Twelve

SOME OF MY STUDENTS CLAIM I HAVE EYES IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD. RIGHT then, I wished I did.

I careened wildly, jerked hither and yon, all the while shrieking and babbling and wondering who or what could have hidden itself in the stingy space behind me.

“Please!” I heard.

Another wild carom and scream. What kind of kinky villain said please?

“Hush, now. Calm down.”

Hush? I once again tried to oxygenate my lungs, then pulled the car over to the first free curbside. Now all was silence behind me; so slowly, one ligament at a time, hand on the door handle, ready to bolt, I turned around.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t take my car. The police would find me, and besides, I don’t know where to go. I saw you through the window. I heard you calling me. You seemed almost familiar. I don’t know. Safe, maybe. A second sense I had, so when I saw you go across the street, to Patsy, and I was sure you were calling the police—it was all I could think of as a place to hide.”

Lydia Teller’s face in the streetlight was frightening, the skin mottled and broken, one eye swollen almost closed. She had moved the plastic container. There wasn’t room for it and a person in the back. It was raining on her. I told her to come up front, and she did, docilely. She was a woman too accustomed to being told what to do.

“Why were you looking for me?” she asked.

“I found your book.”

She wrinkled her forehead, as much as she could with her puffs and bruises.

“The book you underlined.”

Still nothing, and then a gasp, a searching look. “That book? But that was a while ago.”

“I just found it.” My voice was as low as hers, raised only to cover the sound of passing cars and honking horns. “Two days ago. I’ve been searching for you ever since.”

She shook with long, hard sobs.

“Let me take you to the shelter people,” I said.

She shook her head. “I can’t. They’ll be looking for me now, won’t they? The police? Wouldn’t they have to turn me in?”

I didn’t know how far the shelter’s vow of secrecy went, but I suspected it stopped at homicide investigations. “Mrs. Teller, I want you to know I don’t blame you. When I read that book, I was sick at what you’ve been put through.”

“Don’t blame me for what?”

“Everybody has a breaking point.”

She pushed her body against the side window, away from me. “You think I did it.”

“Well, I—you didn’t?”

She shook her head.

“Then who did?”

She shook her head again.

“How could you not know? You just said you were in the house when it happened, didn’t you?”

She looked up at my scaly convertible top and blinked hard. “You see? That’s just how the police would be, but I don’t know who did it. I don’t!”

“Where were you, then?”

“Upstairs, in the bathroom. Locked.” She put her hands up, as if to cover her bashed face. “Hurt me. I ran up. Locked the door. He pounded and swore and said he’d be back, but I waited and waited, then I thought he’d gone to sleep, passed out like sometimes, and I came out and there he was. On the floor.”

“You didn’t hear anything? A quarrel, a gunshot?”

She shook her head. “I was upstairs, in the bathroom, locked.”

I couldn’t tell if she was in shock or repeating a rehearsed alibi.

“I put on the record,” she said. “I wanted to listen to it forever, then you rang the bell. I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t. I made the music so loud I wouldn’t hear. My son’s a singer. Every school he went to, he starred in their show. In Oklahoma! he was Curly.”

“Hugh was in my class at Philly Prep.” I introduced myself, although it felt a peculiar time and situation for the formalities.

“That’s why you seemed familiar,” she said. “That’s why I felt that way about you. He liked you. That’s where he did South Pacific, Lieutenant Cable. Oh, yes. ‘Younger than Springtime,’ remember? I have that album, too. I have them all.”

I nearly wept for the image of her sitting in her family-less room, summoning and knowing her son only by other people’s renditions of his musical comedy roles. “How is Hugh?” I asked.

She held her head high, almost defiantly, and then she winced, and slumped. “He’s a good boy,” she said softly. “Being a student isn’t everything. There are lots of talents. Wynn’s too hard on him, so I barely ever see my son—his son—he never can—he—” And she remembered, and stopped talking.

“Come home with me.” The idea set off alarms from my stomach to my brain, but I couldn’t think of any other place to safely deposit her. I couldn’t believe she was capable of violence, and even if she had murdered her husband, it would have been to save her own life. I was sure I had nothing to fear from Lydia Teller, only from hiding her, but I saw no other option. “All right?” I asked her.

She nodded like a prisoner being moved to a different holding pen.

“We’ll think of something,” I said as I drove. “They’ll find whoever did it and then you’ll be free.”

She didn’t seem particularly cheered, but how jolly could a woman with a murdered husband, a messed-up son, and injuries to her face and psyche be?

Her vulnerable gray eyes, old-fashioned face, and waiting silence made me want to protect her, and I couldn’t comprehend how anybody—let alone anybody who theoretically loved her—could bear to hurt her.

“Do you know if anybody else was there tonight?” I asked, trying not to further upset her.

