The Home Place: A Novel Page 18

  “I’m here about Vicky.”

  “Join the club.” Dennis chuckles with a nervous glance to one side, then opens the door further to reveal Ray Curtis standing near the front window, eyeing the street. He and Alma exchange amused nods. Ray moves quickly toward the door.

  “I can come back later, Alma. You and Dennis go ahead and visit,” he says, reaching for the doorknob as Alma steps inside.

  “No, I don’t mean to interrupt you,” she objects. “It’s nothing important.”

  Ray holds up a hand. “It’s okay. I just got here. We’ll talk later.” And he is gone, the heavy door lock clunking into place. Alma turns to Dennis with her mouth open, but before she can speak, Dennis continues.

  “Oh hey, listen, I don’t know what she’s been telling you, but there’s no way I can pay her this month. I was out of work four months and I just got this job at the Gazette. My benefits don’t kick in for another couple of weeks, I’m behind on my rent, and now they’re garnishing my wages! Can you believe that shit?” He doesn’t know. Ray hasn’t told him yet. Alma hears Ray’s unmarked car start outside, the police V8 purring to life. Her mind turns over. Ray made a split-second decision that he wanted her to tell Dennis about Vicky’s death, alone. What is he hoping for? What does he think Dennis might reveal to her but not him? Dennis wanders into the kitchen and rearranges a few items in the fridge before emerging with a growler half full of dark beer and two fairly clean-looking glasses. “Check this out. We played a gig at Yellowstone Valley and they paid us in beer. Porter.” He sets the glasses on the plywood coffee table and begins to pour.

  Alma unbuttons her coat a little in the heat and stuffs her gloves in her pocket. She lets out her breath. “Dennis, Vicky’s dead.”

  He sets down the growler with a heavy thump. The table wobbles. “Dead? What do you mean, dead? I just saw her last week. She was fine.”

  “It was in the paper.”

  “I don’t read the paper.” Dennis turns back to the beer, pours himself a very full glass, and starts to drink it in long gulps.

  “You just said you work for the paper.” Alma examines the other glass for cleanliness before pouring herself a few inches of porter, just to taste.

  “That doesn’t mean I read it. I do page layout.”

  “And you don’t read the articles?” Alma is stuck on this point. She takes a tiny sip of the porter, then a bigger drink.

  “A lot of times the articles come in at the last minute and we’re just playing with blank spaces. It can be a real bitch.” Dennis stares down into the dark beer at the bottom of his glass with a child’s look of deep confusion. “What happened to her?”

  “They found her frozen in a yard on the south side early Sunday morning.”

  “Whoa.” Dennis stands still for a moment to absorb this, takes a swipe at his wet eyes, then remembers his manners and comes around the low table. “Listen, you want to stay a little while? Have a pipe or something?” He gestures at the couch. He’s wearing flip-flops in January, and the cracked plaster of the old walls drips a little in the humidity. Somewhere in here, she feels sure, there’s a grow light. No wonder he was nervous around Ray. Alma remembers when Dennis was the white-hot star of the local indie music scene, such as it is. The heat seems to have slipped a few degrees.

  No way is Alma sitting on that couch. “No thanks, I can only stay a few minutes. So you didn’t get a chance to talk to Ray at all?”

  “Ray? Oh, the Indian? No, he just got here. I thought he was trying to bust me.”

  Alma smiles a little at her beer. “I don’t think that’s his beat. He’s investigating Vicky’s death.”

  Dennis slumps onto the couch with a harsh laugh. “I guess the PD’ll hire anybody these days.” He takes a long sip, looking Alma up and down.

  “Ray? I’ve known him since high school. He’s sharp.”

  That same nasty laugh. “Yeah. Whatever. Probably didn’t even make him take the exam, so they could fill their quota. Those guys off the res all think the world owes them a living. They don’t lift a finger. I know, I’ve worked with ’em.” The marijuana leaf has hitched up to expose Dennis’s deep, hairy belly button. Alma sets down her glass and wipes the condensation from her fingers onto her coat. She turns her face away from Dennis. The professional habit of hiding her emotions is so ingrained that she practices it involuntarily, even when she might rather reveal herself.

