I was aware of a certain convenience-store calm coursing through me, steady and ho-hum as the thrum of the beer fridge. Where I wanted to go, whom I had to talk to, was plain as the mirrored windows, the display of gum and batteries, Diamanta’s hoop earrings.
“It’s a whodunit,” I said. “I was wondering if I could borrow your car.”
Laughter in the Dark
Hannah was wearing a housedress the color of sandpaper, crudely scissored off at the hem so tiny threads hula-danced around her shins when she opened the door. Her face was bare as an unpainted wall, but it was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping. Her hair hung serenely by her cheekbones and her bright black eyes bumblebeed from my face to my dress to Larson’s truck to my face — all in a matter of seconds.
“Goodness,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Blue.”
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I said. It was the sort of thing you said when you arrived on someone’s doorstep at 2:45 A.M.
“No, no — I was awake.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile, more of a cardboard cutout, and instantly I wondered if I’d made a mistake in coming, but then she put her arm around me. “God, come on in. It’s freezing.”
I’d only ever been in her house with Jade and the others, with Louis Armstrong warbling like toads, the air full of carrots, and it felt claustrophobic now, forsaken and dim like the cockpit of an old crashed plane. The dogs peered at me from behind her bare legs, their gaunt army of shadows slowly advancing toward my feet. There was a light on, the goosenecked lamp in the living room, and it spotlighted papers on the desk, bills, a few magazines.
“Why don’t I fix you some tea?” she asked.
I nodded and after squeezing me again on the shoulder, she disappeared into the kitchen. I sat down on the lumpy plaid armchair next to the stereo. One of the dogs, Brody with three legs and the face of a senile sea captain woofed in disgust, then hobbled over to me, pressing his cold wet nose into my hand, smuggling a secret. Pots coughed behind the kitchen door, a tap whimpered, a few moans from a drawer — I tried to concentrate on these mundane sounds, because frankly, I wasn’t feeling all that marvelous about being there. When she’d opened the door, I’d expected a terrycloth bathrobe, her hair a hornet’s nest, a heavy-eyed, “Sweet Jesus, what’s happened?” Or, hearing the doorbell, she should have taken me for a mulleted highwayman thirsty for gruel and a warm lady, or a livid ex-boyfriend with tattoos on his knuckles (“V-A-L-ER-IO,” it spelled).
I had not foreseen the stiff, clapboard manner with which she’d greeted me, the bare bones welcome, the whisper of a frown — as if I’d been wired for sound all night and she’d been privy to every defamatory chat, banter and tête-à-tête, including the one in which Jade accused her of Mansonian ties, and the one from my head, when the reality of Cottonwood smashed into the reality of Zach Soderberg and I was temporarily manslaughtered. I’d driven to her house (40 mph, barely able to merge, out of my mind when passing a semi or what resembled a wall of tulip poplars) because I loathed Dad, and could think of no other decent place to go, but I also sort of hoped seeing Hannah would lay to rest those other conversations, render them funny and invalid, the way a single scientific sighting of a Mysterious Starling (Aplonis marvornata) could tear it right off the Extinct Species list, throw it up on the dire, but decidedly more encouraging Critically Endangered.
Seeing her, however, had made it worse.
Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one saw them in the Mind’s Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic — their pessimism or insecurity (sometimes really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean) — and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.
A gasp of the kitchen door, and she reappeared, carrying a tray piled with a sagging piece of apple pie, a wine bottle, a glass, a pot of tea.
“Let’s turn on some lights,” she said, pushing with her bare foot a National Geographic, a TV Guide and some mail off the coffee table before sliding the tray across it. She switched on the yellow lamp by an ashtray, cruddy with dead-worm cigarette butts, and thick light splashed all over me and the furniture.
“I’m sorry to be bothering you like this,” I said.
“Blue. Please. I’m always here for you. You know that.” She said the words and the meaning — well, it was there, but it was also sort of grabbing its suitcase and heading for the door. “I’m sorry if I seem a bit…out of sorts. It’s been a long night.” She sighed, and staring at me, reached forward and squeezed my hand. “Really, I’m glad you showed up. I could use the company. You can stay in the guest room, so forget about driving home tonight. Now tell me everything.”
I swallowed, jittery about where to begin. “I had a fight with my dad,” I said, but then to my surprise — just as she picked up the paper napkin and, biting her lip a little, set about folding it into an isosceles triangle — the phone began to ring. It sounded like human screams — Hannah had one of those bleating 1960s telephones, probably picked up for a dollar at a yard sale — and the sound made my heart throw itself melodramatically against my ribs (see Gloria Swanson, Shifting Sands).
“Oh, God,” she whispered, visibly annoyed. “Hold on.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. The ringing stopped.
I strained to hear her voice, but there was nothing to eavesdrop on, only silence and the pings of the dogs’ collars; they nervously raised their heads off the floor.
Almost immediately, she reappeared, again with that small smile shoved onto her face like a tiny child forced onstage.
“That was Jade,” she said, returning to the couch. With secretarial concentration she became absorbed with the teakettle, lifting the lid, scrutinizing the floating tea bags, tapping them with one finger as if they were dead fish.
“I take it you two had quite a night?” she asked. Glancing at me, she poured the tea, handed me the I HEART SLUGS coffee mug (not reacting when some hot water dripped off the side onto her knee) and then, as if I’d been begging her all night to pose for an oil portrait, she stretched out across the entire couch, glass of red wine in hand, her bare feet pushed beneath the cushions (Visual Aid 16.0).
“You know, we had a terrible fight,” she said. “Jade and I. She left here absolutely enraged with me.” She was speaking in an odd, teacherish voice, as if explaining Photosynthesis. “I don’t even remember what it was about. Something mundane.” She tilted her head toward the ceiling. “I think it was college applications. I told her she needed to get organized or she might not make it. She flew off the handle.”
She took a sip of wine and I sipped my oolong tea feeling pangs of guilt. It was harrowingly clear Hannah knew the things Jade had said about her — either for certain, if Jade had called her and confessed (Jade could never be a confidence woman, mortgage shark or shyster due to her overwhelming need to explain things to her victim), or simply assumed it given their argument. Most spectacular of all, though, Hannah was visibly irked by it. Dad said people do all kinds of odd things when they’re on the defensive, and now Hannah was frowning as she rubbed her thumb around the rim of her wineglass, and her eyes, they kept moving between my face and the wineglass and the piece of apple pie (that looked like it’d been stepped on) back to her wineglass.