The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (16 page)

FROM
New England Review

 

Ithaca, New York, 2003

 

“This isn't the first time the McGuires have taken in a man on the run,” Rosemary said to the imaginary crowd beyond the stove. She loved the drama in her words, even though they weren't exactly true. She and her sister hadn't taken in a man but a woman, and the woman wasn't running from the law but from a boyfriend. Still, the situations weren't entirely different. When the crowd roared, Rosemary took the wooden spoon out of the oatmeal, whacked it on the rim of the pot, and waved it at them. Then she shuffled to the hall and looked up the stairs to where the poor girl was sleeping.

Last night, after the battered girl climbed the stairs, Rosemary had called to her to ask if she could see the lake. “Sorry, Aunt Rosemary,” the girl answered. “It's pitch black.” Rosemary rested her forehead on the newel post, remembering how the upstairs windows turned into shiny black mirrors, and how, when she stood in front of them, she felt she was inside a glass ball.

Francis, Rosemary's husband, had wanted curtains, but Rosemary loved the bare windows. She loved looking out to the water and the wide stretch of lake, and besides, she always told him, there wasn't any need to cover the windows because no one could look inside. A pine grove stood at the front of the house and a brush-covered hill was at the back. The hill fell away as sharply as a sliding board, and at its base was Cayuga Lake—a lake so deep the water never froze.

 

Hours before, when Rosemary first woke, she'd gripped the handrail and hoisted herself up the steps. She thought that by using her hands, she'd spare her hips, but she hadn't taken her upper body into consideration. She hadn't considered how she'd get down the stairs either. Frightened and wobbly, she'd bounced down on her backside, so now, in addition to the usual aches in her hips and knees, her elbows and shoulders were throbbing.

Even so, it had been worth it. It was worth a million aches to see the sleeping girl's hair spilled out like golden seaweed. Rosemary's brothers and sister had been blessed with that same glorious hair, while Rosemary had been cursed with hair like the strings on a coconut. But in the next generation, the injustice was righted and the honey-colored hair passed only to Rosemary's daughter, Moira. And now, here it was in still another generation. Linda—the girl with the bruised face and swollen lips—was the granddaughter of Rosemary's oldest brother.

When Rosemary's daughter was a toddler, strangers would stop to ask if they could touch her hair. By age six, Moira gave permission herself. The girl's nod told people she understood her own beauty—her blue eyes and perfect features, her black eyebrows and golden crown. When she became a teenager, Moira rinsed her hair with lemon juice and brushed it every night. On winter nights, her hair came alive and threw sparks in the air. At age twenty, when Moira lay in her coffin, her face as smooth and peaceful as an angel's, people leaned over to touch her hair.

Rosemary turned when the water began its whistle. She was ninety-one, but her hearing was sharper than a guard dog's. She could hear the drip of water in the basement washtubs and the crunch of gravel in the neighbor's drive. She could hear the beating of birds' wings as they flew to and from their nests in the fir trees. And lately, after determining that the scratching sounds weren't branches brushing against the house, she could hear the scurrying of squirrels in the attic. Once she identified exactly what the noise was, it was easy to picture the dirty pests nibbling away at her papers. Just thinking about the nasty rodents made her stiff with fury. She dreamed of firing Mike's pistol into the rafters and leaving poisoned chestnuts in the eaves, but she had as much chance of getting to the attic as of landing on the moon.

Rosemary shut off the teakettle and tilted her head. Ordinary creaks came from the second floor while a whine like a pipe organ came from Betty's room off the kitchen. Rosemary was used to her sister's snoring. Betty was up half the night going back and forth to the bathroom, then she slumbered the morning away.

In the sitting room, Rosemary pressed the back of her knees against the cushion and sank faster than she planned. She folded her hands and smiled at the memory of the golden hair. “May perpetual light shine upon her, O Lord,” she whispered, “and may her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.” Rosemary had prayed for the repose of Moira's soul for fifty years, and for fifty years she'd regretted being talked into a home wake.

