in handcuffs, ever since-
"I will not think about that!" Jessie screamed at the empty room.
For a moment Ruth was silent, but before Jessie could do more than begin to hope that she'd gone away, Ruth was back... and back at her, worrying her like a terrier worrying a rag.
Come on, Jess-you'd probably like to believe you're crazy ratherthan dig around in that old grave, but you're really not, you know.I'm you, the Goodwife's you...we're all you, as a matter of fact.I have a pretty good idea of what happened that day at Dark Scorewhen the rest of the family was gone, and the thing I'm really curiousabout doesn't have a lot to do with the events per se. What I'mreally curious about is this: is there apart of you-one I don't knowabout-that wants to he sharing space with Gerald in that dog'sguts come this time tomorrow? I only ask because that doesn't soundlike loyalty to me; it sounds like lunacy.
Tears were trickling down her cheeks again, but she didn't know if she was crying because of the possibility-finally articulated-that she actually could die here or because for the first time in at least four years she had come close to thinking about that other summer place, the one on Dark Score Lake, and about what happened there on the day when the sun went out.
Once upon a time she had almost spilled that secret at a women's consciousness group... back in the early seventies that had been, and of course attending that meeting had been her roomie's idea, but Jessie had gone along willingly, at least to begin with; it had seemed harmless enough, just another act in the amazing tie-dyed carnival that was college back then. For Jessie, those first two years of college-particularly with someone like Ruth Neary to tour her through the games, rides, and exhibits-had been for the most part quite wonderful, a time when fearlessness seemed usual and achievement inevitable. Those were the days when no dorm room was complete without a Peter Max poster and if you were tired of the Beatles-not that anybody was-you could slap on a little Hot Tuna or MC5. It had all been a little too bright to be real, like things seen through a fever which is not quite high enough to be life-threatening. In fact, those first two years had been a blast.
The blast had ended with that first meeting of a women's consciousness group. In there, Jessie had discovered a ghastly gray world which seemed simultaneously to preview the adult future that lay ahead for her in the eighties and to whisper of gloomy childhood secrets that had been buried alive in the sixties... but did not lie quiet there. There had been twenty women in the living room of the cottage attached to the Neuworth Interdenominational Chapel, some perched on the old sofa, others peering out of the shadows thrown by the wings of the vast and lumpy parsonage chairs, most sitting cross-legged on the floor in a rough circle-twenty women between the ages of eighteen and fortysomething. They had joined hands and shared a moment of silence at the beginning of the session. When that was over, Jessie had been assaulted by ghastly stories of rape, of incest, of physical torture. If she lived to be a hundred she would never forget the calm, pretty blonde girl who had pulled up her sweater to show the old scars of cigarette burns on the underside of her breasts.
That was when the carnival ended for Jessie Mahout. Ended? No, that wasn't right. It was as if she had been afforded a momentary glimpse behind the carnival; had been allowed to see the gray and empty fields of autumn that were the real truth: nothing but empty cigarette wrappers and used condoms and a few cheap broken prizes caught in the tall grass, waiting to either blow away or be covered by the winter snows. She saw that silent stupid sterile world waiting beyond the thin layer of patched canvas which was all that separated it from the razzle-dazzle brightness of the midway, the patter of the hucksters, and the glimmer-glamour of the rides, and it terrified her. To think that only this lay ahead for her, only this and nothing more, was awful; to think that it lay behind her as well, imperfectly hidden by the patched and tawdry canvas of her own doctored memories, was insupportable.
After showing them the bottoms of her breasts, the pretty