Hints of Heloise Read online

  “Mom, why are you shaking?” Mark asks.

  “It’s cold for March.”

  BRIAN GOES UP AND DOWN, up and down, up and down. He considered stopping as soon as Meghan left the house. Who does she think she is, talking to him that way? But the chore is a good distraction and, fuck her, she was right: he feels as if he’s accomplishing something for the first time in weeks. Months, actually.

  But as the morning turns into afternoon, he begins to lose his enthusiasm. How did one family ever acquire so much crap? Why do they have all these broken camp chairs? A box full of board games that are missing key pieces? In the early going, he thought there might be money to be made, that they would have a yard sale or maybe take things to one of those stores that sells your stuff on eBay, does all the grunt work. But it’s all junk, worthless. It makes him feel even worse, the fact that he’s been living on top of this storehouse of crap, and he doesn’t really seem to be making any progress. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Wasn’t there some story about a guy in hell who has to do this? He has a beer, checks in on the NCAA tournament. Okay, why not another? He looks for some food, but most of it requires at least minimal preparation, and he doesn’t want to go out, so he returns to the job. Really, the stuff seems to be breeding, there’s more of it now than when he started. He comes up with a box full of mysterious hardware, screws and those Ikea wrenches and a broken towel rack. He can barely see over the top of the box, but he does hear the garage door opening. Footsteps in the hall.

  “Meghan?” he says, assuming that the person he can’t see on the steps must be her. Maybe she sneaked home to make up, he thinks. God, when was the last time they had sex in the afternoon? He gets hard just thinking about the possibility of some quick, ordinary sex with his wife. It is the most erotic thing he has considered in ages, better than the porn sites he sometimes checks out on his laptop, always remembering to erase his cache. He doesn’t need a stranger or anything extra. He won’t need to imagine he’s with someone else. All he wants is to get on top of his wife and go at it. Maybe make it nice for her, too, if there’s time before she has to go back to the band practice thing.

  “Hey, Meghan,” he says, “give me a hand with this.”

  She does, in a sense. She presents him with two hands, thumping them hard on the chest, as if beginning CPR, and sends him flying backward down the steps, screws and towel racks and Swedish wrenches racing him to the bottom. He sprawls like a starfish, looking back at her, amazed, his mind trying to catch up with everything that has happened, and all he can think is, So I guess we’re not going to have sex, after all.

  HELOISE IS MAKING SCOTT LUNCH, glad that his one weekend obligation, soccer, is behind them. She encourages him to do everything he wants—soccer, music lessons, art classes at the Baltimore Museum of Art—but she prefers the quiet afternoons, when there is nothing on his schedule and they simply steep in each other’s company, watching television, running errands. She tries to make Saturday dinner an event—Around the World with the Lewis Family, she calls it—and tackles new recipes from different countries. She’s going to make Thai food tonight, and she won’t have to cut back on the spice for Scott’s sake. His mouth is as inquisitive and open as his porous little mind, keen to try new things. He is such a satisfying companion in every way. She has to remind herself that he won’t be with her very long, that she has only a few years in which he will find it acceptable to spend Saturday night with his mother.

  And then? Then she will be alone. She’s through with men. Not through with love, as the song has it, but that’s because she never really started with love. Oh, she used the word quite a bit when she was young. She loved the boyfriend who encouraged her to leave home, the boy she followed to downtown Baltimore, only to end up dancing in a strip club, then tricking. She said she loved Val because he demanded that; the fealty of the word was almost as important to him as the money she kicked back, and she said it so often that she came to believe it for a while. She looks at the redheaded boy, eyes fixed on a nature show as he waits for his soup and grilled cheese, and wonders again at the capacity that allows her not to be scared when she sees that miniature version of Val, a man she so feared that she made sure he would be locked up forever. Val doesn’t know about Scott. She was only three months pregnant when he was arrested and she managed to conceal her growing girth when she visited him in prison, coming up with a cover story for the last few months, claiming she had to go back home to tend to her ailing mother. As if she would be bothered to do anything for that woman. It was one thing for men to disappoint her, but Heloise can never forgive her mother for failing to protect her.

  It was Scott, growing inside her, who changed everything. On her own, accountable only for herself, Heloise could not imagine getting free of Val. She understood the fact that her life was destined to be a short one, that her usefulness as a whore and her biological life span would probably run out about the same time. Val was violent, but he didn’t like to damage the goods, as he called them, so as long as she was a good earner, he employed a certain restraint. But as her market value decreased, she knew the violence would escalate. And she accepted it. She could not see a way out. She had a high school education, no money in her own name, and a career that lasted about as long as a pro athlete’s, but with far less compensation.

  She didn’t even have official confirmation of her pregnancy when she resolved to change. She was sitting in a diner in the early evening, drinking a cup of coffee with a friend, and she couldn’t get beyond the first sip. She asked the waitress to bring her a cup from a fresh pot, but the new one was bitter, too, no matter how much milk and sugar she added. “Maybe you’re pregnant,” Agnes said, meaning it as a joke. But Heloise knew at that moment that she was and she suddenly understood what it took to make a great change in one’s life.

