Strange but True (36 page)

“What would you like? We have water, grape juice, or milk.”

Any of those choices would be fine, Charlene thinks, if I were a first-grader. She wonders if she is going to offer her animal crackers too. “Do you have any Diet Coke?”

Margaret presses her hands flat against her flowery apron. “Sorry. But we don't keep carbonated beverages in the house.”

That's pretty much the
only
kind of beverage Charlene keeps in her house. “I'll just have water. Thanks.”

When Margaret goes to the kitchen, the first thing Charlene does is turn and stare at the white brick fireplace, which she remembers seeing in the background of the snapshots taped to Missy's dashboard. She steps over to the mantel and stares at the row of framed pictures—all of Melissa in a wedding dress. She is smiling and happy. What's more, she does not have a single scar on her face. Charlene picks up one of the photos and examines it more closely, trying to figure out when it could have been taken and who the red-haired young man is standing beside her.

“That's our other daughter, Stacy,” Margaret says when she returns to the room with two tall, skinny glasses of water on a tray. She sets them down on the doily-covered coffee table next to the sofa, a doily over the back of that too.

Charlene had been so preoccupied thinking about Melissa that she'd forgotten the girl had a twin. Now her mind fills with the memory of Stacy standing on the front lawn in that bright green prom dress with Chaz. Then her thoughts rush forward, like those newspaper articles on the screen of the microfiche machine, stopping on a memory of the day Chaz came to visit when he was home from the air force, a year or so after Ronnie died. Philip and Richard had moved out by then, so she was the only one at home. Charlene still remembers when she heard a car door slam outside and peeked though her bedroom window to see him coming up the walkway, dressed in a dark blue uniform, his head shaved completely bald. She remembers how much she dreaded his impromptu visit. But after he came inside and they began talking at the kitchen table, that feeling left her and she found herself feeling grateful that he stopped by. Finally, she recalls what he told her about the reason he and Ronnie had set out to date the Moody girls. Charlene had never divulged that secret to anyone, though she'd come close when she was standing at the front door with Philip last night.

You don't know everything
.

What don't I know?

I just told you. Everything
.

“Stacy got married last spring,” Margaret says. “She met a wonderful young man at Rutgers. They still live in New Jersey.”

“Good for her,” Charlene says, realizing that it's been quite some time since she has had one of these parent-to-parent conversations. “What does she do now?”

“Stacy is a systems analyst at an insurance company. Ted, her husband, is a controller at a technology firm.”

At one time in her life, Charlene used to read the wedding section of the local paper every week without fail. It seemed to her then that just about everyone in that column had a job with that sort of title, though Charlene didn't have the foggiest idea what those jobs were. “What does that mean exactly?” she asks Margaret, figuring she'll go along with the chitchat a while longer before focusing on Melissa. “I mean, what does a systems analyst or a controller do when they arrive at work in the morning and sit down at their desk?”

“Well, I—” Margaret stops. “I never thought about it. I suppose that Stacy analyzes systems of some sort. And Ted, well, he must control … things.”

“I see,” Charlene says, though she doesn't see at all. She puts the photo back on the mantel and gives up on the discussion.

Margaret offers her a seat on the humpbacked sofa, and they both make themselves as comfortable as possible, though the cushions are thin and hard. Charlene picks up her water glass from the tray on the coffee table. As she takes a sip, Margaret asks, “You have another son, don't you?”

Charlene thinks of Philip at home on the foldout bed, reading that biography as the television blares in the background. “Yes. My son Philip. He's unemployed.” She laughs. “I guess that's an easy job to explain. He doesn't analyze or control a damn thing all day long. Not counting the remote control.”

Margaret smiles warily.

“That's a joke,” Charlene tells her. “Kind of a joke anyway.”

“Oh,” Margaret says, and produces an unconvincing chuckle.

