The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [280]
The next morning, when he answered his front door he saw not Matt but Deirdre Rambell, who worked as a secretary at town hall and had heard about what she called, with hushed sincerity, the situation. “Deirdre, it’s a few rocks that I’ve already put back,” he said. “The town is making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“Oh, it’s the Historical Society, you know. The volunteers go around checking, and they really care. For my own part, I’ve always felt the dead have souls that cannot be at peace when they sense any lack of respect.”
“Souls sense respect?” he said. He realized with slight embarrassment that although he was wearing chinos, he still had on his pajama top.
“Indeed they do,” she said.
“Then let me inform you, Deirdre, that at this point I have replaced all but a couple of the six or seven stones necessary to give the souls their deserved respect. Let me also ask you this: Do you happen to really know or care anything about the people buried on this property? About their lives, I mean—as people, rather than as souls?”
Nothing in his tone registered with her. “Aren’t they Moultons?” she said. “Fine people, among the first settlers.”
“Onward!” she exclaimed when she finally drove away.
Yes, he thought, that sort of woman always feels that she’s making progress.
You Got No Choice appeared next, apologizing for what he called the “slipup” at town hall. “That lamebrained letter was embarrassing,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I just found out, Doc, and came right over to apologize.”
“You, and the rest of the town, will be relieved to know that, as infirm as I am, the wall has been repaired, and now all is well with the world.”
“Excellent, Doc!” He tugged the brim of his cap.
“You wouldn’t have seen Matt’s van anywhere around town, would you?” Cahill said. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Are you kidding?” You Got No Choice said.
“Kidding?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?” Cahill said.
“Up in Warren,” he said warily, as if Cahill might be having him on. “It’s been all over the papers.”
You Got No Choice saw the answer in Cahill’s expression. “Doc—they got him on some molesting-a-minor thing, or something. I didn’t want to bring up a sore subject. I know he was like a son to you. You get rounded up by the cops, you got no choice—you go where the Man says you go, right? Don’t mean you’re guilty.”
Cahill put his hand out to brace himself on the door frame. His mind was racing, but it moved neither backward nor forward. It raced like a car on a lift, with someone inside gunning the engine.
“Sorry to drop a bomb on you. Articles have been in the paper every day, as far’s I know.”
“It’s impossible,” Cahill said, having recovered enough to speak, though he could hardly hear his own voice.
“Say what?”
“Why wouldn’t he have called me? Why wouldn’t police have come to the barn, why—”
“There you go,” You Got No Choice said. “Fishy, huh? You got a point; it’s odd if they haven’t made no search.”
Cahill almost tripped on the rug in the entryway on his way back into the house. He walked toward the kitchen and the pile of papers, which he wanted to look through immediately, and not at all. “Real life,” as his wife would have said. He sank into a kitchen chair and brushed the newspapers onto the floor, putting his head in his hands. The phone rang, and he got up and walked numbly toward it. Matt? Calling to say what? “This is Joyce,” his daughter said.
“Joyce, my dear, this is not a time I can talk,” he said, but another voice intruded. “And this is Tara,” a younger, more high-pitched voice sing-alonged, and he realized he’d been talking to a recording. He heard chimes, and the first unmistakable notes of the wedding march. His daughter’s voice said, “We’re sending this recording on the happiest day of our lives to announce that at one o’clock July 20, 2005, we were joined together in a commitment ceremony, blessed by Mother Goddess Devi, and we are now officially Joyce”—the squeaky voice broke in—“and Tara.” “Forever!” the voices shouted in unison. Next, he recognized