Rosemary didn't believe it was natural for a mother to want her daughter to be put in the earth, but with every moment Moira's body remained unburied Rosemary feared for her daughter's soul. Throughout the days of waking, when Moira lay in her coffin on the table in the front room, Betty never stopped talking. The mourners came and went, filling and emptying the rooms, but Betty rattled on, explaining how the poor girl had taken Rosemary's car even though she'd been warned the brake lights weren't working.

Rosemary, numb with shock, understood that Betty kept telling the story about the broken brake lights in order to shield her from blame. But every time Rosemary heard the story, she felt only guilt—for being too weak to insist that the car was unfit to be driven.

***

“Is Linda awake?” Betty said, coming into the sitting room in her red quilted robe.

“Not yet,” Rosemary answered.

Betty sank to the sofa. “Well, now we have proof, if we ever needed it.”

“Proof?”

“Of the power of prayer.”

“What are you saying, Betty?”

“My prayers have been answered.”

“Betty, what are you talking about?”

“Ever since Mike graduated, I've been praying that someone would come to help us. When Al told us he was moving, I really stormed the heavens with my prayers, and now, here she is—a girl to help us.”

“You think this poor girl is an answer to your prayers?” Rosemary stared at her sister, but Betty looked away.

It was true that they'd been in a fix since Mike moved back to Texas, but back then Rosemary hadn't realized how bad their situation really was. She'd assumed another Cornell student would take Mike's place in the neighbors' basement apartment, and that this other young person would be happy to make some money running errands. She hadn't thought that the neighbors would lock up the house and go on sabbatical. She hadn't thought that the other students on Mike's list would be busy. Then, in what turned out to be an even bigger surprise, Al Murphy—the son of one of Francis's old colleagues—announced that he was retiring. Al said he needed the sun; he was moving to Florida.

Rosemary and Betty were on a church list for a driver and errand-runner, but so far no one had turned up except Gladys O'Farrell, a seventy-year-old woman who took them to Sunday mass. On the way home from church, Gladys sometimes let Betty go into the store for milk or eggs, but usually Gladys was in a hurry to drop them back home.

Every few weeks, Betty called a cab to go to the hairdresser. The taxi wouldn't come down the sloped driveway the way Gladys did and that meant Rosemary couldn't go at all.

“Our situation,” Rosemary had said two weeks ago, when she looked at the dwindling supply of canned soup and tuna fish, “isn't good. You might even say it's desperate.”

“I'll pray to Saint Jude,” Betty had said.

 

Rosemary put her hands on the armrests and tried to lift herself, but her elbows screamed and she fell back. Meanwhile, Betty, whose face was settled comfortably in a smug smile, was swinging her left leg like a beauty queen. “Little Miss Muffet sits on her tuffet,” Rosemary mumbled.

Rosemary didn't believe having a grandniece beaten up by someone described as a “psychopath” was the answer to any prayers, and no one, no matter how desperate, would pray that a young woman would have to change her whole life around to avoid what Joanne, Linda's sister, had called “a control nut.”

When Joanne phoned to ask if Linda could stay with them, she said that Linda needed a safe place where Tommy wouldn't think to look. “He's a real psychopath, Aunt Rosemary,” Joanne added, her voice thick with worry. “And I'm sure he'll keep stalking her if she stays in the city.”

“Stalk.” The word made Rosemary think of big-game hunters. She actually pictured a man in a jungle carrying a rifle and wearing khaki shorts and a pith helmet.

“He's a control nut,” Joanne said. “He knows all Linda's friends and the places she'd hide. He'll come to my apartment the minute he finds out she's gone, and with my kids here, I can't take a chance.”

“Of course not.” Rosemary remembered something about Joanne's marrying and having children, though she couldn't recall if she and Betty had been invited to the wedding or if they'd sent a gift. “We'd love to have Linda stay with us. Tell her to take a taxi when she gets to the bus station. Aunt Betty and I will be waiting up for her.”

“I've given her some clothes and money,” Joanne said, “but I'll get to the bank tomorrow and send more.”

