What You Don't Know(79)
She doesn’t go in, not right away. She drinks a cup of coffee, watches the morning news. She scrubs the bottom of the tub, even though it’s not that dirty, and then showers herself, carefully rubs her lilac-scented lotion over every part of her body. She does her hair, applies mascara. Then she goes downstairs, back to the door. Part of her expects it to be locked, that Jacky might’ve come home during the day, he sometimes does. Maybe she wants it to be locked, so she doesn’t have to see what’s behind there, but it’s still open, and it takes her a moment to pull it free of the metal loop it’s hanging through, because her hands are shaking so damn bad. She is Bluebeard’s wife, who was told to not open a certain door but couldn’t resist the temptation, and found out the terrible secret her husband was hiding.
She takes only a single step into the garage, and stays in the room for less than a minute. Then she leaves, locks the door firmly behind her, and goes to the kitchen. Washes her hands and starts peeling potatoes. She is making a roast for dinner, with red potatoes and French bread. It’s Jacky’s favorite.
*
She comes home from the prison, upset and tired, not sure what to think of that reporter woman visiting Jacky, but what can she do about it? Nothing, that’s what she can do. Absolutely nothing. He’s a grown man, he can see whomever he wants, do what he wants.
He always has.
She climbs out of her car, her keys in her hand, thinking that she’ll go inside and brew a cup of tea and watch some TV. Not the news, it’s all about these murders, the Secondhand Killer, that’s what they’re calling him, and she knows they’re trying to connect it to Jacky, although she’s not sure how. The police have even come by with questions, and left disappointed. By the sad looks on their faces, they were hoping she was behind it all, or that she knew where Alan Cole was, who’d apparently been one of Jacky’s old friends although the name isn’t at all familiar to her. Oh, she sent them packing, because how is an old woman like her going to be any help to them?
She’s already got the key slid into the lock before she notices the words spray-painted in red across her door. YOU KNEW, BITCH, it says in straggling letters. It’s already dried, so it’s been there most of the day already, for anyone with eyeballs in their head to see.
The world finally found me, she thinks, but she knows that’s not completely true, it’s not as if she were lost at the bottom of the ocean, or hiding under an assumed name. Anyone who bothered to look could’ve found her, anytime, and they have before, like whoever broke in and stole all her things. A search on the computer, even a quick flip through a phone book, and she could’ve been found. But these new murders are upsetting people, and everyone needs to be angry at someone, and she might just be the right person.
She could get a bucketful of soapy water and a rag, get to work on scrubbing the words away. Three words, it wouldn’t take too long. An hour, maybe less. But does it really matter?
Instead, she goes inside, locks the door behind her. Puts a kettle of tea on the stove and turns on an old black-and-white movie, rests her feet up on the coffee table. And she pretends those words aren’t on the door at all. The easiest lies are the ones you tell yourself, after all, and Gloria’s gotten very good at that over the years.
WE DON’T MAKE MISTAKES
Six hundred thousand people living in Denver. Maybe it’s too damn many. Lots of people from California migrating in, that’s what residents say. All those West Coast people with their bad driving habits and their liberal ideas, taking over. That’s why this city is going to hell, the natives say. That’s why housing prices are going up, why people keep getting killed. Look at what happens out in Los Angeles, they say. All that violence. And now it’s happening here.
But really, it can happen anywhere.
For example: a quiet street in a suburb of Denver. The houses are small and older, mostly made of brick, and the lawns are big. There’s an elementary school a block away, and kids play outside without being watched too closely by adults. There are no children out today, because most of them are in school, and the others are inside, probably in front of the TV, because it’s too cold to be out. Many of the houses have Christmas decorations, lights and wreaths mostly, and one house has a plastic nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not life-size, but it’s pretty close, and the baby Jesus has been stolen and replaced with an empty milk carton wrapped in a blanket, although no one has noticed it yet. It’s a nice place to live, not too far from the glitter of the big city but far enough. A good neighborhood to raise a family.
There is a man walking down the street—he is a man, legally, twenty on his last birthday, although he has the acne-ridden face and scrawny arms of a boy. He is pale and small and his hair needs to be washed. He’ll beef up in the next few years, he’ll hit the gym and start lifting weights and eating plenty of protein, and he’ll wash his car with no shirt on so everyone can admire all his hard work.
That is, it’s what he’d do if he lives that long.
This boy is Jimmy Galen; he doesn’t have a car and has to walk everywhere, point his feet in a direction and go. He doesn’t like to walk on any of the main streets, tries to stick to the side roads and shortcuts, through neighborhoods and parks, over fences and along sewage drains. He doesn’t like anyone to see he doesn’t have a car, doesn’t like to think of the pitying looks he gets as people drive by, seeing his shoulders hunched up against the wind, his eyes squinted against the sun. So he takes the back routes, in the hopes he’ll never see anyone he knows.