Are You in the House Alone? (17 page)

“I just can’t believe it,” Mother whispered. “Can it really be that same old lady?”

Three films were enough. When the lavender lights came up, people craned their necks, hoping to catch a glimpse of Madam Malevich in the audience. She wasn’t there, of course.

It was a full house without her. When we stood up to leave, I caught a glimpse of Sonia Slanek at the end of the front row. I remember that especially because we were both putting on yellow slickers. She even had a red scarf something like mine. But she was better at draping it around her neck. And who knows what exotic costume she had on underneath? She was alone, of course. Then I couldn’t see her any more for the black silhouettes all moving to the exits.

They found Sonia the next day, just at the edge of town where Meeting Street becomes the Woodbury Road. She’d been walking home, out to the barn where the sculpture stood in the yard.

When I heard, I pictured her teetering along on the crown of the road in high-heeled boots, lost in her world, enjoying the rain in her face and the dark. Not minding the solitude. Not noticing at first the car lights behind her, the dented hood creeping closer.

I wondered at first if Phil had thought it was me. But I could never know that. And what could it matter to him? The town was full of girls with red scarves and yellow slickers. Or in Levi’s or tweed skirts or waitress uniforms. Girls slipping out of cars in parking lots, unlocking front doors, walking home alone from the Pilgrim Theatre. We didn’t deserve identity in his mind. We were prey.

That Sunday was cold and bright. A perfect day for weekenders up from New York to tear around the country roads, inhaling real air and scouting for antique shops.

A young couple from Bronxville found Sonia. Somehow they noticed the red scarf in the ditch and the tire tracks on the soft shoulder of the road. They had the wits to stop and investigate.

They brought her in to Oldfield Hospital, thinking she was dead. I imagined her lying in the back of their station wagon, stiff from the cold like a bundle of firewood. She was half strangled by her scarf, people said, and under her slicker her clothes were torn off.

The weekly newspaper carried the story. It doesn’t go in for vivid details. The readers add those. It didn’t even give Sonia’s name, protecting her, I guess, because she wasn’t dead. It used the word
assaulted
and moved quickly on to say she was being treated for exposure at the hospital. Her condition was listed as fair. She had pneumonia by the middle of the week. And again I pictured her, under the oxygen tent now, like Snow White in her glass coffin.

The town held its breath—at least the school did—wondering if Sonia would die. Waiting for that moment, suspending judgment. Passing the time by passing the word.

The man who ran the British Imports Automotive
Garage was said to have said that the tire tracks were made by an MG. Somebody said that Sonia was conscious and giving information. Somebody else said she wasn’t, that they were keeping her alive on a machine. Valerie Cathcart said the police chief had been seen coming out of the principal’s office. Somebody else said that couldn’t be right. Nobody ever came out of the principal’s office. Not even the principal.

I hadn’t been to my locker for a week, not when I knew Alison would be there. We’d worked around each other, and I’d carried a full load of books through all the school days. Suddenly, they were too heavy. I was at my locker after morning classes, and so was she. Our elbows were inches apart, but we pretended we were on separate planets.

Then Steve was there too, taking me by the arm, turning me around. “Do you know who did that to you?” he said in a voice that carried past me to Alison and beyond. “Did you identify him?” We stood there, as close as lovers, and he wasn’t letting go of my arm. “I didn’t ask you before because I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it. Maybe couldn’t talk about it because of the police.”

“The police were through with me in the first moment,” I said, “but I told them who it was.”

Still he didn’t let go of my arm. “Do you think it was the same one who did this to Sonia Slanek?” Why is he getting at me now, I wondered, but in a way I knew.

“I think so.” And then I turned away from Steve. “Don’t you, Alison?”

I’d never seen her run from anything. Not actually pick up her heels and run. She wove through the lunch-hour mob, leaving her locker door standing open.

I closed it for her. People will rob you blind. Even people
without needs. “It wasn’t . . . was it Phil?” Steve stared past me to the point where the crowd was swallowing Alison up. I could feel what he was feeling. We were still close enough for that. There he stood, a perfectly reasonable, more-than-intelligent human being who hadn’t seen the truth because he’d been standing too close to it.

