Harvest of Bones (25 page)

“Interesting thought. But how did the ring get to be that healing place’s logo? Mere coincidence? Or is there a connection there? Look, Ruthie, want to wait till I get down there? I’ll go to Bagshaw’s with you. I don’t want you seeing that old lecher alone. Letting him put the make on you.”

“Uh-huh. If I can handle Zelda, he hasn’t a chance. Anyway, I’ve got to get going. Tim has to leave at one, dentist appointment. Root canal or something. He’s panicked about it.”

Colm didn’t want to talk about teeth. He’d had enough of dentists, he told her, in New York City. He wanted to know if she was free for dinner. “I mean, after milking. Let Emily and Vic do the barn cleanup for a change. You’re too soft on those kids.”

She ignored the innuendo. She couldn’t, she told him. But she couldn’t tell him it was because she’d finally promised Kevin Crowningshield she’d meet him at the Inferno for a drink. “I have other plans, Colm. I’m meeting a friend....”

There was a stiff “See you, then. Some other time.” And he hung up.

She felt bad, she really did. But Colm wasn’t being accused of poisoning his wife, hadn’t lost a woman he loved. Or had he? He was such a romantic; told her she was the only woman he’d ever loved. Could she believe him? The Irish were known romantics, talked themselves into being in love forever, in love with an ideal. A paper doll. That’s what the young Ruth was then: a paper doll. Hardly fleshed out—no idea who she was when she married Pete.

It seemed there was no such thing as a single “self.” One kept changing identities. Why, she was an entirely different person now that Pete had left! She sat down, stuck her elbows on the table. She needed time out, now and then, to think.

Maybe she should give Pete that divorce. What was she waiting for, anyway? When he arrived—next weekend, was it?—she’d make her decision.

* * * *

It was a turnabout trip after all. Fay sat outside the house for an age before she got out of the car. It was a tiny one-bedroom house Dan had built on the property—to rent, of course, but after Patsy’s divorce, at Fay’s urging, he let her have it, for a small rent. Dan never gave anything away—unless it was an old toilet, a used carburetor. When she finally knocked and, getting no response, entered, Ethan said, “Hi, Gram,” like she’d never been away. He was dressed in his red-and-white Little League uniform, ready for practice. He let her hug him, though she felt his impatience—he couldn’t find his glove, he explained. And when she offered the present she’d brought, a set of Legos that built into a pirate ship—forty-nine dollars even at Ben Franklin’s—he just said, “Thank you,” politely, dropped the box on a table, and then knocked off a porcelain vase searching for that glove.

“It didn’t break,” he said, as if Fay might scold him. “We practice every day after school. I just came home ’cause I forgot my glove. Mom,” he hollered up the stairs, “where’s my glove?”

“You left it on the kitchen table,” his mother yelled down. “And hurry up if you want me to drive you. I’m meeting a friend at the café.”

Patsy’s voice threw a fastball at Fay, she had to sit down. Ethan was already in the kitchen. “It’s not on the table,” he screeched.

“Well, look around. It might have got moved.”

Patsy came running down the stairs, dressed to the nines: turquoise suit and hot-pink blouse. Her hair was still in that long orangy-blond braid—lighter than Fay remembered— but she looked more sophisticated somehow. “I thought I heard your voice,” she told Fay, looking stern. “You should have told me you were coming.” She gave her mother an obligatory hug. “I’ve got this man I’m meeting.”

“A new man! No kidding? Tell me about him,” Fay said, following her daughter into the kitchen. There was a time, when she was in high school, that Patsy had told her mother everything: the first kiss, the first fight, the first cigarette, which she nearly choked on. For a moment, the old excitement came back, the conspiracy, the thrill of mother-and-daughter talk.

But Patsy waved the question away. “Oh, he’s just a guy. Out of a job at the moment, but looking, you know.” She turned to Ethan, stuck her hands on her slim hips. “Up on the shelf. You have eyes in your head, dummy?”

“Oh. Yeah. But you said ‘on the table,’ so that’s where I looked. Mom, I’m gonna be late.”

“I’ll take him,” Fay said, wanting, needing to help, and Patsy said, “Would you? ’Cause I’m late, too, and Eddie doesn’t like to wait. I’ll pick you up at five-thirty,” she told the boy. “Meet me by the bleachers. Bye,” and she gave him a pat on the bottom, then whirled out the door. “Next time, call,” she hollered back at Fay, “and we’ll have a little lunch.”

