Sharp Objects(30)

“Oh, don’t worry about it at all,” I said, pulling a pair of tiny boys’ undies from beneath me. “This is what my place looks like all the time.” This was the opposite of true. One quality I did inherit from my mother was a compulsive neatness. I have to stop myself from ironing socks. When I got back from the hospital, I even went through a period of boiling things: tweezers and eyelash curlers, bobby pins and toothbrushes. It was an indulgence I allowed myself. I ended up trashing the tweezers, though. Too many late-night thoughts about their shiny, warm points. Dirty girl, indeed.

I was hoping Betsy Nash would disappear. Literally. She was so insubstantial, I could imagine her slowly evaporating, leaving only a sticky spot on the edge of the sofa. But she lingered, eyes darting between me and her husband before we even began speaking. Like she was winding up for the conversation. The children, too, hovered about, little blonde ghosts trapped in a limbo between indolence and stupidity. The pretty girl might do all right. But the piggy middle child, who now waddled dazedly into the room, was destined for needy sex and snack-cake bingeing. The boy was the type who’d end up drinking in gas-station parking lots. The kind of angry, bored kid I saw on my way into town.

“Mr. Nash, I need to speak some more with you about Ann. For a larger piece,” I started. “You’ve been very kind with your time, and I was hoping to get a little bit more.”

“Anything that might get this case a little attention, we don’t mind,” he said. “What do you need to know?”

“What kind of games did she like, what kind of foods did she like? What would be some words you’d use to describe her? Did she tend to be a ringleader or a follower? Did she have lots of friends or just a few close ones? How did she like school? What did she do on her Saturdays?” The Nashes stared at me in silence for a second. “Just for starters,” I smiled.

“My wife would be the one to answer most of those questions,” Bob Nash said. “She’s the…caregiver.” He turned to Betsy Nash, who was folding and refolding the same dress on her lap.

“She liked pizza and fishsticks,” she said. “And she had lots of girls she was friendly with, but only a few close friends, if you know what I mean. She played by herself a lot.”

“Look, Mommy, Barbie needs clothes,” said Ashleigh, wielding a naked plastic doll in front of her mother’s face. All three of us ignored her, and she tossed the toy to the floor and began twirling around the room in fake ballerina moves. Seeing a rare chance, Tiffanie pounced on the Barbie and began splaying the rubbery tan legs open and shut, open and shut.

“She was tough, she was my toughest,” Bob Nash said. “She could have played football if she’d been a boy. She’d knock herself silly just running around, always had scrapes and bruises.”

“Ann was my mouth,” Betsy said quietly. Then she said no more.

“How is that, Mrs. Nash?”

“She was a real talker, said whatever come into her mind. In a good way. Mostly.” She was silent again for a few beats, but I could see her thinking back behind her eyes so I said nothing. “You know, I thought maybe she’d be a lawyer or college debater or something someday, because she was just…she never stopped to measure her words. Like me. I think everything I say is stupid. Ann thought everyone should hear everything she had to say.”

“You mentioned school, Miss Preaker,” interrupted Bob Nash. “That’s where her talkativeness got her in trouble. She could be a little bossy, and we got a few calls from her teachers over the years about her not taking too well to class. She was a little wild.”

“But sometimes I think it was because she was just so smart,” added Betsy Nash.

“She was whip smart, yup,” Bob Nash nodded. “Sometimes I thought she was smarter than her old man. Sometimes she thought she was smarter than her old man.”

“Look at me, Mommy!” Piggy Tiffanie, who had been chewing mindlessly on Barbie’s toes, ran to the center of the living room and began doing somersaults. Ashleigh, seized by some phantom anger, yelped at the sight of her mother’s attention on the second daughter, and gave her a hard shove. Then yanked her hair emphatically once. Tiffanie’s face split in a red wail, which started Bobby Jr. crying again.

“It’s Tiffanie’s fault,” Ashleigh screamed, and began whimpering also.

I had shattered some delicate dynamic. A multichild household is a pit of petty jealousies, this I knew, and the Nash children were panicking at the idea of competing not just with one another, but with a dead sister. They had my sympathies.

“Betsy,” muttered Bob Nash quietly, eyebrows slightly raised. Bobby Jr. was quickly scooped up and propped on a hip, Tiffanie pulled up from the floor with one hand, another arm around the now inconsolable Ashleigh, and soon the four were moving out of the room.

Bob Nash stared after them a beat.

“Been like that for almost a year now, those girls,” he said. “Them acting like little babies. Thought they were supposed to be anxious to grow up. Ann being gone changes this home more than…” He shifted on the sofa. “It’s just that she was a real person, you know? You think: Nine years old, what’s that? What’s there? But Ann had a personality. I could guess what she’d think about things. I knew, when we were watching TV, what stuff she’d think was funny and what stuff she’d think was dumb. I can’t do that with my other kids. Hell, I can’t do that with my wife. Ann, you just felt her there. I just…” Bob Nash’s throat shut up on him. He stood and turned away from me, turned back once, then away, walked in a circle behind the couch, then stood in front of me. “Goddammit, I want her back. I mean, what now? Is this it?” He threw his hand around the room, toward the doorway where his wife and kids had exited. “Because if this is it, there ain’t much point is there? And goddammit, someone needs to find that man, because he needs to tell me: Why Ann? I need to know that. She was the one I’d always thought would do ok.”