  “The beer’s nice, thanks,” she says.

  “Told ya. So you still doing that law thing in Seattle?”

  “Yep. Still doing the law thing. How’s your band?” Are they really going to do catch-up small talk, Alma wonders, like everything’s normal?

  “Oh, you know, ups and downs. We lost our drummer when she had a kid and we haven’t been able to find anyone else the last six months or so. Can’t seem to get ahead.” Dennis sits back down and kicks up his feet on the block-and-plywood coffee table. Whatever his flaws, Alma remembers him as the guy who didn’t ditch Vicky when the baby came. She wonders how he’ll react to her main agenda item: parental rights.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she answers, almost surprised to hear her own sincerity.

  “Yeah.” Dennis sighs. “Just broke up with my girlfriend too. I mean, we still hook up once in a while, but she moved out. She wants to get married and have kids and I guess she finally decided I wasn’t going to change my mind.”

  “That’s too bad,” Alma says, feeling a notch or two less sorry for him.

  “Nah, not really. I’m happier on my own. I was never much for commitment. More of a loner, you know. Lone rider.” Dennis pours another glass and holds it up to toast his words before sucking off the foam. “I’m thinking about getting a paternity test, you know. Friend of mine brought it up. I mean, how do I know if Brittany’s really mine? Wouldn’t it be the shits if Vicky’s just been playing me for a sucker all these years? Women are tricky. That’s what I’ve learned.” He starts up to sit at the edge of the couch. “Wait, you’re not here about that, are you? You don’t expect me to take her? Look, no way I could do that. I’m never around. I practice all hours. Ask my new neighbors, they hate me. And sometimes I just gotta take off and be on my own. I’m not dad material.”

  “That’s not what I’m here about,” Alma says, resting her hands on her hips as what’s left of her patience starts to go. “Nobody expects you to take Brittany. One of the family will. But I’d like you to terminate your parental rights. Then we won’t have to check with you every time she needs a tooth pulled. And you could stop worrying about child support.”

  Dennis sits back—way back, the couch moving with him—and takes a long slug of beer. “Well, I don’t know. She’s my only child. If I gave up rights, then you could just move anywhere with her and I’d never know what happened to her. I couldn’t protect her.”

  “Protect her? I thought you hardly saw her. She hasn’t mentioned you in three days.”

  “Hey, I have a life. Maybe if something went wrong I could do something. You know, someday. Not now, though. Now’s not good. But you can’t just expect to take my daughter away from me. That’s not right. Besides, if you take her, you’ve got lots of money. You don’t need any child support from me, so what’s the difference?”

  Alma makes an angry, slicing gesture with one hand and points a finger at him. “Dennis, the law says you have to support your child, and I can guarantee you that I’d be a lot more hardass about it than Vicky was. You do not want me going after you.” She gives him her nastiest negotiator’s glare across the table.

  “So you’re taking her?” Dennis leans forward, his expression almost hopeful.

  “I didn’t say that. Let’s say I’m thinking on it. I wanted to know where you stand.” Alma begins to button her coat, closing the negotiation.

  “I guess we could work out a deal.” Dennis stays in the same supplicant position in front of her, looking up meekly now. Alma feels a moment of guilt for intimidating him this way but shoves it aside. Th
is is what the Bryn Mawr and Yale education bought. When something important, like Brittany, is on the line, Alma knows how to get her way.

  Alma turns her back on Dennis. “All right then. Don’t get up, I’ll let myself out.” As she opens the door and looks back, Dennis hasn’t moved. He sits staring at his half-empty growler with the same look of innocent confusion he showed her when she told him about Vicky’s death. Tears are beginning to move down his cheeks. Alma almost goes back to him, almost sits on that couch stained with God knows what and puts her arms around him. Instead, she shuts the door and stands in the hall for several minutes, forcing herself not to cry too.

