Somebody Else's Music (4 page)
Read Somebody Else's Music Online
Authors: Jane Haddam
“Sorry,” Emma said. “I've been a little distracted today.”
“You can't expect to keep customers if you don't listen to what they say,” the old woman said. “You take me, for instance. I won't be back here again. You've got good stock, but I won't go where I'm not being listened to. I'm a customer with money to spend. I have a right to be listened to.”
“Yes,” Emma said. “Of course.”
“You're only saying âof course' because you're trying to humor me,” the old woman said. “I won't be humored. I'm not some senile old cat.”
“Yes,” Emma said. Then she stopped. She had been about to say “of course.” “I hope you enjoy your things,” she said, instead.
The old woman looked ready to start up again, but instead she just gathered up her bags, and looked Emma over â
fat cow
, Emma could almost hear her sayâand left,
making her feet hit the floor with particular emphasis, and slamming the door as she went out.
fat cow
, Emma could almost hear her sayâand left,
making her feet hit the floor with particular emphasis, and slamming the door as she went out.
Emma took a chamois cloth and gave the counter a quick rub, just to give herself something to do. What bothered her about her talks with Belinda was that endless complaint:
it isn't fair
. What frightened her, ever since she had first started hearing Betsy's name on television, was that it might be very fair, there might be something about Betsy that really deserved to be famous, if only in a minor way, something about her that the rest of them, even Maris, did not have. It was not something that Emma herself wanted, but it was something that the rest of the world might easily judge to be better than what she had, and she hated the thought of that, much in the same way she had once hated the sight of Betsy in the hall at school with the top button of her blouse buttoned tight, even though everybody knew that when you wore a blouse that way you looked like a jerk. Now Betsy was coming home, moving back into that big brick house in Stony Hill, and everything would be ruined.
it isn't fair
. What frightened her, ever since she had first started hearing Betsy's name on television, was that it might be very fair, there might be something about Betsy that really deserved to be famous, if only in a minor way, something about her that the rest of them, even Maris, did not have. It was not something that Emma herself wanted, but it was something that the rest of the world might easily judge to be better than what she had, and she hated the thought of that, much in the same way she had once hated the sight of Betsy in the hall at school with the top button of her blouse buttoned tight, even though everybody knew that when you wore a blouse that way you looked like a jerk. Now Betsy was coming home, moving back into that big brick house in Stony Hill, and everything would be ruined.
4
It had been a bad day, one of the worst Peggy Smith Kennedy could remember in at least six months, and that, she told herself, was why it bothered her so much that nobody had thought to call and tell her the news about Betsy Toliver. Of course, there
wasn't
much news about Betsy Toliver. There wasn't anything she didn't know. Unlike most of the others, she didn't try to hide her interest in what Betsy was doing by buying
People
or the tabloids up in Johnstown or out at the mall. She could even remember the first time she had realized that Betsy was becoming Something Important, and it had burned into her brain the way such incidents do, the ones you think later were the billboards that announced your life had changed. Peggy had a lot of those incidents emblazoned on her brain, but not quite
enough of them. She tried to remember the first time Stu had hit herâreally hit her, so that she came right up off the floor and slammed into somethingâbut she always came up blank. It seemed to her that he had always hit her, even when they were children together, even back in high school. She knew that wasn't true. She had pictures of herselfâhomecoming queen, prom princess, president of the student councilâand in those days her eyes had been as clear and unclouded as the water in one of those Japanese pools, those oases of serenity. She did remember the first time she had ended up in the emergency ward, with Stu pacing the corridor and her left arm held away from her body at an odd angle, broken in one place, dislocated in another. The doctor who had seen to her had had eyes as flat as the eyes of an android in the science fiction movies Stu liked to see when he wasn't loaded. When he was loaded, he came home with porn, slick black videotapes that looked as if they had been rubbed all over with linseed oil. He made her sit with him and watch women do things she didn't have words for, that he said she wanted her to do to him, but that they never did together, ever, for some reason that seemed to be clear to him but that she couldn't figure out. What bothered her was that she was sure the doctor knew exactly what had happened. When he looked at Stu, his eyes became even flatter than they had been at the beginning. He looked almost two-dimensional. She suddenly realized
everyone
knew, everyone in this emergency room, everyone (maybe) in town, so that all the energy she had spent trying to keep this secret had had no purpose at all.
