips were pressed together in a disapproving line. “I’ve missed so much, but I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance to make up for it.”

“Courtney Quist says you tried to run over Mister White, and that’s why he’s in a wheelchair.” Taylor’s big blue eyes were merely curious, not accusatory.

“Taylor! That’s enough.” Gary spoke sharply. He looked angry, though Alice suspected it was more at her than his daughter.

“No, it’s okay,” Alice told him. She turned back to her niece. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, Taylor. I was just . . . after Jeremy’s brother died . . . ”
Killed . . . he was killed
, corrected an angry voice in her head. “I was so sad. I wasn’t in my right mind. Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened. When I think about it now, it’s mostly a blur.”

Only it did happen. Not just to you. To us
, said the ravaged look on her sister’s face.

“Taylor, honey, why don’t you clear the table while your brother does his homework,” Denise said, abruptly pushing her chair back and standing up. “I’ll help you with yours
after we get this cleaned up, then you can watch TV.” Suddenly she was back in action, bustling about the kitchen, dumping leftovers into plastic containers, and running plates under the faucet.

“Let me help with that,” said Alice, carrying her bowl over to the sink.

Denise shooed her away. “No, you must be tired from your trip. Go put your feet up. I’ll have Gary make up the sofa bed in the den.” She shot him a meaningful glance: the ageold language between husband and wife that communicated more than any words. She was asking him to go along with the pretense that Alice was just an ordinary visitor.

“No, please. Let me do it,” Alice said, heading for the doorway. “Sheets and blankets still in the hall closet?”

Denise, elbow deep in suds, called over her shoulder, “Laundry room.”

Alice came to an abrupt halt. “Since when do you have a laundry room?”

“Since we added on a couple of years ago. Didn’t I tell you? I guess I forgot to mention it,” Denise said distractedly. “Anyway, no more running up and down the stairs to do the wash. Plus, we doubled the size of our bathroom. Remember how tiny it used to be? You could crack a kneecap just sitting down on the john. Go take a look. Make yourself at home.”

Home
. Alice wondered where that was. Right now she didn’t feel as if she belonged anywhere, least of all in her sister’s house, where the strain of keeping up with Denise’s efforts to maintain a kind of normalcy was already beginning to show. She felt exhausted, as if she’d traveled, not just halfway across the state, but back in time. Right now, she longed to stretch out someplace quiet where she
wouldn’t have to put on a brave face. But there was something she needed to do first. Something that couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

After she’d made up the sofa bed in the den, she reached for the phone on the desk and punched in her old number, a number she’d dialed so many times while at Pine River, she could almost hear the jingle of change tumbling into the pay phone on her cell block. It rang and rang at the other end, each trilling burst causing an invisible band about her chest to tighten. Finally, just as she was about to hang up, it was picked up.

“Hello?” Jeremy’s voice, deep as a man’s. The rare occasions he’d deigned to come to the phone when she’d called all those other times, their conversations had been brief and mostly one-sided. It came as a shock now to hear how much older he sounded.

Alice felt herself go perfectly still. It was as if she were encased in a brittle membrane that would shatter if she moved so much as an inch. Her lungs had stopped drawing in air and her blood had ceased to flow. The only part of her still functioning was her heart, its rhythmic beat like a clock keeping time in a house where no one was home. Her voice, when it emerged, was queer and high-pitched. “Jeremy? It’s me. Mom.”

“Dude, you miss the bus or what?” Rud peered at Jeremy as though he knew exactly why he was still hanging around on campus when school had let out nearly an hour ago.

Rud, of course, needed no reason to be kicking around after hours—he and his buddies moved in their own orbit, like planets around a fickle sun. Normally Jeremy would have welcomed the chance to hang with them, but right now all he could think about was getting rid of Rud and Chuckie, so they wouldn’t see when his mother pulled up.

He’d asked her to meet him here rather than at the house. He hadn’t wanted to get into it with his dad, who’d been acting so weird since she’d come back, all itchy, like when he’d been trying to quit smoking. Now Jeremy wondered what to expect. Whatever she was offering, he wasn’t interested. He’d gotten along just fine without her all these years, what did he need her for now? At the same time, he was curious. He wanted to hear it from her own mouth: To have her explain to him
why
.

Only it might be a case of being careful what you ask for. He’d read in one of those how-to-fix-what’s-wrong-withyour-life-in-thirty-days-or-less books that the only way to deal with a situation like this was to meet it head on, to dig deep where it hurt the most. What if he dug all the way down and never got to the bottom? All he’d end up with was a giant hole.

And now here was Rud, the coolest guy he knew, grinning at Jeremy like he was a fly whose wings he’d plucked. “Me and Chuckie here,” Rud jerked a thumb toward his sidekick, Chuckie Dimmock, a large, pimple-faced boy who never made a move without Rud’s approval, “are heading over to Mike’s to watch the drag races. Wanna come along?”

“Nah. I got stuff to do,” Jeremy said. Any other time he would have leapt at the offer, but not now.

A slow, knowing smile spread across Rud’s face. “Oh, I get it. You waiting on some chick.”