“Come see me,” yelled Fay, but the door had already shut. Fay leaned for support against the refrigerator, heard it click on. She pulled her bones upright, hoisted her chin. “Chauffeur at your service,” she told Ethan, but the boy was on the phone now. When he hung up, he said, “Bootsie Marino’s mom will take me; he lives next door. You don’t have to bother, Gram.” He dashed out with his glove before she could give him a hug. He turned on the front step. “Thanks for the Legos. See ya,” and he ran, leaping a shriveled shrub at the side of the driveway.

Fay sank into a black vinyl armchair, surveyed the dingy living room until it got too blurry to see. The whole house seemed smaller and seedier since she’d seen it last, all that vinyl furniture, the gaudy wallpapered walls. Oh, they didn’t need her at all; they had their own lives. And all that time while she’d felt so guilty, daughter and grandson were playing ball and going to school and meeting a new man and ...

“Jesus,” she said aloud. “What a sap I am.” She blotted her eyes with a fist, got up, straightened her skirt—she’d dressed up to come here, but for what? Of course she should have called ahead. Of course she should have known they’d be busy, have other plans. It’s just that they seemed so self-sufficient! So contained, without her. Or was she misinterpreting? Had she called ahead, would the reception have been different? One never knew. Oh well. She’d try again.

She closed the door softly behind her and went out. Patsy’s house had its own driveway, so she could avoid Dan—or could she? She heard voices over at the big house. Her old house. Even now she could smell the chickens, though the egg barn was at the bottom of the hill. Safely in the car, she peered over. Dan was standing in the driveway. With a woman. His arm around her, leading her up to the front door. He was definitely losing his hair; he was growing a potbelly. The woman was overweight. But they were laughing; they were having a good time. Fay sniffed back her remorse, her anger, her disappointment—whatever it was she was feeling. She rammed her foot down on the accelerator, lurched down the driveway and into the rutted dirt road that led to Route 2.

From Route 2, she entered the thruway to Route 7. On an impulse, trying not to think, she swerved over to 22A at Vergennes, singing loudly—”I’ll Be Home for Christmas”—when it wasn’t even Christmas; it was still October. “You can count on me ...” So Patsy had a boyfriend now.
Lover
might be a better word, the way she was dressed. She was a grown woman of thirty-one; she could do what she liked. She didn’t need any mother telling her what to do. “Please have snow or mistletoe ...”

She slowed for a light in Vergennes. Funny little town, called itself the “smallest city in the world.” Mountains rising up lavender-blue all around, a stunning view in the late-afternoon sun. But the early settlers chose Branbury, with its waterfall in the town center, as their hub—turned Vergennes into an outpost.

Like that old guy in a feed cap stumbling along the sidewalk, thumb stuck out for a ride, the other hand munching on a candy bar. Looked like one of the homeless you read about. It seemed the light would never change. He lurched toward the car. He took her pitying glance for an affirmative, put his hand on the door handle.

“Okay, hop in,” she said. “But I’m not going far.”

He shrugged, got in beside her. He was a small man, monkey-like. Shaggy white hair and beard, needed a cut, a shave. Seemed harmless enough, civilized—a man down on his luck. He was thanking her. Usually, she didn’t pick up men—not even women anymore; you never knew who’d pull a gun, a knife. But there was something needy about this poor fellow. A human being in distress. Actually, she could use the company right now. She really could.

“Okay,” she said, remembering a line out of some play, “Where to, good sir?”

“As far as you’re going, good madam,” he said, turning gallant, doffing his cap, playing the game. “As far as you’re going. I’m a bit out of funds, you see.”

And Fay said, “You can trust me, sir, to take you there.”

****

Ruth parked by the Healing House; she didn’t want to frighten Alwyn Bagshaw, have him drive off or wander out into the fields. She’d go to the center first, then walk over to Bagshaw’s. Knock on his back door maybe, take him by surprise.

On the way in, she stopped to examine the sign, was surprised to see that it was really quite different from the ring: The arrow tip was pointed up rather than down. And there was that half-moon. There were two tiny prongs, like the tines on a fork, at the end of the arrow. She didn’t recall that on the ring. Of course, it might have been harder to put all that detail on a small ring. Or perhaps Willard Boomer had added the detail; he wasn’t above doing that. He had embellished the Holstein on her sign, when all she’d wanted was the simplest WILLMARTH FARM: HOLSTEINS, with the outline of a cow’s head. And then Willard had added something that looked like a smile on the cow’s muzzle. Pete had laughed. “Good old Boomer,” he said. “Leave it be.”