That
was one of those moments that was emblazoned on her brain, because ever afterwardâthis morning, for instanceâwhen she went into town and walked down Grandview Avenue, or when she left her classroom to go to the teachers' lounge at school, she was sure that people could look straight at her and know her for exactly what she was. Not a homecoming queen. Not a prom princess. Not a student council president. Not even one of the girls who had gone up to UP-Johnstown to get her teaching certificate,
unlike the others who had had to stay home and settle for junior college, or worse. What she really was, was one of those people who are nothing, not a thing, without any value whatsoever, so that it didn't matter if they were beaten bloody twice a month or if the one baby they had ever managed to conceive had died in a miscarriage brought on when their husbands kicked them senseless on their own kitchen floorsâit didn't matter because they deserved it, they
deserved
it, God marked some people out from birth to be the ones who
deserved
it, and it was only an accident that she had been able to hide the truth about herself for so long.
wasn't
much news about Betsy Toliver. There wasn't anything she didn't know. Unlike most of the others, she didn't try to hide her interest in what Betsy was doing by buying
People
or the tabloids up in Johnstown or out at the mall. She could even remember the first time she had realized that Betsy was becoming Something Important, and it had burned into her brain the way such incidents do, the ones you think later were the billboards that announced your life had changed. Peggy had a lot of those incidents emblazoned on her brain, but not quite
enough of them. She tried to remember the first time Stu had hit herâreally hit her, so that she came right up off the floor and slammed into somethingâbut she always came up blank. It seemed to her that he had always hit her, even when they were children together, even back in high school. She knew that wasn't true. She had pictures of herselfâhomecoming queen, prom princess, president of the student councilâand in those days her eyes had been as clear and unclouded as the water in one of those Japanese pools, those oases of serenity. She did remember the first time she had ended up in the emergency ward, with Stu pacing the corridor and her left arm held away from her body at an odd angle, broken in one place, dislocated in another. The doctor who had seen to her had had eyes as flat as the eyes of an android in the science fiction movies Stu liked to see when he wasn't loaded. When he was loaded, he came home with porn, slick black videotapes that looked as if they had been rubbed all over with linseed oil. He made her sit with him and watch women do things she didn't have words for, that he said she wanted her to do to him, but that they never did together, ever, for some reason that seemed to be clear to him but that she couldn't figure out. What bothered her was that she was sure the doctor knew exactly what had happened. When he looked at Stu, his eyes became even flatter than they had been at the beginning. He looked almost two-dimensional. She suddenly realized
everyone
knew, everyone in this emergency room, everyone (maybe) in town, so that all the energy she had spent trying to keep this secret had had no purpose at all.
That
was one of those moments that was emblazoned on her brain, because ever afterwardâthis morning, for instanceâwhen she went into town and walked down Grandview Avenue, or when she left her classroom to go to the teachers' lounge at school, she was sure that people could look straight at her and know her for exactly what she was. Not a homecoming queen. Not a prom princess. Not a student council president. Not even one of the girls who had gone up to UP-Johnstown to get her teaching certificate,
unlike the others who had had to stay home and settle for junior college, or worse. What she really was, was one of those people who are nothing, not a thing, without any value whatsoever, so that it didn't matter if they were beaten bloody twice a month or if the one baby they had ever managed to conceive had died in a miscarriage brought on when their husbands kicked them senseless on their own kitchen floorsâit didn't matter because they deserved it, they
deserved
it, God marked some people out from birth to be the ones who
deserved
it, and it was only an accident that she had been able to hide the truth about herself for so long.
