The Why of Things: A Novel (18 page)

She feels acutely self-conscious as she goes, and when she realizes too late that in her desperation to get out of here she has headed for the back door rather than the door through which she entered, she continues anyway, and soon she finds herself outside again, not in the dust of a parking lot but among the rows of plants on tables set up out back; at the sight, she comes to a grateful stop.

She hasn’t been to this nursery in years, but she can remember coming here as a little girl when her parents needed fertilizer, or mulch, or plants to line the border of the quarry, and running among these rows, which then seemed infinite in number, a giant maze, but that, when she looks at them now, don’t live up to the memory. She remembers one time running headlong into a man she thought was her father and wrapping herself around his leg, and the horror she felt when she realized that the leg belonged to someone else; she wonders if it was the man’s behind the counter. She does not remember being impressed by the individual plants themselves—except for the strawberry plants, and the warm, soft fruit that she and Sophie would sneak when they thought nobody was looking—though now she finds herself admiring the structure of the leaves, the delicate blooms. One in particular catches her eye; it is large and flowering, with bright, trumpet-shaped blooms, the crepelike petals opening around a long, seeded pistil. She pauses before it, watches as a butterfly hovers.

“Hibiscus. Latin, from the Greek for swamp mallow.”

Eve turns around; the man from inside has appeared behind her, silent as a ghost.

“You see its flowers?”

Eve turns back to the plant, nods.

“They live only for a day. That plant will have produced new flowers by tomorrow.”

Eve looks at the plant with interest, finding it a peculiar notion to think of a plant’s appearance changing overnight, the positioning of flowers completely rearranged.

“Can you be here at seven o’clock?”

Eve turns to the man. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes. You. Here. In the morning. Seven o’clock. It’s the most
efficient time of day to water. Evening the plants stay damp and risk getting fungal disease. Midday’s so warm that most of the water evaporates. If you can be here at seven to water, the job is yours. One less thing for me to worry about.”

“Really?”

“I’d hate to see a young girl like you resort to prostitution,” he says; almost imperceptibly, he winks.

*  *  *

O
N
her way home from St. Ann’s, Joan picks up a head of lettuce and a frozen pizza for supper for the girls tonight; it is trivia night at the Widow’s Walk, a bar and restaurant in downtown Gloucester. The food at the Widow’s Walk has gone downhill over the years, and the owner who emcees the evening grows less and less coherent the more and more he drinks, which is more and more each year, but it has been Joan and Anders’ tradition to go to trivia night every year they’ve come here for the summer. She hadn’t really expected that they’d go—in Maryland, they’d abandoned their tradition of going out for Italian on Wednesday nights—but Anders mentioned it this morning as if their going were a given. Joan was both surprised and hopeful.

When she gets home, she puts the groceries away. She skipped breakfast, and now she is hungry, so she takes a yogurt from the fridge. This she eats standing at the kitchen counter, absently scanning a newspaper from the small stack piled there, waiting to be recycled. Three flat-screen TVs were stolen from vacant rooms in a Rockport hotel, and a Byfield man was sentenced for selling pot in Gloucester. Commercial and residential fishermen are appealing for congressional relief. A new charter arts school is bidding for students. It is Sunday’s paper, she notices, and she flips to the obituary section. The familiar spot where James Favazza’s obituary used to be is now a hole. Eve has clipped it: she’s
not surprised. She has read the obituary enough times anyway to know what it says.

Joan frowns. She tosses her yogurt container into the garbage, sets her spoon in the sink, aware suddenly of faint noises coming from behind the laundry room door. She looks at the door warily, imagining a raccoon or a squirrel or a rat or a bat trapped on the other side. She should wait for Anders to be home, she thinks, before she opens the door and risks loosing whatever creature it is into the house. But then she hears a whine, and a scrape against the door, and the throaty sound that precedes a bark—the unmistakable sounds of a dog. Peering through the door she sees the gray dog that lately seems to have made itself a fixture in their yard.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asks it, releasing the creature, which runs twice around the kitchen table, clearly delighted to be free. After the second lap, it returns to Joan and leans heavily against her, its tail wagging. Joan pats its head, noticing for the first time the note on the kitchen table, which she hadn’t seen beneath the vase of flowers that holds it down. She lifts the note and reads it.
Gone to George’s. Back soon. Dog in laundry room—will explain when we return. Love, A and E
. Joan feels a flash of jealousy; Eve would never agree to go to breakfast with her mother. The dog sits at her feet, looking up at her expectantly.

There is the sound, then, of gravel on the driveway, and Joan looks out the window above the kitchen sink, expecting to see Anders and Eve in the Buick, back from breakfast, but instead what emerges through the trees is the same maroon car that had come up the driveway the other day. Joan’s limbs grow cold. As uneasy as the car had made her feel the other day, she hasn’t thought of it since, but the sight of it here again now fills her with anxious apprehension. She takes a step back, out of the sunlight filtering through the window and into the shadows of the kitchen,
where she hopes she can’t be seen. The dog runs to the door and peers through the screen; Joan beckons it away, but it pays no attention. She wills it not to push through the door.

The other day, she hadn’t been able to see through the windshield for the glare of reflected sunlight; today, she can easily make out the driver behind the wheel. He is a young man, perhaps in his twenties, and he is wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap that is tilted upward at such an angle that his features are visible: pointed nose, hollow, unshaven cheeks, deep-set eyes. He is skinny, with a sharp jawline and a jutting Adam’s apple that seems to bob nervously in his throat. He looks at the house, squinting, and then lowers his neck and peers out at the quarry. He doesn’t look particularly threatening, and part of Joan feels she ought to simply go outside and find out what he’s doing here. If Anders were home, she would. If Anders were home she wouldn’t think twice about it. But aside from the dog, which has thankfully lost interest in the car and is now sniffing around the garbage can, she is alone, and so she doesn’t dare.

