His last few words were drowned in a general hubbub of disbelief and concern. Wendy glanced at Isabelle and saw the pained look on the artist’s face. They were all upset, but Isabelle, who’d lost most of her paintings in a fire years ago, was the one who knew better than any of them just how devastating this would be for Jilly.
“This is connected, isn’t it?” Sophie said. “To the hit-and-run.”
Lou turned to her. “What makes you say that?”
“I can see it in your face.”
“You think someone ran her down deliberately?” Meran asked. Her voice echoed the shock they were all feeling.
No, Wendy thought. That couldn’t be true. It was just too awful to contemplate.
“Until we find the driver,” Lou said, “it’s impossible to say.” Then he sighed. “But it doesn’t feel right to me. First the car, now this business with her studio. The incidents are just too close to each other to feel like a coincidence.”
“But you’re talking about someone actually trying to kill her,” Saskia said.
Angel shook her head. “No, they want to erase her. Her and her work … To make it be like she never existed.”
“I don’t believe it,” the professor said.
He took off his glasses and gave them a brief cleaning they didn’t need before putting them back on, his gaze fixed on Lou’s grave features.
“No, it can’t be true,” Cassie said. “How could it be true?”
Lou just gave them all a tired look.
“Does she have enemies that any of you know about?” he asked.
There was a long moment of silence.
“This is Jilly you’re talking about,” Sophie said.
“I doubt she’s ever hurt anyone in her life,” Meran added.
“Certainly not deliberately,” Lou agreed.
On the other couch, Christy nodded. “Which would mean you’re looking for someone with an intense dislike for the relentlessly cheerful.”
That woke faint smiles throughout the room, but they didn’t last long as Jilly’s friends considered the idea of someone hating her so much that they would want to cause her this much pain. Enough so that they would destroy her life’s work and deliberately run her down with a car.
“Just think about it,” Lou said. “Keep your eyes and ears open. And if you think of anything that could help us, if you hear or see anything, call me. I don’t care what time of the day or night it might be.”
7
Once upon a time …
I open my eyes and I can’t move. It’s not just because of the casts on my left arm and right leg. There’s no feeling under the leg cast. There’s no feeling in my right arm either. That whole side of my body is paralyzed and numb. It’s so weird. I can feel the fabric of my hospital gown and the bedclothes against my skin—but only on the left side. On the right, there’s nothing. I can move my head, stiffly, with an effort, my left leg, the arm in the cast, though that sends a shiver of pain through me.
I remember how it was before, when Sophie was looking down at me. I couldn’t move then either. Now I know why. I remember the car and the impact.
There’s no one in the room with me, but I can hear voices from nearby.
I look down at my useless right arm, my hand, my drawing hand, willing it to move. I can’t even feel it.
There are lots of fairy tales. I remember the professor telling me once how people need to be storied to get over their fears. We were talking about the elements of fairy tales and their relevance to the World As It Is, the here and now in which we all live. It was just the three of us—Christy, the professor, and me—sitting in that old-fashioned drawing room of the professor’s that he uses as a study.
People who’ve never read fairy tales, the professor said, have a harder time coping in life than the people who have. They don’t have access to all the lessons that can be learned from the journeys through the dark woods and the kindness of strangers treated decently, the knowledge that can be gained from the company and example of Donkeyskins and cats wearing boots and steadfast tin soldiers. I’m not talking about in-your-face lessons, but more subtle ones. The kind that seep up from your subconscious and give you moral and humane structures for your life. That teach you how to prevail, and trust. And maybe even love.
The people who missed out on them have to be re-storied in their adult lives.
Maybe that’s what’s happening to me. Faithfully though I read them when I was a kid, and have kept reading them all my life, maybe I need to be re-storied again anyway. Because there’s something missing in my life, too. I don’t need Joe or anyone else to tell me that. I’ve always known it.
