The Clairvoyants(49)

20




On the car ride back from Mrs. Swindal’s, the journals sat on the backseat between Alice and me. From above, the car might have looked like a slash of red against the black asphalt, the white, snow-covered hills, the trees’ crosshatched branches a complicated nest. William would have found the trailer on one of his explorations—another abandoned place to have sex. The trailer might have been their own little place, like a playhouse. Despite what evidence I had that William and Mary Rae had been together in the trailer, it didn’t mean that he was the mysterious man she’d been seeing at the time of her death. He wouldn’t have told anyone about the trailer, for fear of implicating himself. I couldn’t be jealous of a dead girl, but for some reason I was, and I wanted, more than anything, to see what the journals held.

“Anne wants them,” Alice said, when I suggested we take a look, but I knew, from her expression, that she would give anything to go through them herself.

“Let’s go to Del’s place first,” I said. “We can get something to eat, and you can tell Anne it got late, and you’ll bring them by Windy Hill tomorrow.”

Del turned to smile at me from the front. She punched Randy in the shoulder.

“You heard her,” she said.

To keep themselves in Anne’s good standing, they would say it was my idea.

We stopped at the Korean place in Collegetown, the front window steamed up, the interior nearly empty—everyone was away on break. We brought the food back to Del’s. I’d tried to call William, but his phone had gone to voice mail, and I left a message. I assumed our married life would simply be a continuation of what we’d had before, and if he wanted to talk to me he’d call me back.

Del’s apartment was neat and spare. On one wall were shelved books: volumes of classic works in the original Greek and Latin that the professor had collected and her own translations. There were two wing chairs, their upholstery worn. The lamps were old-fashioned, with large silk shades and alabaster bases shaped like pitchers. Assorted pillows—beaded and tapestried, plaid and paisley—decorated the couch. Randy sat at the small bar in the kitchen and ate from the cartons. Del, Alice, and I settled on the carpet under the lamplight with plates of food, the journals spread out on the floor between us.

“Anne will be mad,” Alice said.

“Why does she care?” I said. “Why would she even want them?”

Del had set her plate to the side and was thumbing through a journal with a cover of a seascape. “She must suspect there’s something in here she doesn’t want anyone to see,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

I spun the ring on my finger. It felt odd to be wearing it. “You mean about William,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said it out loud.

Alice had taken a mouthful of food. “God, no,” she said. “Why do you think that?”

“How many entries will we find in here about Billy?” I asked her.

Alice wiped her mouth. “Rae was obsessed with him. You’ll find a lot, I’m sure. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It doesn’t mean he was the guy she was seeing?” I said.

“He broke it off with her and that was that.”

Alice’s voice was hoarse from all her crying, like the keening women on the tapes in my Women and Grief course. Alice put her hand over her mouth as if to stifle a gasp. Her hair was an unruly mop of curls she’d fastened up. She wore a Syracuse University sweatshirt, a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants.

“He broke her heart,” she said. “She hated him. She would never have had anything to do with him.”

Del looked at me a little sadly. The Milton girls weren’t jealous of me at all. In their show of support for Mary Rae they hated William, too. If they had indeed been a coven, they would have summoned spells to bring him grief.

“He’s nice at first,” Alice said, as if this excused my stupidity for getting involved with him. “But he changes, you know?”

Randy came over and stretched out on the couch with a sigh. He looked over at us sitting on the rug, then pulled a throw pillow over his face. “I’m really going to sleep this time,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say to Alice. Del continued to thumb through the journal. The room was cold, as usual. The elm threw its shadowy form on the window, a reminder that Mary Rae might be there beneath it, the snow piling up on her coat’s shoulders. I wished I could invite her inside to set us all straight.

“Maybe you’re the one he was looking for all along,” Alice said, softly. “Maybe he’ll be different.” She pointed to the ring on my finger. “But he tried to get her to marry him, too.”

I was suddenly angry, and I stood. “I can’t believe I even care what’s in these things,” I said.

Del clutched the journal to her chest and pulled her knees up. “Martha, stop,” she said.

“You might not know as much as you think you do about her,” I said. “She might not even have liked you very much.”

Alice paled. She set her plate aside. “How can you say that to me?”

“She hated everything about that horrible town,” I said. “She dreaded ending up like all of you.”

Alice looked confused. “What’s she talking about?” she said to Del.