  Agnes was dead within the week, killed by a john. They never found the man, although Heloise gave them a detailed description. She and the other girls had known he was trouble, had seen something in his eyes that scared them. Agnes laughed at their fears; Agnes was found in a vacant lot, her throat slit. If Heloise ever spoke of her real life to anyone, if she ever had the luxury of telling people about herself, they would probably reduce this story to simple cause and effect. Heloise was pregnant and needed to start a new life. The death of her friend inspired her to escape Val, get out on her own, and set up a business where women who sold sex could be safe, above all. Safe and well compensated, with health benefits and flexible schedules. But the linear story line was not quite right. Even if Agnes had not died, Heloise would have found a way to do this. No disrespect to Agnes, but a mouthful of coffee, acrid and syrupy, was what changed her life.

  The phone rings, making her jump, because it rings so seldom, the home line. She has no friends. It is lonely at times, but friendship is a luxury she can’t afford. One day, perhaps when Scott graduates, she hopes to sell the business and retire on the proceeds, or reinvent herself as a real lobbyist. Once Scott is out of college, she can afford the drop in income. The fact is, she has the contacts, and one of the big wheels in Annapolis has all but given her a standing offer to come on board, help him advance the case of alcohol and tobacco in the state legislature. He wants her to go back to school, though, get one of those weekend MBAs, and she can’t do that until Scott is older.

  “Meet me at Starbucks.”

  It takes her a second to realize the caller is Meghan, speaking through gritted teeth.

  “I’m just getting Scott’s lunch—”

  “Now. Leave him with Audrey.”

  “I give Audrey the weekends off. I mean, she’s around, but she’s not on the clock, and—”

  “This is life and death, Heloise. I need you. And if you can’t be there for me—well, I can’t be responsible for what happens.”

  Is Meghan threatening her? The thought is almost laughable, except . . . there is something steely in her sister’s voice, something cold and resolute that Heloise recognizes. It
is a quality she remembers from Val, the willingness to destroy others, even at the risk of destroying oneself. Val killed a boy just for laughing at his name, and the striking thing to Heloise is that he has never expressed any regret about it. He has never said, I can’t believe I ruined my life over such a silly thing. Or: What was I thinking? In fact, whenever he spoke of the crime to Heloise it was in the context of the inevitable death-sentence appeal. He mused how, if he had to be in prison for the boy’s death, he wished he could go back and inflict more pain on him, not kill him with the relative speed and kindness of a single bullet to the brain. The cliché about bullies is that they back down when confronted. But Heloise has known a different kind of bully, men—and women—who will happily upend your life just because they can. Meghan knows what Heloise does for a living. Meghan has the power to ruin her and she won’t stop to think about how it might boomerang on her.

  “The Starbucks by the mall?”

  “Yes. As soon as possible.”

  “I’M A WHORE,” HELOISE SAYS. “I charge men money for sex. That doesn’t mean I know how to help you cover up a murder.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Meghan says, although she knows it’s her voice that’s closer to being out of control. Then: “And who said murder? That’s the problem. He’s still breathing, I think. His chest looked like it was moving.”

  “And you left him there?”

  It’s a curious feeling, seeing the horror in Heloise’s eyes, being judged by a whore, Heloise’s very word.

  “Temporary insanity,” she says, gauging Heloise’s reaction, wanting to see how this theory might play. “No, seriously, I just lost it. I was sitting there at Mark’s battle-of-the-bands practice, and I kept getting angrier and angrier, and when they broke for lunch, I couldn’t help myself, I drove back home to have it out with Brian. Don’t you hate that thing men do, where they drop some huge piece of information on you when they know there’s no time to discuss it?”

  Heloise, happily manless, looks baffled.

  “I just wanted to talk to him. I don’t know why I did what I did. But if he’s dead, then it’s over, there’s nothing to be done. But what if he’s not?”

  “Maybe he has a head injury. Then if he regains consciousness and starts talking about how you shoved him—”

  “I really didn’t mean to.” She’s beginning to believe this, the more she says it.

  “You can say it’s the result of the fall. If he regains consciousness. You could have crippled him for life, Meghan. Your husband could be a paraplegic now.”

  It takes a second for Meghan to process the horror of this, the idea that she has created an invalid, someone who will require a lifetime of care and provide nothing in return. Dead, Brian is worth a lot to her. Permanently disabled, all he will cough up is a small lump sum, eighteen months of mortgage payments, and then they have to petition to get on the federal system. She knows this thanks to Dan Simmons, insurance agent extraordinaire. He’s been trying to tell her that they don’t have adequate coverage for disability, and she’s been blowing him off.

  “Go home, Meghan,” Heloise says. “Don’t leave him there, whatever you do.”

  She shakes her head. “I have to go get Mark. The practice ends in less than an hour.”

  “But . . . then he’ll be with you when you go home. Do you want to do that to your son, have him see his father that way? Don’t you at least want to spare Mark?”