After half a minute, the man turns around in his seat and begins to back his car down the driveway. Joan wishes that he would turn the car around so that she could read the license plate; mounted to the front is a plate with the big red B of the Red Sox logo.

Joan watches the car until it is out of sight. She wonders if its presence has anything to do with James Favazza, and regrets her trepidation; her curiosity now that the car has gone is more compelling than her fear. She should have just gone out there, she thinks, frustrated with herself. She wonders what she should do if he returns, and finds herself almost hoping that he will.

There is a crashing sound in the corner of the room; the dog has knocked the garbage can over, strewing the contents across the kitchen floor. Joan’s yogurt container rolls out across the tiles
among several balled-up paper towels, an empty container of orange juice, a soggy coffee filter. She feels a flash of frustration, and then it’s gone. Distractedly, she rights the bin and picks up the refuse, letting the dog lick up the splattered remnants of her yogurt from the tiles. When a moment later she hears a car coming up the driveway, her eyes dart to the window, her heart racing. But it is the Buick that emerges from the trees; Anders and Eve are home.

The car doors open simultaneously, like a set of wings; Anders closes his behind him, but Eve leaves hers open, marching directly across the driveway to a pair of trees at the edge of the lawn. Anders follows. Eve points at the trees, her mouth moving rapidly; she is clearly worked up about something. Anders nods his agreement in a manner that seems both tolerant and weary. It’s clear that whatever’s got Eve worked up has to do with James. Eve turns and marches toward the house. Anders follows, shutting the Buick’s open passenger door as he passes the car in the driveway.

“You’re back,” Joan says when they enter.

“We are indeed,” Anders replies. He gives his wife a kiss and leans back against the counter.

Eve pulls out a chair and sits down with a plunk; the dog runs to her and jumps up, resting its front paws on Eve’s thighs. She scratches it between the eyes.

“As is the dog, I see,” Joan continues. The dog hops off of Eve’s legs and gives its head a flapping shake that jangles its collar loudly. Joan looks at Anders questioningly.

“Yuh,” Anders says. “It’s back. We were worried that it might be lost after all. I left a message on the owner’s machine, letting whoever it is know that we have him.”

Joan nods. “I see.”

“Obviously they didn’t call back?”

“I’ve only been home a few minutes,” Joan says. “But I didn’t check the machine.”

“I’ll do it.” Anders passes through the kitchen and into the main room, where the answering machine sits in the room’s far corner, often neglected.

“Mom,” Eve says, when her father has left the room. “You will never guess what we found out.”

“What did you find out?” Joan doesn’t even bother asking who they’re discussing.

“Well, he did die of drowning, we learned that, so it wasn’t like someone poisoned or bludgeoned him then dumped him in.
But
, here’s the thing.” She looks at her mother hard. “He was shitfaced.”

Joan opens her mouth to scold Eve for her language, but stops herself.

“His blood alcohol level was
five times
above the legal limit.”

“And how did you learn this?” she asks.

“Dad called the police station. After breakfast. He called up and found out.”

“He did?”

“Yes, we had a deal, but—” Eve waves her mother off. “But
five times
, Mom.
Five times
the legal limit.”

“That’s a lot,” Joan says. She is not sure why this has Eve so excited.

Eve stands and goes to the kitchen door. “See those two trees?” she asks her mother, gesturing.

“Yes.”

“The truck drove
in between
those trees. Look how close together they are! You couldn’t do that
sober
!” Eve returns to her seat and plunks down. “So I was right! Doesn’t it seem possible, even
likely
, that he was driven in? Pushed in? I mean, maybe he was drinking with friends and passed out and they, I don’t know,
thought
that he was dead, so they freaked out and drove him up here and dumped the body. Or else he was flat-out
killed
.”

Anders has reappeared in the doorway; he clears his throat and leans against the door frame. “I think,” he says, “it was probably more likely an accident.”

Joan finds herself wondering about this, wondering about the man just now in the maroon car, wondering who James Favazza really was. His image from the obituary flashes through her mind, somber and distracted. She’s not sure
what
has happened here, but she decides to keep quiet.

Eve frowns. She crosses her arms, her brow furrowed in thought. “And,” she says slowly, after a moment, “I just thought of another thing. According to the paper, he was last seen at his mother’s house at eleven in the morning. Was he drunk then? I doubt it. I mean, don’t you think his mother would have mentioned it?” Eve takes a deep breath. “Which means,” she says, “he had to go
somewhere
to drink
after
he left his mother’s house. Someone
must
have seen him. But they’re not speaking up. A little weird, huh?”

No one responds. Outside, there is the sound of a helicopter somewhere overhead, and in the distance, the barking of a dog, which reminds Joan of the creature they are sheltering now, which has curled up in the corner of the room. She looks over at it, and then at her husband, who is looking at it, too. “No messages?” she asks.

Anders shakes his head. “No messages.”

S
he is lying on the beach, her heels dug into the cool, wet sand at the end of her towel. Though the water is just steps away, the noise of the sea is a distant, lulling murmur. Joan’s eyes are closed, but she can tell when a cloud is passing before the sun; the screen of her eyelids dims from bright red to a deeper, rustlike color, and her body will have just begun to cool when suddenly the cloud passes and it is bright again—more bright, it seems, than it was before, if only because she had grown accustomed to the dimmer light.