* * *
—
On Saturday, Willa had a call from her sister. She would have missed it if she hadn’t been upstairs near her cell phone at the time. “Elaine?” she said when she answered. “Is everything okay?”
“Where are you?” Elaine asked. She sounded cross. “I’ve been calling you and calling you.”
“You have? You’ve been calling my cell phone?”
“No, your home phone.”
“But I told you, I’m in Baltimore,” Willa said.
“You told me that ages ago. You’re still there?”
“Right.”
“Well, darn. I’m in Phoenix for a conference.”
“You’re in Phoenix, Arizona?”
Elaine didn’t dignify this with an answer.
“I had no idea!” Willa said. “Did you leave me a message?”
“No,” Elaine said, “I just hung up. I was afraid I might have to talk to Derek.”
“To…?” Willa said.
“I mean Peter. Sorry. Peter, Derek: same difference really, right?”
No matter how accustomed Willa was to her sister’s blunt manner, she could still be shocked by her. She sat down on her bed abruptly, pressing her phone to her ear.
“Hello? Are you there?” Elaine asked.
“I’m here.”
“So it sounds like you won’t be home in time. I’m leaving tomorrow evening.”
“Well, I wish I’d had some warning,” Willa said.
“Why? Would you have flown back early?”
“I might have,” Willa said. “It seems like forever since I’ve seen you.”
In fact, when she imagined Elaine nowadays she had to remind herself to add in the grown-up details of her—the threads of gray in her hair and the settled shape of her body.
Elaine said, “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.”
“No,” Willa said. “I’m sorry I’ll miss you.”
But the sister she missed was a six-year-old sitting at a long-ago breakfast table, not the heavy-voiced woman at the other end of the line.
As Willa was putting her phone back in her purse, she noticed she had a text message. She clicked on it, and up came a photo of Ian. He was standing in front of a log cabin with an older man in a park ranger’s uniform and a hefty young woman in hiking clothes. Ian himself wore jeans and a faded windbreaker. He’d grown a beard several years ago that still took Willa aback every time she saw it, a close-cut, pointed beard that accentuated the sharpness of his face; and he had new glasses, the rimless kind that people used to call granny glasses. “Hi mom just down here getting supplies hope you’re ok,” he wrote. Where “here” was he didn’t say. She studied the photo for clues. The log cabin must be a grocery store; a sign above the door read “Bennett’s,” with a Coca-Cola disk at either end like a thumbtack. The woman seemed the right age to be Ian’s girlfriend, but it was hard to know for sure; they were standing next to each other but not touching. Though on second thought she was so unselfconscious, so carelessly slouched and indifferent-looking, that she was probably just an acquaintance.
Willa did manage to figure out how to send back an answer. “Good to hear from you, still in Baltimore,” she wrote. Then she went downstairs and showed the photo to Denise. “This is Ian,” she said. “Sean’s brother.”
“Gosh, they don’t look much alike, do they?” Denise said.
“They never did, really. I can’t tell if that’s his girlfriend. What do you think?”
Denise peered at the photo more closely. “Nah,” she said finally. “I doubt it.”
“He’s had a few over the years but they don’t seem to last,” Willa said. “I’m really beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be a grandma.”
“Well, look at it this way,” Denise said, returning the phone. “If you don’t have grandchildren, you won’t have to worry about them going through the death of the planet.”
This made Willa laugh. “There is that,” she said.
* * *
—
Then, on Sunday afternoon, Denise got a phone call from Patty and Laurie’s mother.
Willa had never met her, so when Denise said, “Oh, hi, Fran,” it meant nothing to her. “You do?” Denise asked next. And then, “Say what?”
Willa and Cheryl, who were baking gingersnaps together, looked over when they heard the edge to her voice. She said, “You’re kidding.”
They couldn’t make out what was said on the other end of the line.
“Who else knows about this?” she asked. And then again, “You’re kidding.” She pressed a palm to the crown of her head like a skullcap. “Well, thank you, Fran. Thanks for telling me. I’ll take it from here. Bye.”
She hung up and turned to Willa and Cheryl. “So,” she said. “Fran Dumont says Erland was the one who shot me.”
Willa and Cheryl froze.
“And you knew this, Cheryl. And you too, Willa. You knew all along.”
Willa said, “Well, not all along…”
“You knew and didn’t tell me.”
Willa felt herself flushing. And Cheryl, she saw, had a fine white line tightening around her mouth.
“I had to hear it from a third party,” Denise said. “Were you two ever going to tell me?”
Neither of them answered.
“Who else knows?” Denise asked Willa.
“I don’t think anyone,” Willa said. “Well, Sir Joe, of course, but—”
“Sir Joe knows?” Cheryl said.
Willa nodded.
“What’d he say?”
“What difference what he said?” Denise demanded. “I’m the one that matters here. Jesus! Seems like everybody was in on this but me. I feel like an idiot.”