The door opened while she was still examining the sign, and Isis called to her from the porch. She was wearing a sweatsuit; she’d been working out, she said. Her skin shone. It seemed any minute she’d rise up out of her wheelchair and run.

“Rena will be all right,” she said, sounding expansive, pushing her hair back from her perspiring brow. “She’ll live; they gave her the purge. I spent the night in the hospital—this wheelchair wasn’t meant for sleeping.” She leaned forward, smiling, put a hand on the small other back.

Ruth was glad of the news; she inquired about the sign. She refrained from pointing, though—she thought she saw a window shade pop up next door.

“Well, it was Angie’s stepmother, actually, who gave her the idea for the sign. It seems she knew old Mrs. Bagshaw, borrowed the idea from some hex sign she had. But Angie created her own version, of course. In an earlier design, she had arrow and bone inside a full moon, then thought it too much of a pregnant belly to suit her. She couldn’t have children of her own, you know; it was a sensitive subject. So she made it a half-moon. The arrow, she said, meant healing, direction, creativity. It was important to her that it point upward. She sketched out the design and that sign maker with the green bicycle painted it.”

Rolling back through the open door, she led Ruth inside. She wanted to talk about the Healing House, what would happen to it. “The police have more or less shut us down, you know. We can’t officially operate, that is, take in any new people—two of my women have already left!—till this poison question is resolved. How it got here, who was responsible. They’ve tested everything in the refrigerator. Tom, soy milk, cottage cheese, bread. There was some talk about those chocolates—but not everyone ate them.”

“Beet greens, lettuce?”

“Well, I don’t know. The greens just came out of the garden, not the store. We ate all last summer out of that garden. How can you poison greens?”

“Can I take a look? In that garden?”

Isis waved her back behind the house. “Why not? It was Angie loved them, you know. It was practically all she ate. Fixed them with garlic butter and salt. Got some of the other women eating them, too.”

“Rena?”

“Rena? Well, probably, I don’t know. I don’t recall. But don’t go asking her yet. She’s still weak, spent, since the hospital. She doesn’t talk much anyway. To me, yes, but then I’m her confidante. She has no other relatives. She came here looking for sanctuary from her husband.”

A gong sounded, and pine incense filled the air. Ruth heard Mozart on a tape in the meditation room. It was time for the healing session—Isis was going on with it in spite of police orders. She was swallowed up by six women, all chattering at once: “Mother” this, “Mother” that.

Marna, who had called about her fears, tugged on Ruth’s sleeve as she passed through the hall. “Mother says Rena’s all right. But I’m still worried. I haven’t felt well myself. We’re so vulnerable here.” She followed the others into the healing room, gazing back at Ruth as she entered, her violet eyes appealing.

A pile of beet greens caught Ruth’s eye as she passed through the kitchen and she slipped a few into her handbag. It was silly—how could greens from an organic Vermont garden poison anyone? But something had; someone had slipped superwarfarin into the food, or drink—it seemed the most obvious way, an abuse of the old law of hospitality. But who? Surely not Kevin Crowningshield! He’d never been inside, he said. Was she that poor a judge of character? But then ... she’d thought Pete stable, loyal, a man who would never leave her....

Okay. These things she had to find out. Had to! Some inner need, a way of giving back to her community maybe. It was so easy to live isolated on the farm; the farm work fulfilled her, recharged her. But she had to reach out. This was
her
religion.

She slipped out the back door, remembering why she was here: to see Alwyn Bagshaw, to take him unawares before he could leave—even now he’d be looking out his window. At her approach, he’d slip out another door. Vermonters were suspicious by nature, it seemed. They holed up in mountains, behind rocks, worried that someone would take away their space. She made a wide path to the west, behind a hedge, where Bagshaw couldn’t see her from any of his lookout windows, moved cautiously back to where the hedge stopped, then ran the few spongy feet to the back garden. Had he seen her? She hoped not. There was a stand of sugar maples between them, a scattering of ocher leaves clinging to the limbs, but the branches were brownish- black and thick. The fallen leaves crackled underfoot; ahead, the Green Mountain range loomed dark purple and brown in the cloudy light. Even so, she loved this time of year: It was sad and yet exciting, unpredictable. Anything could happen, for good or bad. Halloween came at the right season.