Stony River (40 page)

A mournful diesel horn on the highway punctuates their words—a sound Miranda used to hear when the World meant “out there” in the parallel universe she's part of now, however shakily. She feels released from the orbit of James's sorrow, at last. Free to turn to the sun.

TWENTY - FOUR

JULY 8, 1958
. Linda wasn't thinking right when the pale green convertible drew up beside her. Even if she had been, she wouldn't have been able to report the year and make. She was hopeless at that and wasn't wearing her glasses. They made her look like such a square. Plus her mind was replaying her disastrous date down the shore with Lonnie. How babyish she'd looked in her ruffled polka dot bathing suit next to Arlene and Dee in their two-pieces!

“You didn't bring any money?” Lonnie had asked. He'd grudgingly paid for her boardwalk rides and bought her pizza. Nobody had told her to bring money. Wasn't the boy supposed to pay? Then in the fun house he'd pulled her hard against him and grabbed her breast. She'd pushed him away, of course. He was sullen on the ride back and didn't offer to see her home, even though it was starting to get dark when Arlene's date dropped her off at the rec center, in the part of town where people locked their doors. It was a good half-hour walk to her house.

Her parents had driven to Boston yesterday and would stay while a clinic ran tests on Mom. Linda would be free of them for two more days. She'd practically prostrated herself for permission to stay alone and agreed to all sorts of conditions she'd already violated. They wouldn't have allowed her to go down the shore. She'd left after their daily call this morning and told Mr. Houseman next door
she was spending the day at the library where it was air-conditioned. Now she was hurrying home in time for the nightly calls from people who'd been commandeered to keep an eye out for her when, like sweet manna from heaven, the guy in the convertible called out, “Looks like you could use a ride.”

It had to have been ninety degrees all day. Her lavender sundress was wet under the arms and her sweaty feet were stinking up her white sandals. The back of her knees were sunburned and stiffening up. The guy's smile was boyishly sweet and she didn't want to be rude. Besides, she'd never ridden in a convertible. He got out, walked around and opened the passenger door like it was a gift. “They call me Georgie Porgie,” he said. He had a crew cut, blue eyes and a big lower lip. He wore a Marlon Brando shirt and tight black pants. His upper arms were bulgy thick. His aftershave had a fine woodsy smell.

“I'm Linda.” She dropped the canvas bag with her wet suit and towel in the back seat and climbed in the front. “Nice to meet you, Georgie.”

“Where to, sweet Linda?”

“Just a straight shot down this road, not more than a mile. You live around here?”
Just a straight shot
. Where had that come from? Some cornball thing her mother would say.

He didn't answer, just drove, drumming on the steering wheel with his fingers in a calypso-like rhythm:
day, me say day, me say day, me say day-o
. Too bad Lonnie couldn't see her now. When he turned off Grove onto Route 1, she said, “No, no, keep straight,” thinking she hadn't given clear directions. He didn't say anything. As they approached the White Castle, she said, “Turn left here. Then a couple blocks, left and left again.” He still didn't say anything. When he stopped at a traffic light a few more blocks away she tried to leave the car but the passenger door handle was missing. He reached over and wrenched her to him. Her dress hiked up and the back of her thighs made a sucking sound against the leather seat.

“Where are we going?” she asked. He said nothing but kept his arm around her.

She forced herself to speak calmly. “I'd like to get out, please.” He kept driving, steering with his left hand, his right arm painfully tight around her.

She wrestled away and pushed against the car door. He dragged her over again.

Route 1 was busy as usual. She shouted “Help!” but the wind swallowed her words.

He turned off the highway and onto a street with no houses, only a factory and a nearly empty parking lot. Linda had no idea where they were. Georgie looked lost in himself, unaware of her even as he crushed her to his side. She'd never known anyone so strong. Her neck and side felt the strain of trying to twist away from him.

He turned onto a bumpy side road leading to a woody patch, surprising in its sudden appearance. He stopped in a small clearing. Took his hand away to turn off the car. She stood on the seat to climb over the side but he forced her down. He held both her wrists in one hand and with the other scrabbled at her hem, pushing the dress up to her waist. His breath smelled like sour milk. She kicked and pushed. He yanked her dress off over her head, squeezing her ears, pushed her back down on the seat, held her with one hand and unzipped his pants with the other. Then he lay on top of her and rocked back and forth, his weight pressing the air from her lungs. When she felt something sticky on her leg she twisted her head and bit his shoulder hard.

He jerked away. “Fucking bitch. You want to die?” He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a knife. “Beg for your life.”

For a moment she thought she'd lose control of her bowels, but an image of Tereza's defiant eyes of all things came to her. She shook her head so hard it made a rattling sound.

“Scream,” he said, holding the knife to her throat. “Beg for your life.”

