Irini unfolded the letter surreptitiously so as to cover both the Drene girl and the Babe. The letter was handwritten in the rounded, looping penmanship of a young girl.
“Dear Maggie Collins,” she read.
I hope you don’t mind me writing again. I felt so close to you after your letter and I have no one else. I’m afraid you will be mad at me when you hear that I ignored your advice and told my best friend how I really feel about her. I was hoping she felt the same way. But now I wish I had listened to you. She pretended to misunderstand and she hasn’t spoken to me since. She has a new best friend and they whisper whenever they see me. It sometimes seems to me that everyone is whispering.
It helped me so much to have you say that you also have such feelings. Now you are my best friend, maybe my only friend. I would like to write again sometimes. You don’t have to answer. I know how busy you are and I know you don’t have time for someone like me.
It was signed “Lonely in Yolo.”
“What does it mean?” Margo asked Irini when they stood together, wavy-haired and rosy-cheeked, on the Tarken front porch. Margo always looked pretty and Irini’s hair would be all right when she’d had the chance to comb it out for herself. Mrs. Tarken favored hair that didn’t move from one appointment to the next. She used repeated applications of hair spray to achieve this effect, letting each dry before the next coat, as if she were shellacking a table. It would take a boar bristle brush and plenty of muscle to loosen things up.
“I don’t know. It could mean anything, couldn’t it? It could mean nothing,” said Irini. “Don’t tell Mr. Henry.”
Margo took the letter back. “It must not be Fanny, after all. It must be Claire.”
I already told you how Claire Kinser’s engagement to the blond soldier from Detroit was mysteriously broken off, but there is more to the story. Claire Kinser had broken it off herself and sobbed out the reason to Fanny over a trio of Manhattans one long night at Bumps. Fanny hadn’t told anyone what she said, not a word, but suddenly, quite recently, all the Sweethearts knew. At least they knew what they knew; the concept was so foreign to the girls in Magrit that perhaps only Fanny fully grasped it. “Under the present circumstances,” Fanny said, when Tracy and Irini asked her about it, “it seems a pretty reasonable thing to be.”
It is highly likely that Claire herself was still working it out. Until her engagement she had spent half her time hoping she didn’t feel the things she felt and the other half hoping everyone else felt them, too.
When she did begin, tentatively, to talk about it, she was profoundly depressed by the response. The girls were indulgent—it would be another sixteen years before The Group was published—but mystified. They suggested that she had just not met the right boy yet. Had any of them? Claire blushed whenever she saw anyone and wished she had never spoken of it.
Irini had been raised to be a tolerant person; it was, in fact, the one thing her father insisted upon. “It wasn’t so long ago that the Doyles were indentured servants in this country,” her father said. “The potatoes turned rotten and the Irish sold themselves into slavery for food. You just give everyone their fair chance, Irini. You just judge people by what they say and what they do. That’s the only sign of class worth having. That’s the only one you’ll ever need.” Even during the war he never let Irini say Jap instead of Japanese, or Jew instead of Jewish, and when Irini used the old rhyme for choosing, her father made her say “Catch a tiger by the toe.”
“Well, I’ll answer the letter,” said Margo. “We just can’t let it go unanswered, the poor little thing. But what if she writes again? She says she’s going to. What if she does and neither you nor I can intercept it?”
“We’ll have to watch for the postmark,” said Irini. “And someone’s going to have to talk to Claire.”
They agreed that they would tackle this delicate task together. They would ask Claire to the Friday-night pictures. Gently they would lead the conversation around to the letters. They would give Claire every opportunity to confess. No harm had been done. Claire would never, never intentionally hurt anyone; everyone knew that. The first letter had been cute, sort of, and the second letter was a secret. But there was the end to it. The whole thing had to stop.
"Come to the pictures with me," Irini suggested to Claire at practice the next day. "With me and Margo," she added just so there’d be no possible confusion. "It’s Andy Hardy. You’ll love it." Movies were shown in Magrit once a week in the school auditorium on the back of the map of the world with Norma Baldish running the projector.
