The Singing Bone (24 page)

“Did the police look for her?”

“Not for very long. It's not like a case where you have a pretty college girl missing and it's all over the news. It was the seventies. My sister just disappeared. No one but the family seemed to care. We tried to find her.” She picks at the edge of a placemat. Hans can hear anger in her voice, betrayal, but mostly he can hear sorrow. “She'd been into drugs. The police said—” Hans can guess. It would have been an easy conclusion to come to.

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I think Jack Wyck killed her. Or Lee Frank. Or both of them.” She wraps both hands around her coffee cup and looks down. The black line of her hair falls across her face, and then she looks up at him, her eyes wide. “Jack filled her head up with crazy ideas. Allegra was a sweet girl, but there was something—” Sophia taps her head. “Now that I'm older I can see. She had some problems. People take advantage of that. My mother, when she was at the end, she kept asking for Allegra. Allegra, she was the baby.”

“Did she say where she was going the day she left?”

Sophia shakes her head. “Sometimes I try to think that she's still alive. That she just doesn't want to be found. Maybe something scared her or she needed to start over. I like to think she went back out to California and she's there doing her yoga somewhere. That she's happy. That she had her baby.”

“Her baby?” Hans says. Ariel looks up from behind the camera at Sophia.

“I guess I didn't tell you—” Sophia smiles. “Allegra was pregnant. That's why she left. Jack didn't want any babies. She told me that.”

“Was the baby his?” Ariel asks, but Sophia shrugs.

“She didn't know. She guessed it was his or the other one—”

“Lee?”

“No. Not him. The other one. The young one—Jason.”

“Jason Stover.”

“Yes. She said it might be Jack's, but it was probably Jason's baby.”

Big John's mother's house was small with low ceilings and wooden floors. It was rustic compared to the Smiths', but clean and proper compared to Mr. Wyck's. The first time they went, Alice, Molly, and Trina arrived early to make sure everything was in order. Even though it was cold, they opened the windows and let the air in. Trina swept the floors and dusted the furniture, and Alice lit a fire. It was October—a cold, gray day. By Halloween, all of the leaves would be off the trees. When Alice was finished with the fire, she and Molly pulled things aside that she gauged none of them would read or want. She swept colorful china figurines into boxes. Even when Allegra changed into the tiny corduroy dress she wore to see the Smiths, Alice could not imagine her choosing such a thing to set on a windowsill or a side table. There was nothing they could do about the faded, floral couch and chairs. The bright woven rugs were fine, and the wooden table in the dining room didn't bring any questions to mind, though Alice did remove the plastic flowers at the center of the table and put them into the box with the figurines and the doilies.

Trina went outside and stood with one hand on her hip, smoking. Alice opened the screen door. “What's Big John's mother's name?”

“Ah,” Trina said, looking up at the trees. “Virginia.”

“Virginia liked figurines.” Alice came outside and stood next to Trina. An old swing set—the kind the Malloys had in their backyard—sat at an awkward angle at the edge of the yard. It was covered with leaves and missing the center swing.

“Everyone needs a hobby.”

“Can you imagine Big John in a swing set?” Alice laughed.

“No, but maybe Big John is what happened to the missing swing.” Trina threw her cigarette on the ground and crushed it out. “Let's go in. I'm freezing. Where's Molls?”

“She's upstairs looking for warm clothes.”

Inside, they kept their winter jackets on over their summer dresses. Allegra had told them to check to see if there were some warm clothes in the house, and if not, she gave them each twenty dollars to buy something. “And don't buy some cheap fake leather thing,” she told them. “Buy something that looks nice. Something the Smiths can see you in.”

Alice and Trina found Molly on her hands and knees, pulling boxes out of the closet. “We should keep the money Allegra gave us and tell her we had to buy something,” Trina said, examining a pleated woolen skirt and then pulling it on over her dress. ”What do you think?” she said. The skirt hung unevenly on Trina's hips.

“Have you lost weight?” Molly asked.

“I don't know. You have,” Trina replied.

Molly looked down at herself. “Have I, Alice?”