She spat in his face and braced for the cut. But he shuddered as though waking from a dream and looked at her with pained blue eyes. He plucked her dress from the car floor and handed it to her. Started the engine while she got dressed. Retraced their route to the corner of the highway and Grove, across from Tony's Garage. He stepped from the car, walked slowly around the front and opened the passenger door from the outside. He reached in the back seat for her canvas bag. Gave her a little bow and that same sweet smile.

She made it across the highway and ran to her house, praying she wouldn't encounter any neighbors, amazed her trembling legs held her upright. The ground beneath her feet heaved like the Staten Island ferry deck. She took a bath, scrubbing herself sore,
day-o
playing in her mind like a stuck record until she had to scream and scream.

TWO DAYS LATER
she stepped out the side door that opened onto Mr. Houseman's driveway, keeping one hand on the knob in case she needed to jump back in. She peered left at his garage and then right toward the street. She smelled newly cut grass and saw the clippings on the drive. Minutes ago she'd heard the whooshing slice of his push mower. She couldn't hear it now, but he could be doing the other side of his house, within sprinting distance, if she needed to scream for help.

She hadn't been outside since it happened. But Mom would come home tonight expecting food in the house and Linda had eaten nearly everything in the pantry, including two jars of maraschino cherries, four cans of metallic-tasting green beans and the single can of white asparagus her mother was saving for the company they never had. During her parents' calls yesterday and this morning, she didn't mention she'd shoved the settee against the front door, bumped the kitchen table down four steps and upended it to block the side door. She didn't say she'd shut and locked the windows despite air so hot and humid the saltines had gone soft. Mr. Houseman had knocked
on the side door yesterday. She'd opened a window and told him she had a sore throat, was staying in until she got better. Sitting cross-legged in bed, she'd wrapped the phone extension cord around and around her finger and told her parents everything was fine. She told Mrs. Judge, Mrs. Ernst and Aunt Libby the same when they called to check on her.

She locked the side door behind her and crept down the footpath, her back pressed against the scratchy siding. Once she reached the stoop, she scanned the street. To the left she could see across the highway to Tony's, to the right as far as Tereza's old place and Rolf's store. A car on the highway backfired and she nearly wet her pants, but nobody drove down Grove Street. There was no sign of Georgie's car, but he could be waiting anywhere. Maybe he wouldn't recognize her in glasses, a plaid kerchief and Betty's hideous flowered housecoat.

Even if she could bring herself to venture into Rolf's, he wouldn't have white asparagus. She'd have to go into town. She darted across the highway, her mind sprinting ahead. If Georgie suddenly appeared she'd take refuge in Tony's Garage and use his phone to call the police. But they might say she'd been asking for it by getting in Georgie's car. They'd tell her parents, who would have a fit about her going down the shore. Mom would ask what she'd done to encourage the boy. Daddy would say she hadn't really gotten hurt.

On the other side of the highway, breathing heavily, she slowed her pace, still looking left and right. Daddy would have a point about her not being hurt. It hadn't been as big a deal as it could have been. Who was Linda Wise compared to all the women in the world who'd actually been raped? All Georgie had done was threaten her with a knife, come on her leg and curse at her. His language had shocked her as much as anything: he'd spoken to her as if she were no more than lint. Arlene and Dee would probably find the whole thing a riot if she weren't too embarrassed to tell them. They'd turn it into one of their stories and spread it all over school, ribbing her for not even
getting a whisker burn out of it. Did Georgie have whiskers? She should have paid more attention. Should have scratched his license plate number in the dirt with a stick. But what if she had? Who would have cared?

It wasn't like anything had really happened.

SEPTEMBER 18, 1958
. Betty worked every Tuesday and Thursday from four in the afternoon until eight at night, typing invoices, completing insurance forms and calling patients whose accounts were long overdue. Lou Pierce's office was in a mansion built in the early 1900s by the founder of a music-box company. Lou's late dad, also a doctor, had bought the place sometime in the 30s and turned the downstairs into a medical office. Lou, his wife and their two children lived on the second and third floors. Betty had never been upstairs, but she wasn't bellyaching. It was enough for her to step up on the pillared porch of the grand white building on the elm-lined street and know she had as much right to be there as anyone.

She appreciated the solid feel of the front door and, as she opened it, the scent of furniture wax and rubbing alcohol that greeted her nose. The polished wood floor of the large waiting room, a once-upon-a-time parlor with fireplace and fancy molding, creaked as she crossed to her desk. Her brown leather chair sounded important as it rolled over the Plexiglas that protected an Oriental rug. An adding machine, typewriter, pens and pencils, sheets of vellum, envelopes and stamps waited just for her.

On this Thursday, when Betty arrived, Lou's nurse, Rose, was wrestling her coat on. “Doc's already gone upstairs,” she said. “His last patient canceled. Big news in the paper, hey? That's all anybody could talk about when they came in today.”