And even though it was Andy Hardy, and the advertising campaign had promised a “scene of tragi-comedy in which Mickey Rooney is locked out of the house wearing nothing but a lady’s wrapper,” a scene unlikely, in fact, to appeal to anyone, Claire said yes, so there they were Friday evening, standing outside the auditorium waiting for Margo, who was late, and instead of Claire confessing to Irini, Claire was, in her gentle way, taking Irini to task over her irritating tolerance. Irini had just assured Claire that everyone liked her anyway.
Claire’s normal flush deepened emphatically. “Anyway. Don’t you see? You like me because you’re so nice. I’m supposed to be grateful.”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Irini. “We like you because we like you.”
“No. You like me anyway. I’m not complaining. I am grateful. You are nice. That’s the part that really steams me. I don’t mean to be critical, Irini. I’m just telling you so you’ll understand what it’s like for me.”
“I do understand,” said Irini, who didn’t understand any of it. She had never heard of such a thing. She had never read about it in a book or seen it in a movie or heard it in a song or had it covered during a game of Pop-ups. “Gee whiz.”
In fact Irini was quite nervous around Claire now. It wasn’t the actual facts, whatever they were, that disturbed her. Irini liked Claire. Claire could be whatever she wanted. It was the sense of the secret life. It was the sense of you-don’t-know-this-person-at-all. Mostly it was the anonymous letters.
They were interrupted by Thomas Holcrow. “Miss Kinser.” He took off his hat. The Tarken haircut had been successfully eradicated. Irini noticed that he had eyelashes as thick and dark as a girl’s. He was dressed in dark pants and a dark twill jacket. “Miss Doyle. How exceptionally lovely you two ladies are tonight. Could I persuade you to join me for an ice cream?”
“We’re going to the picture,” said Claire. Bright red, embarrassed spots the size of quarters flamed in her cheeks. We can assume that Holcrow misinterpreted them.
“Perhaps after?”
“After we have to get home. We have a big game tomorrow. We’re in training.”
Lucky for Irini that she didn’t color as easily as Claire did. Lucky that she had taken the time to put her hair up for the evening. Mrs. Tarken’s curls still curved around her face. A bit of breeze passed over the back of her bare neck. It was a sensation much like excitement. Irini, having missed out on one confession, went after another. “Mr. Holcrow?”
“Tom,” he suggested. “After all we’ve been through.”
She nodded, but couldn’t actually bring herself to say his name. “What are you doing here in Magrit?”
“I fell in love,” he said, leaning toward her, “with the place.” He paused in the sentence just where I paused. It made the back of Irini’s neck prickle and the prickling sensation moved from her neck to her shoulders and her breasts. If this had been a musical, it would have been one of those moments when someone starts to sing.
Irini had a sudden, unasked-for, unexpected, unwelcome desire to kiss him. What would he do, she wondered, if she just fell into his arms?
He wouldn’t have caught her. He was already taking in the spring evening with a sweep of his hand. The trees were leafing with the speed of light, and the sky was streaked like marble cake with high swirls of clouds. Everything was absolutely still. Norma Baldish had been hired by the city to repair the potholes, so the sweet
scent of tar was carried on the breeze. It was Magrit’s loveliest season, and also her loveliest time of day. There in the middle of it was Thomas Holcrow, who couldn’t have looked lovelier or more at home.
But Irini had recovered herself and her tone was sarcastic. “Really.”
He regarded her for a moment, so intently that she had to look away. “All right, Irini. I’ll come clean. I’ve already told everyone else. It’s not a secret. I’m a sort of rocking chair historian. Magrit is pretty civilized now, but it used to be a brawler’s paradise. I’m trying to talk to some of the older residents, collecting stories about the old days. Strictly amateur hour. Ladies.” He turned away, headed out into the spring evening, in the direction of Bumps.
“Did it seem to you he left a bit quickly?” Claire asked.
You can’t be the kind of natural, gifted cook that Claire was without knowing the exact moment when a thing is done.
