Burn (14 page)

It was starting to feel familiar. The stories. Standing on stoops of unfamiliar buildings, not sure who would answer the door. She'd done this twice now. It shouldn't make her as nervous as it still did.

Zinny Croft lived in a blue, two-story house in an older neighborhood with giant trees and crumbling sidewalks. Lona heard someone running a vacuum cleaner inside, layered over the fainter noise of someone talking on public radio. Both noises stopped when Lona rang the doorbell; a few minutes later, a woman with cropped white hair opened the door.

“Can I help you?” Shiny red globes hung from her ears and bobbled when she talked.

No stories this time, Lona had decided. No invented extra credit or ancestral research projects. She just needed Zinny to tell her anything she could about Edward Lowell.

“My name is Lona. I'm looking for Zinedine Croft. Or Zineria? I was hoping to talk with her about the Julian Path.”

The woman's smile contracted. Just a little. A twitch, a spasm. The door swayed slightly as she leaned on it for balance. The wreath hanging on it smelled like pine needles, and from the inside of the house there was a different kind of pine smell. An air freshener, or an artificial cleaner, maybe. Something that smelled sweeter than the real thing.

“I wondered if someone might come one day,” Zinedine said. “Yes. You can talk to me. Would you like to come inside?”

The vacuum cleaner sat in the center of a half-finished carpet. One side had neat vertical stripes marching up and down the beige; the other side was covered in footprints. Zinedine gestured to a sofa seat in the middle of the vacuumed zone. Lona tried to tiptoe along the perimeter, not mess up the pattern. Bowls of mixed nuts and foil-wrapped chocolates sat on the coffee table.

“You're getting ready for a party,” Lona said. “I'm sorry. I can come back?”

“It's just for my husband's students. He always holds the first class of the semester at our house. An Epiphany reception – we invite them over to eat up our leftover Christmas candy – but they won't start arriving for another hour.” Lona felt a twinge at the mention of college students.
Fenn's not coming to this party
, she reminded herself.
Fenn goes to school two hours away
.

Zinedine perched just on the edge of the chair, hands folded in her lap.
She knows something. She knows why I'm here.
The thought made Lona's throat too dry to speak. “May I have something to drink?”

“Of course,” Zinedine said, but she didn't move.

“I could get something myself – if you just told me where the kitchen is.”

Zinedine leapt from the chair. “No – I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was doing – what would you like to drink?” She backed around a dividing wall into what Lona presumed was the kitchen. “We have almost everything, for the party. Soda? Juice? I was going to make some punch, but Jeremy's not back from the grocery store yet.”

“Just water.”

She heard cupboards banging in the kitchen, several, as if Zinedine had forgotten where she kept the glasses. She finally returned with water in a cut-glass tumbler, but then almost as quickly hurried out of the room again. “Ice,” she muttered. “Of course you'll want ice.”

The ice she brought back to the living room stuck to the paper towel she'd wrapped it in for transport. Zinedine shook the napkin over Lona's glass, vigorously, dashing one of the cubes against the coffee table where it broke, splintering into the mixed nuts. Zinedine yelped. “Oh, dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

With shaky hands, Zinedine plucked the ice slivers out of the nut bowl, wrapping them back in the paper towel. “It's so silly,” Zinedine said. “It's just a little ice. Like I said, I always wondered if someone would come – I suppose you think you're prepared, but then the time comes and you're throwing ice around the living room. Do you – would you mind if I had a drink?”

Lona shook her head. Zinedine opened the wooden china closet behind the sofa, taking out a dusty bottle and pouring amber liquid into a small glass. “I really don't even know if this is any good. Someone left it at our house after a party. I don't usually—” She tipped her head back and emptied the glass, coughed, and returned to her chair across from Lona.

“I really can come back another time,” Lona said. “Maybe – you said your husband would be home soon?” This woman didn't make Lona nervous in the same way Ned Hildreth had, but there was still something off.

“No, of course not. I'm fine. I was being ridiculous. Now tell me about your business with my daughter.”

“Your – I'm sorry. What?”

“Zinedine Croft. My daughter.” The woman raised her eyebrows. “You're here because you have information about – oh, I see. You don't have information. You're here because – why are you here?”

