Twelve
Carol tapped at her door at dawn a few days later.
“It’s going to be a hot one,” she announced when Lori opened the door.
The heat had been increasing from day to day and had begun to reach the
level of serious discomfort. This was to have been the summer for Dave to
install the long-promised central air, one of a long list of hopelessly
shattered dreams.
Something in Carol’s posture alerted her to trouble.
Dressed in a conservative peach blouse and slacks, Carol took a seat on
the living room couch.
"I see Ruben's gone," Lori said. "I hope he fell
into a deep, dark hole and can't find his way out."
Carol fidgeted. "I didn't want to burden you, but I
think I have a really serious problem. I don't know who else to turn to."
Lori couldn't imagine what might qualify as serious
trouble. "Knocked up?" she ventured hopefully.
Carol burst into a frantic laughter. "Don't I wish!
I'd screw a Mack truck if I thought I could get a kid out of it." Her
laughter trailed off. "Seriously, I have something I need to show you."
"How far are we going?"
"As far as my basement."
"I hope it's nothing kinky."
"Yeah, those dreams of yours."
But drugs was Lori's first thought. The cops had been looking
for stolen drugs.
Carol shot nervously to her feet. "Just let me show
you."
She hurried back across the street with Lori in tow
and went down a cramped staircase to a partial basement containing little
more than a furnace and a water heater. Carol turned on an overhead light
and dropped to her knees beside the water heater. She pulled a loose
cement block from the foundation and reached inside a hollowed out area
behind it. She withdrew a plastic bag the size of a five pound bag filled
with what may have passed as flour, but wasn’t.
Lori backed away in cold fright. "Carol, call the
sheriff."
"I heard Ruben scrapping down here one night.
There's five bags of this stuff in there. This is what the police were
looking for. There was some kind of big sting operation somewhere, Ruben
told me. Something went wrong and a lot of people got hurt. I think
Ruben stole this stuff in the confusion."
"Call the sheriff!"
Carol eyed her with a haunted look. "He said he'd
kill me if I ever went to the police. He said he loves me, but that he
has friends who will kill him if they ever find out about something he
did. Lori, I'm scared. I never told him about the police being here. He
thinks he's safe with me.”
"Put it back."
Carol replaced the bag and the cement block.
Lori waited until the worst of her queasy panic eased
a bit. "When will Ruben be back?"
"I don't know. He said he's going to California on
business, and then he'll come back for me, except that I don't think he
cares for me as much as he says he does. Lori, I can't tell the sheriff.
There's no way Sheriff Danielson can protect me any better than he did Amy
from so far away.”
Carol went back upstairs, pale and trembling, and
wandered in circles in the kitchen. Lori followed, lost in her own
agitation and filled with dread. "Get the hell out of here. I don't want
you in this house until that stuff and Ruben both are gone."
Carol couldn't see the logic of her argument. "Why?"
"It's not just Ruben. If the police find those bags,
or if Ruben's friends show up, they'll think you've been helping him."
Carol locked the basement door and leaned against it
for support. "What am I going to do?"
"Move out of town until we can think of some way out
of this mess," Lori said. "Can you afford to do that?"
"I have money saved up," Carol said. "I could. At
least for a while. But I'd have to use the car."
Lori sighed in misery and gave a reluctant nod of
agreement. "Let me know where you're staying, but tell nobody else."
"Lori, I don't know how long he's going to be gone!"
"We'll think of something."
Carol went to her living room window and stared out
into the gray morning with sunrise still a smear of bright colors in the
east. "I guess I should. I don't know how much more my nerves can take."
Lori felt numb pressing the keys to the Volkswagen
into the palm of Carol's hand. She needed the car herself. “What are you
going to do about your job?”
“I’ll tell Greg the truth. He can do without me for
a few days.” Carol gave her a desperate hug. "You were right about
Ruben. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you."
Lori went home despairing for both a friend in harm's
way and the loss of her only means of transportation. She was watching
later in the morning when Carol put two suitcases in the Volkswagen and
drove away. Before Leslie and Wendy awakened, she went back across the
street and put pieces of cellophane tape on the seams of Carol's doors and
windows. She then began checking the house each morning that followed to
ensure the tape hadn't been disturbed.
Carol phoned on a Saturday two days later.
"Anything?" she asked hopefully.
“No,” Lori said, confident she felt as despondent and
helpless as Carol. “I’m not sure what to do yet. I’ll have to think of
something.”
“I want to come back home, Lori. Everything I have
is in that pig sty of a town. I never thought I'd ever get old and want
to settle down. I guess it's happening, and I'd like to be somewhere
where I can do it with a little grace and dignity. I guess I should be
nicer to Greg."
Lori felt numb, dissociated from the world by lack of
sleep, as if she moved through a three-dimensional soap opera that failed
to penetrate to the sanctity of her deep emotions. Mail that morning
included a letter from Dave. She ripped it open on the porch, enveloped
in the glare of sunlight, the heat, and the quiet of the day.
Lori,
Kahn's back in town. Sandra wants to run and hide
while we can get away clean. I've got five weeks vacation coming. She
has four, and has other sources of money, so we pooled the checks and put
them in my checking account for you and the children. I don't know how
long I can live with myself for what I'm doing, but I've got to go with
her. I didn't want to leave, but I'm in too deep.
