Promise Not to Tell: A Novel (14 page)

“Poor Nick,” he said at last, placing a hand on his chest again, but laying the other across his desk blotter this time. “My heart goes out to him, it does. I just can’t get involved anymore. The past is the past and he needs to let things go, walk his own path. Nicky comes around sometimes, wanting to go out for drinks. I’ve gone a few times, just for old times’ sake, you know? I probably shouldn’t have, but I did. But I may have sent the wrong message.”

“Message?”

“You know…” There went the reddening ears I remembered so well. “That I was, ah…interested again. Nicky’s a great guy. I care about him, I do. And I’m not saying I have regrets about what happened back then, but we were kids, you know?”

I struggled to understand what he was getting at, not quite willing to jump to the conclusions he was leading me to.

“So, what, are you telling me you two had an affair?”

Zack studied me a moment, his whole face reddening this time. Then he laughed nervously, shook his head.

“Oops. I thought you knew. I don’t mean to shock you. I guess you could say it was part of my free love period.” He grinned crookedly, then quickly looked away, eyes focused on his guitar. Was it the same instrument after all these years? The guitar he serenaded my mother with back in the tepee?

“God, Kate. I was sure he told you. You two were close for a while there. I was sure you knew.”

“I had no idea,” I admitted.

He plucked at his goatee.

“I was nineteen. I thought bisexuality was another road toward freeing the mind. Letting go of preconceived notions of gender and identity. Balancing the male and the female, the yin and the yang. God, it was 1971. It was
in
then.”

I nodded understandingly. I’m not a closed-minded person. It wasn’t that I found the idea of Zack and Nicky sleeping together offensive, but it was quite a surprise. Nicky’s determination to keep this a secret made sense to me, but I was a little hurt at the same time.

“Did Del know? I mean, about the two of you?” As I asked the question, I heard Del’s voice in my head:
B-A-D spells bad
, she warned.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “She walked in on us once. Poor kid. I think it scared the hell out of her. Then once it sank in, she held it over his head. Blackmail, really. She knew his big secret and she used it against him any way she could. She was really struggling to find her place in the world, wasn’t she?”

I nodded, chewed my lip, wondered how far Nicky would go to keep Del from revealing his secret.

“Can I ask one more thing?” My voice came out small and timid. My ten-year-old voice.

“Why not? We’ve already dragged this many skeletons out of the closet—so to speak.”

“Did my mother know about you and Nicky?”

He hesitated, looking at me with what I imagined to be thorough consideration. I understood. I mean, this was my mother we were talking about. How in-depth do you want go when it comes to intimate secrets about someone’s own mother?

For whatever reason, he decided to go for the full reveal.

“Sure she did. She thought it was sexy, I think. She said she didn’t mind my being with a guy, but if I started sleeping with another woman, we were through. She didn’t want any repeats of the Lazy Elk scene.” Here came his hand again, reaching for mine across the desk. “Kate, your mom was an amazing woman. I was crazy for her back then. I know you weren’t thrilled about it at the time, and I’m sorry. I never meant to ruffle anyone’s feathers. I was just trying to follow my heart, you know?” He clutched at the Wheel of Life pendant again.

While I didn’t think his heart was the only organ Zack was following back then, I accepted his apology. He wasn’t such a bad guy after all. A little too touchy-feely for my liking, but I sensed he was being up front with me and this won him some points.

I looked at my watch and saw I was ten minutes late for my meeting with Meg. “I should go,” I told him, getting up from the chair. “Meg’s probably waiting for me.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Kate. Give your mom my love. I’ll stop by to see her soon. Promise.” He moved from behind the desk to embrace me, smelling faintly of sandalwood and marijuana. It was one of those over-long, full-body hugs sensitive men are fond of. I couldn’t help but squirm a little.

M
Y MEETING WITH
M
EG DIDN’T GO WELL
—I’m sure she thought I was the one with the memory problem. I couldn’t stay focused on our conversation. The entire time I sat in her office, I thought about who could have put Del’s star in my purse and about Zack and Nicky’s boyhood fling. I started to make a mental list of all the people who’d had access to my purse: my mother, Raven, Gabriel, Opal, Nicky. Someone could have dropped it in when I was shopping at Haskie’s. But who? And why me?

Meg was saying something about “a specialized facility,” which I took to mean nursing home, but I found myself remembering the day I met Zack coming out of the cabin—the day Nicky kissed me. Nicky, who had probably been making out with Zack just minutes before. Zack, who returned to the tepee to bed down with my mother. The whole thing made my head spin. And it continued to bring me back to my original question: Why did Nicky want me to know all this? Guilt? The need to reveal his long-kept secret in an effort to build my trust? And were there other secrets, darker secrets, waiting to rear their ugly little heads?

I thought of the God of Death, with his fangs and menacing eyes, turning us all around as if we were on some giant roulette wheel: gods and titans, mortals and hungry ghosts, Zack and Nicky, me and my mother, Opal and Raven.

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows…

When Meg suggested tentatively that we meet for lunch the following week, I agreed, relieved. I knew the situation with my mother was severe, but I just couldn’t give it my full attention right then and there. I thanked her and headed for home.

