Eva
When I was married, which seems an eternity ago, no detectives ever came to my door at night and asked where my husband was. Which I suppose is some kind of cold comfort.
But then in those early days, before he died, I never knew where he was. Even when I thought I did, I didn’t. Only afterward, when the autopsy blamed his liver and his heart, did I realize what he was actually doing when I thought he was working late. Drinking and watching sports with his cronies. The drink was always the same: whiskey chased with beer. But the sports and the bars changed with the season. I found all those specifics out later, after his funeral, when his friends and coworkers told me things that confused me, that didn’t make sense, didn’t add up. I pieced it all together and surveyed it like a thin, mismatched quilt. And I knew suddenly that even though he was a football player in college, it wasn’t his passion for sports that had driven the behavior but his passion for drinking.
I would have welcomed the company of policemen on some of those dark nights. I would have let them have pot after pot of fresh coffee if they liked. In the early years of my marriage, I became a good cook; I took it seriously, like it was part of my job. There would have been homemade coffee cake or banana bread iced and waiting for the morning. I would have been their favorite informant, I’m sure. Of course they would have pegged me for exactly what I was: a lonely, bored housewife. They didn’t need footage from a security camera to know that.
Oh, if she needed help or someone to count on, that little girl had chosen the wrong house! I was always home, always available. What did she need? What did she want? The way Hillary had suggested she’d been selling cookies, so dismissive. As if any child’s errand would be of no importance. Hillary, who had been the fiercest, smartest, most enterprising child of them all! How her fifth-grade teacher had said that she’d made up “pre-tests” for her and her sister to study, then tried to sell them to the rest of the class. How, even younger, she’d approached the boys in the neighborhood with a plan to market lawn services—she would do the flyers and ads, and they would do the labor.
Hillary’s answer had been reflexive, defensive, weak. Did the police think she was covering up? There were no boxes of candies or forms in the child’s hands. The police weren’t stupid. How would they peg her? These police who stereotype people at first glance, not just because it’s quicker, because it’s easier, but because if you asked, any one of them would say they were right nine times out of ten. Nine times out of ten, a stereotype holds. She was lonely. He was stepping out. It’s always the husband. Kids go door to door selling stuff.
Now, my tremendous relief at having raised two girls who don’t seem to have their dead father’s addictive tendencies had dissipated. There were new things to worry about. New secrets to keep.
When the detectives left, Hillary had said, “Let’s keep this between us.”
“Well, I’m not going to hold a press conference,” I’d huffed.
“You know what I mean.”
“Hillary,” I had said. It always came out like a sigh, those names with H’s that I’d chosen. It always sounded dramatic even when I didn’t mean it to. But this time, I’d meant it.
“I just feel terrible, like I—” She had stopped.
I’d finished.
“Like you convinced her to move to a murderous neighborhood where everyone is under scrutiny?”
“Yes. Basically.”
“Well, why should you feel guilty? You didn’t kill the child.”
“Jesus, Mom, do you have to be so blunt?”
“It’s what old age does to you. It shortens your time and therefore your sentences.”
“Well, I’ll shorten mine. Don’t tell Hannah.”
“I’ll let you tell her.”
“Mom.”
“Your sister would be the last person to think any of this was your fault.”
That had been my final word on the topic, and I’d raised my eyes for emphasis. She’d said nothing, but the look on her face said way too much. Hillary is a beautiful woman, but her face is capable of every shade of ugliness. When I think back and consider everything in that look and all that was packed inside as she bade me goodbye, I saw the world in it. I saw pity—pity for her clueless mother who stupidly thought the best of her daughters. I saw fear, competition, envy. I saw the huge house and the handsome husband and the beautiful daughter and the home-cooked, from-scratch, all-organic meals. I saw her whole universe compacted into her narrow eyes. All that she had at stake.
Was I wrong? Would Hannah judge Hillary for having more, for having it all? Admiration, wistfulness, hope, even envy perhaps. But would it really mix together and turn into judgment?
Still, when I got home that night, I confess I locked all my doors and kept the outside lights burning and lay awake in bed, wide awake, listening and ruminating a long time. I had too many secrets in my head. Like a therapist or a priest, I knew too much, and I couldn’t hold it all. It burst the seams of my brain, leading me to other moments, other arguments between my girls, other tensions I’d noticed but hadn’t excavated. A night in high school when one had come home later than the other, their voices rising from their room, waking me a second time after the door opened at two in the morning. Fighting over a boy? Or the curfew? What? Other places I probably needed to go but didn’t want to visit.
I thought of everything the security footage didn’t show. All the things the police were looking for. Like which way the little girl walked as she went down the driveway. If she was going up and down the block, which neighbor she sought out next.
Had she wandered down to say hello to my other daughter, my grandson? Had she gone to see the boy obsessed with dead things?