“I couldn't let you have a fucking baby,” Stu had said, when she came back from the hospital after the miscarriage. In the hospital, he had been different, not only sober but reasonable, so reasonable that the doctors had finally had to stop asking the questions that danced around the whole issue of what had made her lose the child. Once they got home again, he had started drinking. To give himself a bigger kick, he had done four lines of cocaine from her tortoiseshell hand mirror while she was in the bathroom. When they were both in college, after her junior year at UP-Johnstown, he had wanted her to try cocaine, too. He had even laid out the lines for her so that she wouldn't have to struggle with them herself, in the back of his van, out in the parking lot of the little supermarket across from the Sycamore. Later, that would seem significant, too, that they had stopped going to the Sycamore, where all their friends went, even then. If she had really been what she thought she was, if she had really been somebody to be proud of, Stu would have wanted to go on showing off their relationship in front of all the boys who rightly should have envied him.
“I can't let you have a fucking baby,” Stu had said, lying on the couch while she sat huddled in an armchair that had springs poking out all over it. One of them was digging into the soft skin of her right arm, but she liked it. She kept rubbing her arm back and forth across it, trying to make it
hurt more than it did. Stu had a six-pack of beer cans on the floor and his nose was running. “If I let you have a fucking baby, you'd kill it.”
hurt more than it did. Stu had a six-pack of beer cans on the floor and his nose was running. “If I let you have a fucking baby, you'd kill it.”
The teachers' lounge was full of potted plants. That had been true when she was a student at Hollman High School, and it was true thirty years later, when she was a teacher. She had no idea who brought the plants or who watered them. She never did either. The first time she'd realized that Betsy Toliver was becoming Something Important was on one of those weekends when Stu went off huntingâif anybody wanted to know how truly awful she was, she'd only have to tell them how often she wished that Stu would come back dead from hunting, Stu, whom she had known all her life, whom she had fallen desperately, hopelessly in love with at the age of six. She had had the house to herself, and she had pulled all the blinds down tight and locked all the doors and turned on the answering machine. She had wanted to be safe, just that once, not only from Stu but from everybody and everything she knew. She had a little stack of romance novels from Silhouette and Second Chance at Love that she had been keeping hidden in her work bag under the textbooks and assignment sheets she needed from school. Stu really hated it when she read romance novels. He said it made her stupid, and she couldn't afford to get any stupider than she already was. Actually, he called her a stupid cââ, but she couldn't say that word even in her own mind, and she didn't really hear it when Stu said it. Instead, let out into the air, it turned into something physical, the bouncing ball in those old Merrie Melodies cartoons, follow it and you don't have to have memorized the words.
She turned on the television just to have noise in the house. She liked music, but there was no point buying CDs of Mozart or Bach. If it wasn't what Stu liked, he broke it, at the first opportunity, and there was always opportunity. She thought vaguely that she would turn on PBS, or Bravo, where there were often orchestras on Saturday afternoons. She flicked clumsily at the remote and went through channels,
channel after channel, the Sci Fi Channel, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, and then, on her second run-throughâhow could they possibly have all three tiers, HBO, Showtime, everything, and still have nothing to watch?âit had suddenly occurred to her that the woman on the CNN panel show was vaguely familiar. She settled down to watch, a copy of a book called
Reckless Desire
held in one hand, idly, so that she would have something to fiddle with while her stomach dropped out of her body and her brain froze tight. It wasn't that the woman was vaguely familiar. She'd known who it was at first glance. It was almost impossible to mistake that dramatic, high-cheekboned faceâalthough, in spite of the fact that it looked the same, for some reason it now seemed handsome instead of ugly. Peggy had a line of bruises going up her arm from her wrist to her shoulder, dots of black and blue where Stu had held his fist against her so that his high school ring cut into her flesh. All of a sudden, all the bruises started to hurt, and all her muscles lost control. She was as cold as if she'd been locked into a butcher's walk-in freezer. The people on the panel show talked, but she didn't understand a word they said. She caught the fact that the host called Betsy “Liz,” and that was it. Then she was utterly, irrevocably sick, so sick she didn't have time to get out of her chair and run for the bathroom. She leaned over and put her head between her legs and vomited, right there on the floor, vomited and vomited. So much stuff poured out of her, she thought she was vomiting up her own intestines. When she was able to sit up again, the show was rolling credits.
