But Eliza preferred her sideline view of her sister’s life. And unlike larger-than-life Vonnie, Eliza had been spared what their mother dubbed the Vikki Carr curse. Part of that was the simple good luck of meeting Peter when she was eighteen and falling into a relationship that, whatever its ups and downs, was pretty much without doubt. But even with her high school boyfriends, she had been…diffident. She almost never called them, for example. Vonnie sneered that Eliza was a throwback, that she was betraying all womanhood with her willingness to let men call the shots. Eliza didn’t think so. She just didn’t have that much to say.
But sometimes she wondered if Walter’s self-help book, the one that had urged women to embrace their “natural” roles, had left more of an imprint than she realized. While traveling with Walter-a euphemism, yet not-they had gotten into the habit of going to yard sales, and he would sometimes let her buy a book, if it was cheap enough. She had picked up a copy of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, of which Walter did not approve, so she had to read it during her brief moments alone, in the bath or on the toilet. She would soak in the tub-and tubs were fewer and far between, once Walter got the tent-and read until the water was tepid. She imagined what Don Corleone would do if she were his daughter, or even the daughter of a friend. He wouldn’t kill Walter, not on her behalf. That would not be justice, as he explained to the undertaker whose daughter had been raped by the two college boys. But they would do something pretty bad to him, she was sure, especially if she asked them to avenge the girl whose body had been found in Patapsco State Park.
She still had the book with her when the state police picked them up near Point of Rocks. At first the book had reminded her of the time with Walter, and she hadn’t wanted to read it. But then her high school boyfriend had said they should watch the film on his family’s VCR, and she’d decided to finish the book first. She had plunged back in, following Michael into his Sicilian exile, feeling a bizarre kinship with him-she had been exiled, too-then on to his wedding night, where he had discovered his young bride was a virgin, and a virgin was the very best thing to be, according to Mario Puzo. She had stopped reading there and forgotten about the book until Vonnie had discovered it during summer vacation, while looking for the latest copy of TV Guide. (It was an article of faith in the Lerner household that Eliza’s bed, the territory beneath it, was a kind of Bermuda Triangle where all sorts of things came to rest.) The book’s spine was broken on the page where Eliza had abandoned it, and Vonnie, emerging from beneath the bed with a few dust bunnies clinging to her hair, as unruly as Eliza’s but not as red, looked at the pages, then at her sister.
“How would he know?” she said. Vonnie was exhausting and infuriating, but also loyal. Eliza, filled with warmth at this memory of her sister, decided to call her for no good reason, although she was almost certain to be dumped straight to voice mail. She began heading downstairs to the den, the coziest spot in the house.
The other phone rang, full-throated, robust. It had no answering machine, no voice mail, another decision on which Verizon had fought with her. It would ring forever if Eliza allowed it. Phones never rang that way anymore. It was one of the interesting things about older movies, where phones might ring six, seven, eight times, or-in that one gangster movie of which Peter was so fond-something like thirty-seven times. Nowadays, phones rang maybe three or four times, then rolled over to voice mail, or got picked up by answering machines, or-
She picked up on the seventh ring, almost hoping it was news about her car warranty or mortgage or credit card. The automated voice gave her a moment of hope. But this time, the voice was asking if she would accept a collect call from Walter Bowman.
She said she would.
“ Elizabeth?”
“Yes.”
There was an echoing metallic sound that seemed to go on and on. “Excuse me,” Walter said, and the noise grew louder, swelled, then fell back, ending with a few faded clangs.
“What was that?” She had intended to ask him as few questions as possible, to put the burden of conversation on him, but her curiosity got the better of her.
“Oh, one of the guys went down to Jarratt and got a stay, so we’re kicking him back in.”
“Kicking-?”
“We kick the doors, in solidarity, when a man gets a postponement. Although I have to tell you, I don’t really have much for this particular fellow. He’s managed the trick of being both the meanest and dumbest man here.”
She was nonplussed. It felt like the polite conversation a salesman makes as he settles in, getting ready to launch into his pitch. She wanted to blurt out: What do you want? Get to it, stop stalling. Before she could ask, her cell phone buzzed from her pocket. She glanced down at its screen. Iso’s school.
“Walter, can you hold on? There’s another call coming in on my cell and…”
She did not want to explain why the call could not be ignored, but nor was she happy when Walter said: “Sure, I understand. You’ve got young kids.”
“My husband told me he might need me to pick him up at the airport today,” she lied, with a promptness that made her rather proud. The old-fashioned phone could not be muted, so she walked out into the hall, determined that Walter not overhear the conversation with Iso’s middle school.
It was the principal. “Can you come in, Mrs. Benedict? We have a…situation.”
“Is Isobel hurt? Sick?” In her worry, she couldn’t help using her daughter’s full name.
“No, just something to discuss before it becomes a problem. And we know that Iso’s brother is in elementary school, so we thought it would be easier to have you come in now, rather than complicate your life with after-school detention, which means Iso would miss the bus.”
“Detention?”
“Only if it were warranted and it’s not.” A pause. “Yet.”
She walked back to the beige phone, tried to think what she could say. “Walter, I’m sorry, but this is urgent-”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “We’ll catch up later. We have a lot to talk about.”
As anxious as she was about Iso and the unspecified situation, Eliza couldn’t take Walter’s invitation to end the call. “Do we? Do we really have that much to discuss?”
“I think so,” Walter said. “And although I know you doubt this, it will be mutually beneficial, Elizabeth. Really, you have to believe that I have nothing but your best interest at heart. I’m doing this for you.”
She said good-bye, grabbed her purse and her keys, headed out to the garage, and then, almost as an afterthought, dashed back inside and threw up in the powder-room toilet.
22
TRUDY TACKETT WAS IN HER CLOSET, taking careful inventory of her clothes, a biannual ritual in which she banished the warm-weather months and welcomed the cold ones by sorting, folding, and mending, as needed. Also eliminating. As needed. She was ruthless about culling things. She had to be. Trudy had been exactly the same size since her wedding day forty-four years earlier, with the exception of her many pregnancies, and clothing had a way of mounting up. She reversed the process every April, although not with the same sense of satisfaction. She liked the arrival of the shorter, colder days, which seemed to pass more quickly than their summer counterparts. A June day required so much of a person. Enthusiasm, cheer. She didn’t doubt that seasonal affective disorder was real, but wasn’t it also possible to suffer from a surfeit of sun? Here in her closet, Trudy was glad for the lack of natural light, even if it meant missing the occasional grease spot, or navy masquerading as black.