What Strange Creatures (38 page)

Marge?
I thought. Was she greeting me at the entrance to purgatory? Surely not hell. Because I’d at least tried, in this life. Sometimes. Zach had been right about my doubt, but was it that easy to get sent to hell?

“Theresa, hon?”

At those words Zach’s grip loosened and my vision returned. I sat up.

“Do you realize that your indoor cat is sitting outside on the lawn, Theresa?” My mother’s voice came closer to us. Zach, stunned, let go of my neck and eased his hands down to my shoulders. “Just staring bug-eyed at your car like it’s the mother ship. Shut up, puggle-face.
Shut up!
”

Wayne was still going ballistic when my mother reached us.

“Oh. My. God,” she said. “I’m
so
sorry. I’m interrupting.”

I managed to wriggle away and stand up.

“You’re not interrupting, Mom. Give me your phone.”

“Oh, dear. I should go. Hon, I was just checking in. And I’d stopped at the Dip for dessert. Did you know they’re having an éclair special?”

My mother smiled at Zach. “Did you even know there’s such a
thing
as a pistachio éclair? Leave it to the Dip, though—I think it’s pistachio Jell-O pudding on the inside.”

I picked up the DVD case off the floor. “Give me your phone, Mom. Jesus!”

My mother shot me the evil eye but handed me the phone anyway. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. I’m Theresa’s mom, obviously. Do you like éclairs? I’d have bought more if I realized she’d have a guest.”

“Um . . .” Zach struggled to catch his breath. “I . . . don’t . . . Well, yeah. Yeah, I do.”

I went into the kitchen as I dialed 911, then ran back into the living room with my biggest kitchen knife.

“I have an intruder in my home,” I said to the 911 operator. “And he tried to strangle me.”

Zach stared at me as I gave our address.

“Theresa!” my mother screamed, dropping the white bag. “Are you out of your mind?”

“You can run.” I shoved my mother’s phone in my back pocket so I could hold on to the knife with both hands. “Or you can stay here and have one of my mother’s pastries while we wait for the cops, since she’s already offered. As long as you don’t touch either one of us.”

At that, Zach turned and ran from the house. When I heard his tires squeak, I hoped Geraldine had managed to stay out of his way.

My next thought was realizing that my mother of course had seen Zach’s car in the driveway before she came waltzing into my house.

My mother stepped closer to me and put her fingertips to my neck.

“This is for real?” she asked as the conspiratorial smile finally left her face.

I dropped my knife and put my arms around her.

I
t wasn’t really warm enough to eat supper outside, but we were all willing to pretend it was. I’d just given Boober and Wayne baths, and the whole house smelled like wet dog and flea shampoo. None of us wanted to stay inside—particularly Nathan, who’d spent an hour making us a ginger-chickpea recipe he’d insisted would be
transcendent.
We were eating early, before he had to go to work.

It was a special occasion. We were celebrating Jeff’s new job driving a bread truck. Tish had used one of her many family connections to help him get it. It wasn’t a dream job—I had no idea what Jeff would consider a dream job—but it would buy him security, days away from his dreary apartment, and some time to think about his next steps.

He was free now.

It hadn’t happened overnight.

After my final encounter with Zach, I made copies of Kim’s DVD—one for myself, one for Jeff’s lawyer, and one for the police. It forced the police to give Zach another look, but they still didn’t take him seriously as a suspect.

Zach denied everything, and they didn’t have enough to take him in. They still had their sights set on Jeff anyhow.

Then the DNA tests came back from Kim’s fingernails. And the profile didn’t match Jeff’s. That’s when they took it seriously. That’s when they tested Zach.

Over the past few months, he’d changed his original plea from not guilty to guilty. His lawyers were hoping to get him a reduced sentence, since the murder wasn’t, they claimed, a premeditated act. Zach had driven down to Rowington with the intention of going along with Kim’s plan. They’d met at the Denny’s and were planning to drive over to the meeting together in Zach’s car. According to his account, she began talking about Dustin’s footage again and making further demands of him. Zach lost his temper and stabbed her in the thigh with a screwdriver he had in his car. She started screaming. He panicked, jumped on her, covered her mouth, and strangled her in the heat of the moment. The prosecution was claiming he couldn’t have done this in the parking lot of the auditorium where the town meeting was to take place—that someone would’ve seen the struggle in the car. Zach, they said, probably took Kim to a secluded place, which indicated premeditation.

In any case the police dropped the charges against Jeff just before Christmas. Zach was arrested on Christmas Eve.

By then, of course, Donald Wallace had won the election.

“Seconds?” Nathan asked now.

“I’m not sure I need more,” I said. “I can handle only so much transcendence this early in the evening.”

This thing with Nathan didn’t happen overnight either. I went to Wiley’s on a frigid evening in early February, feeling uninspired by Marge that night—and half hoping Nathan would be there. He was. He’d read about my brother by then. It had occurred to him to call me, he said, but he’d been busy. With the two jobs and now a night class, he had a lot on his plate. Plus, he was still looking for a home for the cockatoo and now a painted turtle he’d been saddled with as well. But he missed my stories about Marge.

“I’ve been thinking of getting a couple of tattoos,” Jeff said.

“Really?” Nathan asked. “Don’t go anywhere but Tasty Pain, I’m telling you. They do beautiful work.”