  CHAPTER 13

  TUESDAY, NOON, MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

  Back at the Itching Post, tucked in behind the counter on a stool next to her brother so that they can talk while he keeps pulling coffees, Alma breathes several times and starts the easy way.

  “We’ve been spending some time with the Murphys,” she begins, describing their visits, picking up a teasing old conversation they used to have about Chance as if she’s never been gone, the comfort of their familiar routine immense. “Brittany’s out there today, playing with his little girl. His ex-wife is a big San Francisco artist,” she says.

  “That good old boy is into the art world?” Pete nearly loses his cap when he tosses his head back to laugh. “Sounds like a variation on ‘Come up and see my etchings.’ ” Pete was always suspicious of Chance. After his time out working on the ranches, Pete will never think any former rodeo cowboy good enough for Alma. She knows what Pete would say—too rough, too egotistical, too closed off, no kind of decent husband. But he saw only the caricature, the silent man on the horse, the kid from up the road who gave him a hard time for being a city boy. Pete never knew the boy who saw her cry over broken robin’s eggs the year before they started dating, and how she began to find eggs—wood, ceramic, glass, stone—in places only she would go, underneath things of hers left outside. Alma lined up the eggs on the front windowsill at the house on Lewis that last summer, when all other decoration was gone, and watched the light change on them, the only objects of beauty she owned. Now they’re in a small box at the top of a closet in Seattle, out of sight but never out of reach.

  “I thought we made a deal that you don’t pick on my ex-boyfriends if I don’t pick on yours.”

  They’re surrounded by people at the bar. Pete gives her a look. “Louder, I don’t think they heard you in Laramie.”

  Alma sets down a tin of breath mints she’s been tossing and catching. “Why do you live like this, Pete? It’s undignified. When are you and Shep going to go someplace where you can live like ordinary people?”

  Pete leans both arms on the bar and bends toward her. “We do live like ordinary people, we just don’t advertise. For the hundredth time, Alma, I’m not going to leave my hometown and go live in some queer ghetto. That would be undignified. And Montana isn’t like it used to be. Do we have to have this conversation every time you visit?” He offers her his old, exasperated smile. “This is our home. All our friends are here, our families are here. I can drive an hour and be on my great-great-great-grandparents’ homestead. If I have to be a little discreet about my private life, well, that’s a price I’m willing to pay. It’s not like people don’t know. Some of them are just blind because they want to be, and that’s fine by me. They don’t ask and we don’t tell and we all get along. You’re the only one who has a problem with it.”

  “Walt has a problem with it.”

  Pete darkens. “Walt is an asshole. What else is new?”

  “I don’t blame you for keeping your distance from Walt,” Alma assures him. But this is more than dislike of Walt talking. He’s leaning over with his head down and his hands on his knees, rubbing his palms angrily on denim.

  “It’s not your fault, Petey.” Alma grasps his heavy hand. “It was probably just a stupid, stupid accident. Even if you or Walt had gone, who knows if you’d have found her? Who knows if it would have changed anything?”

  Pete looks up quickly, his eyes unfocused.

  “That’s right. It was nothing but a stupid accident.” He squeezes her hand without meeting her eyes and hops up to serve another customer, then returns to her side to tamp down coffee for espressos and resume the conversation. “Whatever you might say about Vicky as a mother, and God knows she has her problems, she loves Brittany.” His persistent meandering into the present tense for Vicky rubs at Alma, but she can’t bring herself to correct him. “She would have done anything in the world to protect her from the dangers she understood. But the drugs weren’t the only problem. She told me other things that would make your skin crawl. Under the influence, of course, so I could never be sure what was the truth and what was crazy talk. Vicky lies, you know that.” Pete looks at Alma with these words.

  “Yes, I know. She’s lied to me many times. I always thought of her as not so much dishonest as . . . creative.” Alma raises her voice a little over the hiss of the espresso machine.

