A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [70]
“Cathy,” I said, when she answered. “This is Howard Goodwin.”
“What is it?” Her voice was not full of concern, the way I remembered.
“I was wondering—ah, you—you’ve probably heard about Alice.” I waited for her to speak. I waited to the steady rhythm of the boyng, boyng. I waited and then I said, “I was wondering if Emma and Claire could—if you would be able to watch them tomorrow or Sunday afternoon, for an hour or so. I’m in a slight bind and I—”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Those aren’t good times for me. If you’ll excuse me, I was just on my way out the door.”
“Oh well, thanks anyway,” I said.
The girls were outside running through the sprinkler. I had let Emma hook the hose up to the pump even though we might later regret squandering water. I could see them from the window running back and forth in their matching pink-and-green-striped swimming suits. The phone was still in my hand. I was also hearing the drone of the severed connection. The girls were quietly holding their fingers over the rusty holes of the sprinkler. Each time when they let go and the water came shooting up at them, they screamed and ran. They were playing as if they did not have a care in the world. They were smart girls, and pretty. They were caring, good girls and their neighbors were set against them. They were running, spreading their arms and flapping.
I made the next call to Suzannah Brooks, a neighbor of the Collinses up in the subdivision. Suzannah home-schools her three children. Every year she brought them down in the evening for a field trip to see the dairy operation. I had let them feed the calves, squirt milk from a cow’s tit, pet the kittens, slide down the hay chute. “Hello, Suzannah?” I said.
“Yes, this is she.”
“Howard Goodwin.”
“I’ve been praying for you. I feel for you, I really do, and I pray for that poor child. I honestly can’t think what the world is coming to. I think of the Scripture: ‘A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, scrapes with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.’ I pray that your wife is not beyond healing. I don’t know how you’re going to live with her if she ever gets out, how she’ll live with herself. Jesus will save you in the end if you give over your trouble to him.”
“Oh,” I said, and hung up.
On Friday morning, I brought the girls along with me to Rafferty’s office. There are several rejuvenated Victorian houses along the way to the courthouse in Racine. If Alice had been allowed an open window we would have been able to shout at her from Rafferty’s office. His is the green house with yellow and purple trim, right next to the phone company. Downstairs, in Finn’s quarters, there is swirling wallpaper that makes a person dizzy. In the bathroom there are stenciled balances one after the next at waist level. Finn’s wife does the decorating for the downstairs, according to Theresa. Apparently when Dolores Finn appears with her pattern books Rafferty stands guard on the stairs. He tells her she can go no farther with her paintbrushes and dried flower arrangements.
Outside of Rafferty’s office there were stacks of boxes to the ceiling. They obscured whatever decorative motif lay behind. The place didn’t feel like a rich man’s lair or a sanctuary where a learned person plots the triumph of justice. The built-in bookshelves along the far wall were filled with novels, do-it-yourself manuals, Peterson’s guides to the flowers, trees, birds, and shrubs, as well as the thick, drab books of law. I moved the Sears tool catalog off the sofa in the hall and settled the girls there. They each had her own bag of Starbursts. A whole bag, each, sixteen ounces of individually wrapped candies. They also had new crayons and pads of paper. I had bought the things on the way, at the Target in Racine.
Rafferty is tall and thin, with large protruding eyes behind his thick lenses. He has slightly buck teeth, a graying