Kisscut (17 page)

Lena looked at her watch, wondering how much Nan 's stuttering was costing her.

"I'll be at Suddy's tonight around eight," Nan said. "I'll have the boxes in my car if you want them. Meet me there if you… Otherwise, well…" Again, she stopped.

Lena fast forwarded, skipping the rest of the message. Suddy's was a gay bar on the outskirts of Heartsdale. There was no way in hell she was going to meet her sister's lover in a gay bar.

Lena 's heart dropped into her stomach when she heard the next message. Hank said, "Lee, Barry's sick. I gotta cover here tonight, maybe tomorrow."

She closed her eyes, leaning her back against the wall as Hank explained that it would be easier for him to stay in Reece because there was a beer delivery tomorrow morning. She felt panicked again, then angry, because he had taken the coward's way out, leaving the message instead of calling her cell phone to explain.

Lena walked over to the other side of the hallway, looking out the window. There was an atrium in the middle of the school, and across the way she could see the cafeteria staff setting up the tables. She was so absorbed in their movements that she missed part of the last message. She rewound it and listened again.

"This is Pastor Fine, Lena," the message began. "I apologize, but I'll have to cancel our appointment this evening. One of our parishioners has taken ill. I need to be with the family right now."

Lena snapped the phone closed as he asked for her to return his call so they could reschedule. She would let Jeffrey deal with that. She was not in the habit of letting herself think too far ahead, but the meeting with Fine had been something she had settled her mind on as something to do tonight. In a flash, she saw herself going back to her empty house, being alone. Panic enveloped her.

She put her hand to her chest, feeling her heart pounding against her rib cage. She was sweating, she noticed, and the back of her knees felt hot and sticky. She wanted to hear Hank's message again, to see if there was a nuance in his voice she had missed. Maybe he had left an opening. Maybe he was playing some kind of game to make her say that she wanted him there.

The final bell rang, a loud, piercing tone that vibrated in Lena 's ears. She looked around the empty hallway, forgetting for a moment exactly where she was and why. As if out of a dream, she saw the image of a woman walking toward her. Lena 's eyes felt like they blurred for a moment, then with a start she realized that she was in Jenny Weaver's school, and that Dottie Weaver was walking down the hall toward her.

"Shit," Lena mumbled, looking down at her cell phone, willing it to ring. She flipped it open like she might make a call, but it was too late. Dottie Weaver was less than ten feet away holding a heavy-looking textbook in her hands.

Weaver stopped in the hallway, her mouth an angry straight line. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she had been crying for the last year. Red splotches were all over her face.

"Mrs. Weaver," Lena said, flipping her phone closed.

Dottie shook her head, like she was too angry to say anything.

"We're just talking to some classmates and teachers to see if they can shed any light on-"

"Why can't you just leave her alone?" Dottie begged. "Why can't you just let her rest in peace?"

"I'm sorry," Lena told the woman, and she meant it.

"She was my baby."

"I know that," Lena answered, looking down at her phone.

"You're here raking her name over the coals, trying to make her out to be a bad person."

"That's not my goal."

"Liar!" Dottie screamed, throwing the book at Lena. Lena dropped her phone to catch it, but missed. The spine slammed into her stomach and she winced as it dropped to the floor.

"Mrs. Weaver," Lena began, stooping to retrieve the textbook.

"The school wanted her book back," Dottie said, her bottom lip trembling. "Take it. Take it and tell them all they can go to hell."

Lena tried to close the book without damaging the pages. She picked up her phone, which didn't seem to be broken.

Dottie dabbed her eyes with some tissue, then blew her nose. She did not leave, though, which Lena could not understand until she spoke again.

"Jenny loved this school," the mother said, wrapping her arms around her stomach as if it brought her pain to speak. "She loved being here."

Lena thought now was as good a time as any to get this out of the way. "Was she seeing anybody, Mrs. Weaver?"

Dottie shook her head. "A psychiatrist?" she asked.

"A boy," Lena clarified. "Was she seeing any boys?"

"No," Dottie snapped. "Of course not. She was just a child."

Lena nodded, feeling an encroaching dread. "Some of the girls said she was."