“Maybe a little. Maybe we all have. We don't eat meat anymore.” Virginia's bedroom held two neatly made single beds complete with dust ruffles and throw pillows. A Bible and a pair of reading glasses sat on a table next to the bed. Alice sat down in a rocking chair and as she leaned back, she began to laugh.

“What?” Molly said.

“I'm trying to imagine this as Mr. Wyck's room.”

“It actually reminds me of my parents' room,” Trina said.

“We couldn't all fit in here,” Molly said. “We'd have to move the beds together. Do people still wear these?” She had found a pair of striped denim bell-bottoms and pulled them on.

“I think you mean do people
our age
still wear these?” Trina said. “Doubtful.”

“Give me that skirt,” Molly said. “I'm going to take the waist in for you. I saw a sewing machine in the next room.” Trina pulled the skirt off and handed it to Molly. “Alice?”

“I'm cool,” Alice said. She'd found a sweater dress in the closet, a belt, and a pair of stockings. She kept one hand over the clothes as she rocked in the chair. “What about shoes?” Alice said to Trina.

“Where are we going?” Trina smiled. “We're supposed to be at home, remember? You don't have to put shoes on.”

“True.”

“What did Mr. Wyck tell the Smiths about you two?”

“Just that we decided to stay on for the school year. Our parents are getting divorced.”

“That's so sad,” Trina said, laughing. “Is it a bad divorce?”

“Horrible. Molls and me are completely destroyed.”

“I bet your dad cheated on your mom.”

“Wouldn't you?” Alice pictured her mother in Virginia's room, reading the Bible or watching the small black-and-white television set before she drifted off to sleep. “Big John's mother seems so normal,” Alice said. “Where did Big John come from?”

“Where did
I
come from?” Trina said. “Seriously, though, Alice. There's so much to remember,” She said. “Where are we supposed to be in school?”

“Hamilton.”

“Right. I know a girl who went there. I can remember that.” Trina lay down on the bed. “It smells musty in here,” she said. Alice got up from the rocking chair and opened the window. “Alice,” Trina said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you believe it?”

“Believe what?”

“That Mr. Wyck really has someone inside. That Robert is still alive.”

“Of course,” Alice said simply. “Why would Mr. Wyck lie about that?”

“Because we lie about everything else maybe?”

“But that's different. That's because they won't understand the way we live.”

“True.” Trina closed her eyes. “But if it were a lie, it would be really bad. I mean, really.”

Alice rocked in her chair and looked out the window. The sewing machine hummed in the next room. “I feel like I haven't slept in days,” she said.

“Because we haven't, not really.”

Alice closed her eyes, and the orange of the autumn sun coming through the window burned brightly behind her lids. Mr. Wyck wasn't a liar. Alice knew that. He lied about the small things so he could make the big things happen. She pictured Robert Smith—but not the Robert Smith of the framed pictures—not Robert Smith with his football or Robert Smith at his school formal. This Robert Smith was gaunt and passive; he was alone in a cold cell, isolated. Snow piled up outside of a small barred window where beyond the icy flat land stretched interminably away into nothingness. At night, when the sun burned down below the horizon, there was nothing: no light, no warmth, just the cold, black air and the scurry of rats—maybe the howl of wolves in the distance. But suddenly the door to Robert's cell swung open and there stood a man, a silhouette framed in almost unbearably brilliant light. It was Mr. Wyck! He reached out a hand to Robert, who was all bones and dressed in dirty rags. Mr. Wyck took Robert's hand in his and led him out of the cell, to warmth, to safety, and into the healing light.

Stuart and his friend Howie were hitting tennis balls against the low brick wall of the elementary school. Stuart was bored, so he hit one ball after the next onto the school's roof. When they were all gone, he stood looking up at the sky. Howie came over and stood next to him. “What are you looking at?”

Stu nodded towards the roof, his arms folded. “I hit all the balls onto the roof.”

Howie's flushed face grew rosier. “What'd you do that for?”

“Because I felt like it,” Stu said, still looking up at the sky.

