On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Thirty-Nine

After the fiasco in the gym Hester was lying in bed in the dark thinking about how odd Theo Ottinger’s behavior had been, when Al rolled over to face her and said, “You awake, Hester? My ankle’s throbbing. I can’t sleep.”

She was awake, but didn’t answer. Al had been complaining about his stupid ankle for years. She was tired of listening to him whine about it because a bad ankle was a small price to pay not to go to Vietnam. She used to keep reminding him of that. “Al,” she’d say, “you know that ankle kept you out of the service and out of Vietnam. Did you forget that if it weren’t for that ankle, you would’ve been the first to go? Did you forget that your birthday was September 14, the first birth date picked in that awful lottery?”

Al could’ve ended up in a jungle somewhere, addicted to heroin, forced to kill people, sick with some disease, maimed, deranged, or, worse yet, dead. Hester would remind him of all of this. She would tell him about the veteran’s hospital in Philadelphia where she volunteered to help with the amputees. They were young guys, handsome young guys, with no arms or legs, with half a face, with a hole in their skull, with their penises blown off.

“It was a blessing, Al, a goddamn blessing you shattered your ankle in that high school football game. It was a true gift from God, and you should be thankful,” Hester would add with a sigh.

But tonight Hester was tired, and she didn’t want to coddle Al or talk about the war.

When she didn’t answer him, he moved closer to her and slipped his cool hand under her pajama top, and began kneading her breast, “I saw that twerp Theo all over you tonight. What was he in your ear about?”

Hester didn’t answer, but thought,
what was he in my ear about?
Was Theo trying to stir up trouble or was there something Al needed to tell her?

“Hester, Hester, you fucking love goddess, even the young married men are after you.” He rubbed her breast harder. “Mad at me for interrupting, huh? Well, too bad for little Theodore. You’re my wife, and he can keep his pencil dick to himself.” Al rolled on his back and lifted Hester on top of him in one smooth move. His hands cupped her buttocks. “You are still so round and firm. It’s all of that exercise you get running away from the younger men. How’s this for a stud?” He pulled her nightgown up and forced himself into her. Hester propped herself up on her arms to keep her face from touching his. She really wasn’t in the mood, but Al certainly was, even after all of the chaos in the gym.

Al had gotten that situation under control by getting on the loud speaker and canceling the entire graduation ceremony until the next day. People were angry about his decision, but Al stuck to it, and finally everyone left. Al and she straightened out the caps and gowns and locked up the building. When they got outside, Nina was standing in the rain alone. They took her with them for pizza. It broke Hester’s heart that not one person from her family had been there and probably wouldn’t be tomorrow night either. After dinner, Al reached across the table and took both of the girl’s small hands in his and told her how important she was to Hester and to him. It made Nina blush, but it filled Hester’s heart with joy to see Al acting like a real father. Tomorrow, Hester would order roses for Nina and say they were from Al.

Even though Al had handled the mess in the gym so competently and had been so sweet with Nina, Hester couldn’t stop worrying about what Theo said, “…it’s better to know…you have to know so no one else will get hurt.” What did she “have to know”? Who else “will get hurt”? She should’ve let Theo tell her.

Al was breathing heavily, his penis thick as a hunk of salami.

“Baby, baby, make me come.”

All he needed was for Hester to thrust slightly, and it would be over. But Hester wanted to stop everything and confront him. She wanted to say, “Hey, Al, what was Theo in my ear about? What do I need to know, and who’s going to get hurt if I don’t?” But before she could get off him, his body went rigid, he hollered something about God, and came. As soon as he let go of her, Hester got up and went into the bathroom.

By the time she cleaned herself up and got back in bed, Al was snoring. No hug, no honey, that was great, no nothing. It was the first time they’d done it without one kiss.

Hester was wide awake. She moved as far from Al’s body as she could get and lay watching the shadows on the ceiling and listening to the rain. Had Al hurt someone? Another staff member? He’d certainly hurt her more than a few times.

