The Body in the Ivy (17 page)

They were at the end of the room. Faith had turned the lights off earlier and now she turned them on again. She had a sudden thought and wasn't sure why it seemed important.

“Did anyone come down to look at her while I was gone?”

“I didn't. I imagine Elaine would have. No one else said they did, but I wouldn't have known unless I'd seen someone head for the stairs. Elaine woke each of us up with the news—and the news about the storm, which wasn't really news. I'd been awake for hours wondering how serious it was. This isn't hurricane season, but it's behaving like one. Oh dear, I'm rambling. To answer your question: I'd be surprised if anyone other than Elaine came down here. It would have been a pretty ghoulish thing to do.”

“But if she'd been a particular friend?”

“None of us have been in touch since college. Bobbi roomed with Maggie freshman year, but they weren't that close. She and Phoebe roomed together sophomore year, and we all had singles junior and senior years. Phoebe was probably her closest friend back then, but there's no one now.”

The two women crossed the room and stood by the side of the Jacuzzi. The water was still and the bottle had sunk to the bottom, joining Bobbi Dolan. Her hair streamed out and her eyes were wide open, their blueness intensified by the color of the water. Her naked body looked oddly childlike and Faith was reminded of the Kingsley Water Babies on some of the tiles that lined the large pool. Only in the book those sprites had been alive.

“We'd better get suits on. There's an assortment in the changing room if you didn't bring one.” Faith had discovered them when she'd taken inventory the first day, a day that seemed a very long time ago.

“I brought one, but I'll use one of those. It will save time, and besides…”

Faith had already decided the same thing. She'd never be able to wear hers again after this gruesome chore.

“Before we change, we should turn up the air-conditioning in the spa room,” she said. “And I think we can take the mat from the massage table and use that to move her.”

“Good idea. Poor Bobbi. She really was a very good masseuse. I had one yesterday and she managed to get a kink out of my neck that's been bothering me for months. Such an unnecessary death. I'm sorry. That
sounds so trite—and I suppose the same can be said of all deaths, most deaths,” she added.

“She was in good health, hadn't even made her fourscore and ten, and it was an accident—something that shouldn't have happened. You're right: unnecessary,” Faith said.

The spa room was quite cool and Faith set the controls at an even lower temperature. The body would be all right here for some time. They dragged the mat next to the Jacuzzi and went to change.

Lucy proved to be as fit as Faith had suspected. She had an athlete's body. Well-toned muscles, lithe. “Do you play a lot of sports? Run?” Faith asked as they changed.

“I used to play sports when I was in school, and yes, I do run. It's my passion.”

“Tennis? That's my husband's passion.”

Lucy bent over to pick up her robe, which had fallen to the floor. “No. I was never very fond of tennis.”

Faith tried very hard to think of Bobbi Dolan's body as if it were an inanimate object—like one of those dummies used for CPR training. It didn't work. As soon as she put her arms under Bobbi's to lift her out, Faith was overwhelmed with sadness—and revulsion. From the look on Lucy's face, it seemed she was having the same response. They worked quickly and soon the body was in the spa, covered by one of the sheets Bobbi would have used for a massage.

In silent accord, Faith and Lucy headed for the showers, then clad themselves in the luxurious terry-cloth robes provided and sat on the chaises by the pool. Faith found herself oddly reluctant to return to the kitchen.
Judging from the way the baked goods were moving, there wouldn't be much meal preparation called for. The storm meant they would all be staying indoors. Bobbi's death canceled anything in the way of entertainment. She wondered what the women would do. Stay in their rooms? Stick together in a group? Safety in numbers?

Safety. It had been there since she'd come upon the body. This thought, not below, but on the surface of her mind. This thought that Lucy was addressing.

“She didn't drink, you know.”

Faith did know. The first night, Bobbi had opted for mineral water while the others drank champagne. It had been the same at the other meals.

