look at me like that!’
‘Look, you said . . .’
‘I know what I said. I had to tell you something.’
And don’t scrunch up your face like bubble wrap, it’s disfiguring. And would you stop sighing? ‘If you don’t have anything . . .’
She blurts, ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come!’ Everything is sliding around now. Her face, her stated reason for this encounter.
‘. . . I’ll just go.’
‘I couldn’t bear to get back in that car with Davis. Not with everybody knowing. Not after I kicked him out for good.’
‘Right.’
He can leave, but he can’t stop her from following him to the door with that sweet, frenzied smile. ‘This is a really hard time for me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I. If you want the whole truth, I just wanted to show Davis.’
‘Show him what?’
‘That I have friends!’ She grabs his arm. ‘Was that so terrible of me?’
Pressed, Dan bares his teeth. As a smile, it sucks, but at five a.m. it’s the best he can do – a rictus to get out the door on.
But she goes all life-or-death on him. ‘Wait! Ugh.’ Nenna groans. Something inside her is struggling to the surface. ‘Agh. This is hard. I . . .’
Shit. He has to stay until she coughs it up.
Finally she blurts, ‘I had to show them all I’m still attractive. Is that so terrible?’
‘You don’t have anything on Lucy, do you.’ Say no, so this night can end.
‘No.’
‘OK then.’
‘I mean. No, I do!’
Now it’s his turn to groan. There is no way of seeing into urgent, worn-out Nenna, no telling what she has stored up for him. To find out, Dan has to follow her back into that Louis-Whatever parlor, sit down and wait.
‘Coffee?’
‘No.’ He sits, but does not speak: an interviewing tactic he learned on the job. Let silence do its work.
‘I should have told you yesterday,’ she says, ‘but it’s hard. We never talked about it at the time and we didn’t talk about it afterward and we don’t talk about it now because you don’t in Fort Jude, especially since nobody’s sure what went down and it would ruin one of us. Am I making any sense?’
Looking into his hands, he waits.
‘See, certain things are best forgotten. Everybody has something to live down and we respect that, aren’t we all here to help each other through?’
They sit until the period clock on the marble mantel strikes again.
‘When you get mixed up in something shameful in Fort Jude you’ll shoot yourself dead before you let on, because your nearest and dearest will badger you until the story comes out – and when it does, you are implicated. Tarred with the same brush, you just are. We think your mother was . . .’ She blushes. ‘Well . . . A thing like that can toxify your life. You don’t talk about it with your best friend, you don’t even whisper it to your lover, you wouldn’t dare because we are all connected. Tell one single human being and they all know. You have to protect yourself!’
Oh fuck, he thinks. Talking in circles.
‘What if people found out that was you, laid out drooling by the bonfire when it happened, squealing drunk with a bunch of boys so out of control that there was no telling what they’d do? What if people knew you were so loaded that you don’t even remember what you stooped to or with who, what would everybody think of you then?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘What if they started asking why didn’t you stop them?’ All her breath comes out in a sob. ‘Understand, when these things happen, they always blame the girl.’
‘What things?’
‘Like it’s all your fault,’ she says bitterly, ‘for being jealous of her and so wasted that you didn’t lift a hand. You didn’t make it happen but you let it happen. Do you know what that’s like?’
He needs his digital recorder. The tangle of words is unraveling too fast, with loose ends everywhere.
‘I mean, look at poor Jessie. It took her years to live down all the things she did with all those boys, because everybody knew. She had to make all those donations, drive all those miles for Meals on Wheels to . . . What do I want to say here? Atone for whatever she did with those boys. And she enjoyed it!’ Frowning, she corrects. ‘Or what we think she did.’
A bad wind blows in out of nowhere. ‘At least I’m not the only one.’
‘The only one what?’ Shut up, Carteret. Just let