The Clairvoyants(71)

The waitress eyed us, a teenager who probably had plans that night after work—a date with her boyfriend at the bowling alley down the street. They might kiss in the car for a long time after. She might not be able to foresee her life without him. We ordered sundaes and coffee. We watched her put on her coat and go home, and a new waitress take her place, an older woman with gray hair and ropy veins in her hands. When the waitress brought our bill, I discovered that neither Del nor I had any money with us.

I told Del I’d check William’s wallet. I felt full, and warm, the grease coating my tongue. I slid out of the booth and went out to the car. I leaned into the backseat where Del had tossed William’s bag and unzipped it. On top was the Leica. He was rarely without it—it was always on its strap around his neck. I lifted it and the back fell open, and the film spilled out. It was all that was left of him. The cold was awful, and despite everything I didn’t want to imagine him trapped in the asylum for the night. I stuffed the camera back into the bag and quickly dug out his wallet. And then I remembered the other roll of film—the first one he’d shot, and taken out of the camera, and placed in his coat pocket. It was too late to go back, to find him and retrieve it. Once he was found the film would be found and developed, and they would see the images. And maybe he’d gotten a shot of me.

My hands were numb, but I managed to take some bills. Del sat in the booth, watching me through the restaurant window, and I closed the car door and returned to pay the bill. I couldn’t tell her, not when she believed we were safe.

We got directions home from a patron sitting in a booth by the door. We were over an hour away, and I told Del I’d drive. For that length of time we traveled in silence. Del fell asleep, her head against the window. At our house we parked in the street and climbed slowly from the car and entered the vestibule. The first night William came, when I kissed him, we believed things about each other that were never true enough. His beaver-skin hat still hung on the peg where he’d left it. I thought of him slipping into Del’s apartment. Had he been looking for the portfolio? I felt another rush of panic at the thought of having left him behind. And of the roll of film in his pocket.

Del reminded me, in this moment, of our mother—steadfast, stoic. She put her key in her apartment door and swung the door open. The faint scent of incense, of last night’s meal, wafted out. Then she stepped inside and closed the door. The lock turned, as if she were barricading herself against me.

After we’d hidden David Pinney’s body, the threesomes and foursomes continued to play the ninth hole, hitting their drives, their putts, getting caught in the rough. None of their monogramed balls ventured near the stand of willows. Our friends continued to swim at the pool afternoons, but Del refused. She’d gone out once and been confronted by the stray dog—its dark shape darting out from beneath the privet hedge. From then on she told our mother she wanted to stay inside. Some days I was able to stay inside as well without drawing suspicion, but more often than not I was the one who had to pretend that nothing was wrong. One day at the pool Jane Roberts asked me where that boy was.

“What boy?” I said. I felt a buzzing, flickering faintness.

“The one you said you liked.” she said.

She had on another boy’s aviator sunglasses and lounged on her towel in the grass. I told her I didn’t know where he was. “I don’t even know his name,” I said. I laughed at my own carelessness, and she laughed along with me. I pretended I was interested in another boy at the pool, and I flirted with him, and we went out to the movies with Jane and Paul Grant. I tried not to think about David Pinney under the willow. It was the animal control people, called by my mother’s report of the stray dog, who found his body. His photograph was in the newspaper, but I barely looked at it. He had on a suit and tie, the photograph taken on the occasion of his sister’s wedding.

A variety of local boys were initially questioned as suspects, though none confessed and nothing tied any of them to the crime. Everyone believed he’d been the victim of a crazed drifter, someone from beyond the neighborhood, summoning a picture of a man riding the rails into town, slipping from an open car under cover of darkness to do his evil deed. His family’s ties to the Spiritualists by the Sea darkened the camp’s reputation further, and for a while people wanted to shut the temple down. But eventually, a sort of hush settled over the tragedy, though the case, still led by Detective Thomson, remained open.

On the stair landing I considered confessing everything to Geoff. He’d call the authorities and have the asylum searched, William’s body found. We could tell the truth about the accident, and trust that no one would ask about the teenage boy found dead near our family’s property in Connecticut. But Detective Thomson would know—he’d follow up. He’d come talk to me, to Del. I was too tired to play games with Detective Thomson.

Was David Pinney a friend of yours?

No.

Not a friend?

Not really.

What about your sister, Delores?

No.

But he was often here, at the pool?

Sometimes.

He was a good-looking boy, wasn’t he? Did any of the girls have crushes on him?

Not that I know.

But you noticed him, didn’t you?

I noticed he was sometimes here, if that’s what you mean.

I put Geoff’s car keys under the mat, and I stood outside the door to my apartment, wondering if William, or some version of him, would be waiting for me in the duck-carved chair. I was afraid of his being there, of what that would mean. The dead had appeared to me with their awful longing, their torment at being separated from their loved ones plain in their expressions. I was afraid to see that look in William’s face, to know that I’d made a terrible mistake. The room was dark. I turned on a lamp. The light cast a round shape on the floor. The place was empty and cold. And that night I was glad for it.