“Before the massage, she was asking me some lifestyle questions—purely voluntary, she said, but it helped her to get in touch with my essence, something like that. I drink too much. I told her that. Out of boredom, because that's what people like me do in the places I go—the club, dinner parties, events. She was sorry for me. No, she didn't say so, but I could tell. Anyway, she mentioned that she avoided toxins, which included alcohol. That she'd been tempted to have a glass of champagne on the plane, but knew she'd regret it.”

“And yet she drank an entire bottle of it.”

Lucy shrugged. “So it would seem.”

In the quiet that followed, the sound of the wind and pelting rain filled the room, yet neither woman said anything. Each seemed preoccupied with her own private thoughts. Then Faith spoke, blurting out only a part of what she had been thinking about, impelled by the vivid picture of a life cut off with such finality. Bobbi must have had dreams, plans, dental appointments?

“What would you like to be doing with your life?” Faith asked. “I'm sorry, that's terribly personal. It's just that it can all come to such a sudden end—and you seem…”

“Dissatisfied? Bobbi picked up on it, too. Not all that difficult. What would I like to be doing?” She paused for such a long time that Faith started to get up. It was really none of her business.

“I've raised two wonderful daughters. I'm pretty proud of that. The younger one is off to college this fall. Not Pelham, thank God—NYU. She wants to be a social worker, change the world. Her sister is at Stanford. She wants to change the world, too, but in a different way—visually, films. I suppose I felt the same when I was their age. It's hard to remember. Oh, I know you're going to tell me I'm not all that old and I'm not, but you'll find that life gets in the way of a lot of your memories. But what would I like to do with myself? Write books.” She smiled a little. “I wrote one once.
That
memory is clear.”

“When was this and what was it about?” The day, and perhaps days, stretched far ahead; they were captives of the storm. There was no rush to get back to the others, to do anything now that they had done what they had to do.

“The year after I graduated from Pelham, I was living with Elaine in Manhattan. You may have heard it mentioned last night. Our parents had arranged it all.” The bitterness in her words was unmistakable, Faith noted. “We were both working in publishing houses. I read the slush pile—hoping to discover a genius—made coffee, picked up the senior editors' dry cleaning, and loved every minute of it. After a few weeks of reading, I
decided to try my hand at it. A coming-of-age novel, like most first novels. Holden Caulfield in a skirt. We all wore skirts in those days. Miniskirts.

“I'd written some fiction at Pelham and my professors were very encouraging.
The New Yorker
sent very polite rejection letters, but
Mademoiselle
published one.”

“And then…?”

“And then one day in the early spring, I came home after work to find my mother burning my almost completed manuscript in the bathtub. It was one of those old-fashioned ones with the lion's paw feet—the bathtub, of course. Mother was always very resourceful. She had doused the stack of paper with lighter fluid—everybody smoked then, who knew?—and dropped a match on top. Whoosh—it must have been quite a sight. I came in on the ashes.”

“But why?”

“She didn't like it. She'd read enough to convince herself that it was, as she put it, ‘filth.' I had planned to use a pen name, but she couldn't have known that.”

“How had she known you were writing it at all? Did you tell your family?”

“Not very likely. No, Elaine told her. For my own good, she said. It worried her to think that the book might be published and people would think it was truth disguised as fiction. I believe those were her exact words. You see, some memories don't fade. She said pseudonyms never worked. That people would figure out who the writer was. We moved in a very tightly circumscribed world, it's true. Although I really wouldn't have cared if people knew I had written it.”

This was a wound as sharp and deep as it was on that day so many years ago. Faith put her hand on top of Lucy's.

“What did you do? Move out?”

“What I did was accept a dinner invitation from Ned Stapleton, a friend of my brother's, and get extremely drunk. My daughter, Becky, was born nine months later.”

 

“You can't refuse to walk down the aisle with your father! I don't know what's the matter with you! Naturally, we would like to have more time to plan our only daughter's wedding, but you've taken care of that very nicely. Not that we don't simply adore Ned. Marrying him is the first sensible thing you've done in years.”