Thomas Holcrow was just beginning to create some problems in Magrit. No one had expected him to come back, but when he did, everyone thought he would choose some girl, at least for the duration of his visit. Tracy had first dibs, but Fanny usually got the guy when there was a guy to be gotten. She was too old for Holcrow, but only by four or five years. If she wanted him, age wouldn’t be a factor. She would pout at him once, purse those ripe, full, berry lips. “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” she would say or some less inspired Magrit equivalent and he would never look back.
Then there was Arlys, who was the prettiest, with her red-blond hair and her perfect, poreless skin, but she was also shy around men. So was Helen, who was helplessly bound to attract the wrong kind of attention.
There may, in the end, have been too many choices. Holcrow persisted in an absolutely evenhanded flirtation with all of them. Perhaps he hoped in this way to keep everyone happy. If so it was a definite miscalculation. The girls were dressing a little more carefully and quarreling a little more often. Irini thought there was a hint of something special in his voice whenever he spoke to her, but she knew Tracy and Margo and maybe even Claire heard the same thing.
“What do you think of him?” Claire asked after the movie. Arlys and Margo and Irini were walking home. Claire was walking to the Leggetts’. She would have a cup of coffee with Helen and then get a ride back out to Collins House. By now the sun was down, but the moon was up and bright enough to keep the stars quiet. A single bird sang sleepily and monotonously in the distance. A dog barked twice. Somewhere a phone rang.
“A new low for Andy Hardy,” Irini said. “What is it about men dressed up as women? Why is that hilarious?”
“Last month at a high school in Ohio all the boys came dressed in skirts. It was a protest over the girls wearing blue jeans,” Margo said. “I read about it in Good Housekeeping.”
“I don’t believe it for a minute. And I wasn’t talking about the picture,” said Claire. “I was talking about Thomas Holcrow. Do you think he’s up to something?”
“What do you think he’s up to?” Margo asked. Her voice contained more than the usual interest. Claire was not the suspicious sort.
“Nothing bad,” said Claire quickly. “He seems really nice. But I was wondering if he might be a treasure hunter. He came to Collins House a couple of weeks ago. Flirted with Mrs. Ada and got Mr. Henry to talk on and on. History, he says. Well, sure. He’s looking for the Mather Mine or he’s looking for the wreck of the Griffon. What else?”
“He’s too far south for either,” said Arlys.
“He talks a lot to your dad,” said Claire. “And, excuse me, Irini, but you Doyles hardly count as old-timers.”
“And my dad makes things up,” said Irini. “Some night Dad’ll tell him we have the Mather map. ‘Man gave it to me,’ Dad’ll say. ‘Died in my arms with a potato masher in his back and the Mather map in his hand.’ Dad’ll think it’s a joke.”
“Fortune hunters don’t think much is funny,” said Margo.
“He’s too far south,” said Arlys.
The girls struck a patch of moonlight. They stopped inside it a moment, searching for flat skipping stones to flick into Glen Annie Creek. Their shadows were dark and squat. Irini had the arm, of course. She threw three stones and the last one skipped ten times, hopping up the creek against the current, ten distinct, solid hops that you could hear as well as see.
“Still the champion,” Arlys told her. A cloud passed in front of the moon and picked up its luminescence, became a frothy meringue of light.
“You know who might have had a map of the mine? The Nadeau boys,” said Margo.
“They weren’t miners,” Claire objected. “They were lumberjacks.” Her voice was a little stiff, a bit cautious. People from Upper Magrit preferred not to discuss the Nadeaus with outsiders.
“But they worked up north. What if they did have something hidden in the house, something even their mother didn’t know about? It could still be there, couldn’t it?”
“What if they were all murdered?” said Irini. She made her eyes big and her voice ominous. “And not drowned at all.”
“You’re trying to make me sound ridiculous,” said Margo. “But notice how you’re not succeeding. The bodies were never recovered. Why couldn’t they all have been murdered?”
“Is this your grandma’s bead necklace, Anna-banana? Or was it all a dream?”
“Well, why couldn’t they? Do you think no one’s ever been murdered in Magrit?”
