What You Don't Know(101)

GLORIA

She turns on the shower, waiting for the hot water to make it through the pipes, and looks at her naked body in the mirror. She’ll turn fifty-six next year—not bad, a goodish age. Not old enough to be out of her mind, but still old enough. Her breasts were the first to go—they went from high and firm to loose bags of flesh hanging from her chest, and she could’ve had plastic surgery, had them fixed for all eternity; they’d had plenty of money for that, but she didn’t. She didn’t like the idea of going under the knife, so instead she bought bras and creams and cure-alls, although nothing worked the way it was supposed to. And her stomach was always so flat, nearly concave, but is now a pooch that rounds out uncomfortably even though she’s never given birth to any babies, never been overweight. But that’s getting old, she thinks. Her eyes are bad, her lips lined. She’s spent thousands of dollars to make herself look better, but for what? None of that matters. She looks in the mirror and sees only herself.

Today’s reflection is different from usual, though. The sensitive spot of flesh below her nose is swollen from where the Jacky-boy had clamped his hand over her mouth, and there’s a bruise rising on her left cheekbone, but it’s not much, nothing that couldn’t be covered with makeup. All it took was a dab of concealer and she was good; the detectives who’d had so many questions about Chris Weber for so long had never even mentioned it. But that was men for you—they only saw what they wanted to see, they overlooked the little things. Like the bruises on her face, and the way she’d moved, slowly and carefully, favoring her right hip, because she was sore and tired—some of it was from what the boy had done to her, but most of it was because of the cleaning she’d done after he’d left. Oh, it would’ve been easy enough to leave Chris Weber on the floor where he’d fallen; she could’ve called the police and told them exactly what happened, they would’ve had to believe her, all they’d have to do is examine her and they’d know she was telling the truth. But she hates the police, hates the way they treat her when they realize who she is, so before she put much thought into it she was taking care of the problem herself, the way she always has. She dug Weber’s keys from his pocket and pulled his car into the garage, careful that the door had shut all the way before rolling him onto an old comforter and tugging it through the house. It took her three hours to move him thirty feet, she almost quit a dozen times, but the thought of having a corpse in the house with her was so revolting that she couldn’t bring herself to stop. Besides, it was too late to call the police—they’d want to know what she was doing with the body, why she was moving it. So she dragged him out, wadding the blanket up in her hands and pulling, wincing when the back of his skull cracked against the steps leading down into the garage, but she finally managed to bundle him into the backseat, and even though her back was twinging painfully and she’d never been more exhausted in her life, she cleaned up. Threw the comforter into the washing machine and got out her cleaning supplies and wiped up the blood—there wasn’t all that much of it, except in the spot where Weber had fallen to the ground, and she was still able to get most of it up off the hardwood, except the faintest maroon shadow, and that could’ve been mistaken for a red wine stain, but she still scooted the rug over it. Of course, if the police decided to run their tests on her floors they’d know the truth in a second—she was a good housekeeper, but not that good. Then she pulled Weber’s car out of the garage, planning to drive it across town and abandon it in some parking lot, or on an old dirt road, but instead left it out front, in the same place Weber had parked. She didn’t consider herself a lazy woman, just tired, and she didn’t think her brain was capable of carrying out any sort of plan, not in such an exhausted state. The last thought she had before collapsing onto her bed and falling to sleep was about Jacky, and wondering how he’d kept it up for so long.

She’d called the police when she woke up, and covered the bloodstains left on the sofa with a big velvet throw. The two cops had sat on that couch, right on top of the evidence they needed, one of them even complimented how soft the blanket was and she’d had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. What a joke it was—not necessarily a good one, but still. It might’ve been easier to skip calling the police, but the thought of someone discovering Chris Weber out there—a child, heaven forbid—forced her to pick up the phone and dial. And the police came, they poked around and seemed satisfied with her reasoning that she’d always been targeted because of Jacky—look at what someone spray-painted on my front door, officers—that maybe this Secondhand Killer was trying to send a message, she knew they’d be back sooner or later, but they would stay away for a while, because she’s not a suspect, not an old lady like her.

She looks in the mirror, runs her fingers over her cheeks and pulls her skin taut. She’s aged, of course, but that doesn’t make the reflection any different from the day before, or the day before that. No, the real changes aren’t so obvious. It’s in the tightly drawn skin around her eyes, the valleys that’re suddenly bracketing her mouth. For the first time she looks old. She never looked like this before, even when Jacky was first arrested, those terrible months when he was on trial and she wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her.

The bathroom is filled with steam now, billowing out over the top of the shower curtain, and she swipes her palm against the mirror, leaving behind a clear fan shape. The Jacky-boy had kissed her when it was over, gently, on her eyebrow, and absently patted the side of her face. I’ll be back soon, he’d said, and then he’d left. She stayed there on the couch for a while, holding her torn skirt against her chest and feeling the rush of warm air from the vents against her bare legs. It occurred to her then, looking at the popcorn-textured ceiling, that Jacky would always be a part of her life, in one way or another, and that’s how it would be, until the end of time.