tales of what her father had done so long ago.
And the more time Ma spent with the old lady, commiserating, griping about how this or that person had crossed her or Anna, the more Tina Sudek grew dissatisfied with the marginal existence she and Anna had carved out for themselves. Suddenly, Dumpster diving was no longer an honorable, if slightly messy way of steering clear of welfare. And suddenly, every little thing the cats did was wrong, filthy, evil—just as the old lady used to say about things that displeased her.
But Ma had been duty-bound to go back to the old lady, to help her out, just as Anna had considered herself duty-bound to stay at home with Ma, and give over her money to her. That sense of duty, of obligation, had been drummed into Anna’s head by the old lady since she was small—that, plus other things.
“Good girls stay at home. Only bad little girls go out and play.”
“If I could have, I would have taken care of my Ma all the time, even when she was old.”
“Boys are bad. When they put that thing in you, it makes an ugly sound, like ham fat jiggling.”
“I knew you were no good from the time you were born—lying there, kicking off your blankets, showing off your plum.”
“Mark my words, Tina, she’s no good—gonna be knocked up by the time she’s sixteen, and kicked out of school.”
“You’ll both starve without me. You’ll be back in a week.”
No, they hadn’t come back in a week, and they hadn’t starved, but the old lady had Ma back, and had gone to work on her, until now all Ma did was sit scrunch-faced, mouth and eyes bitter under her light fringe of bangs, flailing at Anna with words and fists, jabbing elbows and kicking feet.
Anna watched her mother sit and cry, without covering her mouth or eyes with her hands. In a high, quivering squeak, she bawled, “I am so tired of this all, you hear me? Just so tired. And it’s all your fault—everything. This is all because you can’t stand her.”
Unable to watch her mother, Anna glanced down at her watch. It was almost five, and the launderette’s automatic doors opened at five-thirty. Leaving the bags where she’d dropped them, Anna quietly got up and went into the kitchen, grabbing an old sweet roll before she hurried to her bedroom, peeked in to see that the cats were all right (Bruiser was cornering Mouth, but they were both big cats, able to stand each other off for hours), then rushed out of the house.
She supposed that she should have gone over to her mother and done something, said something comforting, but that time was long past between them. She was sorry for her mother, even as she wasn’t sorry at all.
Anna could never forgive her mother for the way she had turned her back on the warmth and friendship they had finally shared, all because of one of the old lady’s all-too-transparent “I need help” ruses. Lucy Miner had been using the same sympathy-seeking tactics on Anna and Tina for years. It just didn’t cut it with Anna anymore.
FOUR—Arlene (1)
Arlene Campbell sat on her sofa, old rotary-dial phone perched on her lap, the cats playing with the Velcro flaps on her shoes, for even she wasn’t sure how long, before she finally dialed the police. Even then, she hung up before the last number went through. The actual calling to report what she’d seen wasn’t the problem; it she wasn’t even afraid to give her name. But what did bother Arlene was the thought of the questions:
What were you doing out at that time of the morning?
What were you in the woods, off the path?
What were you looking for?
Why did you wait this long to call, ma’am?
Why didn’t you come right to the station?
Arlene put the phone back on its little black painted phone stand and sat down on Don’s old wing chair, the one she had never been allowed to sit on when he was alive. Screw you, Donald, she thought, picking petulantly at a loose thread in the right antimacassar, while mulling over her dilemma.
Clearly, she had a choice here—either tell what she knew and have her name splashed all over the paper (and even if they kept her name out of the paper, people would know anyhow—you couldn’t break wind in Ewerton without everyone and his third cousin knowing you ate beans for supper), and worse yet, have people know for a fact that she was nothing but an old garbage picker, (“See, I tole you Don’ didn’t leave her squirt—”), or sit back and wait until someone else found the body. If she waited long enough, Chief Stanley or Sheriff Sawyer would be able to smell it for themselves, and save her the trouble of coming forward.
But then again, if there was a murderer about, he or she might have seen her, and be waiting to shut her up before she told. In that case, it would be best if the police were at least aware that she was in danger.
Brushing her cat Silky off her lap, Arlene got up and went to the phone, fishing in her smock pocket for a handkerchief as she did so.
FIVE—After Work
Anna let herself into the house early that afternoon without bothering to knock. Even though Ma got done with work an hour or so before Anna, the young woman knew better than to expect Ma to open the door for her, or for there to be any meal on the table. Not after one of her “I’m so tired!” episodes. If things went as they usually did, it wouldn’t be until late Tuesday or early Wednesday that Ma would so much as talk to Anna, or quit banging into Anna whenever she passed her in the hallway.
From past experience, Anna knew that things might be smoothed over for the moment if she simply acted as if nothing had happened that morning, so as she closed the door behind her, Anna said, “You wouldn’t believe what those pigs did this time. Broke both gumball machines and then threw the gumballs in one of the driers and turned that on...the crap was baked on the drum. I had to call Gordy to come down and look at it, and naturally he acted as if it was my damned fault.”
Silence from Ma. Anna pulled off her knit cap and fluffed her hair out with her fingers as she continued, “And I don’t know, if it was the same people or what, but someone dumped a couple of cans of soda all over the carpeting, so I had to mop that up before I could use the vacuum on it. Geez, you’d think they’d drink the whole can after paying fifty cents for it....” Anna let her voice trail off as she wiggled out of her coat, her mouth going dry in the too-quiet house. Apparently, smoothing things over wasn’t going to be easy this time.
Biting her lip as she hung her coat up, Anna sniffed deeply and thought, The least you could have done was change the cat pan. How would you like it if you were locked in an outhouse for five hours? Not to mention that Anna would have to sleep in a smelly room that night, if she was destined to get any sleep at all. Usually Ma made sure she sat up all night with the TV turned up full blast. Ma could sleep, open-mouthed and snoring blattily, anywhere and at any time, regardless of any noise around her, waking up only when Anna ventured out to turn down the volume.
Anna went into the bedroom, dodging Mouth as the fat tiger spay ran out into the hallway. Hoping that Ma wouldn’t do anything to the cat while she was busy in the bedroom, Anna held her breath and attacked the full litter pan. As she scraped up the used litter and rolls of poop with a piece of cardboard, dumping the offal onto a sheet of newspaper, Bruiser came sliding up behind her, butting and rubbing his massive head against her back and behind, making soft, high-pitched churrup noises.
“You’re Mama’s good Bruiser, huh, boy?” she asked the huge black tom, who churruped in reply. Fastidiously, the cat began to scrape the carpet nap over the mound of litter and cat dirt on the big sheet of newspaper spread out before Anna’s knees. Twisting the mess into the middle she said, “There, all gone. See? Mama made all gone with it.”
Bruiser sat there solemnly regarding his mistress (he was Anna’s cat—Ma wouldn’t even look at him, or allow him out of Anna’s bedroom very often), his wide-spaced green eyes loving and luminous. Ever since he’d relented last January—after two years of roaming around outside the house—and allowed Anna to take him inside, Bruiser