“Oh, please don’t think that way,” Willa said. “We weren’t…conspiring or anything, I promise! We just didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“ ‘We,’ ” Denise said bitterly. “You and Cheryl: isn’t that cozy. I should have known you’d come between us; you always put on this lady act, so cheery and polite and genteel and super…super…”
“…ficial?” Willa suggested sadly.
Denise glared at her. “But underneath, meddling,” she said. “Meddling and interfering with your busy little dainty fingers.”
Then she wheeled and plunged out the back door, clunk-step-clunk in her boot cast, letting the screen slam behind her.
Willa and Cheryl looked at each other. Cheryl said, “She was mad.”
“You should go talk to her,” Willa said.
“You come with me.”
“I shouldn’t be there. It has to be just the two of you.”
Cheryl didn’t look happy about it, but she turned finally and trudged out the back door.
* * *
—
Up in her room, Willa crossed to the open window and listened for voices. Not that she would have eavesdropped; she just wanted to know if Denise and Cheryl were speaking to each other. But it was a side window and she couldn’t hear a thing out in the backyard.
She felt so miserable that she took her phone from her purse and sat down on her bed to call Peter, but then she thought better of it. She could guess what he would say. “Didn’t I tell you?” he would ask. “What did you expect, getting caught up in other people’s lives? People you don’t even know, for God’s sake!”
So instead, she started checking for a flight home. Home! Even the word was a comfort. She didn’t want to wait till Rona’s office opened on Monday; she wanted to leave immediately. This very evening, if it could be arranged.
But it couldn’t. Or maybe she was just inept; she had never made a reservation online before. At any rate, the first flight she found left early the next morning—6:45. That was bearable, she supposed. All she had to do was get
through the night. If she went to bed early, she wouldn’t have to interact with Denise for more than a few hours.
After she had entered her credit card information (taking way too long at it, forced to start over twice), she did call Peter, but she dialed their landline in the hope she could just leave a message. To her relief, the call went to voice mail. “Hi, honey,” she said. “It’s me. Just to let you know I’m coming home tomorrow morning, arriving at eleven twenty in case you still want to pick me up.” Then she gave him the flight number and caroled, “Bye now!” She was almost sure she sounded perfectly normal.
Although the instant she ended the call, she allowed her face to go slack and she slumped on the edge of her bed.
From beginning to end, she thought, she’d done everything wrong. She should have told Erland right away that he had to confess to Denise, but instead she had focused on Sir Joe—on what his reaction might be and on how to protect Erland from it. And also, face it: she had been so pathetically pleased to find herself in the role of confidante. Denise had been the last person in her mind. No wonder she was angry!
Nothing terrified Willa more than an angry woman.
Well. Anyhow. She rose and went to the closet to haul her suitcase out.
When she had packed everything that she wouldn’t need that night and draped her travel dress neatly across the other bed, she smoothed her hair and refreshed her lipstick and gathered herself together to go back downstairs. Denise was on the couch in the living room. She was reading the newspaper; all that Willa could see of her was the opened-out Baltimore Sun. Willa continued through the foyer to the kitchen, where she found Cheryl at the table doing nothing at all. She had her hands clasped in front of her; at the center of the table sat a plate of freshly baked gingersnaps.
“Oh, didn’t they turn out nicely!” Willa said.
Cheryl said, “They’re okay.”
“They look delicious.”
Cheryl was silent.
“What do you think we should fix for supper?” Willa asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“Deviled eggs? Tuna salad?” They’d had their big meal at noon, since it was a Sunday.
Cheryl shrugged.
“BLTs?”
“I hate BLTs.”
“Goodness! You’re the only person I ever heard say that.”
“They scratch the roof of my mouth,” Cheryl said. Then she said, “Grilled cheese sandwiches might be good.”
“Well, I hate grilled cheese sandwiches,” Willa told her.
“We could heat up a pizza, maybe.”
“Good idea,” Willa said. “Do we have one?”
She was almost hoping they didn’t. A trip to the supermarket would fill some of that gaping stretch of time. But no, she found a pepperoni pizza in the freezer. “And we could fix a salad to go with it,” Cheryl said. She was beginning to look happier; she slid off her chair and went to the fridge to see what was in the crisper. “Can I make up my own dressing?”
Willa said, “Absolutely.”
She might as well have been in a play—some amateurish, wooden high-school play whose only virtue was that the actors did remember their lines, more or less.
* * *
—
Not until they were eating supper did Willa announce she was leaving. They were sitting in their usual places around the kitchen table but keeping very quiet—Denise perched on her chair with perfect posture, her manners impeccable for once; Cheryl looking alertly from one of them to the other but saying nothing. “So,” Willa said finally. She set aside a crescent of pizza crust and wiped her fingertips on her napkin. “Tomorrow, I’ve got an early flight back to Tucson. I thought I should mention it now because I’m leaving before you two will be awake.”
Denise stopped chewing.
Cheryl said, “You’re leaving?”
“I’ve got a 6:45 reservation,” Willa said. “I’m going to tiptoe out of the house like a mouse.”
Denise said, “You don’t have to go.”