Regular Correspondents
, one category said,
Michael Kinsley, Ramesh Ponnuru, Laura Ingraham, Elizabeth Toliver.
Oh, she thought, Betsy must be some kind of liberal. Then she was vomiting again, and it had begun to occur to her that there was no way she was going to be able to clean it all up before tomorrow evening, to get it so clean that Stu would never notice what it was she had done. She could not have explained it to him, any more than she could have explained it to anybody else, this idea
she had that a judgment had been passed, not only on her or on Betsy but on all of them.
channel after channel, the Sci Fi Channel, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, and then, on her second run-throughâhow could they possibly have all three tiers, HBO, Showtime, everything, and still have nothing to watch?âit had suddenly occurred to her that the woman on the CNN panel show was vaguely familiar. She settled down to watch, a copy of a book called
Reckless Desire
held in one hand, idly, so that she would have something to fiddle with while her stomach dropped out of her body and her brain froze tight. It wasn't that the woman was vaguely familiar. She'd known who it was at first glance. It was almost impossible to mistake that dramatic, high-cheekboned faceâalthough, in spite of the fact that it looked the same, for some reason it now seemed handsome instead of ugly. Peggy had a line of bruises going up her arm from her wrist to her shoulder, dots of black and blue where Stu had held his fist against her so that his high school ring cut into her flesh. All of a sudden, all the bruises started to hurt, and all her muscles lost control. She was as cold as if she'd been locked into a butcher's walk-in freezer. The people on the panel show talked, but she didn't understand a word they said. She caught the fact that the host called Betsy “Liz,” and that was it. Then she was utterly, irrevocably sick, so sick she didn't have time to get out of her chair and run for the bathroom. She leaned over and put her head between her legs and vomited, right there on the floor, vomited and vomited. So much stuff poured out of her, she thought she was vomiting up her own intestines. When she was able to sit up again, the show was rolling credits.
Regular Correspondents
, one category said,
Michael Kinsley, Ramesh Ponnuru, Laura Ingraham, Elizabeth Toliver.
Oh, she thought, Betsy must be some kind of liberal. Then she was vomiting again, and it had begun to occur to her that there was no way she was going to be able to clean it all up before tomorrow evening, to get it so clean that Stu would never notice what it was she had done. She could not have explained it to him, any more than she could have explained it to anybody else, this idea
she had that a judgment had been passed, not only on her or on Betsy but on all of them.
Now she realized that she had been staring at the plants for what seemed like forever, and that her free period was going to come to an end sometime, and maybe it already had. She looked up at the clock on the wallâshe didn't understand why they had to have the same kind of clock in here that they had in all the classrooms; it made her feel as if she were still sixteen years old and waiting for the bell like she would wait for a governor's pardonâand saw with some relief that she'd only been zoning out for maybe fifteen minutes. Her head hurt, badly. She thought she might have another mild concussion, but she had decided, years ago, never to go to the emergency room for anything minor. Never mind the fact that she would have to pay for any treatment she had herself. The system had gone to an HMO a little while back, and now if she wanted her insurance to pay for her trips to the ER, she had to get permission from her primary care physician. He was not, thankfully, one of the boys she had grown up with, but she still hated to see him for every little thing. He had flat eyes, too, when he wanted to.
