Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (24 page)

She waved a hand across her face. “Nah, before, way before this. I can see it, right under your skin. Not like that friend of yours that shot the other fellow.”

“Gwen's a good cop—”

“But you didn't shoot him. She did. Now you're wondering what to do with him, ain't you?”

I took another swallow of coffee, tapped a finger against the rim of the mug.

“Not married, are you?”

I shook my head slightly, watching her warily.

She nodded, satisfied, but satisfied as to whether she'd gotten it right or satisfied I wasn't married, I couldn't tell. “Boyfriend?”

I thought of Ricky's teasing smile, his hands moving quietly down my belly, between my legs. “Kind of,” I said, surprised to hear my response, surprised to realize that this was exactly how I thought of Ricky. Indefinite. Lovely in the moment, but not permanent. Just a kind of, something in between work and sleep. An antidote, like all my boyfriends had been. I'd just never admitted it to myself before. I fought back the sudden burn of tears.

She smiled at her feet. “Betcha got him confused half the time.”

I gripped my cup tighter. “I think everything is rather confusing right now, don't you?” I spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable, like I did when talking to prisoners, explaining why they should tell me the truth about what had happened. I gave her the look too, the one that
said, Let's cut through all the bullshit. Sometimes this worked; sometimes it didn't.

Doris Whitehead's face ran through a lineup of emotions: blank, amused, grim, and finally something like acceptance floated up. “You like stories?”

“Ma'am?” I thought of my mother reading me
Bambi
and
Peter Pan,
then starting the
Black Stallion
series, a chapter each night, until I became impatient and learned to read on my own. I wished I hadn't been in such a hurry now; I'd have liked more memories of her voice.

Doris Whitehead rubbed her hand hard against her ear. “I'm gonna tell you a story. Help pass the time. And we got lots of time together, you and me. And a course with him.” She smiled her tight-lipped smile, lips stretched across gums, and jerked her head toward the bedroom. “But this isn't for him, it's for you. Want some more coffee?”

She stood up and moved past me to the kitchen, taking my cup with her. I tucked my gun into the back of my jeans and went into the bedroom, checked the ropes around Vince's legs, the gag in his mouth. His eyes were hard and tight. I couldn't resist patting him on the head. His arms jerked hard against the cuffs, and he muttered something through the gag. “Good boy,” I whispered, unsettled at the equal mixture of venom and sadness I felt.

Doris Whitehead handed me my cup, full and hot. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, the skin under her chin almost taut, and started speaking slowly to the ceiling, so soft I had to concentrate to hear.

“Grew up in New Iberia, married just out a high school to a boy I'd known since I was three. Carl was a decent man. Didn't talk much, but then we didn't put much weight on talking back in those days. Surviving, that's what we focused on. We worked hard, both of us. Lived with his parents for the first five years. I worked in a grocery store for a while, him working construction. When we'd enough saved, cutting corners here and there, putting a little bit away each month regular like, we bought the house in Baton Rouge. Didn't look like that then, needed lots of fixing up. More opportunities, we figured, in a big city. We had dreams, see. Noth
ing big, just poor-people dreams. He kept working construction, following the jobs, and I worked in one a them plants across the river. Just like Jeannette.”

She stopped for a minute, took a sip of coffee, her eyes fixed on the far wall. “I started taking some classes during the day at the university, working night shifts, until I got my teacher's certificate, started teaching math at the elementary school over in Brusly.” She smiled faintly. “Always liked math. Wrong answers and right answers. No in between.”

I nodded, thinking about my fondness for facts in the territory of gray that was my job, when the one big fact I was having a hard time accepting, or knowing what to do with, shifted in the bed, and there was a thud, the bedsprings squeaking loudly. I went to the door, then came back and sat down. “He's fine,” I said.

“He's a sumabitch,” she said.

“Yes.”

