On Turpentine Lane(60)
“Did they tell you not to buy it? That it’s a deathtrap?”
“Not before the closing . . .”
“I lost three husbands there. One from pneumonia. And the other two . . . they had accidents.”
I expressed my insincere condolences then asked the nature of the accidents.
“They fell.”
“By any chance, down the cellar stairs?”
“I didn’t push them,” she announced. “But God works in mysterious ways.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t believe in divorce. Then they died. Things happen. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Do you mean that you did take matters into your own hands?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Raymond had pneumonia. He was my daughter’s father. He died in that house.” She looked down to the wheelchair’s footrest. “They make us wear sneakers,” she said. “They think we won’t slip and break a hip.”
“Then you remarried, I understand.”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you were widowed two more times. You told me that yourself just now.”
“Mistakes, both of them.”
“The accidents, you mean?”
“No. Getting married to people I didn’t know very long.”
“And when you got to know them, you weren’t happy?”
“They wanted to go to bed with me,” she said.
I heard a snicker from Ruthie’s side of the room. I said, “But isn’t that what all husbands want?”
“I told them when we married there would be none of that.”
Oh, dear. What now? “Did they both die falling down the stairs?” I asked.
“Sure. They were very steep. The second one went to the hospital.”
“And died there?”
Her expression did not convey Tragically, yes, but quite clearly Took him long enough.
Keep in mind I am hearing this from a ninety-plus-year-old woman wearing a tweed suit and crepe de chine blouse. I had not come to play detective about the conjugal, marital aspect of her criminal past. I’d brought with me both photographs of her possible twin baby daughters. Having hit her in a confessional mode, I took the Polaroids from my pocketbook. “Who are these babies?” I asked.
She reached for the photos, but I held on to them. “No, just look,” I said.
After hardly a glance, she said, “I don’t know.”
“Is it possible these are your babies? Did you give birth to twins in December of 1956?”
“I don’t know. Did I?”
“I think you did. And I think their father might have been . . . well, now we say person of color, but back then, maybe you’d have referred to him as colored.”
“Oh,” she said. And stopped there. She turned her face rather resolutely toward the window.
“I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with that . . .”
The overhead TV went silent. I said, “These pictures were taken in your kitchen. I recognize the counter. Possibly you had these twins, and for some good reason, maybe you were under pressure, social pressure, and possibly between husbands at the time, you gave them up for adoption.”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t give my own flesh and blood away.”
Ruthie called over. “She visits.”
I stood and stuck my head through an opening in the dividing curtain. “Who visits her?”
“The colored girl.”
I returned to my chair, and asked, “Did you hear what Ruthie said? Colored girl? Who is she?”
“My friend.”
“Really? What’s her name?”
“How do I know?”
“You said she was your friend.”
Ruthie called over. “Jeannette.”
“Jeannette?” I asked Mrs. Lavoie.
“If she says so.”
“Does the other one have a name?”
“There’s only one.”
I asked Mrs. Lavoie again, “Did you have twins you gave up for adoption?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I just need to know they didn’t die under my roof.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” she said, “especially not them.”
I asked Ruthie if this Jeannette might be around sixty years old.
“That sounds right. She takes the bus here.”
“Is the girl who visits you one of the twins?” I persisted.
Still nothing.
I said, “Tell me what you did with the twins, and I’ll leave.”
“Someone else wanted them,” she said.
“Who?”
“His mother.”
“Whose mother?”
“Joseph’s.”
“Was Joseph the babies’ father?”
No answer.
I said, “Is Joseph still alive?”
She shook her head.
“What did he look like?”
A sudden smile. “Handsome.”
“Handsome like . . . Clark Gable? Gregory Peck? JFK?”
“No. Not them.”
“Like who?”