The door to the teachers' lounge opened and Shelley Brancowski came in, closing the door behind her with a snap, so that none of the students would be able to look in and see what went on when the teachers weren't working. Why that would be important, Peggy didn't know. It wasn't like any of them smoked anymore, and if any of them did they had to go outside the building just like the students did. Shelley threw her pocketbook into one of the chairs and went to get herself coffee from the big spigoted pot that was kept hot all day long. By the time the final bell rang at three-thirty, the coffee inside it was a thick mud sludge like the mud pies they used to make in the sandbox at Central School after a good hard rain.
“So,” Shelley said. “You okay? You've been looking a little distracted all day.”
“I'm fine. I'm just a little tired.” Shelley's eyebrows shot
up. Peggy ignored them. “I've been talking to an old friend of mine, sort of by accident. Elizabeth Toliver really is coming to stay here for a month.”
up. Peggy ignored them. “I've been talking to an old friend of mine, sort of by accident. Elizabeth Toliver really is coming to stay here for a month.”
“I know,” Shelley said. “It's been everywhere, really. It's exciting, don't you think? I mean, it's not like she's a movie star, or somebody the kids would understand, but it's still exciting. It's not every day we get somebody who's been to dinner at the White House in Hollman.”
“Mmmm,” Peggy said.
Shelley cocked her head. “So, what's wrong? She was a friend of yours, right, or somebody you knew? She was in the same graduating class. I looked it up in the old yearbooks. She was really remarkable-looking even then.”
“We thought she was ugly,” Peggy said. “And maybe she was. For high school. Your tastes change when you get older.”
“So, what is it? I mean, I know there's all that about the murder, but I can't see that it matters. It doesn't have anything to do with anything, no matter what the tabloids say. I looked that up, too. Were you there, the night that boy died in the park?”
“Everybody was there, really. Wandering around. We used to go to the park on Saturday nights and neck. There was a pine forest there and you could lie down on the dead needles and it was soft. That was one of the few times I ever wished I'd gone away to college. It would have been much easier if we'd had a bed in a dorm room to use for what we were trying to do.”
“Were you and Stu already going out then?”
“Stu and I started going out in kindergarten. Or something like it. Well, I wanted to go out with him, and I just sort of hung around until he got the idea himself. I think he finally made it when we were freshmen in high school.”
“Were you one of the people who locked Elizabeth Toliver into the outhouse?”
“No,” Peggy said, and that was true. Whatever else she had been in those days, she had not been one of those girlsâlike Maris and Belinda and Emmaâwho had felt
the need to make Betsy's life as miserable as it was possible to make it. She had only wanted to keep her distance, because she knew that guilt by association really worked. On the other hand, it was also true that she had known what they were going to do, and had listened to Betsy screaming just before she'd run off to look for Stu, and that she hadn't done anything to stop what was happening.
the need to make Betsy's life as miserable as it was possible to make it. She had only wanted to keep her distance, because she knew that guilt by association really worked. On the other hand, it was also true that she had known what they were going to do, and had listened to Betsy screaming just before she'd run off to look for Stu, and that she hadn't done anything to stop what was happening.
Now she glanced back up at the clock and began to gather up her things. If Emma hadn't called here looking for Nancy and if she hadn't answered the phone accidentally, she would never have heard the news about Betsy Toliver, except thirdhand, from newspapers, the way Shelley had. Guilt by association still worked, she understood that. It was just that, now, she was the one they were all afraid to be associated with. She didn't even blame them. If it had been one of them in her position, she would have done the same thing.
Things
. When they saw her in the mall, they pretended not to, and if they were walking toward her they turned around abruptly, or crossed the corridor to the other side to pretend to look at window displays of electronics or candy canes. When they saw her in town, they smiled and said they couldn't understand why they never saw anything of her anymore, even though they did understand, completely, and so did she.
Things
. When they saw her in the mall, they pretended not to, and if they were walking toward her they turned around abruptly, or crossed the corridor to the other side to pretend to look at window displays of electronics or candy canes. When they saw her in town, they smiled and said they couldn't understand why they never saw anything of her anymore, even though they did understand, completely, and so did she.
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