Tonight, the front door was open, the screen door latched. Ronnie stood on the tiny porch, listening to the whirring of fans throughout the house. As always, there was music playing, fancy music. This was Helen’s choice for early evening. It was only when midnight had come and gone that she allowed herself to play the records from her youth, lowering the volume in deference to the neighbors. They were actually records, not CDs, played on an old stereo. “If you take care of your things, they last,” Helen had told Ronnie more than once, for Ronnie was careless with possessions. She didn’t mean to be, but she was.
Helen had taken care of all her old things. The house on Nottingham was filled with her books, her clothes, and even her toys-tiny stuffed animals from Germany that she said you couldn’t buy today for a hundred dollars, old board games like Masterpiece and Life, a red double-decker bus from England, papier-mâché acrobats from Mexico, metal windups, pristine Barbie dolls.
The best toys, by far, were Helen’s City Mouse and Country Mouse houses, which she sometimes allowed Ronnie to take from the highest shelf in the living room and set up on the rug. “Which do you like best?” Helen had asked, and Ronnie believed the question was a test. Most little girls would pick the City Mouse, with her red velvet canopy bed, silver-plated mirrors, and outfit of orange satin. Alice loved the City Mouse. So Ronnie said the Country Mouse, who wore a checked apron and carried a broom. “She’s my favorite, too,” Helen said.
The Helen who came to the door on this evening looked the same to Ronnie as the Helen she had known seven years ago. But then the light was very dim, inside and out. She was wearing bright orange Capris, black ballet flats, and a man’s Hawaiian shirt that echoed the orange shades of the Capris. She looked beautiful.
“Vintage,” Ronnie said. It wasn’t what she had meant to say the first time she saw her, but Helen smiled.
“Hello, Ronnie.” She had a little sniff, as if she had allergies.
“Hi, He-Helen.” It had always been Helen, never Mrs. or even Ms. Manning, but Ronnie had not said the name out loud for so long. She had never spoken of Helen to anyone, not even her doctor. Just their secret, Helen said, and Ronnie had kept it.
“You grew up so pretty. I always thought you would.”
“I’m not pretty,” she said automatically.
“Well, you should tweeze your eyebrows in the middle, and wear your hair back. But you’re a knockout. Enjoy that body. You won’t have it forever, although I know it’s hard to imagine. Metabolism always comes to call. Happened to me at thirty, on the dot.”
“Oh.” The conversation confused Ronnie. She had hoped for something more momentous from Helen. A hug? An apology? Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t trying to speak through a screen door, with Helen so oddly detached, talking about eyebrows and hair and Ronnie’s body, which was embarrassing. “I was looking for Alice.”
“I don’t think Alice wants to see you, Ronnie.”
She’s dying to see me. This thought did not find voice, but it pierced Ronnie’s head, as clear and pure a sound as the singer trilling away in Helen’s house. Alice wanted to see Ronnie as much as Ronnie wanted to see Alice.
“Is she here? He-Helen?”
“No. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where she goes and I don’t know what she does.”
“Does she have a job?”
“She says she can’t find one. But you did, so I have to think it’s a lie.”
Did Helen mean to be unkind? If stupid Ronnie can find a job, anyone can. But Helen had never been cruel to Ronnie on purpose, just careless at times. She probably meant that Ronnie had done well, so Alice could, too.
“What does she do, if she’s not working?”
“She says she walks. For weight loss. Although-well, between us, she is bigger than ever. I’m afraid I didn’t do well by her when I went wading in her father’s gene pool. Between us.”
Between us. There was the magic phrase. Between us, Ronnie, I think you’re the one who has the real imagination. Between us, Ronnie, I think you have an artistic temperament. Between us, Ronnie, I sometimes wonder if a bad fairy switched you and Alice at birth. Have you heard about changelings? Because you are so much more like me than she is. Alice is a good girl, a sweet girl, but you’re a pistol, Ronnie. You’re not scared of anything, are you, Ronnie? Between us, Ronnie, we’re two peas in a pod.
But the words didn’t seem to mean anything to Helen.
“Do you think Alice will be home soon? It’s almost dark.”
“I don’t know, Ronnie. But I don’t think you should hang around here.”
“Don’t you-” Her voice tore a little.
“Oh, no, baby, I’m happy to see you. I really am. But a reporter came by here not more than an hour ago. She wants to write a story about you and Alice. Now, Alice has a lawyer, a smart one this time-well, she has the stupid one again, but the stupid one now works with a smart one-and they’re going to take care of my baby. They promised me that they’ll scare that reporter so badly she won’t even think about putting Alice’s name in the paper. Have you got a lawyer?”
“I haven’t done anything.” Then, remembering what Helen knew, “Not this time.”
“Well, there’s doing and there’s doing, of course. Sometimes the innocent are more in need of legal protection than the guilty. This reporter, she keeps saying she can write the story even if no one talks to her. Maybe she’s bluffing. I don’t know. All I know is I didn’t talk to her, and I wouldn’t, either, if I were you.”
“Where does Alice go, He-Helen? When she goes walking?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” The repetition revealed the lie.
“Please, Helen. Please.” For the first time, the proper name slipped out without a stutter.
Helen leaned close to the screen, to a spot almost directly across from Ronnie’s forehead. If Ronnie had tilted her head forward, they would have been touching, more or less.
“She never told me, but I saw her once, when I was coming home from the grocery store. She goes up to the pool. She walks around the swim club, looking at people. Sad, isn’t it?”
Ronnie turned to go, then remembered what she had been longing to ask Helen since she came home. “Helen-do you remember the honeysuckle?”
“You mean…”
“The time I tried to make honeysuckle soda and sell it from a stand, like lemonade?”
Some strange emotion flooded Helen’s face, her voice. “Of course I do, Ronnie. Of course I do. You tried to squeeze the juice from the blossoms into a pitcher of sugar water.”
“It tasted awful. And I picked your vines bare. But you didn’t mind. You weren’t mad at all.”
“It was a good idea,” Helen said. “There should be a honeysuckle soda. You always had good ideas, Ronnie.”
“I did?”
“You did, baby. You absolutely did.”
It was past eight, but Infante and Nancy continued to read files, waiting for the moment when inertia turned to exhaustion and they could go home without feeling guilty. Now and then, Nancy forgot what they were looking for and found herself reading about the low-level medical complaints of a Martin or Moore-asthma attacks, chicken pox-as if they were good beach novels. Then she would start skimming again, looking for any trace of Alice Manning.