G
ABRIEL AND MY MOTHER
were making lasagna when I found them in the kitchen. My mother was at the table, beating eggs to mix in with the cheese Gabriel was grating. She was working in slow motion, studying the eggs as if there were something utterly perplexing about them. Perhaps she was pondering that famous old
which came first, the chicken or the egg
question. Or maybe she was remembering the walks we used to take down the hill to buy eggs from the Griswolds’ leaning stand.

Lazy Elk says they’re no good because they’ve got blood in them. That just means they’re fertile.

Gabriel wore sweatpants with suspenders, a faded flannel shirt, and a misshapen green felt hat.

“Well, let’s see, Jean. What do we do next?” he asked, putting her in charge, or giving her that sense at least. When she didn’t respond, he held the plate of grated mozzarella up, cocking an eyebrow.

“Cheese,” my mother said.

“You’re still the best damn cook on the hill,” he told her, then leaned in to kiss her sallow cheek.

“You’ll never guess who I ran into at the college,” I said.

“Could it be the infamous young Zachary Messier?” asked Gabriel.

“Is there anything you don’t know?” I asked the old man.

“Plenty, my dear. Plenty. How is the professor these days?”

“Fine. It was good to see him.”

“I’m so glad he came back when he did. He’s the reason Raven went back to school, you know. She needed the little extra push he gave her. And he’s been a wonderful influence on Opal.”

“Zack,” my mother said, a dazed smile moving over her face. “Zack was with me when that Griswold girl was killed. Poor little thing.”

Lucky you,
I thought, remembering young Zack’s dirty bare feet, wondering if he left her sheets filthy and smelling of sandalwood. I decided that, while I may have misjudged him back then, I still really wasn’t comfortable with the image of Zack between my mother’s sheets.

“You know,” I said, “it’s funny. Talking to Zack today was a little unsettling. It made me feel like I never really knew him at all.”

My mother laughed out loud and gave me a nod.

“You were ten or eleven last time you saw him, Kate,” Gabriel explained. “You were a perceptive kid, but there’s a lot you missed. Even now, there’s a lot all of us miss. We think we know someone and then we learn something that just blows everything to hell. Keeps things nice and interesting, Katydid, don’t you agree?” Gabriel asked, narrowing his eyes at me. It was a suspicious look and I imagined him wondering if I was the cat killer. I was sure Raven had gone to him with her concerns and wondered if he considered me a suspect in Magpie’s death. Hell, maybe they both thought I killed Tori Miller, too.

If only they knew what I had in the pocket of my purse….

I had to get rid of that star one way or another. The sooner the better.
Tonight
, I thought. I’ll take care of it tonight.

“I suppose so,” I said. “I’m going to go change, then I’ll come out and give you two a hand.”

“Hey, have a look at your mother’s painting. She was in there most of the afternoon working on it. I finally had to stop her and give her some extra medication. Didn’t I, Jean? I think you worked too hard and got yourself a little wound up. But you’re feeling better now, aren’t you?”

Sure she was. She was so doped up, she was practically drooling.

I walked into the studio and dropped my bag immediately. There was no mistake, even in the fading light of the room. The painting was more colorful now; there were pinks, purples, and blues that hadn’t been there before. Also, in the top left corner was now a distinct pair of eyes. Blue-gray eyes. The kind that look straight ahead, but seem to follow you wherever you go. Eyes like Jesus’s in those creepy velvet paintings of the Last Supper. All-seeing eyes. No face to go with them, just eyes staring out from the flames.

“Ma!” I called out. “Ma, can you come in here a sec?”

My mother was soon in the doorway, followed by Gabriel.

“Ma, who is that?”

She only smiled at the painting.

“Who is that there in the painting?”

Her smile widened and she began to giggle. It was not the giggle of a seventy-two-year-old woman. She raised her hands to her mouth to cover it, to stifle her laughter. But the sound that came out was the high-pitched giggle of a little girl. And once she started, it seemed she could not stop. Tears poured from her eyes and she tee-hee-hee’d until she became short of breath and Gabriel led her away, shooting me an irritated look before taking her into the kitchen and giving her yet another walloping dose of tranquilizers.

T
HE BODY OF TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
Delores Ann Griswold was discovered by her brother Nicholas at approximately 7:00 p.m. That is what the eleven o’clock news out of Burlington reported. We didn’t have a television in the tepee, but there was one in the big barn and all of New Hope was gathered around it. By then, the police had already made their first of many trips up to New Hope, asking if anyone had seen Del at all that day and wanting to know where everyone had been during the afternoon. I said I’d only seen Del in school. I didn’t tell them what had really happened there. They knew that Del had been picked on, but they had no idea of the extent of it. Or that I was the one who chased her back toward town, right into the arms of her killer. The police wouldn’t tell us what had happened, but when we walked down the road to see the row of state police cars flashing in front of the Griswolds’ place, we knew whatever it was, it was bad.

As we watched the news and saw the school photo of Del fill up the screen, my mother put her arm around me.

“Were you two friends, Katydid?” she asked.

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head, denying her in death as automatically as I had in life. “We just waited for the bus together.”

