Stony River (46 page)

“Why'd they think those skivvies could be mine?” she'd asked Maury. He said she should put them out of her mind.

She couldn't. “Why'd they think they were mine?” she'd asked Buddy the next morning.

“I suppose because they found them in my car.”

“You suppose? How'd they get there?”

“I have no idea. My mind isn't mine anymore. Pastor Scott says if you let your old self die and be reborn, you'll be set free from the devil's power. I don't know how to do that.”

More devil talk. Tereza was sick of it. “Maybe you better get your mind looked at.”

That had seemed to piss him off.

The toilet flushed and he was back in the kitchen. “Dearie still sleeping?”

“Far as I know.”

With any luck Tereza would be out of the house before the old bat got up. Tereza loved Dearie, but lately she hated everything about her: her stupid soaps, the stupid funnies she read, the way she said “Hmm, hmm, good” about her own Sunday roasts. And she acted like nothing was wrong, hunching over the whirring sewing machine hour after hour, stitching enough flannel receiving blankets and sleepers for a herd of babies. Or sitting in the parlor, watching soaps, knitting tiny things. “I'm done worrying about things I can't change,” she'd told Tereza. “You got an idea how to make these troubles go away, I'm all ears.”

Two days ago Tereza had blown a gasket at her for not getting help for Buddy when he was a kid, for letting him believe the devil lived in him.

“So you think he's guilty,” Dearie had said.

“Well, something's sure not right.”Tereza couldn't let go of those blue skivvies. If Buddy had been screwing somebody else after all she put up with, she'd split, even though she couldn't count on Miranda's money anymore to get her someplace.

The day Buddy was arrested, Dearie had contacted Herman, who put them in touch with Maury—“Don't worry about the fee, he owes me a favor.” Buddy was supposed to have been at the bail hearing the following morning but the cops kept him for an interview, something Maury raised a stink about. Tereza and Dearie showed up at the hearing with two thousand dollars borrowed from Herman and the eight thousand left of Miranda's money. Dearie had pulled it out from behind the cinder block before Tereza could get to it. She said she'd known it was there from the time Tereza moved in. “I figured you stole it. Didn't want nothing to do with it.”

Tereza was more cheesed off than embarrassed: all that worrying for nothing. “If you thought I was a crook, why didn't you kick me out?”

“If you was on the street the cops might've found out about the money, found out you'd been here, put two and two together and got five. Buddy could've got in trouble.”

“Sometimes you can be a real yoyo, Dearie. What else you know you aren't telling?”

“If I ain't telling it's because it ain't your business.”

Buddy had shrugged and said “Everybody needs a secret” when Tereza confessed she'd hidden the money all that time.

When he was charged with assaulting Linda, his bail was jacked up to fifty thousand. Tereza broke down and cried then and apologized to the baby for making it sad. Dearie pledged the house as collateral and
Herman loaned them the five-thousand-dollar bail bond fee. There wouldn't be much of Miranda's money left after paying him back.

Buddy pulled out a kitchen chair. She set his oatmeal in front of him.

“Where's yours?”

“I ate already.” That was a lie. Lately, everything tasted like puke. Her due date was seven weeks away and she was losing weight, not gaining like she was supposed to. The doctor had ordered blood tests and tut-tutted over the deep shadows under her eyes. Tereza didn't point out who she was; maybe he hadn't connected her last name with the man in the news. He'd written her a prescription for milk shakes—a real comedian.

The detective who'd taken her statement asked if she was the Ladonna who placed the ad. She recognized him then as the man at the newspaper office she'd thought was a robber. Maury said she didn't have to answer, but she wanted to meet Miranda. She told the detective only about the necklace, said she'd explain how she got it when she personally handed it over to Miranda. The detective asked her to describe it. A few days later he called to say he'd bring Miranda to a diner a few blocks from where Tereza worked. At eleven o'clock on November 5th.

That was today. Earlier this morning, she'd fished the tiny key out of her pocketbook and picked up the briefcase she hadn't opened for four years. The lock had been sprung. The necklace was there but the black-handled knife was missing.

Tereza looked at Buddy spooning oatmeal into his mouth like nothing was wrong. She thought about how spectacular she'd been as Eunice in
Streetcar,
bringing Dearie to tears at the end when she said Stella had no choice but to assume that Blanche's story about the rape was a lie and continue to live with Stanley.

For the baby's sake she would keep the fear from bubbling into her throat.

MIRANDA HAS NOT BEEN
in a diner before, something Enzo finds “astounding.” This one is on a loud street. She's let Enzo persuade her to meet the wife of a man he suspects of murder, ostensibly to secure the return of a crude necklace. She knows he hopes for more. She wants to learn how the woman came by the necklace and what she knows about the altar.

Enzo scoops up menus at the front and leads Miranda to a booth with a brown vinyl seat and a red Formica-topped table mounted with a small jukebox. He sits opposite her, facing the door. “Got a favorite?”

“No.” She doesn't follow popular music.

The diner isn't busy but the air is congested with grease sizzle, cutlery clatter and the homey smells of coffee, tomato, onion and bacon.

Enzo drops a coin in a slot and presses a few buttons. Music starts right away, bouncy and plaintive at the same time. “I'll sit over there when she gets here,” he says, nodding to an empty booth across from them. “She doesn't look dangerous, but no point taking chances.”

“It's a wonder I survive the days you're not with me,” Miranda says.