“Of course,” she said. “The person who shot Wynn.”

I nodded. “Patsy Benson said several people—”

Her sigh was enormous, enough to stop me. “Patsy knows everything that goes on in our house,” she said. “Except what really goes on.”

“She said lots of people came and went.”

“I was upstairs, in the bathroom. I’m sorry.”

We reached the end of that conversational alley almost precisely at the moment we reached our destination.

“Home,” I said, pulling up. I hustled her inside. “Your room’s upstairs. The top floor. It’s tiny, with only a fold-up bed. I’m sorry. The bathroom’s on the second floor.” Definitely not four stars, but I did have emergency first aid supplies, which I left with her while I removed my car from my preinternal-combustion-engine street and walked home from my parking lot double-time. I didn’t even bother with an umbrella, since I was already sopping wet and beyond help. I stopped at the drugstore for a toothbrush for Lydia, wondering whether civilization could be reduced to that one essential.

When I was home again, while water boiled for tea, I filled two brandy snifters—without asking Lydia whether or not she needed it. If she didn’t, I’d drink hers, too.

She didn’t give me the chance. With shaky hands around the snifter, she downed hers like medicine while I explained my working hours and the rather obvious requirement that she not answer the phone or make any calls. I showed her where my small stock of food was located and promised to buy more. I warned her not to feed Macavity every time he feigned starvation. Showed her the idiosyncrasies of the toaster oven and TV, and then I was done, too poor to afford any more quirky appliances.

Lydia gave my house tour the attention due something much more complex. A weak smile flickered across her face. I could see how exquisite the once-upon-a-time-happy Lydia must have been. She had an old-fashioned face, oval with a small pointed chin and heavy-lidded almond eyes. At least, she had that beneath the swellings and discolorations. She was small-boned and would have looked fragile even without evidence of abuse. She should have been cherished.

“Thank you,” she said. “You make me feel safe.” And then she inhaled so sharply, it sounded like a swallowed sob.

I hugged her, gently, so as not to press on her injuries. She was definitely no longer a creature of my imagination. The kettle whistled, and I busied myself fixing a tray while she sniffled and blew her nose. She stood near the room divider and lifted, of all things, the zillion ways to get a guy tome. She flipped through it, and as much as it is possible for a wry smile to play over swollen and livid lips, one did.

“We work so hard to win their affection,” she said softly. “Pervert ourselves, deny ourselves. Look at this telling you to take up a hobby you don’t like, join a club or a church without personal meaning—read magazines you couldn’t care less about—” She pushed it aside. “Men complete the job, but we start it. Don’t,” she said. “Look at me and don’t.”

I promised I wouldn’t. I didn’t even explain the stupid book’s origins. We settled down in the living room. I pulled the curtains in an attack of paranoia, as if a Lydia-hunting posse were likely to charge down my little street.

The geometric completeness of baroque music is as effective as tranquilizers, at least for me, so I put on a Bach three-part invention, and after a long, almost comforting silence, Lydia spoke.

“I grew up in Africa,” she said. “My parents were naturalists. For what seemed half my life, they studied wildebeests. Gnus, by other names. The wildebeest has an odd disease. It starts to run in circles and can’t stop. The circles get smaller and tighter, and on they go till they’re more or less spinning. And then they drop. That’s what my whole life feels like.

“I tried so hard, but nothing was enough. Nothing was right. A speck of dirt, or dinner a minute late, or overcooked, I talked too much or not enough, I was too dumb, or too loud, or laughing too much or not enough, or Hugh, poor dear, was…anything. Just was. Angry at him from the day he was born.”

For once, Macavity was not perverse. He studied Lydia, saw a need and filled it with little cat feet gentling their way onto her lap, and then an audible purr. For that, cat, pâté tomorrow, I promised. Lydia smiled with the parts of her face that still could. “Wynn wouldn’t allow pets,” she said. “They’re messy, like people.”

She spoke without animation, almost as if she were reading a text that she still found confusing. I wanted to cry, to rush back in history and unmake it, to do something, but she’d said she felt safe, and she sounded as if she believed it, and I was afraid of disrupting whatever peace she had hold of.

“My parents died in a plane crash when I was sixteen,” she said at one point. “I came back to the States and my grandmother took me in, but when she died two years later, that was it for family. And then Wynn appeared…” She was silent again for a long while. “He wasn’t that way then. He was strong, you know. Had high standards and all, but not cruel. I don’t know what happened. I had never seen men shout at women that way, let alone hit them. I thought it must be my fault. I told a counselor that my husband got mad a lot. She said I had to try harder. She knew Wynn, said what a nice man he was. I knew nobody would believe me. Thought I was crazy. Depressed all the time and lying about why I couldn’t be where I should be because how could I say my lip’s split, I can’t breathe, he strangled me, my shoulder’s dislocated. Half the time I didn’t even believe it myself. He told me I had fallen against the stove, tripped into the wall, and I wanted to believe him even though the more he drank, the clumsier I got.