Yes, she knew what it felt like to be hurt, to be young and devastated. She knew what it was to fight your own private war, to stand in a dormitory hallway and bleed like a wounded sow.

Forty

Two days later Debbie from the Pleasant Palms office knocked on the door of their trailer. Al was in his La-Z-Boy with the TV blaring—Judge Joe Brown rapping his gavel on the desk, shaking it in the air.

Hester stopped making the coffee and went to the door. She knew Al wouldn’t. Debbie handed a paper to Hester. “It’s important; make sure you read the whole thing.”

Hester thanked her and handed it to Al, who immediately hit the Mute button and started reading. Hester went back to the kitchen and plugged in the percolator.

“Hester, hand me my cheaters.” Al was never one to skip the fine print. Hester tossed him his glasses. He put them on and read silently for few more minutes before he exploded. “What the hell? Are they kidding? Listen to this, and I quote, ‘Ribsom & Newton are due ten percent, or thirty million, of the three hundred million sale price. The buyers have put down ten million and the board of directors has voted to give the Ribsom & Newton nine-point-seven million of this down payment to assure a smooth closing. Each of the three hundred unit owners in the park will receive an equal share of the remaining three hundred thousand dollars from the down payment, or a sum of one thousand dollars each…’”

His voice grew louder. “‘As each unit owner must share in the cost of legal representation, the final figure to be equally distributed is two hundred and seventy million, but there may be other costs that may lower the final figure. The sale is contingent on a thirty-day closing, which means all units must be vacated in thirty days from today.’ Can you believe this?” Al got up, went into the kitchen, and tossed the paper on the counter.

“Already we’re down to nine hundred thousand, and no one has said one word about capital gains. That could be another forty percent. And what are the mysterious ‘other costs’? Hester, do you understand what this means?”

Hester was scrubbing the sink with Clorox for the third time. She didn’t want to talk to Al, but she couldn’t help looking up at him and saying, “No, Al, remember I’m too dumb to understand what anything means?”

“Oh, God, Hester, get over it, would you? I didn’t mean that, and you know it. And you know these idiots sold us out. All we’re getting before we have to be out of our trailer, is a thousand dollars. Not enough to pay a mover, let alone put money down on a new place. How are we supposed to buy something else if we don’t get a decent amount down?”

Al was fired up and pacing the small space in front of the sliding glass doors like a caged tiger. The angrier he got, the more pronounced his limp. Hester used to see him like this at school outside his office when one principal or another—he had lived through so many—had pissed him off.

“I’m going to the office. Somebody’s got to say something about this, and I guess it’s going to be me, since nobody else around here seems to have any balls or brains.” He grabbed his sunglasses, his hat, and left.

Hester was glad she wasn’t Debbie. She stopped cleaning and picked the notice up from the floor where Al dropped it.
Thirty days is not much time, and Al’s ranting isn’t going to change anything.
Hester put the paper in the basket with other bills and junk mail, grabbed her laptop, and went out under the Bo tree.

She turned it on and, for some unknown reason, Googled “Arthur Kendall.” She clicked on the third listing down. An article from 1980, in
New Jersey Magazine
about MIAs and POWs appeared on the screen. Ten years had passed since the men listed had disappeared in Vietnam. There was little hope any of them would be found. Hester scrolled down and there it was, highlighted in blue ink, Arthur Kendall, Lodi, N.J., missing since July 16, 1970.
He’s gone. He’s been gone.

Her warped fantasy for so long—Arty finds her to tell her everything was a terrible mistake. They were young and foolish, and in the end they learned a hard lesson from what they did. It was his fault, all his fault. He hugs her and says, “Hester, I am so sorry.”

Now, Hester saw the truth right in front of her on the computer screen—Arty went to war and never came back. He would never find her, never apologize.