“Oh, I know that!” Willa said brightly. “But Peter’s going to think I’ve deserted him if I stay away any longer.”
“Well, there’s no need to overreact,” Denise said.
“No, of course not, but…is it all right with you if I print out my boarding pass on your printer?”
After a pause so long that it almost seemed she wasn’t going to answer, Denise said, “Sure.”
“Thank you,” Willa said.
They finished supper in silence, and then Denise picked up her own dishes and set them in the sink. For a moment she stood watching as Willa and Cheryl cleared the rest of the table, but eventually she left. A kind of bleakness hung over the kitchen once she was gone.
Willa filled the sink with hot water and squirted detergent in. Cheryl fetched a fresh dish towel from the drawer. She said, “Willa, can’t you stay a little bit longer?”
“I wish I could,” Willa told her, sponging off a handful of forks.
“I was even thinking you would maybe build a guest cottage in our backyard,” Cheryl said.
This made Willa smile. She said, “But what about Peter?”
“Peter could live there too, and you could be a resource at my school. Mrs. Anderson is dying for resources!”
Willa turned to hand her the rinsed forks and found Cheryl staring up at her expectantly. She reminded Willa of those little girls on Victorian valentines—her cheeks touched delicately with pink, her upper lip a curly Cupid’s bow, her eyes a lustrous gray and fringed with long, thick lashes. She really was the most beautiful child, Willa thought.
She had read somewhere that human infants were born with the belief that they were entitled to two parents—that this explained why children reacted so catastrophically to divorce. Since coming to Baltimore, Willa had begun to wonder if they also felt entitled to grandparents. And certainly the reverse was true, because it seemed unthinkable that she didn’t have any grandchildren.
Even if they would have to deal with the death of the planet.
* * *
—
After she’d printed her boarding pass Cheryl suggested a game of I Doubt It, but Willa said, “How about Crazy Eights?” because I Doubt It worked best with more than two people and Denise had pointedly reclaimed her computer by now. The whole time Willa and Cheryl played (speaking in loud, obvious voices, slapping their cards down dramatically), they were haunted by the silhouette of Denise in the dining room, her profile set like stone toward the screen in front of her.
At eight thirty—not even Cheryl’s bedtime, let alone Willa’s—Willa announced that she’d better say good night because she was getting up early in the morning. “Should I take Airplane out first?” she asked. She was thinking that Denise would volunteer to do it later, since she was perfectly capable of standing on the porch while Airplane peed, but Denise said, “If you like,” and went on gazing at her screen.
“Does he even need to go yet?” Cheryl asked.
Willa sent a glance toward Airplane, who stood up and wagged his tail. “Well, I guess you do,” she told him. “Let’s be off, then.”
Outside a night breeze was stirring, and tattered clouds were whisking across the face of the moon. Willa trailed Airplane down the front walk to the street, where he peed against a lamppost and sauntered on, tracking some scent that had caught his attention.
The sound of her heels on the concrete reminded Willa of how she used to wish for sidewalks when she was a child. She had dreamed of living in a real city where she could fall asleep every night listening to the gritting of strangers’ shoes beneath her window. And now look: here she was, heading down a city sidewalk perfectly at home.
Cheery and polite and genteel and superficial.
If Willa were to invent a clock dance, it wouldn’t look like the one the three little
girls had shown her. No, hers would feature a woman racing across the stage from left to right, all the while madly whirling so that the audience saw only a spinning blur of color before she vanished into the wings, pouf! Just like that. Gone.
Airplane raised his head and made a snuffling noise; he was eyeing a cat picking its way along the hedge in front of Mrs. Minton’s house. “Robert?” Willa said. The cat paused and glanced her way. Willa started walking toward him, meanwhile giving the impression that her attention was elsewhere. She avoided Mrs. Minton’s crumbling front walk so as not to make a crunching sound; she approached the cat stealthily and then darted forward to snatch him up. He allowed it, to her surprise. He neither resisted nor snuggled against her but perched like a figurehead within the crook of her arm, waiting to see where she took him. “Let’s get you home,” Willa told him.
She walked on past Mrs. Minton’s house and turned in at Ben’s, with Airplane ambling after her. Now Robert made a move to escape, but she tightened her grasp and climbed the porch steps and rang the doorbell. The light clicked on overhead and Ben appeared behind the screen. “Robert,” he said in a disgusted tone. “Thanks,” he told Willa. “I didn’t even know he was out.”
He opened the door to take the cat, and Willa brushed gray hairs off her blouse. “He was under Mrs. Minton’s front hedge,” she said.
“Won’t you come in?”
“No, thanks, I’ve got to get back. You know, when I was a little girl cats went outside all the time. Some of them even lived outside; the barn cats.”
“Same when I was a kid,” Ben said. “But now we know that every year, cats in this country kill something like three billion songbirds.”
“Really! Well, I see your point, then,” Willa said.
“I shouldn’t even own one, but I can’t have a dog because he’d set up a ruckus every time a patient arrived. Not to mention that I happen to be a sucker for cats.”