  “Yeah. She’s creative, all right. Creative like a rug. Brittany’s got a little of it too, you know, when she really wants something. But I never knew Vicky to lie about something that really mattered. It was more like—like embellishment, telling people what they want to hear. Making things more interesting than they are, or protecting someone. Do you know who Brittany’s father is?” Pete lowers his voice so much that Alma can barely hear him over a noisy set of girls chattering at the pastry case.

  “I always thought Dennis, but I just saw him and he says there was never a paternity test. Wouldn’t there have been one for the child support order?”

  Pete shakes his head and leans closer. “Not if he didn’t contest.”

  “So then, you’re saying you think it wasn’t him?” Alma has never heard such a suggestion before this moment. Back when Vicky had Brittany, she was still in near-daily phone contact with Alma. Surely she would have said something about seeing a boy other than Dennis. “But she would have told me.”

  Pete shrugs. “Maybe.”

  Alma accepts the tea Pete’s been brewing for her and puts the weight of her back against the counter, perplexed. She wonders for an instant if Pete has an idea of who else might be Brittany’s father—why would he bring it up?—but dismisses the thought. They never kept secrets. Just like Vicky would have told her, Pete would tell her. Like she has to tell him the new and awful secret she’s just acquired. She sets down the tea and takes his forearm lightly in her hand to draw his attention.

  “I don’t know who to tell this to, so I guess I’ll tell you. It has to be a secret.”

  “I oughta be good at those.” Pete flicks his eyes up and down the bar, but the patrons are all involved in their own conversations.

  “Okay. Try this on: Vicky was three months pregnant,” Alma says low into his ear.

  Pete just stands there, rag in hand, leaning forward with the same contemplative expression, studying the pattern on the bar. Finally he nods. “I know.”

  “You little shit! How could you not tell me that?” Alma slams down her hand on the counter. “When did she tell you?”

  Pete shakes his head. “She didn’t have to.”

  “Look, Pete, she’s dead. You’re not betraying confidences if you tell me what the hell was going on with her.”

  Pete bends down to rest on his forearms. “I’m just glad you’ve been away from here, little sis. You’ve been safe from the shit that goes on in this town.” He rubs his face with both hands before continuing. “I knew she was pregnant because I know she was raped three months ago, and I know what she’s been acting like since. She’s been sick and crabby, going on one bender after another like she was trying to kill herself, lost her job, got evicted, dragged Brittany all over the place. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d said it was suicide. And you can keep a secret yourself—don’t go telling your police buddy everything I say to you.”

  Alma sits back, stunned. “Jesus, Pete, you do know how to keep
a secret.” A moment later: “Did they catch the guy? Did she press charges?”

  “No, there was never any talk about that. She wanted to forget about it. She’d been trying to get things together the last year or so. Things got rougher after—that happened, then it all just fell apart one day. She stopped going to work—I started getting collections calls because she wasn’t paying the note on the car and I cosigned. I figure that’s around when she found out she was pregnant.”

  “But she didn’t end the pregnancy.” Alma’s face shows puzzlement.

  “You know how many abortion providers there are in this state?”

  Alma shakes her head.

  “Two. The closest is in Livingston. It ain’t easy even if you’re firing on all cylinders. I don’t know what went through her head, but she just fell apart.”

  “But it was rape.” Alma objects like a lawyer who’s identified the technicality that will get her client off and can’t understand why the court won’t sustain her objection.

  Pete just looks at her and rubs his hand over his mouth as if holding in threatening words, words that might get out and harm all of them, even the dead. Alma blinks in the dust particles circulating under the blown-glass light fixtures. She has a strong desire to sneeze but holds it in.

  Pete hunches even closer. Coltrane playing in the background and the click of pool balls hide his voice from the students embedded in soft furniture around them. “Vicky came to me and Shep for help the night it happened.” Pete pauses and knots his hands in a gesture of grief and penitence. “I don’t know if you realized, but Vicky wasn’t doing so badly the last few years. She had a pretty good job at Denny’s. She rented a little apartment near there. I cosigned for her on a decent car so she could get around. I thought things were shaping up for her.”