Keys.
Still, the girl said, you can’t be too trusting. For example, I could tell you something about yourself that you’d probably be tempted to believe.
Such as? the man said.
Such as, we used to be neighbors.
On Beacon Hill? the man asked.
Exactly, the girl said. Before my family moved to the suburbs.
OK, the man said slowly.
We lived in the brownstone across from your brownstone. You and I were fast friends. You took me to movies, you took me to restaurants. My parents didn’t care because they were those sorts of parents, and I was a middle child, and they figured the extra attention was good for me. Plus they assumed my regular companionship eased the pain of the fact that your ex-wife couldn’t have children.
My ex-wife didn’t want children, the man said.
That’s what she told you, the girl said. In fact, she was infertile. I overheard her confessing to my mother that she’d had an abortion when she was just out of college and dating around. She was ambitious, your ex-wife; she didn’t want to be saddled with a husband and children before she’d had a chance to establish herself in the world of finance. The operation went badly. She probably told you all this before you married her, but you’ve forgotten. Now she’s decided there’s little point in divulging personal details to an ex-husband who doesn’t remember the marriage anyway.
The man nodded, his face vaguely gray.
So. You and I, we were like a father and a daughter who never fought. I trusted you. Even after everything that happened, I trusted you.
After everything that happened, the man said.
You were ashamed, of course. That’s why you burned down our house. Ask your wife if it’s true—the family’s house across the street burned down. An electrical fire, they determined. But I knew. You knew I knew.
This is obscene, the man said, signaling for the check.
Is it? the girl asked. Then why have you parked across from the cemetery every single school day this semester? Why have you been so interested in me?
You have a good imagination, I’ll give you that, the man said, flapping open his billfold. He wedged too much money under his malted glass.
Maybe this isn’t imagined, the girl said. Maybe I know something. I know something and you want to know what I know.
The man refused to look at her.
I’m taking you home, he said.
Outside, the rain had abated to a random spattering of drops, shaken loose from the nearby tree branches by the gusting wind. The man started the Mercedes, put the car in drive, then put the car in park again.
A person would remember, he said. A person would remember if he’d done a thing like that.
But you forget, the girl replied. Memories are shoddy things, even under the best of circumstances.
West Salem
NOVEMBER 9, 1999
D espite the house’s state of festooned disarray, Mary found the phone book where the phone book had always been, fitted inside a roasting pan in the farthest right-hand kitchen cabinet. Biedelman, Rosemary was not listed in the Hulls Cove–West Salem–Massapoisset white pages; nor was she listed in the yellow pages under psychiatrist , mental health professional , overzealous Freud-hater , feminist rabblerouser , or recurring life-disrupting nuisance . Mary dialed the number for Semmering Academy; the switchboard operator speedily routed her to Roz’s personal line.
She hung up before Roz’s phone could ring.
Since Regina and Gaby had taken Mum’s Peugeot to Boston and Dad had disappeared for the day with his American-generic sedan, Mary’s transportation options were limited to feet or bike, neither of which was especially tempting given the weather. But the sleet-rain-snow had stopped; the moisture was in the process of being sucked back up to the sky and the air had warmed and thickened. Mary found three Semmering-era bikes leaning against the far wall of the garage behind a folded card table and a stack of equally old firewood, the remnants of a
Still, the girl said, you can’t be too trusting. For example, I could tell you something about yourself that you’d probably be tempted to believe.
Such as? the man said.
Such as, we used to be neighbors.
On Beacon Hill? the man asked.
Exactly, the girl said. Before my family moved to the suburbs.
OK, the man said slowly.
We lived in the brownstone across from your brownstone. You and I were fast friends. You took me to movies, you took me to restaurants. My parents didn’t care because they were those sorts of parents, and I was a middle child, and they figured the extra attention was good for me. Plus they assumed my regular companionship eased the pain of the fact that your ex-wife couldn’t have children.
My ex-wife didn’t want children, the man said.
That’s what she told you, the girl said. In fact, she was infertile. I overheard her confessing to my mother that she’d had an abortion when she was just out of college and dating around. She was ambitious, your ex-wife; she didn’t want to be saddled with a husband and children before she’d had a chance to establish herself in the world of finance. The operation went badly. She probably told you all this before you married her, but you’ve forgotten. Now she’s decided there’s little point in divulging personal details to an ex-husband who doesn’t remember the marriage anyway.
The man nodded, his face vaguely gray.
So. You and I, we were like a father and a daughter who never fought. I trusted you. Even after everything that happened, I trusted you.
After everything that happened, the man said.
You were ashamed, of course. That’s why you burned down our house. Ask your wife if it’s true—the family’s house across the street burned down. An electrical fire, they determined. But I knew. You knew I knew.
This is obscene, the man said, signaling for the check.
Is it? the girl asked. Then why have you parked across from the cemetery every single school day this semester? Why have you been so interested in me?
You have a good imagination, I’ll give you that, the man said, flapping open his billfold. He wedged too much money under his malted glass.
Maybe this isn’t imagined, the girl said. Maybe I know something. I know something and you want to know what I know.
The man refused to look at her.
I’m taking you home, he said.
Outside, the rain had abated to a random spattering of drops, shaken loose from the nearby tree branches by the gusting wind. The man started the Mercedes, put the car in drive, then put the car in park again.
A person would remember, he said. A person would remember if he’d done a thing like that.
But you forget, the girl replied. Memories are shoddy things, even under the best of circumstances.
West Salem
NOVEMBER 9, 1999
D espite the house’s state of festooned disarray, Mary found the phone book where the phone book had always been, fitted inside a roasting pan in the farthest right-hand kitchen cabinet. Biedelman, Rosemary was not listed in the Hulls Cove–West Salem–Massapoisset white pages; nor was she listed in the yellow pages under psychiatrist , mental health professional , overzealous Freud-hater , feminist rabblerouser , or recurring life-disrupting nuisance . Mary dialed the number for Semmering Academy; the switchboard operator speedily routed her to Roz’s personal line.
She hung up before Roz’s phone could ring.
Since Regina and Gaby had taken Mum’s Peugeot to Boston and Dad had disappeared for the day with his American-generic sedan, Mary’s transportation options were limited to feet or bike, neither of which was especially tempting given the weather. But the sleet-rain-snow had stopped; the moisture was in the process of being sucked back up to the sky and the air had warmed and thickened. Mary found three Semmering-era bikes leaning against the far wall of the garage behind a folded card table and a stack of equally old firewood, the remnants of a
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