Little Girls(56)

“Thank you.”

“I mean it. Don’t forget that. Don’t lose sight of it and run off chasing things that aren’t there.”

She believed him. There had been a time recently in their marriage when Ted had grown distant and incommunicative, spending more hours than necessary working outside the house. She knew he had been unfulfilled in his career, overly stressed about what the future held for him and his writing, so she had allowed him to remain for a time in his self-pitying cocoon. During this period she wondered if he would ever return to her, the man she had married, or if his emotional distancing signaled the eventuality of divorce. But he was here now, and she found that she trusted him.





After dinner, they walked down Main Street, peering in at the crowded bars and watching middle-aged couples stroll up and down the cobblestones. Midshipmen in their starched whites flocked together outside bars, their faces impossibly young, square, hairless. Down along the water, boats clanged in their moorings. People in shorts and crewneck shirts lounged on the decks of large yachts, their radios tuned low while their conversations were lively and inebriated. Ted laughed and waved to a boat deck of young men and women passing around a bottle of tequila, and some of the women and one of the men waved back.

There was a cigar shop with a wooden Indian on the curb across the street from the outdoor restaurant where they had eaten the day after visiting David Cushing’s office. Ted squeezed Laurie around the waist and said he had the strange urge to buy a cigar.

“Go on,” she told him.

Like an excited child, he scampered across the cobblestone street and disappeared into the small smoke shop. A young woman in spandex running gear paused beside the wooden Indian to let her Pomeranian lap water from a great silver bowl someone had set out for just such a purpose. Laurie smiled to herself.

She turned and found herself facing the neon handprint in the window of the palmist’s reading room. She recalled Susan running up to the glass on their previous trek downtown together, touching her small hand to the lighted one, and saying, Ooh. It’s warm.

There were memories—distant ones—of coming down here as a young child with her parents. She could recall these memories only in brief snapshots. One particular memory had her family framed along the bulkhead that overlooked the inlet. It was around Christmastime and the parade of boats came down the inlet, one by one, their masts spiraled with colored lights, their bows decked out with small decorated pine trees and holly wreaths hanging where the life preserver should have been. Some of the boats had small speakers affixed to the tops of the masts where tinny Christmas music would trickle out and echo across the inlet and out into the Chesapeake Bay.

It could have been someone else’s memory for all it mattered now.

“Curious what the future holds?” Ted said, coming up behind her. He had an unlit cigar in his mouth. She thought he looked ridiculous.

“What?”

“Palm readings.” Just as Susan had done, he placed his palm against the neon hand behind the glass. “It’s warm,” he said.





Laurie was silent for much of the car ride back to the house. Ted smoked his cigar with the windows down, the smell of the smoke making Laurie woozy. It reminded her of the way her father’s clothes had smelled, and how the closets in the house still smelled. With some disillusionment, she wondered if she were trapped in some time warp, where things reflected other things, and new people took on the personifications of old ones.

After they pulled into the driveway, Ted turned off the ignition and squeezed her left knee. “I had a nice time tonight. I’m glad we went out. We both needed it.”

She hugged herself and stared out the passenger window. It was fully dark now. The trees were black pikes rising out of the earth.

“What?” he said. “What is it? Are you cold?”

“I’m not cold.”

“Then tell me. We had a good time, didn’t we? What is it, Laurie?”

She remained silent.

“Please,” he insisted.

“There’s something you don’t know,” she said. “Something I’ve never told you. I never thought I would, to be honest, because I never thought I would have to. But I’m back in that house now, and . . . well, maybe it’ll help you understand what’s been bothering me lately.”

“Jesus, babe, what is it?”

“When I was a little girl living in that house, I was friends with the girl who lived next door. Her name was Sadie Russ. We were friends at first, but as we got older, she started to . . . I guess . . . change. Out of nowhere she would have these fits. Tantrums. She would scream and pull at her hair. A few times when this happened and I was there, she would rush at me, hit and pinch me, or try to knock me down. She would always apologize later, but she started to scare me. We were just little girls. I tried not to play with her after a while, but she would always come to the house calling for me, and my folks would always let her in.

“Then she got worse. She would still hit me and pinch me . . . but then she would laugh, like it was all a big joke. She stopped apologizing. Sometimes she would go down to the water and catch frogs, and squeeze them to death. Or she would catch minnows in a net, then smash them on the rocks. Once, she took one right out of the net and bit it in two. Blood spurted down her chin.”

“Jesus Christ, hon.”