There is an awkward moment of silence between them then. Charlene senses that Margaret wants to get back to the topic of Melissa, but she finds herself thinking of Philip and his poetry. Charlene had never been very encouraging, which is the opposite of what one might think, seeing as she was a librarian. But Charlene had met too many poets at the library during National Poetry Month every April. Almost all of them had the same dazed look, and they seemed so full of regret and sadness. Frankly, she didn't want that sort of life for Philip. What she wished for him was a career with some semblance of security, which didn't seem to matter much in youth, though Charlene knew damn well it became important later. Now, though, she wonders if it had been a mistake to discourage him, because look how his life had turned out anyway. And who was to say those poets were any less happy than the thousands of systems analysts and controllers roaming the world?

The sound of Joseph's footsteps creak on the second floor. Charlene glances up at the ceiling, and just then, she feels something vibrate in her pocket. The motion startles her until she realizes that she must have switched the cell phone to vibrate while playing with the buttons.

“Is something the matter?” Margaret asks.

“No,” Charlene says, letting the call go to voice mail again. She is surprised Philip called her back at all, never mind twice. Still, she doesn't want to be rude and answer it, like those mothers who are always yapping away in line at the Genuardi's.

“So can you tell me what you know about Melissa?” Margaret asks in a quiet voice.

Charlene takes another sip of water. “How long has it been since you've seen her?”

“Years. It's not that I haven't tried. I have. Not in a long while, but when she first left, I used to try all the time. I'd send cards and gifts. But she never responded. She just shut us out after what happened with—Well, after what happened that summer.”

“I'm sorry,” Charlene says and means it, since she knows full well how it feels to be cut off from your children.

“Does she still look the same?”

“If you mean, does she still have all those scars, I'm sorry to tell you that yes, she does.”

Margaret stares down at the carpet, where her feet are arranged side by side in flimsy, heel-less black shoes. She looks as though she is about to cry. “Missy was such a pretty girl, and I knew the scars bothered her. I would have done whatever it took to make her look better. Joseph and I have the money from the suit. We've had it for years now, but she refused it long ago.”

“You have the money?” Charlene asks.

“We settled out of court. Didn't you?”

“No. The lawyers tried to get me to do that. But I'll never settle.”

“Well, we just wanted the whole ugly business behind us,” Margaret says, her eyes still on the floor.

For Charlene, it's just the opposite. All these years, she has been holding out for her day in court, just waiting for the moment when she could get up in front of a courtroom and give her side of the story. Sometimes she even dreamed about it, and when she looked out into the courtroom in that dream, she saw the faces of everyone she knew: Philip, Richard, Holly, Pilia, even her parents, who were long since dead, had come back from the beyond to hear her side of the story.

“Tell me about the baby. Is it a boy or a girl?” Margaret asks. “And what's its name?”

Charlene realizes that she had not made herself clear earlier. “Oh, Melissa hasn't had the child yet. She's still pregnant. Nine months, actually.”

Margaret pauses to think that over, then asks, “Why did she come to see you last night? Did it have to do with your husband?”

“Ex-husband,” Charlene says as something coalesces in her mind. She thinks of Richard's caginess on the phone earlier, of the way Joseph described her in relation to Richard instead of Ronnie, of Melissa looking up the stairs last night and asking,
Is Mr. Chase home?
“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Saying what?”

“Before at the door, Joseph referred to me as Richard's wife. And just now, you brought him up again. Why?”

All Margaret says is, “You know.”

“No,” Charlene tells her, growing more suspicious by the second. “I don't know.”

Above them, the ceiling creaks again. Margaret lowers her voice so she is all but whispering. “Richard never told you?”

“Told me what?”

“That Joseph caught them together.”

“Caught who together?”

“Your husband—
ex
-husband, rather—and our daughter. Melissa.”

“What do you mean, ‘caught them together'?”

“I don't know the specifics,” Margaret says, “because Joe would never talk about it. All I know is that they started meeting at the cemetery that summer after the accident. My husband began following her to see where she was going and who she was with.”

“And she was with Richard?”

Margaret nods. “Apparently.”