“A cup of cappuccino on one bicep,” Jeff added, deadpan. “And a croissant on the other.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Well, did I tell you I’m considering growing a soft, downy mustache?”

“I’m considering growing an exoskeleton.”

“I’m thinking of growing my own kombucha mushrooms.”

“I’m thinking I’ll Twitter that.”

“Oh,
please,
” Nathan said, standing up from the picnic table. “I can’t stand this game.”

“Tell me about it.” Tish folded her arms.

“You just don’t have the hang of it yet,” I said.

“I don’t ever want the hang of it.” Nathan picked up the chickpea platter, his plate, and mine. “I’m gonna bring in a few things.”

“I’ll come,” Tish offered. “I’ve got to whip the cream.”

Tish had insisted upon making a chocolate pie, to counteract any woo-woo health benefits of Nathan’s entrée. Now, the thing with Jeff and Tish
did
seem to happen overnight. Not that I was sure, even now, what this thing was. But they both seemed pretty happy with it, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions.

“I’ve been thinking of using the expression ‘Oh, my stars,’” I said. “Not every day. But on good days.”

“On that note, Theresa, I’ve been thinking of saying ‘Huzzah’ now and again.”

I sighed and Jeff stretched. We were both spent, and nobody had won. Maybe we were, at long last, getting too old for this.

“Half these things we talk about we’re thinking of doing,” I confessed, “I actually kind of want to do.”

“I know,” Jeff said.

He didn’t add, “Me, too,” I noticed. Maybe he didn’t feel the same.

“I’m thinking of dropping Marge. I’m thinking of withdrawing, finally. Maybe I’d rather spend the fee on a trip this year. A ‘Good-bye, Marge’ trip. A pilgrimage to England, even. I could stop by her hometown and say an official good-bye. It might be more fun than torturing myself for another year.”

I had managed to meet my deadline of presenting pages to my department and done fairly well, but I had felt no victory in it. Some persistent insecurity had impelled me to keep a toe in academics long after my heart had lost interest. I was fairly certain I was ready to take it out now.

“You’re serious?” Jeff said.

“Yes.”

“Well . . .” He ate a single chickpea, looking a bit sad for me. “Think a little more.”

“I am.” I stood up to collect the rest of our dishes. “I will.”

As I reached for my glass, a golf ball flew past me, missed my head by an inch or two, and bounced off the seat of my picnic table.

I stooped and plucked it out of the grass.

“Oh, my stars,” I whispered. “First wayward golf ball of the season.”

“What is that, like, good luck or something?”

“If we want it to be,” I said, and tossed it to my brother.

About the author

    
Meet Emily Arsenault

    
Q&A with Emily Arsenault

Read on

    
Have You Read? More by Emily Arsenault

Photo © by Ross Grant

EMILY ARSENAULT
is also the author of
The Broken Teaglass, In Search of the Rose Notes
, and
Miss Me When I’m Gone.
She lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.

Your last two books were mysteries that involved female friendships. What made you decide to write about a brother-sister relationship this time?

I have two brothers, so it’s an important relationship in my life. In my experience these relationships can be very close but still have awkward, uncomfortable holes. Theresa and Jeff clearly care a great deal about each other and can be about 80-percent honest with each other concerning their lives. It’s the other 20 percent where things get interesting. There are things they will never say to each other. There are things they both know about each other but will probably never address. I can’t speak for all siblings, but this is how it is for me, and I wanted to capture that with Theresa and Jeff.

Who were your inspirations for Jeff and Theresa? Are you very much like Theresa? Does Jeff resemble someone in your family?

Though they are nothing like Jeff and Theresa, my initial spark of inspiration came from my mother and her brother—my uncle. They live in the same town they grew up in, within walking distance of each other. My mother goes out to eat a great deal, and her very frugal brother often comes over and steals the doggie bags from her fridge. I started with that—an adult sibling relationship in which the brother and sister are very much in each other’s daily lives. They are sort of like gadflies to each other. (I should say, however, that my mother and uncle might not characterize their relationship exactly that way.)

I have some of Theresa’s qualities (spotty commitment to academic interests, high emotional investment in pets, general slovenliness), though I wouldn’t say she is me. She is bolder and more spontaneous than I am.

When I was in college, I very much thought I wanted to enter a philosophy Ph.D. program and be an academic. For a variety of reasons, I decided during my senior year to “take a year off” from academics. I got a job at Merriam-Webster, got married a few years later, then taught for a while, had some other adventures, and never thought much about philosophy again. I think of Theresa as a sort of alter ego for me—how I might’ve ended up had things gone differently and had I pursued academics more seriously. I can imagine losing my drive somewhere along the line but clinging to the “idea” of getting a Ph.D. as a sort of intellectual security blanket.

Aside from an interest in origami, which he shares with my older brother, Jeff doesn’t resemble either of my brothers. (Where credit is due: The idea to write a book called
How to Win Chicks with Origami
comes from my brother’s brain, not mine.) The
relationship
between Jeff and Theresa, however, borrows some elements from my relationship with my older brother. For example, we tend to indulge each other’s pessimism, as Jeff and Theresa do.

Why did you choose Margery Kempe as the subject of Theresa’s dissertation? Did you know much about her before you wrote the book? How did you research this topic?