“Yes. It was Phil.”

“And you didn’t tell—”

“The lawyer told me not to make any accusations I couldn’t prove, and there wasn’t any proof.” My mind swerved quickly among the people I’d told anyway.

“I don’t require proof,” Steve said. “You should have told me.”

“What was the point? You—you might have done something silly. You and I—we were coming to the end of what we had together. That very thing might have— Oh, I don’t know.”

“Might have forced me to make some grand gesture?”

“Yes. Maybe something like that. What do I know about the male ego?”

“Here’s more male ego for you. I’m not quite the well-coordinated jock Phil is. But I could have come up behind him in a dark alley and laid a length of pipe across the back of his head.”

“And what good would that have done me?” I said.

“I wasn’t thinking about you. You seem to be protecting yourself pretty well by keeping silent. I was thinking of Sonia.”

“It’s pretty damned easy for you to talk. It couldn’t have happened to you.”

He dropped his hand from my arm. “In a way, it’s happening to us all, isn’t it?” he said, and walked away.

It was. I knew that later, when my defenses were down.
If Sonia died or withdrew farther into her shell, Phil would be home free again. There’d be another victim and then another. It was happening to us all. Who was safe, except for Alison, who was in a kind of danger all her own?
Let Alison work that out for herself
, I thought. But I couldn’t let it go at that.

*   *   *

I cornered her in the locker room. In a way it was just the right place. She hated gym class. She never liked to sweat.

“Oh for Lord’s sake, what do you want,” she said when I moved in on her. I had her in a corner. There was nothing behind her but a high wire-covered window.

“You said the other day that if I ever made any waves, you’d go right to Mrs. Lawver,” I said.

“Yes, and I meant it. You can’t manage to keep that mouth of yours shut, can you?” She was only half into her gym suit. It was true she was never without a bra.

“I just can’t please anybody,” I said. “Steve’s accused me of keeping quiet to make things easy for myself. And you say I talk too much. Maybe you better have the Lawvers run me and my nothing family out of town.”

“Oh, why don’t you just go of your own accord.” She brought up a deep breath and tossed her head. A very bad performance.

“I think you ought to go to Mrs. Lawver, Alison, and have a talk with her. Maybe you can make her understand about Phil. You may just be the only girl in town safe enough to be outdoors by yourself, let alone near his house.”

“You’ve got him all tried and convicted, haven’t you—on circumstantial evidence. From what I see on TV you don’t get far with that.”

“I don’t imagine Phil standing trial, not even if I fantasize
like crazy. And I don’t care much about his tortured soul. But where does it end, Alison? Let’s just say that everything you hope for happens. You wave your magic wand, and I disappear from town. Sonia dies. And that leaves you. You and Phil and a town full of girls foolish enough to open doors too quick or walk down lonely roads at night.”

“I don’t want Sonia to die,” she whispered. “How dare you say that? I . . . I don’t even want you to leave town. I just want things to be—the way they were before.”

“That’ll take more than a magic wand, Alison.” I gave up on her and walked away. Everyone seemed to be walking away from everyone else that day.

“Gail?” I thought I heard her voice through the clatter of gym lockers and the pounding of the pipes. Why bother turning back? But I did. She stood there, motioning for me to come back, looking from side to side. She looked wretched in a gym suit. Who doesn’t?

I came near enough to hear in case she wanted to whisper. Just like the old days, all the way back to middle school. “Listen to me, Gail. I have to say it all at once, or I can’t say it at all.

“That night . . . that night Phil came to Mrs. Montgomery’s house when you were baby-sitting. Afterward, after he left . . . you there, he came to my house. It was late, but Mother never cares since it’s Phil. He . . . there was something wrong with him. He looked terrible. There was something terrible in his eyes. And he was kind of crying. Not really, but almost. It was awful, and he just stood there on the front steps and asked me to forgive him. That’s what he said— Forgive me, Alison,’ over and over like a chant. I didn’t know what to do. I kept asking him why, what was wrong. But he ran off.

“I thought he was drunk. No, that’s not true. I
wanted
to think he was drunk, or high on something. But I knew he wasn’t. I only knew something had happened that I didn’t ever want to know about. And then when I heard about you, in the hospital, I still didn’t want to know.”