“Can't you just shut up, Mother? I could have had an abortion, but besides the fact that it's very hard to find one that's safe, I find I can't do it. And I could have eloped. In fact, I wanted to, but Ned is insistent on having a real wedding with all his Yale buddies getting drunk and trying to screw my bridesmaids. So, let's just get through it as best we can. You can walk down the aisle with Father and me. Plenty of couples do that now, even in your circle. Then after the bouquet is tossed, we can try to see as little of each other as possible.”

It had all happened as she had foreseen, except for the amount of contact. Ned turned out to be a traditionalist when it came to family, and weary with one, then two lively babies, she gave in, watching her father and his father carve turkeys in alternate years and
her mother and his mother hand out gifts before Christmas dinner. Her parents were gone now and only Ned had cried at their funerals. She suspected the tears in his eyes were produced by terror, the realization that death was a tier closer, but it was just one of the many things they never discussed. And here she was telling this woman she barely knew, things she hadn't told anyone else. Ever.

 

“So, what did you do with the copy?”

“How did you know?”

Faith smiled. “Writers are an obsessive bunch. They always keep copies. Was it in the freezer?”

“No, at work, filed under
M
for
mine
.”

“There's more, isn't there?”

“Are you sure you're just a caterer? Not a psychic—or a witch?”

“I'm sure, but I can usually tell when someone's keeping something back.”

“Handy skill,” Lucy said. “Yes, there's more. Elaine's first book was published the year after I was married—under her pen name, but I knew right away who had written it. She had adopted my style, even some of my characters, and a whole lot of the plot.”

“Essentially your entire book?”

“Essentially, but not actionably. She'd added suspense, a woman in peril, cutting out all the coming-of-age stuff. And it was sexier, much sexier.

“I had read parts out loud to her when I was working on it and she'd ask me why I had written something a certain way, discuss character, and so forth. I was her Iowa Writers Workshop. She hadn't even majored in
English. History, which came in handy for her historical fiction. Oh, she's talented. Very talented.”

“But so were you.”

Lucy got up. “Damned straight.”

It was time to leave.

“You go on up and let them know that we're done. I'll be along soon. I wonder if anyone will want lunch?” Faith said. She wanted a closer look at something—and she wanted to take it alone.

“I can't imagine ever being hungry again, but that's just me. I'll ask. You don't have to tell me what you're going to do, what you're looking for, but look hard. Bobbi never drank that champagne.” And after giving Faith a swift hug, she left.

Faith changed back into the clothes she'd been wearing, leaving her shoes at the door, then returned to the Jacuzzi and got down on her hands and knees. There wasn't much, but it was definitely dirt. A few specks of dark, rich loam at the rim. Carefully she paced the whole room looking for more. There was another bit in the grout of the floor tiles directly in front of one of the French doors that led to the patio. She found the third deposit on the doorsill. Bobbi Dolan hadn't been wearing shoes. Her nightclothes had been tossed onto a low table near the Jacuzzi, her slippers, Chinese brocade like the ones Faith had seen in every Chinatown she'd visited, were neatly placed underneath. The soles were worn, but there was no trace of soil on them. Faith regarded the virtually undetectable dark flecks. The three fell in a straight line to the door. She went and looked out. It was impossible to see anything until she found the switches that controlled the patio lights, in
stantly bringing the wild scene to life. Some of the furniture had been blown against the house and several planters had toppled. The tall meadow grasses were blowing horizontally. Faith thought of Lucy's words and looked hard. It was as difficult to see as the dirt had been, but there was a section of the grass that appeared more flat than the rest—as if something, or someone, had been dragged along on top of it. She wanted to go out and investigate, but not without the proper gear. And what was she looking for? All she had to go on was a little loam. Loam—the kind favored by gardeners.

Back upstairs only the college president was in the kitchen, washing out the coffeepot.

“Please leave that; I'll do it,” Faith said, reminded of her official reason for being on Bishop's Island.