“I'm here because I'm looking for – I'm sorry, I guess I'm confused. But you told me that
you
were Zinny.”

The woman shook her head. “No, I'm sure I wouldn't have. I said that you could talk to me about Zinny.”

“Mrs. Croft. I don't want to be rude. But I'm here because I'm looking for something I think your daughter knows. Something she might remember from a long time ago. It would be easier to explain it directly to her, if you have her address.”

“Her address?”

“Or a phone number?”

“Lona? You said your name was Lona?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Magdalena. Maggie. You can call me that. You don't need to call me Mrs. Croft.”

“It's nice to meet you.” Lona awkwardly extended her hand. This was all going backwards.

“Lona. I would love to give you Zinny's address, but I don't have it myself. Zinny has been missing for more than fifteen years.”

“Has been  …  missing for … ” The words came out slowly, as Lona tried to process them. Missing. Edward Lowell's lab partner was missing. The one person left who could help her understand what was happening was missing.

From the rear of the house, Lona heard a loud grinding sound. It must be the garage door. Footsteps came in through the back, stamping as someone shook the snow off their boots.

“Woman, I have procured with my own hands four jugs of the finest cider, on sale two-for-one at the Safeway when I use my manly coupon book—”

The man who entered the room wore a plaid shirt under his parka, and a hat over hair the color and texture of a clump of steel wool. He broke off when he entered the room and saw Lona.

“The first guest!” he said heartily. “But unless I'm even more senile than I think I am, you're not one of my students.”

“Jeremy, she's here about Zinedine,” Maggie said.

His smile disappeared. He let the plastic grocery bags drop to his sides. “Why did you let her in?”

“Don't be rude.”

“Haven't we been through enough?”

“Jeremy—”

“I need a drink.”

He brushed past his wife to pick up the same glass bottle Maggie had poured a glass from a few minutes before.

“Jeremy,” she said again.

“I think I'll have it outside.” He'd left his boots by the back door, but he walked out the front in stocking feet, carrying the bottle with him. The door was still cracked; Lona shivered at the cold wind that blew inside. Maggie peered anxiously after her husband, then gently closed the door, wrapping her cardigan more closely around her body.

“I'm sorry about that,” Maggie said awkwardly. “Men are always so much more emotional. Women have to be strong. Not that I don't miss Zinny every day. But I think it's harder for him.”

“Mrs. Croft. Maggie. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.”

“It's not your fault,” the woman sighed. “I should have known better than to get my hopes up. I don't suppose there's anything I could help you with?”

“I don't think so. Not unless your daughter talked about her coworkers often? Or, I guess, just her work in general.”

Maggie shook her head. “Not that we would have understood it. Jeremy is a literature professor and I'm a retired piano teacher.” She brightened. “We kept her room like it was. Do you want to see?”

Lona hesitated. Did she want to see? She'd already patiently looked through Ned Lowell's useless old science trophies, and she couldn't imagine Zinedine Croft's bedroom would be much different. She felt deflated. Here she was at the end of the road, and it was another dead end.

“It will only take a minute.” Maggie looked so hopeful at the thought of sharing her daughter's childhood with someone else that Lona acquiesced – she could force herself to do this if it would please Maggie.

In the hallway there were pictures of Jeremy and Maggie at Halloween parties, or with their arms circled around each other's waists at the Eiffel tower. There were also empty ovals where Lona could tell pictures used to hang. She bet they would have been of Zinny.

Maggie opened the door at the top of the stairs. The room inside was painted a pale yellow. A rocking chair sat in the corner, the back covered with a star-patterned patchwork quilt, and along the sides were a birch dresser and a baby's crib. Lona was confused. Maggie said that they'd kept their daughter's room like it was when she left, but this was a room for an infant.

“I suggested to Zinny that we do pale green in here,” Maggie said. “Jeremy was the one who wanted yellow. Of course, he always won with her, from the very beginning.” She smiled. “Even before the beginning. Even with her name.”

“Her  …  name?” Lona asked politely.

“There's a photo of her that I really like – I was just looking at it the other day. Now where did I … ” Maggie opened the bottom drawer of the bureau, which Lona could see was filled with photographs. Everything that had been on the walls.