Hester logged off. What she wished for was true? Arthur Kendall had been punished too, severely punished. How many times had she imagined him with his wife Trish and kids, two or three kids, maybe more than that? One big happy family, but that’s not how it was. If he had a child, he never saw it. Just like she hadn’t seen hers, theirs. Many times she hated her life, but now she realized at least she had one. And she’d wasted all that time being jealous of Arty, imagining what Arty’s life was like, when he never had one.

In the shade of the Bo as the air grew cooler, Hester looked at the weeds between the impatiens. They needed to be pulled. She put her laptop aside and went to work ripping the stubborn invaders out by the roots. She twisted the dead leaves off the ginger plants and picked the shriveled flowers off the gardenia bush. Two feet down was Nina’s decaying body, but on the surface, the lush and colorful plants belied death and filled the space with beauty.

Hester knew she had to move Nina, but the thought of it, of digging up the plants, of going down deeper and deeper with the shovel, hitting something, seeing the black bags, seeing the duct tape, touching the bundle, feeling the fat, writhing maggots made her sick and filled her with shame.

Her hands were black with soil. She brushed as much dirt off as she could and went inside to do another thing she’d been putting off. She washed up at the kitchen sink, then went down the hall and into the guest bedroom.

The night Hester buried Nina, she also hid all of her belongings. Distressed as she was, she’d thought to throw whatever was in Nina’s drawers and closet into her suitcase and carry-on bag, and shove them under the bed where Nina had slept. Since then, Hester avoided the guest room and only came in to dust and vacuum.

The bright red luggage was cheap stuff from Marshall’s that Hester had mailed Nina $40 to buy, along with the $266 for her flight down. The girl had been desperate on the phone, crying about how no one at college spoke to her, how cruel her aunt was, and how she missed Mr. Murphy and her.

Hester sat on the floor, unzipped the carry-on first, and started taking things out. Two small black push-up bras, a copy of
People
magazine with Brad Pitt on the cover, a classroom copy of
The Great Gatsby
,—Hester knew Nina hadn’t turned it in—a plastic bangle bracelet, a Hello Kitty address book, a pair of shorts with “Too Cute” written across the rear, a hairbrush, a makeup bag full of cheap cosmetics, a box of tampons, and birth control pills.

Birth control pills?
Hester felt her heart drop. What was Nina doing with birth control pills? She never paid one bit of attention to any of the boys at school. This must’ve started at the community college, or…

Hester lined the items up in a row on the floor in front of her. They looked like artifacts from a lost civilization of junk collectors. Nina had so little, and what she had was cheap and worthless. How insignificant her life seemed if this is what she left behind. Everything there saddened Hester, but it was the strands of Nina’s light-brown hair tangled in the bristles of the worn brush that made her go weak inside.

Hester picked up the
People
magazine; the corner of a page was turned down. It was a story about that cop Drew Peterson, who was accused of killing his wives. She put it down and picked up the copy of
The Great Gatsby.
The cover
of the paperback
was dirty, half the front torn off. Hester fanned through it and was amazed by the number of marginal notations. In the beginning the notes seemed based on class discussions, but further along there were curse words, doodles, small drawings of stick people in obscene positions—a couple having oral sex, a man on top of a woman.

Hester cringed. Her heart filled with dread. There were things going on in Nina’s head Hester knew nothing about and couldn’t have guessed, not in a million years. And she clearly had little respect for school property or for what Hester was trying to teach her.

After chapter six practically every other page was defaced. Midway through the last chapter, Nina made a list of each character and an equivalent slur. “Nick Caraway = pansy ass,” “Myrtle Wilson = fat slob.” And so on.

This annoyed Hester. It seemed so out of character for Nina, but clearly it was her writing. Hester closed the book and tossed it on the bed, and it flipped open to the inside of the back cover, where something was written in big capital letters that had nothing to do with the novel. “MRS. MURPHY = STUPID OLD BITCH” and “THIS BOOK BELONGS TO NINA MURPHY”

Nina Murphy? What had she wanted from them? To be adopted?

