No Story to Tell (41 page)

“Holy shit, Vic! This place is an absolute pigsty. You been sick, or what?”

Defense was the first thing to rush to Victoria’s mind, but as her gaze followed Rose’s over grimy, stuck floors and counters and chairs lost beneath mounds of unfolded laundry, she bit her lip. The extent of what she saw shocked her. She knew things were getting behind, but she had absolutely no recollection of how or when the trailer had become so disgusting.

“Why didn’t you call me? The girls and I could have come out and helped you if you were feeling that bad,” Rose offered, although it was obvious to both of them that it would take more than just general malaise to explain the total deterioration of Victoria’s life. “Here, you sit down. I’ll make tea.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m fine. I can—”

“Sit!” Rose ordered, pointing at a chair like an irate mother, refusing to move until Victoria shuffled some laundry onto the table and complied. “Why didn’t you call?”

“Uh, I was going to but I started feeling better. Actually, I feel a lot better this week. It’s just going to take a while to get caught up again, that’s all,” she lied.

“Well, what about Bobby? Is it beyond him to clean up a little?” Rose went to set the mail on the sticky counter, decided against it and threw it on the couch instead.

“You know Bobby, Rose. There’s men’s work and there’s women’s work and the two don’t cross over. He figures he doesn’t ask me to fix his truck, and I shouldn’t ask him to clean my house.”

“Oh, shit! I forgot. I asked him to come by the house today to fix my toilet. Damn it! And I locked the door, too.”

“Since when did you start locking your door?”

“Since that crazy old bird got it in her head that I stole her mythical treasure. I’ve warned the girls about her, too. Poor kids are scared senseless. Have to make sure I’m back home before they get out of school. It’s absolutely ridiculous that someone doesn’t make them do something with her.”

Victoria nodded absently.

“We could try calling Bobby at JJ’s if you want,” she offered, already dialing the number. “He’s stopping by there first.” She listened as the phone rang, then finally gave up. “No, guess not. They’re probably outside.”

“Shit. I guess I’ll have to get him to stop by this weekend. Cups in here?” Rose asked, her hand already moving toward the cupboard door. Victoria jumped up and rattled the door of the china cabinet open, seizing two of her mother’s dusty teacups and clattering them onto the table.

“These! Let’s use these for a change.”

“China? What’s the occasion?”

“Nothing, really. I just never use these, that’s all. Not much point having nice things if you never use them, right?”

“Whatever. Where’s the sugar?”

“You don’t take sugar.”

Rose gave her a queer look. “I know I don’t Vic, but you do. Where is it, in here?” She turned back to the cupboard, her hand just starting to open it as Victoria almost shouted.

“No! No, I don’t anymore. I don’t take it in my tea anymore. I . . . I just like it plain now.”

Rose shrugged, reached into a canister sitting against the wall, pulled out two tea bags, dropped them into the steaming water and leaned back against the oven door to let them steep, her hand busy picking at something indescribable stuck on the handle. Victoria’s breath caught in her throat as the door made little halfhearted attempts to open, knowing full well there was simply no sane explanation to be offered for an ovenload of grunge-encrusted dishes. Finally, Rose settled herself at the table and Victoria began to breath again as the conversation slipped into other people’s lives.

“So, did you hear the latest?” Rose asked, then continued on without waiting for an answer. “Sounds like Joe and Phyllis are going broke. Don’t know if it’s true, you know how those stories go, but I heard Joe owes half the town money.”

“Really?” Victoria asked without caring, almost without hearing.

“Yep. That’s what I hear. Phyllis even bounced a check at Pearl’s. Pearl was right pissed. She had Bud tape it up in the window facing the street so everyone could see until Joe finally went in and cleared it up and got them to take it down. I got to see it though. And you know what? It was only for sixteen dollars. Can you imagine? Not having sixteen dollars to your name?”

“Hmm.”

