Somebody Else's Daughter (27 page)

“A little souvenir is all.”

Teddy looked: Dale's tooth. He didn't want it, but he stuck it in his pocket.

“You sure as hell earned it.” Rudy leaned on the fence and they both watched Willa on the horse. “You're wasting your time, brother. She don't need you, she's got the horse.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Teenaged girls
love
horses.”

Teddy watched Willa sail over a jump.

“I got a remedy for what ails you,” Rudy said. “You interested?”

“Maybe.”

He told his mother he was going over to Marco's to study, which is what he should have been doing. Instead, he went out with Rudy. “I'm taking you under my wing, son.” Rudy grinned at him, and handed him a can of beer. “Go ahead, enjoy yourself.”

The sun was setting in the back window of the truck. They drove over into New York State, down empty roads, through wide-open fields. They had the windows open and you could smell the earth. The long grass hissed at them as they rolled past. The late sun cut a glare across the glass. The air was fresh and clean. If his mother hadn't told him about his father that morning, he might not have taken the trip with Rudy, but over breakfast she'd shown him a letter she'd gotten from a Mexican prison, confirming that a man named William McGrath, otherwise known as his father, Billy, had been an inmate there for ten years. He'd been released, his whereabouts were unknown. When he'd asked her what he'd gone in for, all she said was, “Drugs.”

“That was pretty stupid,” he'd said to her.

“Nothing about doing drugs is smart.”

“I didn't mean the drugs. I meant getting caught.”

That got her. “You get yourself home after school today,” she'd told him. “I think you need to spend some time up in your room, thinking.”

You couldn't judge a man because he'd gone to prison. Rudy had gone to jail and he was all right. When he asked him about it, Rudy told Teddy that he'd made a mistake. “I'm not going to lie to you, it was fucked up. But I did my time and moved on.” Maybe his dad, wherever he was, had done the same. It came to Teddy that he was drawn to people like Rudy, people who lived hard and true; they didn't waste time on the bullshit. It was how Teddy wanted to live. And whether she believed it or not, it was how his mother had raised him.

As darkness fell, they drove deeper into the country, so far out you didn't see any houses, only a farm or two, and you could smell manure in the air. Then he pulled off into a field where other cars were parked. In the distance, he could see a huge bonfire and a group of men standing around it. Rudy parked and they got out and walked over. Some of them had brought beer and Rudy had taken his. They walked over to the fire and stood there looking down into a valley, where a shallow pit had been dug out of the field. There were flaming torches all around it, and people were standing behind the thin ropes, getting ready to watch. He and Rudy walked down to the pit and joined the crowd. There were cages of dogs, pit bulls, and some of the dogs looked sick and others were whimpering. Some of the dogs looked too weak to get up, their ribs poking through, their muzzles covered with blood.

“Look who's here,” Rudy said. He nodded toward somebody over by the cages. It was Dale. “You better keep your distance. He's got a real short fuse.”

“I'm not afraid of him.”

Dale had on black rubber gloves up to his elbows. His dog was in a cage, panting hard. It was an ugly dog, Teddy thought. Unlike Luther Grimm's dog, Dale's dog looked scrawny and weak. The men standing along the ropes were shouting now, placing their bets. A couple of women stood off to the side, smoking. There was a big crowd around the pit and the people had mean, hungry eyes. They had come to bet, they had come to win. Dogs were going to die. There was the smell of blood in the air. You could hear the howling, the whimpering. They saw Dale bring over his cage; his dog was going to fight. The second he opened the metal door, the dog went tearing into the pit after its opponent as everyone watched, their faces dumb with glee. The two dogs became a jumble in the dark, and then you could see that one dog had the other by the neck and blood was spurting out like a fountain. “Look at you.” Rudy grinned and shoved Teddy on the back. “You're not scared, are you?”

Teddy shook his head, but he was.

“Those animals are bred to fight,” Rudy explained, as if it were all right. “They want to fight. It's all they think about.”

“I don't know.”

