Sisters of the Road (22 page)

“Don’t be silly, of course you do. We’ll pound the veal or something—I know vegetarians have tender sensibilities—and well keep you company.” Beth lowered her pink slippers to the floor and shuffled after her into the kitchen. “We promise not to get involved with the sauce.”

“That’d be… that’d be nice then,” Janis said. “I mean about the veal. I mean—I’d like the company.”

That night at dinner I watched Janis and Beth maneuver around and towards each other. At first it seemed hopeless—when Janis would open up and reveal something, Beth would automatically withdraw. Then Janis would go quiet and Beth would worry and try to make up for it by drawing Janis out. Then the whole cycle would begin again.

In between we ate Janis’ delicious dinner and made small talk about innocent subjects, like Central America and Reaganomics, issues we could all agree on.

I thought it was going to be a long evening but gradually, almost imperceptibly, it began to get better. More laughter, more enthusiasm, more honesty. The two of them stopped trying so hard, stopped worrying about offending each other and started to enjoy themselves.

I enjoyed myself too, when I wasn’t thinking about Trish, or, increasingly, about Hadley.
Had
I given up too easily?
Was
it useless? I thought of her long legs and plain face, her Texas twang and turquoise eyes, and a remembrance of her sweetness came over me so strongly that I could have almost eaten it instead of the cheesecake for dessert.

Eventually I became so preoccupied that I forgot to pay attention to Janis and Beth and it was a slight shock to me when I came to and heard them discussing Trish.

“You can’t tell me she’s in love with that pimp of hers,” Janis was saying, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. “That’s not love, it’s emotional slavery.”

“I’ve been in love like that,” said Beth. “It’s not healthy, but it is love.”

“With whom?” Janis demanded.

“With—a guy—once.” Beth shut up and then the words came bursting out, brokenly, “You wouldn’t understand that kind of masochistic—self-destructive—behavior.”

“Why don’t you let me try? Why the fuck won’t you ever let me try?” Janis said, standing up.

Beth stood up too, then started stacking the dishes and moving towards the kitchen.

“You’re
not
planning to drive back to Seattle now, are you?” Janis panicked and ran after her.

Beth looked at her, opened her mouth and then closed it again and shook her head.

The emotional tension in the air made its own electrical field. I was afraid that if I stood up too I’d be electrocuted.

They slept together that night. I know, I heard them.

And I can tell you, it made me feel as lonely as hell.

W
HEN I WOKE UP
the next morning Beth was already gone and Janis was halfway out the door. Dressed in a gray tweed pants suit with a blue striped cravat at her neck, she was her professional, efficient self, and betrayed no signs of passion.

“I’ll come by for you at two this afternoon. We’ll go visit Trish,” she threw over her shoulder crisply, adding, “You can tell Art I’m her lawyer if he makes any fuss.”

I lay on my back for a while and the terrier came over and licked my hand. She stared at me in a woefully friendly way that made me long for Ernesto’s indifference.

It’s worth a try, I thought, and before I could wake up enough to decide I was doing the wrong thing, I got the Houston operator to give me Hadley’s father’s phone number.

“Hi, it’s Pam.”

“Pam! Pam!” she gulped and burst out happily, “It’s great to hear your voice.”

I saw her so vividly that for a moment I could hardly speak. Then I managed to get a few sentences out. “I just wanted to check out your Texas accent. How’re you doing? How’s your dad?”

“Oh—the same, pretty much. He doesn’t drink anymore, that’s the only good thing. One half his body’s paralyzed and he can barely talk. Still his charming self though. How are you—what’s happening?”

Before I knew it I was telling her about Trish and Rosalie, the murder and the search. It felt good to talk; but somehow it only made me miss her more. She should have been with me through all this.

“You don’t just sit around, do you?” she whistled. “And all this time I’ve just been imagining you at the print shop, churning out the latest political poster.”

“You do think about me sometimes then?”

She paused. “I think about you a lot. I like you, Pam.”

“You said you liked me when you walked away, too.”

“I know… I’ve often thought of that. But I felt I had to do it at the time. It was all so quick… and you scared me somehow. I thought I’d disappoint you.”

“Disappoint me—how?”

“I thought that when you really got to know me… well, it’s silly, isn’t it? I wasn’t very happy without you when it came down to it. Have you missed me?”

I thought of my loneliness at living alone, my brief affairs and failures to connect. I thought of meeting Trish and how that had changed me, had made me start caring again for somebody besides myself.

“I wouldn’t go through it again. But I’ve learned a lot. Nothing like what I expected when I became a lesbian. I thought it was going to be like one of those lesbian Harlequin romances. A little confusion and then the happy ending, souls and bodies merging into Sapphic oneness. We had the happy ending first, then the confusion.”

She laughed and I could almost see the way one side of her mouth turned up, the way her turquoise eyes closed. “I’m planning to come back to Seattle in February. What do you think? Are you going to be around?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very much around.”

The day picked up after that. I made myself some breakfast, took the dog for a walk and found it in my heart to wish Beth and Janis well.

Then I called Detective Logan again. No, he wasn’t there. No, she didn’t know if he’d talked to Karl yet. Yes, they had my number in Portland. Yes, he’d call me if anything came up.

I tried to tell myself that the police had it under control and that I shouldn’t worry. Logan would probably get more out of Wayne or Karl than I could, if they were in Seattle. And if they weren’t? If one of them was in Portland looking for Trish? I tried not to think about it, nor what would happen if I were all wrong and it was somebody else, somebody like Rob for instance, looking for her.