The question surprised Irini, because it was not a question she had ever asked herself. She couldn’t bring to mind a single suspicious death, but it seemed naive to say so. Magrit probably did have its share of adulterers and blackmailers and murderers. Certainly in the old days. And it would be sort of embarrassing to live in a place where no crimes of passion occurred. But who would commit them? The Tarkens? The Baldishes? The Fossums? It was too outlandish. Of course she’d been wrong before, back when she’d assured her father they could none of them be having sex.
Just last year a man and a woman had been murdered in Bloomington, Indiana. I already mentioned this, but there is more to the story. Irini had followed the case in the paper. She was a secretary in a dairy company. He sold insurance. They’d been having an affair on their lunch breaks. One noon they met at an abandoned mill. The bodies were discovered twenty-four hours later; he had been beaten to death and she had been strangled with her own stocking. The police found a packet of love letters from him to her in her purse, letters they had unnecessarily and heartlessly described to the newspapers as childish. The couple themselves were not, in the newspaper photos, particularly attractive. They were middle-aged and married, but not to each other. He directed the church choir; she was an alto. Probably everyone who knew them would have said they were too boring to be writing each other childish love letters, too boring to be murdered.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Claire. “From what I hear, it would have been pretty hard to murder even one of the Nadeau boys. I doubt if Paul Bunyan himself could have murdered all five.” They came to the corner of Maple Lane, where the Leggetts lived. Claire said a quick good-night and left them.
Margo waited just long enough to be sure Claire was out of earshot. “So, Irini. Did you get anything?”
“You were there.”
“I mean before the picture. Did you get her to say anything?”
“No.”
“Did you try?”
“Of course I tried. It would have been nice if you hadn’t been late. That would have been a help. We agreed to do it together.”
“That was my fault,” said Arlys. “I didn’t understand the nature of the deadline.” Arlys had never been late to anything in her life. Margo, on the other hand…
“Why didn’t you try after?” asked Irini. “Why did you encourage her to go on and on about the Mather Mine?”
“I thought you’d have it all done.”
They reached First Street. The moon gave the trees dark trunks and silver leaves. The aspen glittered like g
lass. The Fossums lived down the hill. Arlys said good night. Irini waited until she was just out of earshot. “I thought we weren’t telling anyone. I thought it was just going to be you, me, and Claire tonight.”
“Arlys just wanted to see the movie. Arlys won’t talk.”
“Of course she will.”
“I made her promise not to tell.”
“Oh. Well. Then,” said Irini crossly. “I made you promise not to tell,” she reminded Margo. They had reached the corner of Brief Street. Irini went on by herself without saying good night. She waited until Margo was just out of earshot. “I made her promise not to tell,” she said, in one of those mimics that sounds nothing like the person being mimicked and isn’t intended to. Now she was quarreling with Margo as well as Walter. Maybe her father would be home. She could go for a triple-header.
Tweed caught up with her at the edge of the Tarken yard. She was not coming from the Doyle home; obviously she had been out on her own errands. But she was pleased to see Irini, her tail wagging, her open mouth closing onto her tongue in the surprise of it.
“Where have you been?” Irini asked her. “Chasing rabbits? Playing cards?” Tweed obviously had a secret life, too.
As a little girl, on her way to school in the mornings, Irini had often walked the Tarken fence. It was a board fence, only three feet high, so walking the railing was easy, but walking across the tops of the planks presented a real challenge. Irini thought it might lighten her mood to walk it now. Irini thought since she was playing baseball again, she could bring it all back—the decoder rings, the games of capture the flag, the jars of lightning bugs, the summer vacations. Irini thought—well, Irini didn’t think. She scrambled to the top of the fence. She was much higher up than she remembered being; she could see her moon shadow far beneath her. It had a short torso and skinny little breakable arms and legs. Her feet had widened since her last trip across the boards. She took two or three careful steps. Remembering that, much like riding a bicycle, it had been easier fast than slow, she forced herself to pick up the pace. Tweed whined anxiously.