The couch smelled like cigarettes and mildew. It was small, and I had to stick my legs up on the arm or curl up in a ball to be comfortable, which I wasn't.
I woke up to whispers in the middle of the night. For a second I didn't know where I was. I stared at the blinds for a minute, trying to remember. All I saw were clouds glowing, like the moon was trying to bust out from behind.
Grandma Glad sat on the edge of the bed, Joe right next to her. I could have touched her red slipper, touched her big toe with its thick yellow nail. If I wanted to.
It's funny how adults are. When they think a kid is asleep, they never expect you to wake up and listen.
"You don't ever let them know that you knew about her and him," Grandma Glad said. "If it comes out, you didn't know."
"She says it's all lies. She says he chased her, but she put him off. She liked the attention, she said. I was busy with the Grayson fellow, trying to swing a deal. Is that a crime? It was Evie he went after, she said."
"You never were a chump, Joe. Don't start now. How do you think she got along all those years?"
I wanted to leap up and scream at her that it wasn't true. I knew that. I knew Mom. All she had was her reputation. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of having gossip about her, she said. That's why she dragged me to church every Sunday and nodded and smiled to the ladies as we walked up in our hats and white gloves.
I had been thinking of the wives of the men who whistled as Beverly Plunkett went by, of them being the gossips. That wasn't the enemy for Mom. All the time, her enemy had been waiting. Her enemy was sitting in the green chair in the living room.
"She says I neglected her."
"You were building your business. Nobody did as good as you after the war."
"I haven't been a saint, Ma. When I was overseas —"
"You were a soldier. A hero. You made your way, best you could. Now stop it, Joey. We've got to get this straight, now. Reilly says to hire a lawyer. He gave me a name. Things aren't always on the up-and-up, you know. If we know the right people, maybe we can close this down. That's what he says — without coming right out and saying it, mind you. If you spread the green, he said, certain people will look the other way. I came down with eight thousand."
"Ma!" Joe's voice burst out, and she shushed him.
"We'll only use it if we have to."
"That's all the money I've got in the world. It's going to buy us a dream house."
So Joe had cash, all this time. He could have paid Peter, and he didn't. He wanted his dream house instead. He wouldn't give that up. But Grandma Glad knew about the money.
So many lies around me. Enough lies to fill ten houses.
"Forget the house — this is your life. You saw your chance in the war, you took it, you made something of yourself. Just like your dad."
"Pop died broke."
"Hush your mouth, the man did his best. You'll make it through this. We'll try for the police chief. A bribe here and there. Maybe the judge. Reilly says to ask our lawyer when we get one, and he'll give us the straight deal. But don't ask until we have to."
The shadows moved apart. Joe went back to his bed. Grandma Glad took off her robe and got back into her bed. I kept my eyes almost closed. I watched her pull the covers up to her chin.
I didn't understand. There was so much I didn't get.
But one thing shone through, like the moon through the clouds, silver now painting my blanket.
She told him this and that and what they were going to do and how bad my mother was.
But never once did she ask him if he did it.
Chapter 29
Headlines. Words that once you read upside down, that popped out at you at a newsstand as you roller-skated by, or from the kitchen table as you went by to grab an apple from a yellow bowl on the kitchen counter. Body and Blonde and Murder. Now they were about us.
Grandma Glad went into action. It was like she'd been drafted and had blown through basic in a week. She started telling Joe what to do. The first thing she did, she hired a lawyer. She said we needed a local guy on our side. This guy, Mr. Markel, was a tall, pale man with a stretched-out face and rimless glasses covering colorless eyes. I couldn't exactly see him facing down the enemy. The most he did, from what I could see, was tell Joe and Mom what to wear at the inquest. When Mom told him that she didn't have any navy or gray outfits, he'd said, "Buy some."
They wouldn't let me go to the inquest the first day. Mom wore a gray dress with a white collar and a black straw hat. Joe wore a suit and tie. Grandma Glad wore her diamond pin.
"The good news is that the coroner's report says Coleridge did die by drowning," Markel said. He'd stopped over for coffee before the inquest.
I saw Mom swallow. "Why is that good news?"
"Because if he'd died from a blow to the head, for example, they would have had more of a case that he was dead when he hit the water."
Mom turned her face away. "You certainly don't mince words, do you."
He looked over at her. "No."
They were gone almost all day. I went downtown for the afternoon edition. I took it to the bandshell and held it in my lap for a minute. The park had been cleaned up and the branches carted away. The lake was gray, stealing color from the sky.
I could see the headline, and I didn't want to read the story.
STARTLING TESTIMONY IN
COLERIDGE INQUEST
Suspicion Cast on Businessman's Wife
Surprise Witness Identifies Her in Court
I read it fast, trying to just make sense of the jumping words.
The witness was Iris Wright, owner of Iris's Eye, a gift shop on South Dixie Highway. A couple had come in, in high spirits, said Iris, and browsed. She remembered them because they were both "so attractive." The woman was dressed all in white. They bought a pineapple vase. They laughed together as the man paid for it. She recognized the man in the picture in the paper. And then the state's attorney, Raymond Toomer, asked her if the woman was in the courtroom.
Mrs. Wright pointed with her chin. "That's her there."
"Please rise, Mrs. Spooner," Mr. Toomer requested. Mrs. Spooner stood slowly. She was dressed in a gray silk frock with a white collar and cuffs, her bright hair obscured by a black straw hat with a pink ribbon. Mr. Toomer asked her to remove her hat. Mrs. Spooner's fingers fumbled as she did so. When she pulled it off, her blond hair tumbled to her shoulders and glinted in the sunlight that streamed through the courtroom window.
Mrs. Wright positively identified Mrs. Spooner. "That's her" she said, and pointed a finger. "She's a looker. I'd recognize her anywhere."
She'd come back to the hotel with the pineapple vase the day we'd all gone to the movies. Peter had said goodbye and she'd walked off, her scarf trailing behind her. She was going to see if the shops on Worth Avenue were open, she said.
So Peter had followed her in his car. He'd probably leaned out, his elbow on the door and said, There's nothing open on the island. Let me take you shopping.
I'd thought that day was my first date with Peter. It wasn't. It was Mom's.
All that time it had been him and her, not him and me.
The world went white for just an instant. Then pain roared in. With all the lies around me, this was the worst. This was the one I couldn't stomach.
I had to sit down. I had to think. I had to breathe.