Jeremy must have looked startled, for Rud let out a hoot, slapping him on the back. Kurt Rudnicki might be the whitest white boy who ever spoke ghetto-speak, with his pale skin and white-blond hair, gelled into spikes that glistened in the late afternoon sun, but he wasn’t dumb. He just didn’t have all the details straight. “Yeah, that’s it,” Jeremy said, in a lighthearted tone, hoping to deflect Rud’s interest by making a joke of it. “She should be here any minute.”

“Anyone we know?” Rud asked.

“Nah. She’s no one,” Jeremy muttered, wishing desperately that they would just
leave
.

“You doing her?” Chuckie leered at him.

“No!” Heat flared in Jeremy’s cheeks.

“Yo, we got to educate this boy.” Rud slung his arm around Jeremy’s shoulders, leaning in close, his brown eyes
dark holes drilled into the pale, sharp ridges of his face. “Now the thing to do is keep her guessing. Have her think you are doing
her
a favor. You listen to your Uncle Rud now, you hear. He knows what he’s talking about. It’s all about power, my man, and if you ain’t got the power, you ain’t got shit.”

Jeremy’s cheeks burned. “Yeah, well, I’ll try to remember that.” He injected as much sarcasm into his voice as he could without pissing Rud off.

Rud and Chuckie hung around a bit longer, jiving with him, while Jeremy sneaked surreptitious glances at his watch every now and then, growing increasingly desperate. When they finally took off, the relief he felt momentarily took his mind off the business ahead. It wasn’t until he was alone again that the anxiety crept in once more.

The only other signs of life on campus were a group of kids in costume chatting animatedly outside the auditorium, where they were rehearsing for a play, and the varsity team on the football field below doing relays. Jeremy, who just minutes before had wanted only to be alone, felt a sudden sense of isolation that deepened with each shrill blast of Coach Sullivan’s whistle and chorus of laughter from the drama club. He wasn’t on a team and he didn’t belong to any clubs. Socially, he wasn’t even in the same universe as his cousin Ryan. Ryan charged the ions in the air just walking down the halls, while Jeremy moved about invisible as a mote of dust, torn between praying he wouldn’t be noticed and feeling vaguely let down that he’d succeeded so spectacularly on that score.

Now all that was changing. Over the past few days, people had begun to eye him in a new and unwelcome way. Just this afternoon he’d walked into a classroom only to
have the conversation abruptly cease. Even his teachers seemed to regard him differently, as if he were a rare specimen that required special handling. And that wasn’t all. Everyone knew that Mr. White more or less ran the town. It wasn’t just that he was mayor; he had the power that came with money, and according to Uncle Gary he didn’t hesitate to use it. Which made Jeremy uneasy about how things would shake down now that his mother was back on the scene. Life, he suspected, was about to get very difficult for all of them.

He was distracted from his thoughts by a car now making its way toward him between the rows of parked cars, an older model Toyota Celica, metallic green, with a cracked windshield and a sticker on the front end that read
Rehab is for Quitters.
He smiled to himself. It was like something you’d expect to see on Rud’s bumper.

The Toyota pulled to a stop, and a woman climbed out, dressed in jeans and a blue North Face parka like the one his aunt Denise wore. Lean like a runner, with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and skin so pale he might have been looking at her underwater. She paused, glancing about uncertainly. Jeremy felt a tug of recognition. When her gaze fell on him, he froze.

“Jeremy?” She began walking toward him.

He pushed himself off the chain-link fence he was slouched against. “Hey,” he said, lifting his hand in a lackluster wave. His mouth was dry, and his heart was beating high and quick in his chest. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with the muscles in his face.

She stopped a few feet shy of him, as if afraid he might bolt, staring at him as though she could fix him in place with her gaze. “You’re taller than in your pictures.”

He shrugged. “You look different, too.”

“I suppose I must.” She brought a hand self-consciously to her cheek. Her gaze was hot and searching; he could feel it on his skin like a sunburn. “Shall we go for a ride? We can talk in the car.” She noticed him looking at the Toyota. “I bought it from a friend of your aunt Denise,” she explained. “It was her son’s. He’s in jail on a DUI and she needed the money to bail him out.” Her mouth slanted in an ironic little smile. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”

He shrugged and started toward the car, glancing about to make sure no one was watching before he climbed in. When they were both buckled in, he waited for her to start the engine, but she just sat there, looking at him, as if he were the one in the driver’s seat. Jeremy felt a ripple of unease, remembering what had happened the last time he’d been in a car with her. He didn’t think she would do anything like that again, but it was an ugly reminder nonetheless.

“We could go for a bite to eat,” she suggested.

“I’m not that hungry,” he said. Usually by the time school let out he was starving, but at the moment his stomach was in knots. Besides, in a public place they’d draw too much attention.

“Why don’t we take a little drive then.” She turned the key in the ignition and shifted into gear, maneuvering the Toyota out of the parking lot as carefully as someone learning to drive. Exiting the school grounds, she sneaked a glance at him as she made a right turn onto Church Street. “It’s good to see you. You have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this.” Her tone was casual, but he hadn’t missed the little catch in her voice.