She was silent. The meeting had reconvened, and we were outside by ourselves. A few cigarettes had come and gone, and I was in a state of rapt amazement, as if a home movie of Will had turned up. He hadn't been so alive to me since the moment I'd learned he was dead. "Will said, 'I don't mean to be nosy, but when I asked your boy where he was going, where he wanted a ride to, he started crying. He said you hated him. He said you lived down here. I put him on the bike and gave him a ride. I thought you should know.'
'"You don't believe that, do you, that I hate my kid?'
"Course not. I've got kids of my own. I know how they-'
'"Thanks. That's real nice of you to bring him back. Appreciate it.' I thought that would be the end of it, but he didn't go away.
"He said, 'Is there anything I can do to help?'
"I got real itchy. 'You work for the county, for social services?'
"'No.'
"'The state?'
'"No. Nowhere anymore. I'm retired.'
'"We're fine, the boy and me.'
"I could tell he wasn't convinced, but what could he do? I think he said something like 'That's good, glad to hear it.' Then there was about a minute-or it felt like it; it was probably six seconds-when we stood there, both of us wanting to say something. It wasn't a sexual thing, what we couldn't say, it was a truth thing. It was like how much are we going to let on that we know about me, about why my kid is hitchhiking and crying and telling strangers I hate him? Not much.
"The last thing Will said to me was, 'He's a good kid.' Then he walked back to the bike, horsed around with Matt for a few minutes, couldn't have been nicer. Broke my heart, you know, because it's just me and him, no particular men, and no nice ones when there are, and we had to pack up and leave that pretty spot of ours a week later, because it was almost June and the owners had a big plumbing job to do so they could jack up the rent for summer." She took a long time sighing-smoke went in and out of her lungs-and I thought that might be the end of it. She said, "You want to sit down on that bench?" and started to walk that way, about thirty steps to the middle of the church yard, but when I asked, "Is that it? Is that the story?" she stopped and turned to face me.
"Don't I wish."
It was the end of Will's visit, and she and her son moved, on schedule, a week later, to her sister's house on the outskirts of Cummington, five or six blocks from Will's house. The college kids hadn't shown up yet, so there were empty bedrooms for them, and the cousins all got along, played Nintendo till their eyes crossed, planned a treasure hunt, and had a funeral in the backyard for a dead hamster. Crystal didn't say and I didn't ask, but it all sounded too idyllic for the fractured, boozy life she'd described. There must have been a lot she wasn't saying, a lot of truth going by the boards.
She lit a wooden match against the zipper of her jeans and held it to the tip of a Camel. "I ran into him at Millie's Place the third night we were living in town." Her face was cloaked in smoke until the whorls rose and broke apart. "He recognized me at the bar and said he'd mailed me a letter a few days before. How'd you know where I live? I was there, he said. Well, I'm gone for the summer from there, maybe the post office'll forward it. What'd your letter say? Give me a call sometime, that's what it said. He asked about my kid. And the usual island stuff. Where you from, what do you do. At first it's like he's coming on to me, until he starts talking about you. A lot. Don't worry, I won't tell you what he said. And you don't want to know either. But what do you expect? You ditched him. He saw you in New York the day before on the street with some guy. You're entitled, right? People don't own each other. And he's entitled to be pissed off. I was pissed off about something or other that night, what else is new? My landlord, my sister, my kid's father, but that's a whole other story. We had enough in common to get loaded. I don't remember a whole hell of a lot of the stuff later, at his house. I didn't spend the night. That's about it. Hard to believe he's dead. They think it was a heart attack?"
But that couldn't have been the end of the story. She had ended too abruptly; I could hear it in the rhythm of her speech, the sudden rushing, the summary. Did she think I wouldn't want to know they'd slept together? Did she think I'd care? Or was she hiding something? Then I remembered: "Why did you call him and apologize?"
"When?"
"A few weeks ago. You left a message on his answering machine apologizing for 'the other night.' What else happened?"
"I thought you don't live there anymore."
"I don't. After he died, I had to listen to the messages. There were some for me."
"When did you hear mine?"
"Yesterday."
"When did he die?"
"A few weeks ago. What else happened that night?"
"I don't remember all the details."
"You remembered enough to apologize a few days later."
"Now I get it." Her voice changed; it got lower and sharper, like an animal growling. "You think he killed himself and you're looking for someone besides yourself to blame. Yeah? Well, fuck you. I've got enough guilt about all the dead people in my life, I don't need yours too." She sprang up from the bench, and I lurched in her direction, reaching for her elbow, her arm, but I missed. I got air. She was moving across the church yard, away from the meeting room toward the church itself.
"Crystal, no, that's not it." But it was, sort of. I ran after her, not knowing what I'd say or do.
She stopped at a set of three stairs leading up to a double door and lit a cigarette. "I don't know why I started talking to you to begin with. I must've felt sorry for you for a minute, or sorry for Will." Smoke poured from her mouth as she spoke, no shape, no direction, just those witchy tendrils. She shot me a look. "How the hell did you know I know him? I don't believe this whole thing is a coincidence. You've been following me or you've gotten someone else to, haven't you?"
Her hysteria calmed me, as did her misinterpretation of the evidence, because it was so far off, because I had been telling the truth. "I told you, I had to go through his mail after he died. He'd written you a letter that got returned." I plunged my hand into my shoulder bag and groped for it. "I've been carrying it around for days, but I may have left it at the motel." I did find it, though, and let her see it. She calmed down; she believed me and softened up. And when she did, I felt terrible for her, getting ensnared in this. "No one knows if he killed himself. If he did, it wasn't in any obvious way. He might've swallowed something, but they can't tell yet. The thing is"-we were standing at the foot of those three stairs, talking almost comfortably-"I hadn't seen him in three months, since I left. You saw him three weeks ago. I thought maybe you had some-some impressions. That's all. I didn't have anything in mind to ask when I found you. I'd given up thinking I would." I was leaving aside her apologetic phone call, unsure what to say about it. But something I said must have touched her.
"He wanted to fuck me," she said quietly, her eyes down. "Or he thought he did. But he couldn't. That's the story." And she added something that surprised me even more: "But not the whole story. The whole story is"-another long pause, and I could almost feel the words straining to come out of her-"I wasn't too nice about it." Said so softly, I almost asked her to repeat it. "I was kind of a shit. I get mean. A lot of times I don't remember stuff I say and do. People tell me. But I remember that. How much more do you want to know?"
"That's why you called to apologize?"
"Yeah."
"He was upset."
"Yeah. He was as drunk as I was. You know how it gets." No pronouns: how it gets. Disavow responsibility. He cried, I made him cry. That's what she wasn't saying. How do I know that? I don't. But why else would she have remembered it, and what else would she have had to apologize for? I couldn't bear to ask. I'd already put her through too much, and it wasn't her fault that I'd left him or that he died, or that he killed himself, if he had.