"Which girls?" Dottie asked, looking around as if they might be there.

"Just girls," Lena answered. "Friends from school."

"She didn't have friends," Dottie told her, narrowing her eyes, sensing some kind of trick. "What are they saying about my daughter?"

Lena tried to think of a way to say it. "That she…"

"That she what?" Dottie demanded.

Lena said, "That she saw a lot of boys. That she was with a lot of boys."

The slap came suddenly, and stung so much that after a few seconds the right side of Lena 's face went numb. Before Lena could think to respond, let alone react, she was looking at the back of Dottie Weaver as the woman left the school.

The library door bumped open, and Brad stood there, holding the door for the group of teachers he had been interviewing. They looked tired, and a bit irritated, but this was pretty normal from Lena 's recollection of teachers around lunchtime. One of them looked at Lena, and she could tell from the way the woman assessed her that she sensed something was wrong. The teacher raised an eyebrow as if to invite conversation, but Lena was too shocked to speak.

" Lena?" Brad prompted. She nodded that she was okay, wondering if her face was red where Dottie had slapped her.

Brad introduced all of the teachers, whose names Lena promptly forgot. He said, "They know about the rumor."

Lena blinked, not understanding.

"The rumor about Jenny," Brad clarified. "They said they had heard it."

"None of us believed it," one of the teachers said, her voice indicating that she had resigned herself a long time ago to the fact that there were things that went on in the school that no teacher would ever know about.

"She was a good student," another teacher said. "Very quiet, turned her work in on time. Her mother was involved."

The other teachers nodded, and Lena duplicated the gesture, still too shocked to offer anything of consequence.

"Thank you for your time," Brad said, moving things along. He shook hands with each of them in turn, and to the last one they gave him an encouraging look.

"I'm sorry we couldn't help more," one said.

Another told him, "If we think of anything, we'll call you."

The woman who had looked at Lena was last, and she told Brad, "You did an excellent job, Bradley. I'm very impressed."

Brad beamed. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, tucking his head down like a happy puppy. He waited until the teachers were gone before asking Lena, "Whose book?"

"Jenny Weaver's," Lena provided, thumbing through the pages to see if any notes were tucked in. It was empty, just like the others.

"How'd you get it?"

Lena could not answer him. "Here," she said, handing him the book. "Take it to the front office, then meet me in the car."

The parking lot of Suddy's was pretty empty, even at eight o'clock. If Sibyl and Nan 's life had been any indication, probably most of the lesbians in town were at home, watching sitcoms. Not that Sibyl could watch them, she was blind, but she liked to listen sometimes, and Nan would narrate what was happening.

Lena crossed her arms, thinking about Sibyl, and how she had looked the last time Lena had seen her; not the time in the morgue, but the day before she had died. As usual, Sibyl had been full of energy, and laughing at something that had happened in one of her classes. Above everything, Sibyl loved teaching, and she had taken great joy from being in front of a classroom. Maybe that was why Lena had had such a negative reaction to being at the school today.

Before she could stop herself, Lena got out of the car. Suddy's was nice by most bar standards. Compared to the Hut, Hank's bar over in Reece, it was a palace. Outside, the decor was spare, probably because a place like this would not want to draw attention to itself. Other than a Budweiser sign with a neon rainbow flag incorporated into the logo, the building was pretty nondescript.

The interior was more festive, but the lights were down low, making the room a little too intimate for Lena. Something soft played on the jukebox, and a spinning mirrored ball did a slow turn over what looked like the dance floor. Lena had always been uncomfortable with this side of Sibyl, and never understood how someone who was so pretty, who was so outgoing and energetic, could choose this kind of life for herself. Sibyl had always wanted children, always wanted to be taken care of and loved. Lena would not have predicted this kind of life for her sister in a million years.

When Sibyl had first come out to Lena fifteen years ago, Lena 's response had been an emphatic, "No, you're not." Even after Sibyl moved in with Nan, Lena had still let herself believe that Sibyl was not gay. It sounded trite to say, but Lena could not help thinking in the back of her mind that it was just a phase, and that one day Sibyl would laugh about her confusion and settle down and have children. Being Sibyl's twin complicated matters, because Lena had always felt that a piece of herself was in Sibyl, and a piece of Sibyl was in Lena. It was unsettling to think that Lena might somewhere in her psyche share Sibyl's sexual leanings.