I’m an onion girl, like in that song Holly Cole sings. And what I’m most afraid of is that if you peel back enough layers, there won’t be anything left of me at all. Everyone’ll know who I really am. The Broken Girl. The Hollow Girl.
Maybe the stories can fill me up.
So.
Once upon a time …
I try to move my right hand again. It’s like it doesn’t exist.
I can’t imagine a life in which I can’t paint and draw.
Once upon a time …
I’m in the fairy tale where the girl gets hits by a car and then lies in the ICU ward of the hospital, waiting to die. Or at the very least, life as she knew it is over and everything is forever changed.
I’m not sure I want to know how the story ends.
Once upon a time …
Raylene
TYSON, SUMMER 1969
Pinky Miller’s about my best friend, so I guess that’s why I put up with her the way I do. I mean, she’s as like’ to get me into trouble as out of it and there’s no way around it. She’s pretty much a strollop, and not the sharpest tool in the shed neither, but she’s got a lot of heart. Always stood by me, leastways.
Like the time we ended up at this tailgate party on the Sutherlands’ back forty. We were still in high school at the time, fifteen going on twenty, the pair of us. I was always small, but big in all the right places, if you know what I mean, and Pinky, well, you look up “statuesque” in the dictionary and you’d find her picture.
We was popular with all the boys, but I never put out like she did. Back in those days my big brother Del’d have tore a strip off me if he ever heard I was letting anybody get past second base. He was always telling me I had to save myself for that special guy and we both knew who he was. The boys I dated didn’t mind. I gave a righteous hand job and there was always Pinky, happy to oblige whoever I was with if her own fella got himself a little wore out, and they got wore out more often ’n not.
Pinky’s been like that pretty much since we hit puberty. There were three things a girl had to live for, she’d tell me, men, money, and partying, and not necessarily in that order. “Think about it, Raylene,” she told me once, at a time when we might’ve been going to college if we’d had the grades, the interest, or the money. “You can’t have a party without men and the foldin’ green to buy the party favors, am I right? Now given my druthers, I’ll take a backwoods boy any day of the week, hung like a horse and ready to rock ’n’ roll. But for the finer things in life—and I’m talkin’ perfume and jewels and pretty party dresses here—give me some old fuck with a fat wallet. It’s just economics, you understand?”
But in those days we was dating high school seniors and the dropouts that hung out at the pool hall. Rich was something you saw on TV, not something anybody who lived in our section of Tyson could ever claim to be, so we had to make do. We was white trash, plain and simple. I don’t mean we thought we was white trash, but that’s what we was all the same.
See, we lived not only on the wrong side of the tracks, but past the Ramble, past Stokesville—which the ignorant still call Niggertown—all the way out on the butt end of Tyson in what the townies called Hillbilly Holler. Had us run-down clapboard houses that the wind was as like’ to blow over if we didn’t burn ’em down our own selves, with hand pumps in the ki
tchen and outhouses ’round back. We had phones, and power when it wasn’t being shut off, but the sewers and water mains stopped our side of Stokesville.
What makes a body live there? you’re wondering. What makes you think any of us had a choice?
Anywise, that night I was with Lenny Wilson, a handsome enough boy except for that spray of zits on his forehead. He wore his dirty blonde hair slicked back like he was right proud of those zits, but he dressed sharp and he was funny. Always made me laugh, leastways. He was a high school dropout like pretty near everybody in our crowd already was, or soon would be, and I guess he was going on twenty, but he was okay for an older guy. He settled for the hand job like it was all he needed and never pushed too hard for more.
There was maybe eight or nine of us in the field that night. We had the three pickups backed up to each other, nice and cosy like, a little fire burning in the middle where they met, shooting up sparks—hillbilly fireworks, Lenny called them. There was plenty of beer, a little pot, and good tunes coming in on the radio. It was still early so most of us was just dancing, or necking, or lying there in the bed of one of the pickups, looking up at the stars.
