He had a way of looking at you, like he could get the full measure of you in one long glance. Peter must have inherited that. Now I faltered as his father took me in, and I felt afraid. I wanted to say something, but what?
I'm sorry.
I loved your son.
I wanted justice for him, too.
I'd answered every question, I'd thrown mud at a good boy's reputation, I'd lied, I'd been called a whore. But it was that one man's wave of contempt that finally made the tears come.
Chapter 34
VERDICT IN COLERIDGE CASE IS
ACCIDENTAL DEATH BY DROWNING
Joseph and Beverly Spooner Exonerated
__________________
Lack of Evidence for Trial, Rules Judge Friend
We were packed and on the road by noon. It was a long way home, and a long way to go without talking. Grandma Glad and I shared the backseat, keeping a careful distance, even when we slept. She sat with her feet planted on either side of her brown valise, and she never moved or complained, even when the sweat dripped off her nose onto her bust. She wouldn't talk to Mom, and Mom wouldn't talk to her, and I didn't know if Joe and Mom were talking to each other.
The miles ticked off under the car wheels. The weather got cooler, and we had to dig for sweaters. We never looked at each other. We looked at Georgia and South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Maryland. Delaware. New Jersey.
When nobody looked at you, it made it so easy to feel like you'd disappeared.
All the way on the drive, I just wanted to get home, but when we got there on Saturday morning, there was something that made me and Mom both stop in the driveway and look up at the house, hesitate about going in. I'd been thinking of my room, and my bed, and the white bedspread, and my own pillow. I hadn't been thinking that I was going back to Grandma Glad's house, a place that had never really been mine.
Mom and I looked at each other, really looked at each other, for the first time since Florida. Then she gave a little tilt to her head and shrugged. She picked up her suitcase and walked up the path. I remembered the night in the car when she'd tilted the rearview mirror and put her lipstick on. How she made herself do it.
Being an adult — was this it? Doing the thing you most in your life didn't want to do, and doing it with a shrug?
I picked up my suitcase and followed her. Grandma Glad was already on the porch, her hand tightly gripping her valise. Joe slipped the key into the lock. We stepped into the dark hall. Every house has a smell, but you can't smell it if it's your own home. I could smell Grandma Glad's house.
Grandma Glad went up the stairs and I followed her. She turned into her room and I stopped, waiting. I peeked through the door. She stood, looking around for a minute, then opened the closet door and put the valise on the top shelf, grunting while she did it. As she closed the closet I scooted down to my room next door.
I hadn't even finished unpacking when Margie arrived. Thanks, no doubt, to Mrs. Clancy's gossip know-how. I knew as soon as she saw our car that she'd pick up the phone.
I could see in a moment what Margie wanted, how greedily she greeted me, how her eyes swept over my hair and my figure.
"Tell me everything," she said dramatically. "It was in the paper here, you know. My mother said it was an ordeal for your stepfather. An ordeal, she said. But then you said it was you all along who loved him. An older man!"
I felt my lips close. There weren't any words I wanted to use to talk to Margie.
She had been my best friend for six years. There were all of the secrets we'd whispered, sweaters we'd borrowed, homework we'd done together at her kitchen table. I'd been practically adopted by her mother, brought into family dinners and stickball games, hoeing their Victory Garden, washing their big old '39 Ford with Margie on sunny Saturday afternoons.
I didn't want to be her friend anymore.
She settled herself on my bed and smoothed out her skirt. "You can tell me," she said. She lifted her face to me, all expectation. She would have the gossip before anyone.
It would certainly increase my standing in the cafeteria. I would no longer hover there with my tray, looking for an empty seat. Girls would slide over to make room for me. For us. Margie would be by my side, the interpreter of what had happened to me. I could see her mouth moving, I could see it all, my story served up on a tray with the grilled cheese.
Now I have a story, Peter.
"I don't want to talk about it," I said.
"But—"
"I have to unpack." I said the words so curtly that she reared back, her cheeks red.
"Well, honestly! You don't have to be so rude!"
I reached over and took a blue skirt out of the suitcase. I smoothed it and put it on the hanger carefully. By the time I hung it up, Margie had gone.
Chapter 35
On Sunday morning, I saw Ruthie Kalman come out of the drugstore as I was heading to the subway. She speeded up when she saw me. I almost had to run to catch up.
"Ruthie!" My breath came out in a cloud of steam. It was cooler today, a fall day as crisp as an apple.
She turned slightly and said hello while she kept walking.
I matched my steps to hers. "Ruthie. Please stop walking." I knew she didn't want to, but she did. "How are you, Evie?" she asked in a flat voice. "Terrible. How are you?" I saw a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. "I can hear you in chorus," I said. "You have a nice voice."
"Yeah? You do, too."
"Maybe one day we could go to the record store together. Do you like Sinatra?"
"He's okay. I don't get all swoony about him, like some girls."
"Well. I'm not the swoony type. Maybe you could tell me who you like. And we could listen to some songs."
"Maybe."
"Good."
Ruthie's gaze moved to the bag in my hand. "Are you running away?"
"No," I said. "Not today."
I knew how hotels worked now. I knew it would be okay to walk into the lobby, go to the front desk, and give a name. A telephone would be lifted, a name would be said into the phone, and the clerk would say, "Go right up." Or not.
Still I hesitated on Forty-eighth Street. Right now Mom would be making lunch. Joe would be home. Grandma Glad would still be at Mass. Joe told her last night that he'd be looking for a house for us, and she'd be staying behind. She wasn't talking to anyone at the moment. Maybe the phone would be ringing, neighbors calling up now that we were home. Everyone knowing what happened but not asking about it, wanting to be the first to hear the real story.
When the doorman started looking at me funny, I pushed open the door to the Metropole. The lobby was busy, people checking in, people checking out. Newspaper stand, bellhops pushing carts, elevators dinging. People dressed up and ready for a Sunday in New York. Other people pushing through the doors and going into the swanky-looking restaurant.
So this was what a real hotel was like.
A bellhop offered to take my bag but I shook my head. I went to the front desk and waited while the desk clerk gave a couple directions to Toffenetti's. Then he turned to me.
"Mrs. Grayson, please," I said.
"Is she expecting you?"
"No. But she knows me. Could you tell her that Evie Spooner is here to see her?"
He picked up the house phone and dialed. I waited, trying not to squirm.
"No answer," he said after a minute.
"Can I wait?" I couldn't have come this far without seeing her.
He looked at me and I saw him soften. "I know where she is. Eddie will take you up to the roof.”