The story I’d begun writing two years ago in New York, and brought with me to the cabin, was about a man who was stalking his ex-wife because he believed her sexual forays were making a fool of him, even though they were no longer married. Meanwhile, the ex-wife was desperately looking for love but unclear what love looked like. How can she find something she can’t articulate, or recognize even if she sees it? I pondered that question.
The house phone clanged.
“So how’s it going?” Ramona asked.
“I was about to write War And Peace, Volume II, when you rang.”
“I’ll hang up, for God’s sake!”
“No! I’ll get back to it. I’ve seen some inspiring backdrops, if that makes you feel better. I took a tour of the lake with this really weird guy who knows all about the woods. The creepiest part was that his cabin is full of dead animals—he’s a taxidermist.”
“That’s Frank Tinnerson! I had no idea he was still up there. Stay away from him. Everyone on the lake knows he killed his wife and had her dogs stuffed.”
“What?! Those were dogs?”
“Pomeranians.” Ramona was talking distractedly to someone who was obviously standing in her office doorway, and for a minute she tried to carry on two conversations, finally ending mine. “I’ve got to take care of this. Sorry. Marney can fill you in, but just don’t be alone with him.”
She hung up, and I immediately headed to Marney’s. She was wearing a flowing pink, silk robe and fuzzy house slippers with floppy, golf-ball-sized poodle heads on each toe, giving me Frank-flashbacks. Her hair was in curlers, the kind I hadn’t seen outside an old five and dime store in thirty years. She was delighted to see me, despite my having shunned her for a few days.
“The whole town knows Frank murdered his wife, but no one talks about it,” Marney said, serving me tea and cookies. They were gingerbread and homemade, so I was beginning to warm up to chats with her.
Marney’s white cabin was white inside as well as out. And every wall contained knickknack shelves with salt-and-pepper shakers in the shape of animals kissing. Pink ceramic, salt-and-pepper pigs kissing, black and white cows kissing, rodents, snakes, teapots, all ceramic, all salt-and-pepper shakers, and all kissing. Before I could comment, Marney explained, “Love is the salt and pepper of life!”
“Unless you have high blood pressure,” I teased.
“Making love lowers your blood pressure,” she confided in a whisper.
I had flashbacks of shrieking Marney and grunting Ralph having sex, but they were now two little ceramic salt-and-pepper hippos, which made me realize I’d traveled too far down the spice rack.
I shifted gears. “So Frank wasn’t tried?”
“He wasn’t even arrested. He said it was an accident and that he was heartbroken. Frank and his wife, her name was Dolores, fought all the time, I can tell you that. She was real pretty, with long black hair. In fact she looked a little bit Indian. I always thought Ojibwe, but Frank of course had to say she was European. Sometimes she’d show up in town with bruises, and she’d say she was clumsy and had an accident. But I heard she told someone that if she died, they should know that he killed her. The woods protects a lot of strange people.”
“What about the woman on the Point?” I always managed to switch to that topic because she was my mind magnet, constantly pulling my thoughts in her direction.
“Speaking of strange people!” She laughed. “I don’t know her, she keeps to herself, but her aunt was a famous equestrian. And she had these white horses she trained and traveled with and kept in some fancy barn. She was an odd one too, so maybe it’s just the family way.”
“I somehow think I met her once, maybe when I stayed that summer with Aunt Alice. Was she dark-haired?”
“Wore it swept back like a man, but on her it worked. She was very dashing. I can’t recall how she died, but in her will, she left everything to the niece, who probably has enough to live on, because she doesn’t do anything that anybody can see.”
“Well, maybe she does something she just doesn’t talk about.”
“Like what?” Marney’s eyes widened, probably at the thought there might be something someone didn’t talk about, since she talked about everything that blew through her brain.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, some say she’s a loner, and some say she’s a hooker. Now there’s something she wouldn’t want to talk about! I can tell you one thing. The wives around here keep their husbands away from her. I don’t let Ralph near her.”
“Good idea,” I said. For her sake. It wasn’t lost on me that women will turn on other women quicker than a man will, to curry favor with men, even when the men aren’t around. Maybe that’s why several of my female friends sided with Ben after the divorce, or maybe I was just a lousy friend and Ben was more emotionally accessible. Maybe I’m the loner and the hooker that Marney referenced. I started a mental count of my failed love affairs and stopped at twelve—a dozen of anything is enough. How could none of those affairs have been even remotely satisfying?
I thanked Marney for the hospitality and made my escape, heading into town for a few items from the drugstore.
* * *
Muskie Drugs had a soda fountain in back and a comic-book rack in the front. In between was every basic item a person could need for poison ivy, jock itch, hair color, or minor cuts, and things I couldn’t imagine anyone needing, like a Muskie key chain, a hairnet with God Bless America on it, and a tiny crossbow that fired toothpicks in case your children felt the urge to blind one another.
A skinny schoolgirl in tight jeans and sporting a rose tattoo on her forearm rang up my toothpaste and magazines.
“So you’re meeting everybody,” she said. “Not hard in a town this size. Say you’re from New York.”