The music was pretty loud, and I guess that’s why we didn’t hear a fourth vehicle come bouncing across the field until it was pretty much blowing gas fumes up our asses. By then it was too late to do anything ’cept shiver and quake.
There was three of them sitting side by each in the cab. Russell Henderson, Bobby Marshall, and Eugene Webb. All of a kind, dark slick hair, weasel-thin, and about as mean as you can imagine, and if you’re like me, you can probably imagine pretty good. None of the boys we was with had a hope in hell of standing up to these hardcases. I’d bet even Del’d have backed off ’less he could take ’em on one at a time.
“We’re lookin’ for a party girl,” Russell said with a grin. He studied us, one by one, that cocky gaze of his finally settling on me. “Now you see, Eugene? I told you we was gonna find us some fresh meat tonight.”
Pinky and me, we was sitting on the tailgate when they drove up. ’Bout now I was shaking so hard I thought I’d pee my panties, but Pinky just lounged against the side of the truck bed, hands in the pockets of her jacket.
“You sure this is the way you want it to play?” she asked Russell.
“Now don’t you be frettin’,” he told her. “You and me, I ain’t forgettin’ the fun we had in the past. I mean, you don’t meet that many girls who’ll take it up both ends and still ask for more.”
Pinky gave him a smile.
“Your call,” she told him.
He reached for me and the next thing I know she was swinging her feet to the ground. Her hands came out of her pocket and there was a switchblade in one of them, the blade popping out and locking in place like a piece of dark magic. What happened then happened so fast it took everybody by surprise, especially Russell. She stuck that knife in him, hard, deep in his gut, then gave him a little push. By the time he dropped to his knees and the other two were moving in, she had the knife free and was moving it back and forth in the air between them, spraying drops of blood.
This was a side of Pinky I’d never saw before that night. I mean, she always talked tough. I just never realized how hard she could back the words up. But I guess those boys knew. The one that got himself gut-stuck, all the fight was taken out of him, that was for sure. Bobby and Eugene grabbed hold of him and held him up between them.
“This ain’t over,” Eugene told Pinky before they dragged Russell away.
“Hell, no,” she told them. “Whatever gave you that notion? I’m of a mind to go by where you sorry fucks live and burn them shacks down. Listen to your mamas squeal while they’re fryin’. That about what you had in mind when you’re sayin’ this ain’t over?”
Eugene dropped Russell’s arm and started for her, stopping when that weaving dance with the switchblade stopped and the blade pointed at him, still wet with Russell’s blood.
“A smart man’d know when to quit,” she said, “but you’re just a big dumb fuck, ain’t that right? Let me tell you what’s going to happen here, Eugene. I’m goin’ to be wearing your balls for earrings if you don’t turn around and haul your sorry ass out of here.”
I didn’t know which was troubling Eugene more, that it was a girl facing him down, or that the rest of us was there to see it happen. But I knew this, he was scared of Pinky and scared of that knife. More scared of dying than he was of losing face.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you all.”
He reached down and grabbed Russell’s arm again and helped Bobby carry him back to their pickup. Pinky eased her way ’round to the cab of the truck we’d been in the back of and pulled down the hunting rifle that was up on the rack behind the seat. By the time Eugene and Bobby had reached their own truck, she was standing there with the rifle in her hand now, just a-waiting.
That was Pinky for you. Like I said, she’s not real smart in a whole bunch of ways, but she’s cunning. She knew them boys might have them a coon gun up on the rack of their own truck and she just outthought ’em, same as she outbraved them. Eugene and Bobby got Russell into the cab, climbed in their ownselves, and they peeled outta there, tires spitting up sod and dirt. I wouldn’t have liked to have been Russell on that ride, holding in his guts as the truck went jolting back across the field.
“You can’t never back down,” Pinky told me as she laid the rifle on the tailgate. “You back down and they’re gonna walk all over you. Not just today, but every goddamn day. You trust me on that one, Raylene.”