The people were shouting as the one dog maimed the other, and you could see the fur torn off and the raw flesh underneath and the organs inside busting out. The fight was over. Dale's dog had lost. It cowered in on itself, whining miserably. Money went back and forth from hand to hand. Dale yanked the animal out of the pit as it yelped for mercy and Teddy could see Dale making a big show of his anger and knew he was going to make it pay. He kicked it along with his boot away from the group and doused it with lighter fluid, joking as he did it, wanting everyone to see, then flicked a match at it. The crowd watched as the dog caught fire and some people even laughed, watching it run around in the field, covered in flames.

“Let's get out of here,” Rudy said.

They were quiet in the truck. “That was fucked up,” Rudy said. “There's something wrong with that man.”

They smoked a joint to calm down. Rudy asked him if he wanted to meet his sister, a nurse in Troy. They waited for her down in the hospital lobby, watching people coming in and out of the sliding glass doors. Her shift ended and they went to this Polish bar, below street level, and they had good sweet pickles and wheels of cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers. Teddy didn't say much, but he watched the other people, men mostly, hunkered over the bar in tweed coats, with pointy red chins and bulky, swarming hands. Rudy's sister had long red hair down to her hips and wore fake eyelashes and she smiled a lot. She had a baby too, at home, a boy. They went back to her apartment and he was a little drunk and they peered into the crib and watched him sleep.

They smoked some more pot with his sister then said good night. It was late, and he knew his mother was going to be pissed. She would probably try to ground him or something futile like that, as if she could. On the way back to the Berkshires, they drove through Spencertown and Rudy asked him point blank if he wanted to get laid. Teddy figured why not—he didn't want to seem lame—and he didn't want Rudy to know he'd never done it. You couldn't lie to a man like Rudy. They went up a road called Angel Hill, and took a turn down a dirt road. They drove along that way for a while and he cracked the window and he could smell manure again and he could hear the crickets. Then this house appeared. It was a farmhouse with the shades pulled down over the windows, dim lights behind them. There were some cars parked in the grass. Rudy pulled a comb through his hair and handed it to Teddy and Teddy used it and licked his palm and pressed his hair down in back. Then they got out and started up through the wet grass. Somebody came out. It was a man who looked familiar, something about the way he walked, the subtle hunch of his shoulders, but Teddy couldn't see his face. The man walked around back out of sight and a moment later a car started up. While Rudy was looking for his key, Teddy turned to watch the car pull out. It looked like a Volvo, he thought, a station wagon, but it was dark, he couldn't be sure. Rudy pulled a skeleton key from his pocket and unlocked the door with it. As they stepped into the foyer, Rudy put the key away. You could hear people up in the rooms. Then a girl came out in one of those Japanese robes and you could see her tits sliding around underneath. Teddy started to sweat. His hands felt clammy. Rudy whispered in her ear and she looked at Teddy. Her smile was a wicked flash. He shrugged, he felt weird, but she took his hand and they went up the dark, narrow staircase. At the end of the hall, she knocked on a door. There was a girl in there. The woman in the robe nodded for him to go in.

The room was dark save for a candle. The girl was sitting on the bed. He thought she might be crying. But then the door closed and she got up and put out the cat.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, but he didn't think she was. “What's your name?” She had an accent. He told her his name and she said, “I'm Pearl.”

“Where are you from?”

“Poland.” She was lighting a joint. “You smoke?”

“Not now.”

She went to the window and opened the shade. “You like the moon?”

He could see it full in the sky. “Yes, I like it.”

“You're romantic, yes?”

“I guess.”

He felt a little sick and his mouth went dry. She came and stood by the bed and took his hand and swept it up her belly to her breasts. She let him touch her all over. She took his hand and put it on her and he moved it around. Then she made him lay down.

It was almost light when Rudy came and got him. He had fallen asleep and the windows had gone to white. They went down the stairs, holding their shoes, and even Rudy was trying to be quiet. Down the hall, Teddy could see some of the girls in the kitchen, drinking coffee. They went out to the car, his bare feet getting wet in the grass, saying nothing to each other, and eight geese crossed over the sky.

