A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [77]
“Look it,” she said. “They have to give me a trial in three months. They can’t keep me in here longer than ninety days. Well, okay, they could if Rafferty needs more time and makes a motion to delay. Still, three months, four months—I’m telling you I’m all right.”
“Alice,” I said slowly, “Rafferty said we shouldn’t discuss the case over the phone. We have to be careful. But can you help me understand? Suzannah Brooks is praying for us, no one will speak to me—”
“We don’t have time to explain. It’s happening. I’ve seen Rafferty. He’s so strange he makes me laugh, with that voice of his, thick with adenoidal drippings. He should probably have them removed, don’t you think so? Aside from his goatee and the way he’s always rubbing it, he’s smart, he’s decent—”
“I saw him too.” And again I said, “I can’t understand this.” But we were talking at the same time. We might as well have been on different continents, satellites beaming our voices back and forth over the long distance.
“You have to realize,” she was saying, “that Mrs. Mackessy has had it in for me for a long time. I’ve been thinking these few days how Prairie Junction, Prairie Center, whatever the hell our town is called, has been changing so fast, all the houses going up, the racetrack, the strip along the highway. It’s gone through so much change we don’t even know what it’s called anymore—”
“We shouldn’t be talking about—”
“Those Hmong people have moved in down by the mill. Hmong people in Prairie Center! The old-timers probably think they’re done for. Sometimes people get so confused by how fast everything’s moving they have to throw somebody out, to make them feel better. It could have been anyone, really. The neighborhood associations in the new subdivisions have had so many disputes about how high the fences should be, what kind of annuals you can plant, the Christmas decorations they’ll allow. This ought to unify them.”
“Jesus, Alice,” I said under my breath. I didn’t know how she could see it in such an impersonal way. I had thought she was going to be frail and withdrawn. I had thought I might have to coax her to speak.
“Don’t look at me as if I’m cracked, Howard. I’m not saying I deserve this. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself last night and I thought that I should pray, that I should ask Christ or God, whoever, to save me from prison. And then I realized that there’s no point in believing now, just to be saved. That’s a fair-weather friend. If I had believed before I was in trouble that would be one thing, but to believe now—”
I was trying to understand what she was saying. And I had to keep her in line so she didn’t mention anything in a way that could be misconstrued. Also I needed to pinpoint what was different about her. As she jabbered on about whether it would be right to go to the daily Bible class, I realized that I hadn’t talked with her since before Lizzy drowned. She hadn’t spoken in weeks. She was chattering the way she often used to before Lizzy died. She was the one who usually held up more than her end of the conversation. She had the same lulling and companionable effect of the radio in the barn, something I tuned in and out of. She was coming close to the glass, peering at me. “Are you okay, Howard? You look sort of awful.”
We had so little time and I didn’t yet know how this had happened to her. That was what I had set out to learn, above and beyond seeing that she was in one piece. “Alice,” I said, “there have been some calls. I need to figure—”
“What? What are people saying?”
“We shouldn’t be discussing it here—”
“That’s ridiculous! I have a right to know what people are saying so I can defend myself. I have a feeling each story is going to be more and more outrageous. Tell me! Tell me what’s being said.”
“One woman, a stranger, said that you told her daughter—”
“What?”
“That you could g-get it on with a tampon.”
She shut her eyes and wrinkled her nose, as if she was trying to think back to a smell. After a minute she threw up her right arm. Her eyes, her mouth, both of them popped wide open. She