Charlene puts her hand to her forehead. She wishes she'd taken off her cloak because she is sweating beneath. “Are you saying they had an affair? An affair that took place at the cemetery?”

“Please,” Margaret says, pointing toward the ceiling. “Keep your voice down.”

Charlene hadn't realized that she raised her voice at all. In an exaggerated whisper, she asks, “Are you telling me they had an affair?”

“I don't know if that's the right word. Melissa denied that's what it was. She said they had a friendship. A close friendship. But that wasn't the way my husband saw things.”

“So what happened?”

“Your ex-husband gave her the money to rent a house and buy a car. Then she left us.”

Now Charlene understands the reason for Richard's fumbling behavior on the phone this morning. Now she understands why Melissa kept asking about him last night. All day long, Charlene had been trying to make a connection between Richard's medical expertise and her pregnancy. But that wasn't the case at all. Charlene had been around long enough to know that when a man gave a woman money for a house and a car it could only mean one thing. That's when an odd thought occurs to her: she wonders if the child could be Richard's. Just the thought of it, just the thought of the two of them together, causes her to sweat even more. All the bread she had eaten in the parking lot of the library feels as though it has hardened into a cement ball inside of her.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Missy?” Margaret asks, her soft voice breaking through the haze of Charlene's thoughts.

Charlene blinks. She wants to tell her that she should go to her daughter, that the girl is obviously troubled and needs her help, that she should find a way to make up with her and stop their fighting. But that would be hypocritical, considering the way she treated Philip all these years. And even though it might seem that Charlene's instinct would lead her to call Richard right now, that is not what she wants to do at all. What she wants is to go home and give Philip that Robert Frost book, to sit in the family room and watch TV together, to have a conversation without bickering, and to let him get the last word if they do. She rises from the couch and says to Melissa's mother, “I've told you everything I know. And now I need to go. My son is waiting for me at home.”

“I'm sorry if I upset you,” she says, standing too.

Margaret trails Charlene to the door, where they say a rushed good-bye. “If you see my daughter, will you please tell her that I miss her?”

Charlene promises that she will, then steps outside, where the sky is just beginning to grow dark. On the way to her car, she fishes through her pockets for her keys and pulls out the cell phone as well. On the glowing green screen, the words
TWO MESSAGES
blink beside a digital image of a mailbox. Charlene starts pressing buttons again in an attempt to retrieve Philip's messages, but she cannot figure out how to access the damn things. Finally, she gives up and gets in her car, tossing the phone on the seat next to that strip of microfiche and the Robert Frost book.

Once she pulls out of the driveway and heads off down the street, Charlene allows herself to think of what she just learned about Richard. Yes, she knew he ran around with women like Holly after Ronnie died. But she never would have imagined that he would be so completely devoid of morals as to have an affair with his dead son's girlfriend. And yes, there is a part of her that wants to get on the highway and drive straight to Palm Beach. But what good would that do now?

Instead, Charlene keeps going toward home.

When she pulls in the driveway ten minutes later, she comes to a stop outside the garage door and presses the remote control on the visor. Slowly, the door lifts and she begins to ease the car forward until she notices something that causes her to let out a small gasp: the Mercedes is gone. Charlene slams on the brakes and shifts into park. Only the nose of the Lexus is in the garage, but she leaves it right where it is. Without bothering to shut off the engine, she gets out and walks to the spot where Ronnie's car has been parked for years. There in the corner, among the shadows, she sees the canvas cover she bought long ago to protect it.

Charlene doesn't know why but she picks up the edge of that cover and holds it in her hands. For a long while, she stands there listening to the sound of the engine running, breathing in the cold, oily garage air, and wondering what Philip has done and where he has gone. Finally, she decides there is no way he could have possibly driven the car with his leg in the cast. With this thought in mind, she goes back to the Lexus and turns off the ignition, not bothering to pull the car the rest of the way into the garage. She cuts through the basement hallway, past Philip's and Ronnie's old ten-speeds and tennis rackets and that dusty, deflated alligator raft, and up the stairs.