25

It is only a matter of time before a man betrays his wife. This is what Maggie Heath's mother had told her when she was just a girl. Her mother had told her a lot of things, and most of them had come true—don't swim after eating or you will get a cramp; don't go out in the winter with a wet head, you will catch cold; don't believe for a minute that your husband will be faithful to you—he won't.

On an ordinary Thursday afternoon after school, Maggie discovered an envelope on the seat of her car. She never locked her car, nobody did. It was probably an invitation to something, she assumed, and opened the envelope with anticipation, but instead of a card she found a tidy pile of letters that had been cut with meticulous precision out of a magazine—a clever invitation, perhaps, which did not surprise her, the parents at Pioneer were a very clever bunch. She would have to look at it more carefully at home, she thought, pulling out of the lot. Turning out of the driveway, she caught sight of her husband on the soccer field, coaching the boys' game against Waverly. The sun was bright and his features were blurred, but his posture gave him away, the slightly stooped shoulders, the forlorn keel of his spine. On the adjacent field, the girls' field hockey team was practicing scrimmages, Ada among them; Maggie was grateful to have a few hours to herself. It was only a short drive home to their little cottage. The Head's house was like a beautifully wrapped present— the box was nicer than its contents—and had been home to many families before them. Maggie pulled into the driveway and gathered up her things, stacks of papers to correct and the envelope that had been left on the seat, and went into the kitchen to make tea. She had eaten very little that day and now she felt weary and her belly rumbled with hunger—a not unpleasant feeling that she'd grown accustomed to and rather liked.

Inside, she put on the teakettle and sat down and poured out the contents of the envelope: To her surprise, there were only seven letters, and now the idea of an invitation seemed less likely. She had a knack for word puzzles—she could do the Sunday
New York Times
crossword puzzle in less than an hour. Her father had nicknamed her Wordsmith, when she was still in elementary school. She had always loved words, and loved to write—she'd won a poetry prize at Amherst—the Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize—and she'd written her senior paper on Sylvia Plath. It had been Nate Gallagher's father, in fact, who'd encouraged her to write—but it was Nate who'd become the writer. When she'd received his application in the mail, she'd been so happily surprised that she couldn't resist calling him in for an interview. His parents had lived on the outskirts of campus in a little white cape. On some evenings the house would be all lit up like a storefront, people coming and going, smoking and drinking out in the yard—she'd always longed to go inside, but had never been invited—none of the students were. Through the open windows, you would hear someone bellowing the words of Chaucer or Shakespeare in the voice of a practiced actor.
Get thee to a nunnery!
As a teenager, Nate had been shy and aloof. She could still picture him walking the black paths on campus, his loping, long-legged stride, long arms hanging down, hands shoved in his pockets. People had said he'd gotten hooked on drugs. A few years later, after he'd dropped out and disappeared, Maggie's roommate had gone out west on vacation and visited San Francisco. Walking on Fisherman's Wharf, she'd seen Nate Gallagher with a girl, strung out, a tiny baby in his arms.

Maggie wondered whatever happened to the girl and the baby. She didn't have the courage to ask.

After Nate had left home, the Gallaghers' house became a quiet, dull place, the curtains drawn, the windows dark. And his father was never the same.

The teapot whistled, interrupting her reverie, and she made herself a cup of tea and returned to the table and brought her attention to the letters, pushing them around on the surface like pieces on a board game. There was an E and an A and another E. There was a T and a C and an H and an R. Immediately, she made the word
teacher.
Well, that made sense, but what was the meaning of it? It seemed a silly thing for someone to do. She studied the word. Perhaps there was another possibility. Moving the letters around on the table, another word took shape. C-h-e-a-t-e-r. There.
Cheater.

She sat there studying the word. Had Ada cheated on a test, she wondered, last week's Latin test perhaps? Had someone
seen
her cheating? Almost immediately, she refuted the idea. First of all, her daughter didn't cheat—she didn't
need
to cheat. She was one of the best students at Pioneer. Furthermore, cheating wasn't something that Pioneer students did. It wasn't part of the school's culture. In fact, trust was instilled in the students from their first day on campus, allowing them the freedom to leave their backpacks outside in the halls during classes without fear of anyone taking them. People respected one another's belongings. There was no thievery of any kind at Pioneer.