We were both quiet a minute before she started talking again. “We worked hard all our life, regular like, and never seemed to get ahead. Always bought thirdhand cars, shopped at the thrifty store, cut coupons. This camp, this was our dream. We both loved to fish, loved the river, loved the solitude. Sometimes it was almost enough, you know, having this place? Nothing here when we bought it. Built this whole thing together, Carl and me, with our own two hands. Never had no children, something wrong with one of us, but we never bothered to find out which of us it was. No reason to, I figured. But long hard days, scrimping and saving regular like. Took care of his parents until they died. What I'm trying to say,” she finally looked at me, and goose bumps popped up on my arms, “is for thirty-two years we lived paycheck to paycheck, and I worried how we were gonna end our days. You understand?”

I nodded.

She tucked her head back and looked at the wall again. “Three years ago I happened to open an envelope from the bank.” She went quiet again, and I started calculating the age she'd gotten married, years she'd been married, added the three years ago to come up with a rough total, and looked at her in disbelief. This
woman I'd thought to be in her midsixties was at least a decade younger.

“Don't know why I done that,” Doris Whitehead continued. “Not on that day with that envelope. Must a been fate, or,” she sputtered out a laugh, “the Lord decided I needed to wake up. Some angel watchin' over me, or the devil pullin' me up by my panties. Never been able to figure out which. Carl always handled the money, paid the bills, told me how much we had to live on for the month, handed over my allowance. That's the way he was, said money was the man's business and the home was the woman's, even though I'd worked all my life and the last half of it with numbers. I just gave him my paycheck every month. I was a ninny.” She twisted her mouth up into a pout and blew a lip fart, the noise and gesture so unexpected I jumped a little and lukewarm coffee sloshed onto my leg.

“It was an accounting of our money,” Doris Whitehead said. “There was over a quarter million dollars in our savings account. Three hundred and forty-two thousand dollars.” She whispered the words as if she was seeing that statement all over again. “The man I'd slept with, seen naked and sick, the man I'd fed every night, the man I'd believed in every single day of my life, regular like, believed him that we were on the edge of poverty. He'd been sockin' away money from his jobs, telling me he was making less than he was. The sumabitch.”

“My God,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

She looked at me, her eyes tight. “Yeah, that's what he said. I'm so sorry, Doris. I didn't realize I'd put that much aside, Doris. Please forgive me, Doris.”

“What was he going to do with all that money?”

“I didn't bother to ask. What was the point? I woke up right quick then and there and divorced him, quit my job, and took half of what was in that savings account, along with the house and this camp and told him I never wanted to see his sorry ass again.”

“My God,” I said again, all the pieces falling into place. “No wonder you don't think much of men.”

She came out of her chair so quickly that my hand went to my
gun. “Damn it all, it don't have nothin' to do with men. Don't fall into that trap, missy. None of what I been telling you has a damn thing to do with men, who they are, or who they aren't. It's to do with women. Hear me? With us. You and me and Jeannette and your friend doing all that shooting. All of us. Every woman that breathes on this earth and them that don't anymore as well. It's to do with knowing ourselves, not fooling ourselves, knowing what we're capable of. Who we are in here,” she thumped on her chest, “and up here,” she said, tapping her temple. “Sheesh. You ain't heard a word I said.” And she stomped out into the kitchen, slamming the pot hard against the stove and striking a match. The burner let out a loud whoosh.

After a minute I got up and checked on Vince, who seemed to have dozed off, a faint snore coming from low in his throat, his fingers twitching. I told Doris Whitehead I was going to smoke a cigarette, but she just stared at the pan, waiting for the water to boil.

I walked down to the dock and squatted on my heels, pulled the smoke deep into my lungs. Exhaustion swept in like one of those fierce, sudden Louisiana afternoon thunderstorms, and I tried to remember when I'd slept last, really slept. Sunday night. Seven solid hours with Ricky's arm wrapped over my side, one hand barely cupping my breast before the alarm went off at 5:15
A.M
. and I got up, headed to work, found Jeannette's body.

Fact: What we had done was wrong. Panic of the moment, true; protecting our own, true. But we should have stayed, accepted the consequences: Gwen losing her job, the rest of us suspended probably. If it had been just me, I'd take him back, admit to all of it. But I couldn't make that decision for the others; I couldn't make that decision for Gwen. All I could do was hold firm to what I knew for sure: no more killing. The question was, could I live with letting him go?