“And then he’d be so loving, take care of the hurts, give me gifts, and it seemed over. Forever.” She sighed and drank tea. “I loved him so much,” she said. “He was my hero. And he loved me, too, like in the movies. He did, you know. Couldn’t live without me, he said.”

“The thing is,” I said, “nobody knows what kind of man your husband was, am I right?”

“He’s the Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year. Was.”

“Then why would anybody suspect you? For all they’re concerned, you had a perfect marriage. That article in Philadelphia magazine said so. Patsy said so. Maybe your safest bet is facing the police, explaining that you’re innocent.”

“How would I explain where I’ve been?”

“How about a walk? A long walk. You were sad and needed time alone.”

“Why? It’s so cold and rainy tonight.”

“Because of…because of Hugh.”

“Hugh? Why drag him into this?” Her voice was shrill with a lifetime of protecting her child.

“Because…he’s so far away and you never get to see him.”

“But even Patsy knows he was here Sunday.”

Right. I remembered Wynn’s reaction to my lie about Hugh needing a recommendation. He’d been surprised, said he’d thought Hugh had left town this weekend. “Say it was a sad visit,” I improvised.

“It was. Very. But I won’t involve Hugh.”

“You’ve had a rough time with him. People would accept the idea of your being upset.”

Her face darkened, making her bruises even more prominent. “I’ve had a rough time with Wynn! Hugh tried to protect me. Since he was a baby, he tried. But Wynn would brush him away. Until he was bigger, and then…” She shook her head.

“Your husband hurt him, too.”

She nodded. “So I put him in boarding school, away, safe, and he’d get crazy and run home. To save me, he said.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

She looked down at her clasped hands as if they might hold the answer. “For so long, I thought it was my fault. I made him angry. If I tried harder, I could be a better wife. Wynn was so patient with students and teachers. Everybody thought he was wonderful. Besides, I didn’t have anyplace to go, or any way to make a living or support Hugh. And then, as if he suspected what was happening in my mind, Wynn said that if I left, he’d find me and kill us both. That he couldn’t live without me. I believed him.”

“But when you read that book, didn’t you see it wasn’t your fault? That there were things you could do? Didn’t it change how you felt?”

She nodded. “It was like finding a friend. Somebody to talk to, as foolish as that sounds. I didn’t feel so alone. I wanted to keep it, but I couldn’t, not where he might find it, so I tossed it in the book box when I drove that time. I could have put it in the trash, but some part of me wanted somebody, somewhere, to know.”

“And still you stayed. You thought he’d kill you, but you stayed.”

“Not forever, no. I decided to leave, but Hugh had finished high school and he was on his own, somewhere. I couldn’t leave without his knowing where to find me or we’d never see each other again. I had to wait till he showed up, and he did, this weekend. I thought there’d be some time, a plan, but it was terrible between them and Wynn threw him out, told him to never come back. And he went.” Her eyes welled up again.

I stood up, to get some distance from the mare’s nest of the Teller family. I straightened a picture on the wall, went into the kitchen, sponged off the counter, and finally broke through the thick silence. “Let’s get back to what to do now. I still think you should go to the police. Let’s be honest. Nobody would ever think of you shooting somebody.”

She looked at me, then up at the ceiling. “I grew up with guns,” she said calmly. “It literally was a jungle out there, you know. I can shoot anything, pretty much.” She looked sad. “The odd thing is, I lived in the wilds, places people think of as scary, but I always felt safe, until I married Wynn Teller.”

“Do you—was there—in the house, do you own a gun?”

She nodded. “Several. They’re a legacy. Great-great-grandfather worked for Mr. Deringer here in Philadelphia. When President Lincoln was killed with a derringer pistol, Great-great-grandfather was so fearful that it was one he’d crafted that he became morose and never spoke again. His pistols were the beginning of a collection. Philadelphia Derringers and Colts, mostly. Some are quite ornate. Silver chasing and carved mother-of-pearl.” She yawned.

Please, I implored the god of ballistics, don’t make the murder weapon be an old and unusual gun. I thought I heard a snicker or two from above, and I looked despairingly at Lydia Teller, a woman with the best of motives for murder, plus the skill and the opportunity, and minus an alibi.

Maybe the same series of thoughts crossed her mind. “If it’s all right with you,” she said, “I’m a little dizzy. I’d like to go upstairs and lie down for a second.”

Which is what she did. I thought of settling in for the night, too, but although it felt as if enough time had elapsed to put us in the next calendar year, it was not even late enough for the movie I’d promised myself. Besides, somebody with no consideration of the kind of day I’d had, programmed an Annette Funicello beach movie, an Elvis musical, and Tora! Tora! Tora! I felt personally betrayed.