He laughs. Stands. “Here she is.”

Miranda turns. Hurrying their way is a short, dark woman in a tan raincoat, clutching a purse to her chest. Her face is drawn, her black curls untamed and her eyes anxious. Something about her seems familiar.

Enzo introduces them and offers to buy them whatever they'd like to eat. The menu lists dozens of items Miranda has never tasted, but her eyes and mind are unable to focus. Something about Ladonna has shaken her: a darkness of spirit, an absence of healthy light. It's early for lunch but she asks for a grilled cheese sandwich, what she makes for the children every Saturday.

“Just water for me,” Ladonna says, removing her coat. She's bulging with unborn babe under a rust-colored maternity dress that gives her skin a sallow tinge. She slides bulkily into the seat Enzo vacated. He heads off to find a waitress.

“When's the wee one arriving?” Miranda asks.

“Supposed to be Christmas Eve but the doctor says first babies are usually late.”

Ladonna's arms are alarmingly thin—not even the kindling to start a fire, James would have said. The skin around her naked eyes is like smudged coal. She sets her bony elbows on the table, leans toward Miranda and says in a rush, “Can't believe I'm finally seeing you again.”

“Again?”

“I was near your house the day the cops came and took you and your kid away.”

“When my father died.”

“Yeah. I didn't know that then. Just saw you leave.”

“That's when you found the necklace?”

“No. A couple months later.” Ladonna relates how she broke into Miranda's and why. The runaway Doris told her about, the photograph in the newspaper. Ladonna's mouth twitches between sentences, pitiful and appealing at the same time. Would Miranda have had the self-respect and courage to run away if James had beaten her? Would even
she
have known that was going too far? She briefly tells Ladonna about the orphanage and Doris, that Cian is in kindergarten and shows a talent for drawing.

“Kindergarten! Holy moly. Has it been that long? He was so puny.”

Miranda smiles at Ladonna's directness. Cian
was
puny. He's almost chubby now, so proud of his little square feet in their Buster Brown shoes, so unbothered by his misshapen head.

The waitress brings their order. Ladonna's hand shakes as she
gulps her water. Her fingernails are raggedly bitten down. Miranda would like to take her home and soothe her with lemon balm. “Did you bring the necklace?” she asks.

Ladonna pulls it from her pocketbook. Acorns and seashells that James said Eileen had gathered and strung on wool before Miranda was born. Twenty of each.

Miranda catches her breath, surprised at the sudden longing she has for her younger, undoubting self. “To think you've held onto this for me never knowing if we'd meet. Thank you.” She hesitates before saying, “You must have entered the basement.”

“Yeah. It was kind of creepy. What was all the stuff on that table?”

“Before I tell you, I must know: did you see a harp?”

“Yeah. I shoved it into a corner.”

Miranda nods. Until now, she believed that only she and James had seen the most secret part of their home. What a miracle someone else saw it too. It means she did not imagine it. She takes the necklace from Ladonna. An image of the altar knife rises up before her eyes. She'd forgotten it was missing. Did Ladonna shove that in a corner, too? She blinks the image away.

“The table was an altar,” she says, “and the objects on it symbols. The necklace belonged to my mother. My father said it represented the circle of life and death: that when you die in one world you're born anew in another.”

“What religion is that?”

“I don't think it
is
one. He claimed to hate religions, especially those whose god denounces all other gods as false. He believed that no one god can express all that's divine.”

“What do
you
believe?” Ladonna asks.

“I'm not sure.” For some time now, Miranda's prayers have lacked fervor. She questions the value of praying at all. She feels cut off from whatever the word
divine
might mean. Is she so numb, as the psychiatrist said, that no god can reach her?

“For a while I thought you could count only on yourself. Then I met Buddy and believed in him for a while, but now I don't know.” Ladonna's eyes fill.

“Buddy's your husband?”

“Yeah.”

“Was believing in him like worshipping him?”

Ladonna barks out a laugh. “That wouldn't be my word for it. But early on, when I looked at him, a feeling would swallow me up that somebody had sent him to save me.” She glances sideways at Enzo, leans into Miranda and says softly, “The cops say Buddy done some awful stuff. I don't want to believe it.”

Miranda once thought James was as powerful and wise as the gods he told her about. After she discovered he wasn't, she stopped loving him. But she needs to love him, just as Ladonna needs to love her husband. She reaches across and takes Ladonna's bird-boned hand.

It pulses with fear and sadness.

With horror, Miranda sees it transform into a square, powerful one holding the missing knife. The image fades, leaving a sense of peril in its wake.

She leans over the table and whispers. “What happened to the knife on the altar?”

Ladonna pulls her hand away and falls back against the booth, her mouth pressed as thin as a razor. “I don't remember no knife,” she says. “If there was one, I packed it in a box with the other shit.” She gathers up her coat. “I have to get to work.”

“Wait,” Miranda says. “I want to help you.”

“I don't need your help.” Ladonna slides out of the booth. Miranda turns and watches her stumble out of the diner, struggling into her coat.

Across the way, Enzo gives Miranda a quizzical look.

Her chest feels tight and full of ache for the young woman. On
the drive home, after weighing the risk of stirring up suspicion where there may be no cause, she tells Enzo she suddenly remembered a knife that went missing from her house. She describes the color and heft of its handle, the length and keenness of its double-edged blade. Leaves him to make the connection between necklace and knife.

TWENTY - EIGHT