“Her name?” Lona asked again. “You said Mr. Croft always won, even with her name?”

“Zinedine. After that Algerian soccer player. He's not one of those men who wants a boy so badly he gives his daughter a male name – he just thought it would work for a girl, too. She always liked it – she came up with her own nickname, sort of mocking the masculinity.”

“What nickname?” Lona's throat had gone dry. She already knew what nickname.

“Ned.” Maggie laughed. “From the middle of her name. Some people called her Zinny, but she liked Ned – I think she mostly liked seeing the expression on people's faces when they were expecting to meet a man and instead they met her.” She picked up a photograph. “Oh! Here's the one I was looking for.”

She showed it to Lona, and Lona suddenly couldn't hear anything else in the room because the blood rushing through her ears was so loud. She swayed in place, catching her balance on the crib, leaning against the smooth, polished birch of the railing. The wood was how she knew she was awake right now, that these events weren't a dream.

She had thought that Ned was a man, because his name was Ned, and because his clothing was unisex, and because his hair was short, and because of the way Ned's stomach protruded in the way only men seem to gain weight. Slender legs. Beer belly. Except, of course, she only assumed that because of the context clues. It wasn't only men who gained weight that way.

“She was pregnant?” Lona took the photograph. Zinedine had a sand-colored pixie cut, streaked through with highlights of red, and fine, pointed features – nose, chin, even ears – and she was laughing at something happening off-camera. Her right hand supported her belly, which, underneath her lab coat was a round bowling ball. Her left hand rested on top of it.

“Jeremy and I weren't thrilled. She might have had her PhD, but she was so young. And, we're not exactly prudes, but just from a logistical standpoint – it made me nervous that she was planning to raise a baby all on her own.”

“The father?” Lona asked.

“Never met him. That is,
we
never met him. Zinedine did, of course. She said we would like him. She said she was going to bring him around for dinner, if we could promise to hold off on asking them anything about marriage. He would have – that was the impression that I got. He would have gotten married; she was the one who thought they hadn't been dating long enough.”

“But you didn't meet him.”

“She disappeared. Ran off with him. The father that we never met. And then had a miscarriage, which was, of course, tragic. And then she never wrote us again.” Maggie sighed, taking the picture back from Lona, using the hem of her shirt to wipe a thin layer of dust off the top of the frame.

“This picture is  …  how old?” Lona asked. Underneath the reddish hair were clear blue eyes and a sharp nose.

“Let's see. Zinny was twenty-four. So that would make it seventeen years?”

Lona felt stupid for not realizing it sooner, like the person in the group who can't see the funny-shaped cloud everyone else is talking about. It was so obvious. The person in her dream was Zinedine, and Zinedine was also her mother.

“Lona? Lona?” Maggie's face swam above her own. She felt something soft under her rear. Carpet. She'd slid down to the ground, still grasping the smooth birch rungs of the crib. “Wait here,” Maggie instructed.

Dimly, Lona heard her rush downstairs, and return a few seconds later with a damp washcloth and one of the bowls of candy from the coffee table. She pressed the cloth against Lona's cheek and, when she seemed satisfied that Lona could hold it there herself, tore the foil off a piece of candy.

“Open,” she said. Lona obediently put the chocolate in her mouth. It melted quickly; inside was mint liquid, running down the back of her throat. Maggie handed her another piece. Peanut butter. Only after the third – mint again – when Lona's teeth were beginning to ache from the sweetness, did Maggie stop unwrapping chocolates and sit back on her heels.

“Better?”

Lona nodded.

“I know how young girls can get. Running from one thing to the other, living out of vending machines, and never having proper food.”

“I'm better.” She started to stand, but Maggie gently pushed her back down again. Maggie. Zinedine's mother. Her grandmother, she realized. She was in the same room with someone who shared her blood. It was too much. She needed to get out of here. She felt like Jeremy, needing to escape from the house. Jeremy. Her grandfather.

“My car,” she mumbled. “It's outside. I feel better. I can drive myself.”

“I don't think so, honey. You're in no state to drive anywhere.”

“I need to go.”