What I definitely did not want to do was think about Lydia Teller’s future anymore tonight, which left only the failure warnings as diversion. They weren’t a major project, merely tiresome. They didn’t make students improve scholastically, but they did provoke endless debates of why the warning was incorrect and/or unfair.

Name, grade, section. Then came the part I resent, where I have to explain the warning. I’m always tempted to write something like Are you kidding?, but I have to find stern euphemisms for the girl who appears lobotomized (little class participation) and the boy whose textbook has never been out of his locker, its virgin pages uncut (not working to potential)—

My head jerked at a knock at the door. And then one at the front window. There was a large silhouette on the closed curtains. I pressed back into the sofa, but then the silhouette put its thumbs in its ears and wiggled its fingers.

“Sasha,” I said, opening the door. “What are you doing here at this hour?”

“Saw the light on. I was around the corner. At a movie.” She pulled off a Sherlock Holmes raincoat and a shiny broad-brimmed black hat meant for either rainstorms or a wet garden party. Sasha stood in front of the coffee table, looking down at two each of brandy snifters, cups, and saucers. “Dick Tracy’s here?” she asked. She looked spiffy in a rose peplum number from the early Fifties.

I shook my head.

“Left early, did he?” She slumped into my worn suede chair, legs stuck straight out in front of her. “I tell you, Mandy, I’ve had it with men!”

“Everybody knows that.” I poured her some brandy.

She tapped a long fingernail on the side of her snifter. “I was stood up! Me! Can you believe it? Can you?”

I could probably believe almost anything about her. “You want to talk about it?”

“I waited and waited at the damn restaurant—he had to pick a fancy one, right? Where the maître d' eyed me like I was a hooker.”

“Anybody I know?”

She shook her head. “Nobody I want to know anymore, either. Creep. I wore shoes that hurt for him, too! Waited an entire hour. Cost me twenty-seven dollars for an appetizer and a glass of wine. And then I said to hell with him and went to the movies where I didn’t see a damn thing except red. He didn’t even have the courtesy of calling the restaurant, a message.”

“Maybe there’s one at home for you.”

She shook her head even more vigorously. A silver-trimmed comb fell out and she jabbed it back in place. “I checked my machine ten minutes ago. Men! They’re all scum. I’m finished with the lot of them. From now on, I’m concentrating on my work and my friends and clean, healthy living.”

“I’ve heard this song before.” Maybe a thousand times.

“Ought to sing it yourself. I mean Nameless is not exactly ideal, rushing back to Evangeline.” She nodded toward the extra snifter and cup. “Trust me, the entire species is defective.”

Misery loves company, especially man-hating misery. I wasn’t worried that Mackenzie was scum, but I was concerned about what I would do about Lydia when and if C.K. shook Scarlett loose. This house is very small.

“Women can at least hope to understand each other,” Sasha was saying. “But add testosterone to the mix, and the animal becomes unintelligible, unbearable, un—”

“Would you do me a favor?” My voice was low, but perhaps my anxiety was audible, because Sasha stopped.

“Why not? You’re not a man.”

“Could somebody stay at your apartment? Until…” I had no idea for how long. Until the police caught and locked up a killer? “Until a while?”

“Very secretive,” she said. “Maybe subversive. Who is it?”

I shook my head. “Think of her as Madame X.”

“Madame,” Sasha said, and despite her anti-male ranting, she looked disappointed, as I’d known she would. “Not the mint julep, is it?”

I shook my head. “This woman’s in big trouble. I can’t really say much more.”

Sasha’s eyes twinkled. “She can’t stay here because Hercule Poirot might find her, am I right?” She’d avenge being stood up by one man by duping another. This is the way serious pathology begins, but we’d handle that later. “Fine, sure, when? She isn’t dangerous, is she?”

“Now and no.”

“She’s here? What did you do while he was over?” She looked at the duplicate coffee cup again, then at me, squinting. “Oh. He wasn’t here at all, was he? The creep! So where are you stashing her?”

I took the stairs double-time. I felt brilliant at having thought of this, and lucky to have a friend like Sasha. Nobody would ever find Lydia now.

She must have collapsed on the cot, and there she still lay, fully clothed, uncovered, sleeping so deeply it would have been sadistic to wake her, not to mention difficult. I watched her even breaths, remembering her smile at finally feeling safe, and I knew I’d give her this night.

I slipped off her shoes, tucked a blanket around her, and turned out the light.

“I’ll bring her over after school tomorrow,” I said when I was back downstairs.

Sasha glanced toward the stairs as she pulled on lined leather gloves. “Long as a woman sleeps alone, nothing much bad can happen to her.”

We were smug and self-satisfied at outwitting the universe. And we were wrong.