Howie threw his racket on the ground. “Dickwad. How are we supposed to play now?”

Stu puffed out his chest and turned to face Howie. “All right, then. I'm going home.” Howie was taller than Stu. Everyone was taller than Stu.

“Thanks a lot, dickface. I only have one left.” He held it close to Stu's face, and then he turned and went back to hitting the ball against the wall.

The hollow echo of Howie's tennis ball hitting the wall followed Stu across the playground, where he stopped and got a drink at the water fountain. The sound dissipated as he walked the five short blocks home. When Stu got to his yard, he threw his tennis racket into the bushes and kept going. When he reached the end of his street, he cut through the woods and began the long walk to the other side of the reservoir.

After a while, he got to the familiar clearing where bees had hummed all summer in the stunted apple trees. The clearing smelled good, like cider. The smell always reminded him of playing in his grandparents' basement. He stood behind a tree, waiting, looking at the tall gray farmhouse. It didn't seem like anyone was home. The white VW bus was not in the yard. He scanned the house's dark windows and the row of trees on the other side. If Mr. Wyck was at home, Stuart might see Molly and the beautiful Alice Pearson on the porch. They sat there a lot, smoking cigarettes and listening to a red transistor radio. Sometimes, they tied colorful strands of thread to the porch railing and wove the same kind of bracelets Stu had seen the girls at school wearing, or they sat cross-legged in front of Trina, who laid cards out in elaborate patterns in front of them. They were so quiet that he could never hear what they were saying. Sometimes Mr. Wyck came out to join them, leaning against a railing, shirtless, and they all looked up at him, smiling. On hot days, they put the sprinkler on and ran through it. Stu thought he might see them doing that today, but the yard was empty.

He began to creep closer, dodging behind the apple trees as he went. Every night, behind his parents' bedroom door, Stu could hear his mother crying against the low calming hum of his father's voice. In the morning, his parents looked tired. Since Molly left in May, Stu's comings and goings weren't marked. When he got home at night, dinner wasn't ready. He sat in the den watching TV until he got hungry and then he put a frozen pizza in the toaster oven or ate a bowl of cereal. His mother's clothes hung limply on her shoulders, and his father's pants grew baggy at his waist.

Every morning, all summer long, the window air conditioner in the living room roared into action when Stu's mother sat down with her coffee next to the telephone. She dialed the police station. It didn't matter that they said they'd done all they could do—Molly was eighteen, after all. “But she's just a little girl,” Mrs. Malloy said. “You've got to do something.” With shaking fingers, she plucked one of the skinny cigarettes she had started smoking again out of the pack. “This man, Jack Wyck. Who is he? I think the girls are in danger.” When she got nowhere with the police, she dialed Jason Stover's mother and then his father. After a summer of frantic communication, they were the only parents who would still answer her phone calls.

At first, when Molly started coming home for Sunday dinners, everyone was relieved, but something wasn't right. It was like a new Molly playing the old Molly. She didn't laugh as much, and when Stu brought her to his room to show her the 45s he'd picked out at the record store that weekend, she leaned against the doorframe, her arms folded, her expression blank. She rubbed her eyes. “I'm sorry, Stu,” she said. “This is incredibly boring. I have to go now.” And she turned around and headed downstairs and he heard her call out once to their parents and then the door shut. He went to the window and watched the white van pull away.

His mother and Mrs. Stover had the same conversation every morning: “Any news?” was following by a long silence, and then, “Were you able to get any information on the woman who's living there?” “All right.” “Yes, I called the police again.” “No, no, they won't do anything more. They've already been out there.”

When he reached the edge of the orchard, Stu ran to the house and pressed his back to the clapboard as he'd seen men do in movies. He wished he could bug the house and listen from the shade of the trees, like Harry Cole would do in
The Conversation
, but he didn't know how. He asked for a tape recorder for his birthday, but everyone would see it if he put it out, and he'd really have to be standing there to get something good. The tape recorder made a slight whisking sound when it recorded, like the distant bumping of a wave against the shore.