“Poor Agnes.” Christine’s comment sounded as if it had been made many times.
“What happened?”
“She shot herself.”
“Shot herself?” So Oscar had been telling the truth, I hadn’t misunderstood him.
“Yes. Poor Agnes. There are all kinds of rumors. But cancer is what I think she had. Ask Nettie. She and Agnes were good friends.”
“How awful. The poor thing.”
“Yes, it was awful—” Christine trailed off, sort of absentmindedly and that closed the conversation. I’m not fond of lingering over the gruesome details of anything anyway, so I didn’t press her.
That same afternoon about four-thirty after all the teachers had left Betty Lou came tip-toeing in. “Is Mr. Van Buren still here?” she whispered, looking first one way then the other like a bedraggled little Red Riding Hood in fear of the wolf.
“No,” I told her. “He left about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Good. I wanted to tell you about Miss Drury when he wasn’t around. You know Miss Drury, the secretary here before you came.”
“I know about her, Betty Lou. Miss Anderson told me.”
Betty Lou peered at me from under her long bangs. “Did Miss Anderson tell you Miss Drury was murdered?”
“Murdered!” I yelped. “You’re kidding!” I felt as if I’d been hit in the back with a sledge hammer.
Betty Lou shook her head. “I heard Mr. Van Buren say so right after it happened. He was talking to Nettie on the phone and he said, ‘My God, that isn’t suicide, it’s murder!’ Those were his very words and his face got as white as a sheet.”
I examined Betty Lou’s flushed little face, feeling very sorry for her. Someone should have taken her in hand a long time ago. “Betty,” I said as gently as I could. “I’m sure Mr. Van Buren didn’t mean that someone actually murdered Miss Drury. He meant she couldn’t be blamed for killing herself, that it was really her illness that made her do it. People hate to say someone committed suicide. They say instead that illness drove them to it or that they were mentally disturbed, something like that.”
“He didn’t mean that at all! You should have seen his face!”
“Oh, Betty Lou, come on now. You’re making this all up and you know it.” Sometimes you have to be tough with these kids. She was mad at me when she left. I couldn’t help it. There was just no sense in letting her go on living in the world of her imagination. I had a great imagination when I was her age myself and I knew the trouble it could get you into. I remember when my father died of acute alcoholism, I went around telling everybody he’d been poisoned. My mother nearly ended up in jail. It didn’t take her long to set me straight, believe me.
For the next few weeks I was too busy to give much thought to Betty Lou or anyone else, including Roger Van Buren. There were records to be filed, reports to be made out, purchase orders to be checked, a thousand things. I really am a good secretary, even if I don’t look it. Sometimes at night I’d be so tired, all I could do was drag myself across the street to Nettie’s and fall into bed. On those nights Nettie would bring my supper to me on a tray, though she ate mostly frozen dinners herself. She may have looked like a side-show freak, but she was a doll, really. Oh, sure, she was snoopy, but what old lady with nothing to do isn’t? To tell the truth, Nettie was the only friend I had.
After that first day Christine didn’t have any more to do with me. I knew she wouldn’t. She’d sized me up and got my number, and that was that. As for Betty Lou, I asked her to go to the show with me a couple of times, but she always refused. I think she was still mad at me. She was an odd little kid. The only family she had was her older brother, a bachelor, who owned one of the local pubs. What she needed was a mother, preferably one like mine, someone who would fix her up, set her straight, and then leave her alone.
I talked to Nettie about Betty Lou one day after school. Nettie was sitting in her little straight rocker near the window, knitting. She always sat there so she could see what was going on at school across the street. “Betty Lou seems so lonely,” I said. “I wish she’d let me do something for her.”
“You seem a little lonely yourself,” Nettie said. “There’s so little to do here. I should think you’d go home on the weekends.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d made up my mind to keep away from home until I was sure I wouldn’t go to pieces if I happened to run into Brad and his blonde. And that time hadn’t come yet.
“Don’t you get along with your parents?” Nettie asked, her raspberry mouth pursed like an old movie star’s.
“All I have is a mother and we get along fine. It isn’t that,” I told her.
She examined her knitting and without looking up, asked, “Don’t you have a boyfriend, a pretty girl like you?”
I had to smile. She wasn’t very subtle at fishing. “I had one. He’s going to marry somebody else. A blonde,” I added, for no good reason, except I figured well, why not, she might as well know the whole sad story.
“Oh, Marta, I am sorry. You’ll have to find a new one. It shouldn’t be hard.”
“It won’t be. I’ve got one all picked out, if I ever find time to work on him.”
Nettie didn’t appear to be listening. She was busy counting her stitches. “Who is it?” she asked in between a knit and a purl.
“Roger Van Buren. My boss,” I said. “He’s attractive, don’t you think?” When she didn’t answer I went on, “In some ways he reminds me of Brad, my ex-fiance, the one that got away. Only this time things are going to be different.”
“For a while every man you see will remind you of the one you lost,” Nettie said finally, but without looking up. “It’s a normal reaction in all of us to look for something we’ve lost. But he’s a little old for you. Aren’t there any teachers or anyone your own age with whom you could be friends?”
“Betty Lou is the only person anywhere near my age who’ll have anything to do with me. And she’s so full of crazy ideas, I doubt she has any friends of her own, let alone finding any for me.”
“Crazy ideas, what do you mean?”
“Well, for one thing, you know Miss Drury, the woman who was the school secretary before I came, well, Betty is spreading the story around that the old lady was murdered. Murdered! Can you imagine?” I laughed, forgetting completely that Christine had told me that Nettie had been a good friend of Agnes Drury’s. But the minute the words were out, I remembered, and could have hacked off my tongue.
Nettie closed her eyes for a second. “Agnes Drury committed suicide,” she whispered. “But she was the bravest woman I’ve ever known.” She opened her eyes then and seemed to be looking at something way beyond me. I said I was sorry for saying such a stupid thing, but Nettie didn’t hear and she didn’t say goodnight when I left her. I hated myself. And usually I’m so careful about what I say, too.
The next day was Friday and Friday nights the stores in Long Lake are open. I had a notion that I might run into Roger downtown someplace and if not, I’d looked up his address and intended to hunt him down if necessary. I wasn’t getting anyplace at work. But then, neither was Christine. He was barely polite to her when she came in to ask him something, which she did about eighteen times a day.
I did a little window-shopping, bought a new lipstick at the drugstore, but all I saw were a lot of women and their kids. The taverns were crowded with men, but I was fairly sure Roger wouldn’t be in a tavern. He wasn’t the type. So not finding him downtown, I started walking. By the time I passed the business section and crossed the bridge which led to the older part of town, I must admit I had a few doubts about the sense of what I was doing. The edges of town were mostly weed-filled, empty fields pocked here and there by clumps of gloomy elms and oaks. And it was quiet. Lord, it was quiet.