"Aren't we all."
Saturday had been family day, a day for driving to
the parks, or taking in a movie, just as Sunday had been a day to sleep
in, putter around the yard, and barbecue dinner in the evenings. Lori
wondered if she'd be able to reinstate the old routines on her own at some
later date. Things would change without a man about the house, but not
all for the worse.
Leslie went into the living room to take in his
cartoons. A knock sounded at the front door. Wendy ran to her room to
dress. "Mom, there's two men at the door!" Leslie called out.
Lori stood at the kitchen counter, holding a cup of
hot coffee in a trembling hand. "Selling what?" she called back.
"Don't know, but I got the door locked!"
It was advice she had given him in the past, advice
to be heeded now. Lori went to investigate, reluctant to do so barefoot,
dressed in nothing but shorts and a halter.
One visitor was at the door, the other pacing the
sidewalk. Both wore dark suits and sunglasses. Lori stopped a yard from
the screen door.
"Yes?"
The man on the porch stepped closer and shielded his
eyes to peer into the house. He wore a caricature of a smile. "Ma'am,
we're looking for an associate of ours. He goes by several names, but
he's been driving a white Caddy lately. We were told he had a friend in
these parts."
Leslie pressed in close. "Across the street,
Mister!"
Lori clamped her hand about Leslie's neck. She fixed
him with a severe look and shoved him back. But the man had already
turned away to study the two houses directly across the way. His gaze
settled on the wrong house, Mrs. Robinson's empty house.
"She died of cancer," Lori said on impulse. "Poor
woman. I haven't seen the Cadillac since."
The man grimaced. "Cancer? No shit?"
Wendy pushed Leslie aside, catching on to Lori's
strategy. "Yeah, liver cancer! It was really awful!"
The man gave a twisted smile. "We'll check on it.
Thanks."
The two men sauntered back to a black sedan as big as
Ruben's Cadillac and drove away. Leslie looked up at his mother and
sister with an injured expression, waiting for an explanation for the
abuse after having endured years of propaganda on the virtue of honesty.
"Those men were trouble for Carol," Lori said. "From
now on, if strangers come to the house, you don't know anything about
Carol, or Ruben, or that white car. Understood, Tiger? You know nothing
about just about everything. Play dumb, please?"
Leslie gave a firm nod. "Yep. Don't know nothing."
"I wish Dad was here when things like this happen,"
Wendy said nervously.
Lori's heart was flopping around in her chest. "I
know the feeling."
The temperature edged into the high nineties early
Sunday morning. Lori brought out the two window fans and donned a
reasonably conservative two-piece bathing suit for lounging about the
house. She sent Wendy and Leslie to the swimming pool at the nearby
county park, then sat at the dining room table with a calculator and
scratchpad.
She had phoned the bank the day before. Dave had put
just over three thousand dollars in their joint checking account. If she
stretched every penny to the breaking point, they would make it to late
October, just before the cold weather set in, just before the sky-high
fuel-oil bills and the added expenses of Sorrel's distance from
civilization.
The house payments, taxes, and utilities alone came
to more money per month than she could ever hope to earn on her own. If
Dave was gone for good, she was hardly more than six months from losing
the house entirely. If she went on welfare, she'd have to move to Clayton
by spring and rent an apartment, a cheap apartment on the wrong side of
the tracks. Either way, her standard of living was going to drop
appallingly.
She wondered why the evil men of the world seemed to
have all the money. How much were the bags of white powder in Carol's
basement worth? More than their lives, probably. She paced in front of
the fans, wondering if it would ever be safe for Carol to return and bring
the Volkswagen back with her.
The phone rang. "Karen is inviting us over for pizza
the fourth of July," Amy said in her whispery voice, sounding cheerful for
the first time in months. Amy's mother had been helping, and Ralph had
kept his distance. "She bought sparklers for the kids."
"Sounds great. What time?"
"One in the afternoon. She gets the day off. It'll
be at her place."
"We'll be there."
"I haven't had a chance to thank you personally for
helping me, Lori. You said I would have to do things for myself, but it's
nice to have friends to give me a boost when I need it. Ralph was too
much for me."
"It pays for us women to stick together sometimes."
"I thanked Karen for helping. She cried."
"Karen's got some rough edges, but there's an uncut
gem inside."
"I hope Ralph remembers the rough edges. I'm still
scared."
"Don't be. If Karen wasn't planning on standing
guard in the neighborhood, she would have returned Leslie's baseball bat
by now."
"Ralph won't give up so easy," Amy warned.
Lori closed her eyes, hoping that would not prove to
be true. "One thing at a time. We've got to keep our priorities
straight. Are we going to let Ralph ruin Karen's Fourth of July pizzas?"
"Of course not," Amy said gently. She giggled. "I
wish I could talk dirty like you. I'd call Ralph a really terrible name."
"My father was a truck driver," Lori said. "Bad
language ran in the family. But I know exactly what you're thinking."
"That's it exactly," Amy said happily. "Fuck
Ralph, and the horse he rode in on!"
Lori put the phone down and laughed gently for a long
time. It felt good.
