All the Beautiful Lies(62)
All was going well until the first hot day of Maine’s brief summer, when he took a walk on Kennewick Beach and spotted Alice Moss in a green one-piece coming out of the frothing surf. Looking at her body, he thought she was probably sixteen, but her face—its blank inwardness, the wide-set eyes that reminded him of Emma Codd—made her look younger. He pivoted, checking his watch as though he had just remembered an appointment, and followed her to where she flopped onto a beach towel on her stomach. He walked past, trying hard not to look at the way her bathing suit had ridden up along the firm buttocks, and sat on one of the rocks that separated the beach from the road. He lit a cigarette, watching her, aware that she didn’t know she was being watched. Did she have any idea what her body was doing to all the men in her vicinity? He finished the cigarette, crushing it out on the rock he was sitting on, and watched her flip onto her back, rustle through her beach bag for a book. She was clearly going to stay for a while, and Jake knew he couldn’t linger around too long. He wasn’t dressed for the beach, didn’t have a towel or a beach bag with him. He took a chance and left. It was a Saturday, and the weather was supposed to be hot the following day as well. She’d be back, he told himself.
That night he barely slept, the image of the pale girl in the green bathing suit whipping through his mind like film through a projector. If she wasn’t at the beach the next day, then it was a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. But if she was there, then it would also be a sign.
The next morning he drove to the outlets in Kittery, where he bought himself a new bathing suit, plus a towel and a beach chair. After lunch back at his condo, he walked to the beach. The girl wasn’t where she was the day before, but he positioned himself nearby. He’d brought his Walkman with him, and a book. It’ll be a blessing, he thought, if she doesn’t show up. But she did show up midafternoon, the temperature tipping over ninety, in a different suit, a black bikini this time. He hadn’t seen her with dry hair and was shocked by how blond it was, straw colored almost, hair color that only the very young possess. She found an empty spot less than ten yards away. She was close enough that he could see the fine white hairs on her arms.
He watched her all afternoon. Clouds built up in the sky during the evening hours, white and fluffy at first, but darkening. Soon there were distant rumbles of thunder, and a few fat drops of rain began to patter onto the sand. The girl packed up her things, peering with annoyance at the sky. After she left the beach, Jake made himself count to thirty before getting up and donning a Panama hat he’d brought in his beach bag. He left the chair where it was and scrambled up the wooden walkway to the road, just in time to see the girl turn off onto a side street. He followed her at a distance, the major rain holding off, and saw her enter a small, nice house. He noted the number as he walked past, then doubled back to the beach.
Finding out who lived in the house was surprisingly easy. Recent real estate transactions provided the name of the resident. Edith Moss, originally from Biddeford, Maine, and apparently unmarried. Jake called her from the bank, introduced himself, and asked if she’d like to open an account locally. She said she’d come in the next day at noon. Jake identified her right away, as she pushed through the bank’s glass doors at half past one: an older, worn-out version of the perfect girl from the beach. As he helped her open an account, he could see the past prettiness in her features, now submerged under puffy, alcoholic skin and sun damage. He studied her as she filled out the paperwork, seeing his future life unfold. How natural it would seem that Jake Richter, the newly arrived bachelor, would court and marry an age-appropriate woman who just happened to have a teenage daughter. The thought of living with the girl from the beach, sleeping down the hall from her, was intoxicating.
He called Edith Moss again that night. She answered the phone, her voice thick and slurred, clearly drunk. He thanked her for opening the account and asked her if she’d have a drink with him sometime. She agreed, but sounded confused, as though that day’s events had already begun to fade in her memory. Jake made a note that in the future, any plans he made with Edith would need to be made early in the day.
They were married the following summer, and Edith and Alice moved into Jake’s condo near the beach.
It was part bliss and part torture. Alice, more perfect than he had ever imagined, paraded sleepily through the condo in too-small pajamas and, during the summer, still-damp bathing suits. And as Edith became more and more addled from the alcohol, and from the pills that Jake persuaded her to take, Alice and he began to form a silent partnership, a family unit stronger than anything he’d felt before. It wasn’t just lust anymore, it was love. And Jake now knew that his original plan, to seduce Alice while still married to Edith, was not enough. He wanted more than a cheap affair with his wife’s daughter. He wanted to be together with her, in their own place, without Edith. Jake also knew that Alice did not love her own mother. Her disinterest more than anything else showed that to him. It reminded Jake of his own childhood, his own worthless parents, and how he’d felt nothing for them, then or now.
Jake decided that Edith, half dead already, needed to die, and he wasn’t willing to wait for nature to take its own course.
He killed his wife the night of Alice’s graduation dinner party. Alice brought a friend, that leggy girl who was bound to end up as some rich man’s mistress in some city far away from Maine. Edith, taking more pills than usual, had been speedy all day long. But she began to drink before dinner, and by the time that Gina and Alice were leaving to go to a party, she was her usual self, a drunken, slurry mess. After the girls left, Jake made Edith a brandy and ginger ale heavily laced with crushed Valium. She drank the first one down before he’d even cleared the dinner plates from the table, so he made her another. He didn’t know how many pills and how much alcohol it would take to kill her, but if it didn’t work, he could always try again later. And if it did work, if tomorrow was the morning she didn’t wake up, then it couldn’t be more perfect. Gina had been over to dinner, a perfect witness to Edith’s inebriated state in case there was any kind of investigation.