 

Rosemary stared at her sister, who'd fallen back to sleep. Rosemary had always wished she could sleep late and doze off at odd hours, but she was the nervous sort like their father, though now, thinking back, she had to admit that even their father could take it easy. Every now and then he'd sprawl in his club chair, his feet crossed at the ankles, smoke curling up from a cigar between his fingers.

“Doesn't all this remind you of Daddy and de Valera?” Rosemary said, watching as Betty opened her eyes and wiggled a throw pillow behind her back. A moment later, Betty plunked her feet onto the padded footstool as if it were as easy as dropping a spoon.

“What?”

Betty's hearing wasn't as sharp as it should be, and Rosemary had to work on holding her temper. “EAMON DE VALERA!” Rosemary shouted. “THE MAN ON THE RUN! WE TOOK HIM INTO THE BROOKLYN HOUSE IN 1919.”

“De Valera? What about him?”

“I said having Linda here, running away from the boyfriend, reminds me of the time Daddy took in de Valera.”

“I was too young,” Betty said. “I don't remember.”

“You certainly
do
remember! We've talked about it a hundred times.” Rosemary couldn't bear it when her sister acted dumb. She knew it was just because Betty didn't want to think hard.

“Well, I don't remember the way you do. I was only five years old.”

Rosemary was seven when de Valera came and she remembered everything—how her father brought the family into the parlor and said a great honor had befallen them—that they'd been asked to open their home to one of the greatest Irish patriots who ever breathed God's air.

“A 1916 man,” James McGuire had said. “He gave proof of the faith that was in him.” It was an expression Rosemary's father used for the men of the Easter Rising.

Rosemary's father told them that although de Valera would be raising money and trying to get America to recognize an independent Ireland, they weren't to tell anyone they had a guest, or who he was.

“Didn't Daddy make us promise not to tell anyone de Valera was staying with us?” Betty asked, as if reading Rosemary's mind.

“That's right.”

“What was all the secrecy about anyway?” Betty asked.

Rosemary couldn't believe her sister had forgotten. For over eighty years they'd talked about that visit. They'd discussed the vow of secrecy their father had made them take hundreds of times.

Rosemary took a deep breath and counted to five. “If the authorities found out
when
de Valera arrived, they'd know which ship he'd been on. And if they knew which ship, then they'd know who'd given him help, and the people who helped him would have been in trouble. De Valera and his friends would have lost an important link to America.”

“Huh?” Betty said.

Rosemary narrowed her eyes. “He had to stay quiet before meeting the public. That meant we had to stay quiet, too.”

“He was a stoker on the ship, wasn't he?”

“That's what Daddy said.” Rosemary tried to lift her feet, but her hips wouldn't allow it. The old newspaper next to the chair reminded her of the newspapers her mother had saved from de Valera's visit. Rosemary had taken dozens of boxes of old papers when her mother died, and she was sure she'd had them when she married Francis and moved to Ithaca. Were those old newspapers still somewhere up in the attic? Was it possible that at this very minute they were being eaten by squirrels?

“You made that big pot of porridge?” Betty said.

“Oatmeal. And it will wait.”

“I'm hungry. Do we have to wait?”

Rosemary held up a hand when the floorboards creaked. Half a minute later, when the toilet flushed, she managed to right herself. She had to stand a full minute while the pain in her hips subsided. Meanwhile, Betty, nimble as a cat, bolted up from the sofa and practically ran to the kitchen.

Betty had the bowls on the table and was pouring milk into a pitcher when Linda came into the kitchen wrapped in a turquoise robe. The left side of her face was the color of an eggplant; her right eye was a slit in her cheek.

“Oh, dear heart,” Rosemary said, feeling pain in her own face. Last night, the girl's face hadn't seemed quite as bruised or swollen.

“I'm all right,” Linda said through cracked lips. Her eye began to run with tears. “I slept like a log for the first time in months.”

“We're very glad we could help,” Betty said. “Rosemary made some porridge.”

“I wonder if you should see a doctor,” Rosemary said, remembering that over seventy years ago, she'd taken a friend to a doctor after a beating. The friend had sat beside her on the trolley, her head wrapped in a shawl, her hand squeezing Rosemary's wrist.