“But you did,” I said. “You just couldn’t let anything spoil all your plans for the future.”

“Wait,” she said. “Just wait. There’s more. On Saturday night Phil and I planned to see those old Malevich movies. It was something to do. But he didn’t show up. I sat there all evening, wondering where he was.” The tears ran down her face. “I know he’s sick. Maybe I knew it before anybody, in little ways, but what was I supposed to do? Maybe you think I’m sick too because a little bit of me blames you and Sonia.”

“And do you blame the next victim?”

“Oh no,” Alison whispered. “There can’t be any more.” She shook her head, trying to convince us. We stood there together, like two scared kids. No, that’s not it. We stood there like two frightened women.

“What’ll I do, Gail? Tell me.”

*   *   *

I couldn’t. She’d been so sure nothing terrible could touch her. And I’d been so sure when I’d opted out of trying to get Phil arrested. Maybe, working with a lawyer and a lot of luck we could have got him in jail just for one night. Even that might have made the difference.

I don’t know if Alison ever went to see the Lawvers. I don’t know what she did, or if she did nothing. Whenever we spoke after that, we were both careful never to say anything that mattered.

But there was plenty of talk anyway, and most of the rumors canceled each other out. Some people had it on good authority that a police car had been seen in the
Lawvers’ drive. Or maybe it was an ambulance. Some people said the chief’s deputy traced Phil’s car to that spot on the Woodbury Road and then got fired for his efficiency. Some people said the Lawvers had let Edna go, and the cleaning woman too, and were living like hermits. It was the first Thanksgiving people could recall that the Lawvers didn’t have their reception.

And all the rumors circled closer around Phil until people nodded wisely and remembered the suspicions they’d had all along. But Phil never heard them. There was talk that he’d had a nervous breakdown and was resting in a hospital in Hartford. The last rumor had it that he was captain of the squash team in a boarding school in Vermont. That was the rumor I could believe.

Sonia recovered. But we never saw her again. No more moments of drama in the corridor to break the early-morning school gloom. The Slaneks left their barn and the rusting sculpture behind. Nobody knew where they went. But I think they went back to New York’s mean streets where they’d feel safe. It’s odd. I miss Sonia as if we’d been friends, even now that I’ve almost forgotten that Alison and I ever were.

Later, in the winter, Mother said, “It could all have been worse.” I guess that was meant to sum everything up, file it neatly away. She’d made her first real-estate sale. It was the Slaneks’ barn. A semiartistic family bought it. Mother had her first commission, and so she was looking ahead.

It could all have been worse.
I guess she meant that Sonia hadn’t died and that her case had shifted attention away from mine. I guess she meant that at least Phil was out of the way. Wherever he was, he didn’t come home for Christmas. Maybe she even linked what had happened to
the end of that unsuitable, worrisome affair Steve and I had.

“It could have been worse, Mother, but not much.” She was sitting at her desk in a little pool of light, composing a real-estate ad for the newspaper. “Not much worse. We were all trying to protect ourselves as individuals and families instead of organizing to make everybody safe. There are more Phils out there, you know.”

“Don’t talk that way,” she said.

“Well, there are. We should have done something else. We still should.”

“But what?” Mother said. “What could we do?” And then she turned back to her work.

Turn the page for a sneak peek
of Richard Peck’s ghoulish thriller

THREE
QUARTERS

DEAD

Y
OU
WAIT
FOREVER
to get to high school. Then you’re scared to death. I was. Pondfield regularly makes
Newsweek
magazine’s list of America’s Top Ten Public High Schools. Even so, my best friend, Abby Davis, went off to boarding school instead. Her parents sent her.

Ninth grade had been in a separate building. It was to keep us from being a bad influence on the middle school people. And to keep the high school people from being a bad influence on us. Whatever.

The point is that I’d washed up at this top school for the top people. Kerry Williamson, a face in the sophomore crowd. Not even. I was so invisible that I was
surprised to see myself in the girls’ room mirror. And of course I’d turned up in shoes for some other school and a totally wrong T-shirt. I was in everything but Hello Kitty barrettes.