“I guess Joe tried to say it was just a mix-up in their accounts, but nobody believes him. Everyone knows they’ve been having trouble for years. I bet Phyllis will leave him. She can’t live without money. Only reason she married him in the first place is because she thought he had lots. I don’t think she ever did catch the difference between credit and cash.” She stopped to sip her tea. “Oh yeah, you know that Sanderson guy? Jack, I think his name is.”

Victoria shook her head.

“Yes, you do.”

“I do?”

“Yes. You remember. He’s related to . . . oh, what’s her name? That skinny woman who works at the Lucky Dollar.”

“Hazel?”

“Yeah, her. He’s related to her, somehow. Brother-in-law or cousin or something. You know—”

She looked at Victoria eagerly, encouraging her to remember, but with no success. Blowing her tea cool she continued on, somewhat irritated at Victoria’s lack of cooperation. “He’s a real tall, skinny guy. Kind of ugly. You know him Vic, I’m sure you do. He used to drive that old beat-up station wagon with no muffler, remember?”

“Oh,” Victoria agreed, just to get Rose off her case. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Yeah, see. I knew you knew him. Anyhow, turns out his wife’s pregnant.”

“Hmm. That’s nice.”

“Not for him it’s not,” Rose trumped. “Millie told me he got snipped last year. Oh. Hey. Got something for you,” she said as she reached across the table and grabbed her large black purse off of the chair opposite her. “The girls made it for you. Just a little thank-you for letting them come out and watch cartoons.”

Unzipping her purse, she struggled for a moment to unearth an oversized paper folded up into several layers. Impatiently working it loose, she gave it a tug, pulling it and a cascade of old one-hundred-dollar bills onto the table. Looking up quickly, she saw that Victoria had not missed them and her face grew hard in defense.

“Rose!” Victoria sputtered, absolute shock crossing her face, “Did you take her money?”

Rose laughed, flipping her hair behind her and twisting it up into a nervous knot.

“Oh, just a little bit. Old bag has more money than she’ll ever need. Just wastes it all feeding those stupid cats of hers, anyhow.”

“But still . . . Rose! I can’t believe—”

The jar of the phone snatched their focus, and Victoria spilled her tea as she jumped up to answer it. Grabbing a washcloth off the floor, Rose kept an eye on Victoria’s face as she mopped up the mess, both ears attentive as she tried to eavesdrop on the conversation. She watched with mounting curiosity as Victoria’s features softened around the receiver then grew pale and hard as if she were turning to ice from the inside out. She nodded stiffly once, then twice as her mouth worked uselessly to form the words her brain was trying to send. Setting the receiver back into place, she stared first at it, then at Rose, then back to the receiver.

“Problem?” Rose pressed, excitement alive in her eyes.

Victoria stood motionless, unsure of whether to nod or shake her head as she wrestled with words that as yet made no sense to her.

“It was Bobby,” she whispered, as if this in itself should hold some meaning for Rose, some meaning for herself.

Rose shook her head, not comprehending the significance. “So?”

“He’s at your house.”

“So?” Rose countered again, but coherency was beginning to shift itself uncomfortably to the forefront of her brain.

“He called from the workshop, Rose. From the extension in Steve’s workshop.” She searched her friend’s face wildly to find a denial of the truth that was marching toward her but was met instead with a self-conscious laugh.

“Rose? Was it you?”

Jaw set and eyes hard she leveled Victoria with her answer.

“Of course it was me, Vic. Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t know.”

“Rose! I had no idea it was you. I thought it was . . . I believed it was—”

“You believed what you wanted to believe, Vic.”

“I believed what you said, Rose. I believed what you told me.”

“Wrong!” Rose shouted, clearly happy to be accused of something she knew she was innocent of, seizing on the opportunity it afforded her to turn the tables on Victoria. “Totally wrong. I offered to tell you several times who your mysterious caller was, but you didn’t want to know. Did you? It was you who chose to keep your little fantasy going. I just played along to keep you happy.”