“I am.” I introduced myself.
She extended her hand. “Casey Williamson,” she said, and I realized the name Williamson was on the drugstore and the hardware store. “I dream about that. I’ve read about the subways and Fifth Avenue and all the big theater shows. I want to go to college near there so I can take the train and see it all.”
“I’ll bet you do every bit of that and more.” I smiled at her.
“You think so? She twisted a long strand of her strawberry-blond hair.
“Absolutely.” I flashed her a big smile.
“Heard you met Frank and he gave you the tour…he killed his wife, ya know?” She said it as if it were part of his name: Frank who killed his wife.
“But he didn’t go to jail,” I said.
“No.” She paused. “Sure didn’t. His wife, Dolores, used to come in here. She was a real kind lady. Frank’s a badass. He tried to rape me once.” She was babbling like a kid not knowing when she was over-sharing. “I was babysitting their three little dogs, and he came in and got all over me, but I was lucky because his wife came home and started screaming bloody murder, and Kay was cleaning out their boat house, and she ran up and hauled him off me, or it could have been real bad.”
“I met a woman named Kay at Gus’s tavern.”
“That’s her. We were in school together. She’s a few years older than me.”
“Did you report what Frank did to you?”
“To my mom. She runs the hardware store. My parents own both places. If we’d told my dad, he would have tried to kill Frank and gotten killed himself in the process, Mom said, so we kept it to ourselves.”
“That’s terrible.” In fact, it was terrible on many levels: being attacked, having no one to report it to, having to hide it from your dad or he might get killed, and being the injured party but having to worry about everyone else’s feelings except your own.
“Yeah.” She sighed, seeming grateful to have gotten it off her chest.
“Who’s the real pretty blond lady who was in here the other day?” I took a chance she would remember.
She pointed through the glass doors at Levade entering the hardware store across the street. “She’s the coolest thing up here. I want to look that hot at her age.”
I assured Casey that hot was on her horizon, as I dashed out the door and across the street, entering the hardware store where I’d bought my shotgun right over the counter. It was the largest store in town, taking up most of the block, and I told myself I wanted to look around and see what else they sold, but really I wanted to see Levade. By the time I entered, she’d disappeared into the back of the store, so I hung around the entrance, knowing she’d have to exit in that direction.
Up front was an entire area devoted to animal traps in a dozen different sizes, fishing rods and waders, snowshoes, and a case full of knives with beautifully carved handles. Little Man stood at the counter talking to Gladys, the owner, and I said hello to both of them. “Those are some powerful knives,” he said, tapping the glass as if to see how sturdy it was.
“You’re Casey’s mom,” I said to the frizzy-haired Gladys, and she said she was. “I didn’t make the connection until Casey told me. A small town can be a tough place for a girl to grow up in.”
She glanced at Little Man and then looked at me, as if she knew Casey had shared something personal. “Only tough in spots. Most people are real good here.”
I asked to see one of the knives, so she took it out of the case, and I ran my fingers across the striated handle. The hardwood was carved in the image of a Norse forest god overlooking a wolf’s head peering out of the trees. “I’m not a knife collector, but these are beautiful, and this one is very tempting, just as a piece of art.”
“Knives give us strength to have what is necessary to live,” Little Man said to me, then left the store as if his business there was complete.
When I looked up from the case, I saw Frank examining a bear trap. He was dressed in camo fatigues and a tight black T-shirt that accentuated his muscled biceps. I pivoted and tried to avoid him, but he’d spotted me and quickly struck up a conversation.
“I enjoyed our day together. I’d love to show you some other parts of the lake, when you have time.”
“I’m actually pretty busy working on my book right now.”
“Everybody needs a break.” He grinned. “Can’t work all the time.”
Levade rounded the corner from an adjacent aisle, carrying a windbreaker. She stopped abruptly and stared at him as if she knew him and didn’t like him. He spoke to me while looking directly at her, saying with undeniable pleasure, “I’m not as much a tour guide as I am a hunter, but I don’t want anything to suffer, of course. Like to stalk things, pretty things, as you can tell from my collection.” He glanced over at me. “But I can always postpone hunting to show an attractive lady the lake.”
“She doesn’t want to see the lake or anything else with you, Frank.” Levade’s voice was calm, but her tone was a warning.
His eyes moved to her. “We’ll catch up later. Have a good one.” Then he left.
Levade was visibly upset. She left the windbreaker on the counter, saying, “I’ll pick this up later, Gladys,” and disappeared as quickly as Frank had, ignoring me as if I weren’t there.
“What was that all about?” I asked Gladys, who’d witnessed the exchange.
She shrugged like she knew the answer but wasn’t sharing. Finally, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She comes into town to shop, but she pretty much stays to herself, doesn’t hang around to chat. I don’t care what they say about her since she’s helped out an awful lot of women here…a few men too. She knows things.”
“What kind of things?”
The bell over the front door made a tinkling sound, signaling another customer had entered, and Gladys said loudly, “If you decide you want one of those knives, you let me know.”