The muscles in my thighs started to ache. I laid my gun on the dock and stretched out, pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans, enjoying the taste of air on my skin. My fingers trailed across my belly, pulled up the slight pooch of flesh. I ran two fingers up under my last rib, following that upside-down smile to the middle point, then
walked them up my sternum. I heard my mother's voice again:
The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout.
…I pulled my hand out and let my fingers keep walking up alongside my heart to the dip where my neck began, pressing against my larynx, along the curve of my jaw, my other hand coming up to walk in the opposite direction, both hands moving now, fingers walking, walking, along the side of my ears, down into the hollow of my eyes, following the ridge of bone, pressing hard, the tips of my fingers feeling the spongy-firm orbs resting deep in their sockets, back up and above my eyes, walking across my eyebrows, down along my nose, feeling the contours of my skull, imagining the flesh eaten away, here under all this flesh the steady bone, pulling down hard against the skin, fingers pressing deep in a slow slide, out across my cheeks, smoothing it all away.

 

When I went back in, Vince was still sleeping and Doris Whitehead seemed to have relaxed out of her anger. She sat staring at her coffee cup, told me there was more if I wanted it. When I said I needed to pee and asked if there was an outhouse somewhere round back, she chuckled and pointed to a door off to my left that I'd barely registered.

I opened the door, flipped on the light, and stood there, frozen in midbreath. It was a small room, painted robin egg's blue, a big window of glass blocks taking up one wall without curtains or blinds. On the other wall, the wall facing me, hung a black-and-white photograph of a naked woman, her back to the camera, standing in a field, high grass brushing her calves. Her dark hair was pulled back up off her neck, just a few loose strands caressing her shoulder blades.

I heard Doris Whitehead's footsteps and then her voice just behind me. “Sumpthin else, ain't it. That's Jeannette's.”

I looked back at her quickly. “Her picture?”

“Her picture, she took it. Her room, she painted it. Her body. That's Jeannette.” She smiled at me gently and patted me on the back. “Go on. Use it, and then I'll tell you.”

I closed the door slowly and stayed in there a long time, staring at
the photograph, following the curves of her body, those muscular calves, the vulnerability of her neck, the narrow shoulders. I ached to see all of her, the living, breathing Jeannette: that funny mole swimming between her eyebrows, the angle of her cheeks, the texture of her pores, her collarbone, breasts, the V between her legs, the shape of her knees. But all I could do was imagine, remembering the picture of her on the dresser, her body on the floor. Was her expression shy, giddy, solemn, interior, mischievous? What had she been thinking right at that moment? I reached out a finger, touched the glass lightly, right at the nape of her neck. And for a second, just a second, I felt her there in that room with me, soft breath on my own neck, and I flinched, shut off the light, and left.

Doris Whitehead had a bottle of whiskey sitting by her feet. She offered me some, but I shook my head no, tilting my head toward the bedroom. Not when I'm on duty, I almost said, and winced at the absurdity.

“Tell me,” I said.

Jeannette dreamed of being a photographer, Doris Whitehead told me, but she flunked out of LSU after a year, unable to pass the basic classes. Mostly she was self-taught. She worked at a refinery to pay the bills. When she met Vince—at a bar in Port Allen, Doris Whitehead said with distaste—and fell in love, he promised her she'd be able to try school again. But that never materialized, Vince always having one reason or another why it couldn't work just yet. Still, she persisted, taking rolls of film down to Southern Camera off Government Street where one of the salesmen befriended her and got them professionally developed on the cheap.

“Vince didn't like that,” Doris Whitehead said.

“The salesman?”

“Everything. He was a controlling sumabitch.”

I glanced toward the bedroom, Vince's faint snore just discernable over the wisp of the ceiling fan overhead. I wondered what his dreams were, so twisted up and blocked that he couldn't let Jeannette pursue her own. What tiny terrors chased a man so hard that he'd torture the woman he claimed to love?