Lena dismissed this as she walked across the room. Two women at a corner table ignored her completely, seeming more intent upon pushing their tongues down each other's throat than seeing who had walked through the door. The bartender was reading a newspaper when Lena approached her, and she looked up, doing a startled double take.

The woman said, "You must be her sister."

Lena sat a couple of stools down from her. "I'm meeting someone here."

The woman closed the paper. She walked over and offered Lena her hand. "I'm Judy," she said.

Lena stared at the hand, then reluctantly shook it. The woman was tall, with long dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were an intense hazel, which Lena noticed because the woman would not stop staring at her.

"Beer, please," Lena said, then, "make it a Jim Beam instead."

Judy paused, then walked over to the liquor display behind the bar. "Sibyl never drank," she said, as if by extension this meant that Lena, her twin, would not drink.

Lena pointed out, "She didn't fuck men, either."

Judy conceded the point. "Jim Beam?"

"Yeah," Lena answered, trying to sound bored as she took some money out of her front pocket. She had changed into jeans and a T-shirt at home before coming here, a decision she now regretted. She probably looked gayer than the women in the corner to these people.

Judy said, "She liked cranberry juice, though."

"Could you make that a double?" Lena asked, tossing a twenty-dollar bill onto the bar.

Judy glanced at her before filling the order. "We all really miss her."

"I'm sure you do," Lena told her, aware that she sounded glib. She stared at the dark liquid in her glass, remembering that the last time she had anything to drink was the night Sibyl had died. Lena did not like alcohol, because she hated the feeling of being out of control. Not that she had control of anything lately, anyway.

Lena looked at the clock over the bar. It was five till eight.

Judy asked, "Who you meeting here?"

Lena knocked the drink back in one swallow. "Jim Beam," she said, tapping the glass.

Judy gave her another look, but retrieved the bottle from the shelf.

To discourage conversation, Lena turned on the stool, looking out on the dance floor. A lone woman stood there, her eyes closed as she swayed to the beat. There was something familiar about her, but the light was bad, and Lena 's memory did not want to work. Still, Lena watched her, wondering at the self-absorbed way the woman danced, as if no one else were in the room. As if nothing else mattered.

The song changed, and Lena recognized the tune before the lyrics to Beck's "Debra" came from the speakers. Mark Patterson popped into her mind again. There was something sensual and disturbing about the way the dancer moved that reminded her of the young man. She watched the dancer, wondering again what the hell had been going on with Jenny Weaver. What was Mark's hold over her? What was it about him that would make a thirteen-year-old kid prostitute herself? It did not make sense.

Lena wondered if this was the way Mark Patterson would dance, though she could not imagine the kid doing something so audacious as standing in the middle of an empty dance floor. The thought surprised her, because Lena was not aware that she had put herself in a position to make assumptions about Mark's personality. She knew so very little about him, yet somehow, her subconscious had assigned him certain traits.

Lena turned back around to break the spell. Judy was reading her paper, having left Lena 's drink and her change on the bar. Lena was thinking about what to leave for a tip when she noticed her reflection in the mirror. For just a moment, she startled, and Lena imagined she looked much as Judy had when Lena had first walked into the room. In a split second, Sibyl was there, and Lena felt her heart jump at the sight.

Suddenly, shouting came from outside, and a crowd of people walked into the bar. They were laughing and raucous, all dressed in matching softball uniforms. The pants were black with white stripes up the sides, the shirts white with the word bushwhackers across the chest.

"Jesus Christ," Lena groaned, getting the reference. She stood up as she recognized Nan Thomas in the center of the group. The mousy librarian had a neon-pink athletic strap around her glasses and the front of her shirt was streaked with dirt as if she had slid across home plate. Unlike some of the others in the group, Nan showed no sign of mistaking Lena for her sister. As a matter of fact, she frowned.