On Turpentine Lane(67)

“Lust of the unwanted variety?” I whispered.

“As a matter of fact, it was. She seduced him.”

Oh, God. Could I even picture tweedy, twinsetted Anna Lavoie as a lusty young woman?

Nick said, “Well, this is interesting.”

“He was very handsome—a handsome, strapping man. She pursued him. She made suggestive comments every time he entered the room. And one day, one night actually, she had her way with him. She was the seducer! This was the 1950s. He would not have crossed that line.”

Why pussyfoot around now? There would be no winning her over, no softening of the woman who’d turned her own mother over to the police. “How did you know who seduced whom?” I asked.

“How did I know? I knew because Anna Lavoie, when I finally met her, bragged about it.”

A thought alien to everything I’d observed about Mrs. Lavoie entered my head—that she did have at least one kind bone in her body—and made me ask, “Is it possible that she didn’t want to speak ill of your father, to paint him as the aggressor, so she took the blame?”

“No! She relished the telling! She loved presenting her younger self as fast and loose! It was very clear. She was proud of being a hussy!”

“Where did all of this take place?” Nick asked.

“She had an office in the Manning Building on Castle Street.”

“Doing what kind of work?” Nick asked.

“She kept the books for a few small companies. Today you’d call her a freelance bookkeeper.”

“And your father had an office there, too?” I asked.

“No. He cleaned them.”

I must have looked disappointed because Nick said, “Faith was hoping you’d say Mrs. Lavoie worked at the next desk or did the books for his company.”

“He could’ve been an accountant! In today’s world he’d have owned his own business, and it would’ve had its own bookkeeper.”

“And that night, that one encounter . . . left her pregnant?”

“I can’t say.”

“Because?”

“Because she implied that there were many occasions.”

“You’d think he’d have reported her,” I said. “Tell his boss that he couldn’t clean a certain office because the tenant sexually harassed him.”

“Who’d believe that? Are you aware of history? And this was before sexual harassment had a name.”

Nick said, “You must’ve gotten to know your father pretty well if you heard the backstory.”

“I saw him once in a blue moon.”

“Even though you were living with his mother?” Nick asked.

“He was married,” she said. “And his wife wasn’t someone to put up with any foolishness.”

“Didn’t his wife wonder why her mother-in-law was raising twins?” I asked.

“And one of them was named Josephine?” said Nick.

“She’d fostered children before us. It didn’t raise any eyebrows.”

The waiter was back with our drinks. What to toast fifteen minutes into an awkward, sullen conversation? “Cheers,” said Nick.

Frowning, Mrs. Pepperdine joined in our clinking of glasses.

What now? Nick helped out with “Your grandmother couldn’t have been a big fan of Mrs. Lavoie’s.”

“She hated her; well, hated the idea of her. And was afraid she’d come collect us—which was hardly realistic. Could anyone have been more selfish? Letting two babies be wards of the state? ‘It was easier,’ she told me! Easier than what? Signing adoption papers?”

I asked how old she and her sister were when their grandmother died.

“Fourteen! And unfortunately, we were big strong girls, and we looked it.”

“Unfortunately?” I asked.

“Both of us went to families who needed help. Josie to a family with a bunch of kids, and I was sent to a cucumber farmer in Hatfield.”

“He grew only cucumbers?” Nick asked.

“For pickles. To pickle companies. The whole crop, except what he sold at his farm stand.”

I sat not so patiently through their discussion of what size cucumbers became what pickles. Half sour, full sour, Kosher dill, gherkins, bread and butter. I tried to signal to Nick Who gives a fuck?

Our soup and salads came. We ate and made small talk that provided a break from my interrogation, learning she had one grandchild and one on the way. Though he’d never smoked, Mr. Pepperdine had died of lung cancer. She moved to her current apartment six months after his passing against the advice of the bossy friends who said she shouldn’t make any changes for a year.

When the appetizer dishes were cleared, I asked if she’d ever been to 10 Turpentine.

She said, “No, why would I?” adding, “If only those walls could talk.”

To ask or not to ask? I did. I plunged in with “How did you know that two of Mrs. Lavoie’s three husbands died in tumbles down the cellar steps?”

“She told me she was very unlucky in the marriage department. I asked if they’d carried life insurance. She had the nerve to smile.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” I said.

Nick asked, “Did Faith tell you that Mrs. Lavoie is in jail for attempted murder, for an entirely new crime?”