Bright Young Women(48)

Tina turned off the light in the bathroom and went over to the window, checking to see if the police had arrived yet. “Ruth deserves a proper burial. There are rituals around dying. They’re not for the dead, they’re for those of us who are left behind. I think I deserve that. And I think you deserve better too. Has anyone even acknowledged what you’ve done, Pamela?”

The room spun suddenly and silently with red and blue lights. The police hadn’t even bothered to turn on the siren. “What is it I’ve done?”

Tina went over and unlocked the door for the officers. “You ran toward him. Don’t you see that? Anyone else, if they’d heard what you heard, they’d have run away. They’d have saved their own skin. You heard his footsteps overhead, and you pursued him. That takes a set of steel, Pamela. Everyone should be calling you a hero, but I have a feeling I’m the only one.”

“Afternoon, girls,” said the responding officer, taking off his hat and cupping it against his chest in a mannerly way as he came through the door. He saw Roger, passed out at the table, and clicked his tongue, chuckling. “Heard we’re having some boy trouble.”





RUTH


Issaquah

Winter 1974

When Tina called to tell me that a pipe had burst at Frances’s house and the grief group would be meeting at her place, her voice was sweet to the point of cloying. It was how we’d been speaking to one another ever since she came by my house and watched me make my nephew cry. Bubbly and impersonal.

“I don’t mind picking you up,” Tina said. “I know Clyde Hill is sort of a far drive for your mother.”

“Actually, I can ride my bike over.” I’d salvaged my childhood Schwinn from the junk pile in the garage and spent the weekend scrubbing at patches of rust with a kitchen sponge. My mother had barely spoken to me since I’d told her that CJ had sent his best but wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony for my father, except to tell me that a more considerate person would have gone to the store and replaced the ham they’d gone through on Saturday.

“Are you sure, Ruth? It’s pretty far in the dark. And they still don’t know what happened to that U Dub girl.”

“I heard she ran off,” I told her.

Tina gave me her address, and I did a double take. I knew her house. I knew exactly who she was.



* * *




I left early for the session, after my mother picked another petty fight with me. I’d forgotten to bring in the mail, and if I wanted to live at home for free, a twenty-five-year-old adult woman, then I needed to remember the arrangement. I was there to step in where my father had stepped up, to help her ease into her new life as a grief-stricken widow.

“It’s right here,” I had the immense pleasure of saying after allowing her to prattle on and on, the most she’d spoken to me in nearly a week. I led her into the laundry room. It had sleeted overnight, but the day had been warm and the mail soggy and full of grit. I had spread it out on a dish towel to dry.

“Were you planning on telling me it was there, or were you waiting for me to ask where it was?” She didn’t give me a half second to answer before moving on to my next offense. “And you need to find another place to park that bike if you’re going to be using it again. I can’t get to anything I need with where you have it in the garage now.”

That was when I started snapping up my coat. I didn’t have to leave for another hour, but it was time to go.



* * *




Tina lived in the Spanish-style mansion in Clyde Hill. Everybody knew the house. A few years back, some old Texas millionaire blew into town and built a six-bedroom behemoth with a red barrel-tiled roof and a grand central courtyard. On either side, two ranch-style homes squatted like the estate’s ugly stepsisters. People had been up in arms, and I learned a lot of new words then: gaudy, ostentatious, arrogant. I knew what arrogant meant because I had a sister-in-law. I just hadn’t realized it was something a house could be too.

I’d never actually laid eyes on the Texas millionaire. He was rarely in town, and when he was, he remained in his fortress. The Spanish mansion was not his main residence, and it was a mystery as to what he was doing in the Seattle area. Rumors flew—he was there to buy out Dixon Group, to run for mayor. But he never did anything except build a gaudy, ostentatious, arrogant eyesore too close to the neighbors, and then he died. I saw his picture in the paper and barely registered the news. He looked like someone who would die. He was at least eighty years old. I could not believe that was Tina’s late husband. I imagined sharing a bed with him, his scabby legs sanding mine in the night. I was a little bit disgusted with her, a little bit impressed.

I approached the house, taking small, demure steps, the way I had when I walked down the aisle to CJ. I was never one to be self-conscious or intimidated by people with money. Quite the opposite—their privilege triggered a sort of serenity within me, ums and uhs lifted from my speech, and my ankles wound like those of a noblewoman taking her seat in a European court. The etiquette came so naturally that I almost believed in reincarnation. In another life, I’m sure I was a wealthy woman.



* * *




No one came to the door for a while, but I could hear voices inside. Angry voices. Two women, fighting. There was another car in the driveway, next to Tina’s, but I had just assumed that was hers as well. If she’d had to have sex with that old man, I hoped she’d at least gotten a second car out of it.