One night in late September, beautiful Indian summer, I came home and found Linda sitting in my living room.
“Your landlady let me in,” she said. Then: “This is really a depressing place, Dwyer. You think we could go somewhere else?”
She didn’t like any of the bars I recommended. Too downscale, presumably. We ended up in a place where businessmen yelled and whooped it up a lot about the Hawkeyes. The way they shouted and strutted around, you’d think they owned copper mines down in Brazil, where they could make people work for twenty-five cents an hour.
“Did you hear what happened to Molly? It was in the news about three weeks ago.”
“I guess not.”
“Somebody cut her up.”
“Cut her up?”
“Slashed her cheeks. Do you remember a New York model that happened to a few years ago?”
“Yeah. She wasn’t ever able to work again.”
Linda’s eyes glistened with tears. “The plastic surgeon said there’s only so much he can do for Molly. She looks terrible.”
“What’re the police saying?”
She shook her head, sleek and sexy in a white linen suit, her dark hair recently cut short. “No leads.”
“Molly didn’t see her assailant?”
“It was dark. She parked her car in the garage and was just walking into the house — through the breezeway, you know — and he was waiting there. I guess this happened before— somebody in the breezeway I mean — but neither Molly or Susan told me about it. Why should they tell me anything? I’m just their mother.”
“She’s sure it was a ‘he’?”
“That’s the assumption everybody’s making. That it was a guy, I mean.”
“She doesn’t have any sense of who it might’ve been?”
Linda sighed. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
She nodded. “I think she knows who it was but won’t say.”
“Why would she protect somebody?”
“I’m not sure.” Pause. “I’ve been having terrible thoughts lately.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been thinking that Susan may have done this.”
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.” Pause. “She’s very, very jealous of Molly. Molly... well, a few of Susan’s boyfriends have fallen in love with Molly over the last year or so. About a month ago, Susan made up with this boy, Paul, the one who’d fallen in love with Molly. But then she came home one night and found Paul drunk in the living room putting the moves on Molly.”
“You really think it’s possible that Susan could do something like this?”
“She’s been upstaged by Molly all her life. Even as a baby, Molly sort of unhinged people. I mean, she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And I think I’m being objective about that.”
“Anybody else who might have done it?”
“The police are talking to one of Molly’s teachers, this Mr. Meacham. That’s another thing my girls didn’t tell me until after this happened. It seems this Mr. Meacham offered to leave his wife and daughter for Molly. He’s forty-three-years-old. My God.”
“Anybody else you can think of?”
After another drink was set down in front of her, she said, “I have to tell you something. It’s so ridiculous, it pisses me off to even repeat it.”
I just waited for her to say it.
“Last night, my dear sweet daughter Susan accused me of slashing Molly’s face.”
Calmly as I could, I said, “Why would she say something like that?”
“I’m kind of embarrassed telling you the rest.”
“Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”
“I trashed Molly’s room.”
“When?”
“Late August, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Brad.”
“The guy from the travel agency?”
“Uh-huh. He’d started phoning her, Molly I mean, when I wasn’t there. Then one night he came right out and asked me. I mean, I suspected something was wrong. He hadn’t touched me in two weeks. Then this one night he said, ‘Would it really piss you off if I asked Molly out?’ I didn’t want to let him know how pissed I was so I just said that I didn’t think that was such a great idea but I said it in this real calm voice. I told him that technically she wouldn’t reach the age of consent until October, and he said he’d wait. Then after he left — I sat in the den and got really drunk and then I went upstairs and started screaming at Molly, and then I started trashing her room.”
She started crying, “My own daughter, and I treated her that way.”
I changed the subject quickly. “You mentioned Susan’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Paul.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Right. He calls Molly four times a day. He says he doesn’t care about her face being cut up. He loves her. His parents have called me, they’re so worried about him. He went from A’s to D’s last semester. They want him to see a shrink. When Molly won’t come to the phone, he gets furious.”
“And you think Molly might know who did it?”
“I think so. Would you talk to her?”
“It’d probably be easier if you went through the agency. Ask them to assign me to you. I don’t really have much time for any freelance on the side.”
“Fine. I’ll call them tomorrow. I really appreciate this, Jack.” Then: “Oh God.”
“What?”
“It’s almost ten. I’m supposed to meet somebody at ten-fifteen way across town.” She shrugged. “Met somebody new at the agency. He’s a little older than Brad.”
“Sixteen?”
She smiled. “Wise ass.” Then: “I really am sorry. You know, about Brad and everything.”
“I survived.”
“I’d always be willing to see you again.”
“I never take handouts except at Christmas time.”
What the hell, it never hurts to sound dignified once in a while.
3
The next day, Linda led me up to the second floor den. “She sits in the dark. The blinds are drawn and everything, I mean. You’ll get used to the shadows. She doesn’t want anybody to see her. But I convinced her you only wanted to help her.” Then she went away.
I knocked and a small voice said to come in and I went in and there she sat in a leather recliner by a TV set that was playing a soap opera. Just as I started to sit down in the chair facing her, a commercial came on, the bright colors flashing across the screen illuminating her face.
He’d done a damned good job. If it was a he. Long deep vertical gashes on both cheeks. The stitches were still on and that just made her look worse. But even with the stitches gone, her beauty would be forever and profoundly marred.
“Remember me?”
She looked at me with solemn eyes and nodded.
“You think we could turn the TV down a bit?”
She picked up the remote and took the volume down to a low number.
“Your mom wants me to make sure that you told the police everything, Molly. You understand that?”
Again she nodded. I had the unnerving sense that she’d also been struck mute.
“She told me what Susan said. About hearing somebody run away right after it happened, right?”
She said: “I wish I didn’t have to go through this, Jack.”
“I wish you didn’t have to either, sweetheart.”
“I mean your questions.”
“Oh.”
“My mom talked to the principal this morning. I’m going to finish my classes at home this year. So I don’t have to see— anybody. You know, at school.”
“You’re going to sit in this room, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“With the blinds drawn.”
“I like it when it’s dark. When nobody can see me this way.”
“Can I tell you about the breezeway, Molly?”