The room was spinning inside Victoria’s head, and she gripped the edges of a chair to keep herself from reeling off into space. Anger, fear, hurt, sadness, rage each raced in on her, but she couldn’t grasp one. She didn’t know what she felt other than bewildered, and she looked searchingly at Rose, hot tears accompanying her words.

“But why, Rose? Why would you do that to me?”

“Hey! Don’t blame me. You did it to yourself. The first time was just an accident. I tried to call you from the shop and couldn’t get through because of all the static. And then when I called back from the house, you started telling me this big fantasy about some guy calling and saying he thought you were beautiful when what I’d actually said was ‘I think you’d be a fool not to pursue that thing with Elliot.’ It was kind of funny actually.”

“It wasn’t funny, Rose. It was my life. Why didn’t you just tell me right then that it was you rather than let me carry on and make an idiot of myself?”

“Why? You want to know why, Vic?”

“Yes. Yes, Rose, I do want to know why.”

“Because you were so damn pathetic about it, that’s why. Because it was so bloody obvious you needed a little something to hold on to.” Rose shrugged, then drained her tea casually. “And then it all just kind of got carried away. Or I should say . . . you got carried away.”

“Me? I got carried away? You almost ruined my marriage, Rose—”

“I almost ruined your marriage? Better back up the bus on that one, Vic. From what I heard coming across that line, I’d say it was pretty much screwed already.”

“You bitch! You fucking, fucking bitch!” Victoria erupted, boiling toward Rose with her arm raised to strike before reason grabbed her with the realization of the precariousness of her position.

Her mind flooded full of the details of their conversations, and her heart began pumping insanely as she remembered her unrestricted outpouring of confidences so intimate she had hardly dared share them with herself. She’d spilled her most secret of secrets across that line. Her frustrated blurting that Bobby should go ahead and kill himself. Her ill-fated confession of having been pregnant with Bassman’s child. Rose stood up and stretched leisurely.

“So, that whole thing that happened with Steve? Was that you, too?”

Rose shrugged.

“How could you do such a thing? You ruined his life, Rose.”

“Well, he was ruining mine.”

“How?”

“He annoyed me.”

“Why didn’t you just divorce him then?”

“Divorce is an expensive option, Vic.”

Wrapping herself back inside her cloak, she leaned across the table and tapped Victoria’s hand gently.

“So. I guess we both have our little secrets that need keeping. Right?”

Victoria felt as if the whole puzzle of her life had just been scattered hopelessly across the floor. She looked toward Rose and nodded. But she couldn’t make their eyes meet.

She sat silent at the table until long after the roar of Rose’s car faded into still air. Her mind was wild. Frantic collisions of thoughts that finally drove her from her chair and sent her racing through the trailer. Rose held everything in the grip of her hand. And clearly that hand could not be trusted. Every one of her most intricate secrets had eventually found their way through that phone line and into Rose’s gluttonous ear. Suddenly, she understood Pearl’s uncharacteristic tolerance of Rose. The quick flicker of fear that sparked in her eye whenever Rose voiced any displeasure. How could she not have seen it before? How could she not of understood that Rose held the most damning of Pearl’s secrets as well. She felt sick. Like poison was slowly filling her.

She slumped onto the couch, pushing newspapers and mail to the floor. Her hand stopped over a small envelope, embossed in beautiful script like black lace over a white dress. She flipped it over and over, then held it in her hand as she curled her knees up to her chest and rested her head.

The discovery of the caller’s identity, or lack thereof, was no less than a death to her and many degrees more jagged. The thought could find no place within her, no nook or cranny in which to settle. Finally she rejected it. Him, Rose could not take from her; she would not allow it. She could no more deny his existence than if she had looked into the fullest of nights and tried to believe it day. Within her mind, he lived. And beyond that, in her senses. She had heard his voice. Felt his hands. His hair. She had smelled the warm, sensual pleasures of his skin and tasted his kisses. He had moved over her and in her. Became one with her. And she with him. All of this she had felt and, at the drop of her lashes, she still could.