So she’d had a vision of her life, Rhonda thought. Or maybe it was a vision of life itself.
Not that Rhonda would ever cut her throat — of course! Never. That was a vow.
Not trying to disguise her disgust, for what she’d heard in the doorway and for Edgar Hay sprawling fatuous-drunk. The ridiculous multi-course Thanksgiving dinner hadn’t yet been brought to the dining room table, scarcely 5:30 P.M. and already Edgar Hay was drunk. Rhonda stood just inside the doorway waiting for Edgar’s stabbing-story to come to an end. For maybe this would be the end? — maybe the story of the stabbing would never again be told, in Rhonda’s hearing? Rhonda would confront Edgar Hay who’d then gleefully report back to Drex and Madeleine how rude their daughter was — how unattractive, how ungracious — for Rhonda was staring, unsmiling — bravely she approached the old man keeping her voice cool, calm, disdainful O.K then — what happened to the stabbed man? Did he die? Do you know for a fact he died? And what happened to the killer — the killers — the killer with the knife — was anyone ever caught? Was anyone ever punished, is anyone in prison right now? And Edgar Hay — “Ed-gie” — looked at Rhonda crinkling his pink-flushed face in a lewd wink How the hell would I know, sweetheart? I wasn’t there.
Babysitter
Midday, early spring, sunshine in steel bars flashing on the river, she drove to meet him where he’d summoned her. Wind swept in roiling gusts from the Canadian shore.
Suburban life: appointments! Mornings, afternoons. And then the children’s appointments. Dentist, orthodontist. Gynecologist, hair salon, yoga. Architect, community relations forum, library fund-raiser for which she’s a committee co-chair, flattered to be invited, yet uneasy. Suburban life: each calendar day is a securely barred window, you shove up the window and grasp the bars, grip the bars tight, these are bars that confine but also protect, what pleasure in shaking them!
My appointments this afternoon, she’d told them. Two o’clock, then three, after the library I must drive downtown.
It was a journey: downtown. Twelve miles south and east on the thunderous expressway.
She drove without haste. She drove like a woman already fatally stricken, resigned. She drove at a wavering speed, in the right lane. Calm as a woman in a dream the outcome of which she already knows though in fact she did not know What will happen? I will never go through with this — will I?
She didn’t think so. It would be her first time, she hadn’t such courage.
Out of the leafy suburbs north of the Midwestern city she drove. Massive vehicles passed on the left, her station wagon shuddered in their wake. The nape of her neck was bare, her pale hair swung in scissor-cut wings about her face. Suburban villages were passing beyond the six-foot chain-link fence above the expressway, barely visible from the highway that seemed to be sucking her into it, by degrees downhill in the direction of the river, what was called, as if it were a self-contained place, City Center.
The air was clamorous, like an argument among strangers you can’t quite hear. It was a gusty April, not yet Easter. There was something she meant to remember: Easter. Something about the children. Her skin burned in anticipation of him.
He was her friend, she wished to think. He’d touched her only once. The imprint of his fingers on her forearm was still visible to her, in secret.
The station wagon was a new model, handsome and gleaming and paneled in wood. A sturdy vehicle, in the rear strewn with children’s things. Still, gusts of wind rocked it, she gripped the steering wheel tight. Such wind! In their hillside house in Bloomfield Heights that was an old fieldstone Colonial wind whistled in the chimneys, rattled the windows with a furtive sound like something trying to get in. Doors were blown open by the wind, or blown shut with a crash. Oh Mommy! their five-year-old daughter cried. The ghost!