I knelt down right in front of the set, in the place my mother always forbade me to sit, saying it would ruin my eyes. This time, she gave no dire warnings. In the school picture, Del was wearing a large white puffy-sleeved blouse with a bow clumsily tied at the collar. It was clearly an old-lady shirt, something she probably found at the back of a closet that had once belonged to her mother or grandmother even. Up close, I saw that the photo of Del was made up of hundreds of tiny dots, black and white pixels that had made their way through the air right into our television. And I had the curious sensation that I was breaking apart like that, too; disintegrating into a million particles that no one would be able to put back together again in a way that might resemble a ten-year-old girl.

The anchorman said that Mr. Ralph Griswold sent Nicky out to look for Del when she didn’t show up for supper. The school had called earlier to report that Del had gone truant and had failed to pick up her diploma.

The news man didn’t give many details about her death, except that it was a clear case of homicide. Later, it was reported that she had been found naked. The rumors in town started immediately, and they would continue for decades. Some people said Del was decapitated. Her body was cut into tiny pieces. She was found hanging upside down, her throat slit like a deer’s. The killer had cut her open and placed a raw potato inside. It was her brother who did it. No, her father. Must have been one of the freaks at New Hope.

The truth was, no matter what the rumor of the week was, the underlying feeling in town was the same: What fate could you expect for a girl like Del—dirty, mouthy, running wild all the time, probably half-retarded?

The police had several suspects almost immediately. They brought Del’s father in, because it was well known that he beat his kids (he’d admitted to giving her the shiner the day before she was killed) and the police found a pair of his overalls, soaked in blood, stuffed in the laundry basket. The detectives let him go when the lab tests showed it was only pig blood. They brought Nicky in because he seemed to be the one Del was closest to. They arrested him for the marijuana they found in his room and he was sent to juvenile detention after assaulting one of the state troopers who’d picked him up. They brought in Mike Shane after they found a stack of letters he’d written, confessing his love, but he was released shortly. They brought in Zack but let him go when my mother confirmed he’d been with her in the tepee all afternoon. Zack claimed one of the state troopers winked at him when his alibi was confirmed. Then they arrested a man who called himself Lazy Elk when a necklace found in Del’s drawer turned out to be one of his creations. Eventually though, it wasn’t enough to hold him—he’d been on his way to a craft fair in Middlebury when Del was killed, and a woman who worked at a gas station recognized his photo, confirming his alibi. So they let Mark Lubofski go. Del, they figured, must have stolen the necklace. She was that kind of kid.

Lazy Elk left town after that (unable to face the constant looks of suspicion—the people of New Canaan hadn’t let him off the hook even if the police had) and was never heard from again. He called my mother just before leaving to apologize once more, say he loved her, and ask if she would go with him. She hung up, figuring that was all the answer he deserved. Years later, when Raven was older, she tried to find Lazy Elk, even hired a private detective. But there was no trace of either Lazy Elk or Mark Lubofski anywhere. My one act of theft had turned into something much bigger—it wasn’t just a necklace I took; I stole Raven’s father from her, sending him off into some anonymous life where no one had heard of New Hope, Lazy Elk, or the Potato Girl.

T
WO YEARS AFTER
D
EL WAS KILLED
, when he got back from the Brattleboro Detention Center for Boys, Nicky finally described to me what he’d seen in the loft the night he found Del. We met by chance in town one fall afternoon and sat on the steps of the general store drinking root beer. Nicky was sixteen then. He seemed more awkward. Taller. What I remember most is that he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Nicky and I would see each other from time to time over the next few years, but this was the last time we would speak before I moved away.

“She was just lying there, spread-eagled on that old mattress. Naked. Wearing only this leather cord around her neck. Her face was sort of purplish, her tongue was sticking out a little. But then there were the cuts.”

“Cuts?” I asked.

“Yeah. The sick bastard cut a square of skin right off her chest. Like he was tryin’ to cut a doorway to her heart or something. He took it with him like some kinda fucking trophy.”

Nicky, I realized then, hadn’t known about the tattoo. No one, it seemed, knew but myself, Del, and her killer. The police, after interviewing the whole fifth grade, asked me about what I told Ellie and Sam about a tattoo. Frightened, I told the police I had made it up—that I had lied about everything I told the other girls. The truth was, I told the cops, I hardly knew Del at all. I had just wanted to impress Ellie and Samantha. I’d never seen a tattoo or even the edge of a tattoo. Del had mentioned it once, maybe, but no, I’d never seen it. And Del lied all the time anyway, so you never knew what to believe. If there had been a tattoo, I didn’t know what of. At the time, I assumed they’d seen the tattoo themselves when they found her. What did they need me to tell them for?

After Nicky told me about the patch of missing skin, I thought of going to the police. I thought of it, but in my twelve-year-old mind I told myself I’d already broken enough promises to Del Griswold. Her secret would remain safe with me. I figured it was the least I owed her.

But at night, for years, when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I was down in that root cellar again. And Del was peeling off her clothes.
Are you gonna look or what?
she wanted to know. And when I raised my eyes from the dirt floor, there it was:
M.

A good kind of hurt.