How could Nina write such things? Hester believed Nina had loved her. Obviously, she hadn’t. Hester put everything back in the carry-on, threw the battered copy of
Gatsby
in on top, and lifted the suitcase onto the bed. She remembered throwing a folder full of papers from the drawer into it. She rummaged through the short-shorts, skinny T’s, and hoodies until she found it. It was packed with old stuff like Nina’s report cards from elementary school, her First Communion certificate, notes she had written to her mother when she was a little girl, things like that. She shuffled through the papers and found Nina’s birth certificate.

Nina Alexandra, born—November 11, 1987. Mother—Jennifer Tattoni, father—unknown.

That date? That year? Hester sat still and counted back nine months and tried to remember what happened in the spring of that year.

Well, Al found out about the abortion. She couldn’t forget that traumatic event. She mentally tried to go forward from that awful day. Was that when she saw Al in the dugout with Jennifer Masterson? Then Jennifer dropped out of school and disappeared from the area altogether? Hester couldn’t remember the exactly sequence, and she couldn’t imagine a connection between Jennifer Masterson and this Jennifer Tattoni, who was Nina’s mother. And then there was Nina’s Aunt Linda, whose last name was Connery, but that was probably her married name. Hester remembered teaching another Masterson girl beside Jennifer, but she’d be damned if she could remember if her first name was Linda.

If only she had her old yearbooks, but Al had thrown them away when the whole rush-to- retirement thing started.

What really did happen last June? Al certainly had some sort of breakdown—over what?—she never did get a straight answer from him. Could it have been Al, and not Theo, who was harassing those girls? Was Al capable of molesting students?

Never, he’d never take a risk like that. He’s too smart, too cautious. They never would have given him his pension. So, it couldn’t have been him.

Hester put the folder down.
That name, Jennifer, just a coincidence, that’s all.
She dumped the rest of the stuff in the suitcase onto the bed. Everything smelled like soap. There was a used bar of Zest tucked in a pouch, more clothes. Hester unzipped the lining inside the top and found some photographs. The first one was of a baby on its stomach on a blanket. Obviously, it was of Nina. The eyes had the same wide eagerness.

Baby Nina was bald as a cue ball, but her face was a pudgy miniature of the perfectly shaped one Hester knew. The next one was of Nina as a toddler. Sitting up, laughing into the lens, two little teeth visible in her open mouth. She looked like an angel. An adorable little angel.

Hester heard the slider squeal open. She slipped the photos back in the lining of the suitcase, scooped everything into it, and slid it under the bed. She hurried into the bathroom.

“Hey, anybody home?”

“Yeah, I’m in the bathroom.”

“Well, honey, looks like we’re moving.” Al sounded okay again. “I spent all this time with a couple of the board members, and the upshot is that Pleasant Palms is sold, and they’re going to tear this place down. Once we took that first installment, the sale became binding. It would take something huge to stop the closing. So I think we better talk.”

Al was outside the bathroom door. Hester flushed the toilet.

“Can you hear me, Hester? Come on, really, we have to talk. We’ve got to make some plans. We can go back to Lambertville, of course, and check up on Nina. God knows why we haven’t heard from that girl. I’ve tried to e-mail her and nothing, I get nothing back. Have you gotten anything?”

Hester stood in the bathroom thinking,
he doesn’t know, he really doesn’t know.
Then in her mind’s eye she saw the bulldozer plowing down the Bo tree, the trunk being pushed to the ground, and the roots popping up, and Nina with them.

“For Christ’s sakes, Al, give me a minute.” Hester washed her hands and studied her reflection in the mirror. There she was, as she really was, middle-aged, not the young, attractive person she used to be, changed—some would say for the worse. She picked up the brush, ran it through her hair, took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and stared into the small universe of her own eyes. Who would she be without Al? Another old woman, alone. Was she strong enough to endure that?

She could hear Al’s anxious breath on the other side of the door. Another decision to be made. The beginning of another chapter in their life together. Maybe they would start traveling again. Hester could hear the drums of Africa calling her. How long had she dreamed of going on a safari?