Dovetail: A Novel(23)
“Are you kidding me? You’re as patient as they come. She’s a really horrible woman. I mean, I’m sorry about her cancer coming back, but there’s something about her that makes my teeth hurt. Before you took over the store, she would stop in and sort of make fun of your aunt Edna.”
“No!” Kathleen had spent hundreds of hours at Aunt Edna’s bedside at the hospital, and she’d never said a bad word about anyone, much less Pearl Arneson. “She made fun of her?” She couldn’t imagine it. Aunt Edna was sweet as pie, thanking the nurses for all they did and apologizing for being so much trouble. And before that, when she was in good health, she was practically a saint, dropping off home-baked goods at the homes of people who were sick, not just friends or neighbors but also people she barely knew. Kathleen had heard story after story at the funeral. Her great-aunt Edna was known for giving money to those in need, sometimes anonymously. “It just showed up on my porch one day,” one man said, explaining that he’d lost his job and then his baby had gotten sick. “An envelope full of fifties with a note saying it was from a friend and that she’d be praying for us. No signature, but my wife and I knew it was her. It couldn’t have come at a better time, believe me. We were getting desperate. Your aunt was just an angel on earth.”
“Pearl didn’t make fun of her in an obvious way,” Marcia clarified. She sat down on a stool and rested her feet on the rungs. “It was all disguised as being sickeningly sweet. She’d walk through the store and say how nice it was that some things never change, that Pullman was growing and changing and other people were traveling and coming and going, but you could always count on good ol’ Edna Clark to be behind the counter at Secondhand Heaven, that she was practically a fixture of the store.”
“That’s not too bad,” Kathleen said, mulling it over. She herself was becoming a fixture in the store, and it was working out fine for her. “Maybe she meant it in a nice way?”
Marcia shook her head. “Nope, she meant it like Edna had no life, and this store was outdated. But your aunt never rose to the bait. She was a true lady. Said she didn’t pay much attention to what Pearl said, that Pearl had a tragic life, and if it made her feel better to put Edna down, so be it. She said some people are just who they are.”
“Edna was wise and kind.” Kathleen knew a thing or two about having a tragic life. She was twenty-six and already divorced. Against her parents’ wishes, she’d married young and moved across the country with her new husband. It had been a mistake. A big mistake. She’d realized that on their honeymoon when her husband, who’d been doting, became controlling and jealous. Within months, her life became a constant attempt to keep him happy, to assure him that she wasn’t looking at other men and that she loved only him. What she’d thought was passion became obsession, and what started as arguments escalated until she was defending herself from angry blows. Once he’d grabbed her upper arms so hard that later she saw finger-shaped bruises. He was always sorry. So sorry. He cried and vowed to change, and she always softened and gave him another chance.
One day Kathleen saw a couple at the grocery store in the produce aisle. From what they were saying, she surmised they were picking out a watermelon to take to a family picnic. The woman had a black eye visible from behind the side of her sunglasses, and the man was telling her to hurry up, that she was always making them late. His tone, neutral but with a threatening undercurrent, reminded her of her own husband’s voice when he was just on the edge of exploding, and she saw herself in the woman, who was trying to please him so as not to raise his ire. As they walked away, she heard a female voice in her head, clear as a bell. The voice said: He will never change. It was either divine intervention, or she was losing her mind. Either way, she decided, it was time to make a break.
After that, she began squirreling away money until she had enough to take a Greyhound bus home to Ohio. Her parents helped her get a divorce, and she started her life anew, working as a bank teller in her hometown and saving her money. When her ex-husband started showing up everywhere she went, sometimes following her in his car, she was alarmed, and when the gifts and notes began arriving, it escalated.
The notes had started with pleading and over time became vaguely threatening. I can’t live without you. The thought of you with someone else is killing me. We are meant to be together. You’ll never find someone who loves you like I do. I will spend the rest of my life convincing you that we need to be together. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you by my side.
The police were no help. They didn’t seem to understand the danger. “Ignore him, and he’ll get bored and stop,” one officer said.
Another suggested she might want to give her ex-husband another chance. “I talked to him, and he seems like a good guy,” he said. “He admitted he made mistakes, but then we all make mistakes, am I right?” He patted Kathleen’s shoulder as if she were a child, which made her fume. She tried to tell the cops of their history, that her ex had a violent temper and had been physically abusive, but she sensed that the polite nod of the police officer’s head was all she’d be getting in the way of acknowledgment. No one took the threat seriously except her family.
One day her mother got off the phone after speaking to her great-aunt Edna and suggested she and Kathleen go up to Pullman to help take care of her. Kathleen jumped at the chance. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going, so there would be no way for Ricky to find her.