“I'll drive you wherever you need to go, and Jeremy can follow behind in our car to bring me back.” She groaned and slapped her forehead. “Except for that stupid party. The students will be here any second, if they're not late. Which they will be.”

More strangers. More chaos. She couldn't handle that right now. “I was just lightheaded. I feel better. The food is helping.”

Maggie shook her head, her mouth set in a firm line. “I'm going to make you a sandwich so you have something besides sugar in your system. We'll get you set up in the guest bedroom. You can lie down for a while, and when the students leave, Jeremy and I will drive you home. Okay?” She ended the sentence with a question mark, but Lona could tell that it hadn't really been a query. She was being ordered to bed. She couldn't remember anyone speaking like that to her before, with that kind of maternal concern. To Julian, maybe, but not to her.

The room Maggie led her to had a double bed, a treadmill, a few dusty shelves of books. Lona felt relieved by the impersonality. It was less overwhelming to be in here than in Zinedine's room. Maggie left and returned with a cheese sandwich, a peeled orange and a cup of something hot on a tray. “Just leave it outside the door when you're done,” she instructed, promising to return in a couple of hours. “Do I need to call anyone for you? Your mother?”

Lona shook her head no.
But I do need you to call my mother. That's the problem. You don't know how to.

Where had her mother gone? How had Lona ended up in the Julian Path? How did her memories get in Lona's head? Why had they only arrived a few weeks ago?
There was another question on the outskirts of Lona's consciousness. She tried to bar it from entering, but it got too big:
Was her mother dead
?

After Maggie left she forced herself to sit down. The bed was soft. Downstairs she could hear the sounds of a party beginning and cresting. Clinking silverware. The tinkling sounds of shattered glass, an exclamation of apology, the murmur of Maggie reassuring the student that it was fine, accidents happen, they'd had those glasses for decades and she would love an excuse to replace them.

Had the glasses for decades. Had Zinedine drunk out of them? What about the plate for Lona's sandwich? Had she eaten off that? Had Maggie made Zinedine sandwiches in her school lunch? It was easier to think of her that way: Zinedine. Much easier than thinking of her as “mom”.

Her mother had worked for the Julian Path. Her mother had known Warren. Her mother had taken something from him. Her mother had taken something from him and stabbed him in the arm with a pen, while she was pregnant with Lona. What had led up to that? And what followed that? Why did her dream always end with the fluorescent lights in the wide hallway?

This room smelled clean, like laundry detergent, like verbena flowers and sweet basil. She knew that smell. She had a scent memory of that smell. Her mother's lab coat in the dream had been that smell. Her mother felt almost close enough to touch.

Her head was light. Her fingers were numb. She didn't fall asleep this time. She knew it because she was still sitting, not lying down. She didn't fall asleep, but the vision came after her anyway.

Warren grabbed at her sleeve, but too late. She slid out the door of the lab. It locked from the outside. Through the window she could see Warren search his pants pockets. Keys. Of course he would have keys. Run.

The hallway was wide and bright. It burned her eyes, after the dimness of the lab. There was a minute, maybe, just one minute, before Warren found his way out, or before the people Warren said were outside would come inside.

The main entrance was at the end of the hallway. The main entrance is what she would use if she were trying to escape. But she wasn't trying to escape. Not anymore.

The bright hallway gleamed. It must have been recently washed; she could see a yellow caution sign a few feet away, a stick figure man slipping on the floor. She tried the first door, on her left, marked “Janitors' Closet”. Locked. The one next to it was a private office, and it was locked too. In the middle of the hallway, she was completely exposed.

A stairwell. The stairwell would be unlocked. The stairwell was the third door down. She pressed down the lever handle. The steps inside were concrete, covered in peeling rubber treads. The fluorescent bulb hanging overhead emitted a low droning hum. With her dwindling minute of remaining time, she could run up the stairs or down them. Which had the better chance for survival? She hesitated for less than a second before making her decision. Escaping wasn't important. Capture was inevitable.

She crouched against the door she'd just come through, using her body to block the entrance, buying a second of delay if someone tried to come in now. She pulled out the syringe from where she'd dropped it in her pocket. She pulled up her shirt, running her hand over the place where she had last felt the baby kick, the spot where the baby seemed to nestle more than any other place. And then she jabbed the needle in.