  Meghan wants to snap: What about Scott? How are you going to feel when someone, possibly me, tells him his mother is a whore? But Heloise is here, she has acknowledged Meghan’s power over her, and there really is nothing she can do to help. What had Meghan hoped, when she called Heloise? She assumed her half sister had some mysterious, nefarious connections, men who could make problems disappear. Really, Heloise is kind of bourgeois, not at all the libertine that one might expect in a madam. Meghan almost regrets confiding in her.

  “I’ll call in a favor, con another mom at practice into taking Mark home for dinner,” she says, checking her watch, a tenth-anniversary gift from Brian. She had wanted a Patek Philippe, but he had given her a Rolex.

  “And then?”

  “I’ll figure something out. I’ll do the right thing,” she says, knowing that she and Heloise may not agree on what that is.

  Two hours later, Mark safely at the Pizza Hut with the Bonner family, she creeps back into the house. “Brian?” No answer. She stands at the top of the stairs, but it takes her several minutes to tiptoe down, to investigate. Oh, miracle of miracles, he’s not breathing. She feels a quick pang, wondering how long he suffered. She decides he died instantly, that the rise and fall of his chest was an illusion, a trick of the dim light. She’s a widow. What a glorious thing to be. There will be money enough and nothing but sympathy for her. Except from Heloise, of course, but if Heloise dares to be too open in her disapproval, Meghan knows how to bring her in line. She’s a widow, her problems are solved, it’s the happiest day of her life.

  She’s about to bound up the stairs to call 911, begin her new life as a tragic figure, when she sees something she hadn’t noticed before, a large tufted pillow, one of the decorative ones from her bed. How has this gotten here? What was Brian thinking? There’s a tiny viscous stain. Brian has always been a drooler in his sleep, but this one looks fresh, still slightly damp, and it smells—she inhales—of Brian’s shaving lotion, which makes no sense at all.

  Unless someone held it over his face while she was gone, finishing what she started.

  She races up the stairs and—after putting the pillow back on her bed—discovers that terror makes it that much easier to sound hysterical with grief when she calls 911.

  THREE

  Heloise has a strange insight in the church: this is the first funeral she has attended in her adult life. How could this be? Her mother is still alive and she refused to attend her father’s funeral a few years ago, deciding she could never put up the required façade of sorrow. Too bad, she thinks now. If she had attended, perhaps she would have seen Meghan and they could have swapped notes on where they lived, and she would have planted the idea that Turner’s Grove was simply not—what was the word they used now to describe those who wanted to move up, up, up—aspirational enough. Then Meghan would not have moved here, and Heloise would never have confided in her, and she would not be stuck now in a murder conspiracy. Would Brian still be alive? She doesn’t know, and to be unattractively candid, she doesn’t really care. Heloise cares about only one person: Scott. Not Audrey, not her other employees, although she likes them well enough and wants to be a good boss to them. Not her clients, god knows. And not even herself, except to the extent that she’s the only one who can take care of Scott. To compare her to a mother bear or lioness is inadequate because, for all their ferocity, they are spared the constant worry and anxiety. An animal roars to life when a threat is imminent but can otherwise relax. Heloise lives in a state of eternal vigilance, worrying about every aspect of Scott’s life, determined there will be nothing lacking.

  And yet, the only thing Scott really desires is the one thing she took away from him before he was born: his father. A father. Any father. Should she have married Brad, the detective who had yearned after her, the man who was more than willing to pretend Scott was his child? But she couldn’t see how Scott’s desire for a father would manifest itself as he grew. She barely had one, to her way of thinking, and had wished she had less of one. She yearned to see him . . . not dead, but gone. Heloise has made the mistake that so many parents make, assuming her child will want exactly what she wanted, only to be confronted with the fact that her son is a person, too, and he wants what he wants.

  She thought about sparing him this farce of a funeral, balancing what was best for Scott against what would cause the least gossip. She doesn’t want to see Meghan’s mother, the other half-siblings, but, of course, Meghan’s mother looks through her, still desperate to pretend that Hector didn’t have another family, and Meghan’s bro
thers are so much older—Meghan was born after a long, sad string of miscarriages—that they never really knew Heloise. In fact, there’s an uncomfortable moment when one of them seems to be cruising her, and she is almost grateful for Michael’s quavering “Hello, Aunt Heloise.” Yes, she tells the uncle with a look. We have the same daddy. Move along.

  Still, hearing that note in Michael’s voice, she wishes the two families were close, that it would be natural to sweep him up in a hug. But while she and Meghan have allowed Scott and Michael to have a friendship of sorts—Heloise even more reluctant than Meghan, more fearful of the complications—the two families have never really interacted. The polite fiction is that Heloise and Scott have established their own holiday rituals—Deep Creek Lake for Thanksgiving, someplace warm and sunny for the Christmas holidays. Once, just once, Heloise accompanied Scott to Meghan’s annual Easter egg party, an exhausting affair that had clearly taken weeks to prepare but was forced indoors by a rainstorm. It was Heloise’s only prolonged exposure to Brian. She wasn’t impressed; he was self-absorbed and of no help to Meghan, who seemed about one egg shy of a nervous breakdown. But did he deserve to die? Heloise, who deprived Scott’s father of his freedom and may yet see his life taken because of her betrayal, can’t make that case.