I didn’t say anything, but I nodded. I already knew that. I’d been backing down seems like my whole life and it never got better. Never helped much and only got worse. It’s like every time you get pushed a little further, the one standing over you’s just gotta find something meaner to do, like he’s daring you to stand up for yourself, but he knows you never will.
Pinky reached down and picked up her switchblade from where she’d dropped it on the ground. She gave the blade a wipe, then closed it up again.
“Where’d you learn to be so brave?” I asked.
Pinky laughed. “Hell, Raylene. I got me four brothers—only one more’n you. When we ain’t fightin’ with each other, they’re showin’ me how to fight anybody wants to hurt me. Don’t Del or those other brothers of yours teach you nothin’?”
He teaches me more’n enough, I thought.
“Nothing I want to learn,” I said. “Not from Del. Tell you the truth, Robbie and Jimmy and me—we’s all scared of him.”
Pinky shook her head. “That ain’t right.”
She hefted her switchblade in her hand, then offered it to me.
“Here,” she said. “It’s about time you learned a thing or two ’bout takin’ care of yourself.”
Them boys showing up like they did pretty much shut the party down for the night. Pinky, she was still a-raring to go, but all the fun had leaked out of it for the rest of us. Pinky and me, we got us a ride home, had Lenny let us off a half mile down the road because Pinky said she and me, we had some talking to do. We watched Lenny’s taillights disappear down the road, then Pinky started to explain the finer workings of my new red-handled switchblade.
“You gotta practice gettin’ it open fast,” she said. “Sometimes that’s all you need, just to have it out and be ready to use it afore anybody knows what’s what. Most times, that’s all you’re gonna need to do.”
I nodded. I don’t know as I’d ever be able to cut anybody like she just done, but that knife sure felt good in my hand.
“Now, when you do need to use it,” she went on, “you hold the blade edge up, and cut up with it. Natural inclination’s to cut down, but all you’re gonna do is hit you some ribs. Cuttin’ up, you go clean through all the soft stomach tissue. And you keep this sweetheart sharp, you hear me? I’ll get you a whetstone and show you how. You don’t want to be dependin’ on nobody but yourself.”
It went on like that for a while, Pinky talking
, more serious than I ever heard her before, me nodding and listening, holding it all in.
“You know how to shoot?” she asked me after we got done talking about knives.
I shook my head.
“That’s somethin’ else I’m gonna have to teach you. Time might come when you gotta walk out into the dark, and if you’re walkin’ on your own, a gun makes for mighty fine company. See, most of the hard-cases you’re gonna meet, they ain’t used to no pretty girl that can stand up and be just as hard as they are. Harder even. But they see you know how to use what you’re holdin’, and you ain’t afraid to use it, ain’t nobody gonna hurt you.” She grinned. “’Less you like it a little rough.”
“You been with those boys before,” I found myself saying. “Russell and Eugene and all.”
“Oh, yeah.” I couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, but her voice was as hard as I imagined they’d be. “We had us some history. But they just ain’t much good at learning the difference between fun and pain.”
Well, that night when Del come into my bedroom, like he’s been doing three or four times a week ever since my older sister run off and he needed himself a new special girl, I was waiting with that present of Pinky’s in my hand. I knew I couldn’t outright kill him—that’d probably be a sin, killing your own brother, don’t matter what he was doing to you—but I meant to hurt him bad.
I’d had me some of Pa’s liquor when I got home, to fortify me like. Back then I didn’t have much courage I could call up on my own. But I was primed that night. The old man and Ma was out someplace, don’t ask me where. But I knew that’d mean Del’d be sniffing around my bed as soon as he got his own self home. Jimmy and Robbie were sleeping down the hall, but they wouldn’t say nothing. I could holler like a cat on fire and they’d still stay in that room of theirs, too scared of Del to even think of helping me. Or maybe they’d be jacking off to the sound of my crying. I don’t know. It’s not like we ever talked about it or nothing.