I decided to call the Hemmings’ house just to reassure myself. No answer. From the hosiery department Melanie told me that Rob was out looking for work today. He wouldn’t be back until late.

“Why?” she asked.

Because I think your husband is a murderer? It was impossible, I couldn’t tell her that.

“I just wanted to ask him something,” I said evasively. Then I told her I was in Portland and that Trish was at her father’s.

“Oh,” she said, struggling not to care.

“… I know about what happened when she was young, Melanie. And so does Trish.”

“I blame myself,” she said finally. “I never told her about her father. I didn’t think she’d remember. And he’s changed. He’s different now, I guess. But I should have told her. I just didn’t know how.”

It was the first time I’d heard Melanie take any responsibility for what had happened to Trish and it gave me a little hope.

In fact, I was feeling quite hopeful when I put down the phone. I started thinking about Hadley again and about Trish when this was all over. Maybe she could work part-time at Best Printing. I wouldn’t push her to go back to school, but I’d give her books to read. Beth had said it could take years to get off the streets, but I’d help her find a way. I wouldn’t even care if she didn’t become a radical feminist.

Janis called and broke into my happy reverie.

“Something’s come up and I can’t make it when I said I would. Can we do it this evening instead? I’d really like to go with you. To—ah—get to know Trish.”

A strange feeling told me it was better not to wait, that I should go over there myself. But I didn’t want to disappoint Janis; she was probably trying to show Beth that she could spare a little time for one of her charges.

“Sure. I’ll just call to make sure she’s all right.”

Trish was taking a nap, said Judy Margolin with disapproval in her voice. “She’s been sleeping practically all the time since she got here.”

“Well, she’s probably tired.”

“I suppose so.”

“Has she made any phone calls?”

“Not as far as I know. There’s a phone upstairs, but like I said, she’s been sleeping.”

“We’ll be over at seven or so then.”

It was still raining, but I was restless and took the dog out again. I walked over to the Margolin’s house and looked at it. That odd little twinge hadn’t gone away. Somehow I felt worried about Trish and what she might do. I wondered if having a lawyer around would make Trish any more willing to tell me what she knew.

The house looked cozy in the heavy rain, but the wind chimes clattered with an eerie sound. I told myself that I was just being stupid and went back to Janis’.

Janis arrived home late, after seven, and seemed frustratingly preoccupied. I’d spent a slow afternoon reading and longing for the print shop. June might not believe me, but this self-imposed vacation was getting on my nerves.

When we finally pulled up in front of the Margolin’s house, we found a scene of confusion. Art was wandering around on the porch with a flashlight. He was wearing an enormous yellow slicker that made him look like a large warning light. He was calling in a loud, anxious voice, “Patricia, Patti!” Judy was standing in the doorway with one of the children in her arms; the other held on to her dress with a scared expression.

“Dammit,” said Janis. “Now we’ll have to go looking for her all over again. This could get tedious.”

I walked up to the porch and asked Art, “When did she leave?”

“She was sleeping while we ate dinner. We decided not to wake her. But when I went up afterwards she was gone. Patricia!” he called helplessly, as if she were a kitten who’d strayed. “Where are you?”

A porch light next door went on and an elderly woman in a housecoat came out. “Art, is that you? What’s going on?”

“My daughter’s run away,” he wailed through the rain. “My fifteen-year-old daughter from Seattle. Have you seen her?”

The woman didn’t hesitate. “Twenty minutes ago I saw a car pull up and someone from your house run out and get into it.”

My heart skidded like an ice cube in my chest. “Did you see who was driving? Was it a man?”

“It was definitely a man,” she said.

“Old or young. Was he bald?”

She considered. “Older, I think. And he was wearing a sort of cap. I noticed the license plate though. I always notice the license plate because you can’t be too careful these days. It was from Washington State.”

I was just in time to catch the eight o’clock train.

I
GOT INTO SEATTLE LATE
and didn’t sleep well, kept having dreams that someone was driving me somewhere down an unlit country road at night. Sometimes I was in the back seat and there was blood everywhere; sometimes I was in the passenger’s seat and couldn’t see the driver. How did I get here? I kept wondering, in that terrified, frantic way you do in dreams. Did I get in on my own? Where are we going, what’s going to happen to me? Is it my fault this is happening?

In the morning I called Detective Logan, the first act of what was to be a long, frustrating day.

Detective Logan wanted to know why I hadn’t told him about meeting Trish in Portland and why I hadn’t called the police there. Because I thought I could handle it myself was not the right answer. After we’d discussed my attitude, he grudgingly told me that they’d been watching Wayne and hadn’t seen him go anywhere. They were trying to get a search warrant. As for Karl, he seemed to have vanished completely.

I decided to do a little more investigating on my own, in spite of Logan’s admonitions to “just leave it to us now.” Art’s next door neighbor had said the man who picked up Trish was older. I couldn’t imagine her calling Rob or willingly going with him, so it must have been Karl she chose to rescue her. Or Karl who had come anyway.

I went back to his studio around noon. There was no answer to my knock and the door was firmly locked. Taking a chance, I tried a few other doors down the hall. Eventually I heard a “Yeah, come on in.”

The studio I entered was the complete opposite of Karl’s: bright white and modern with a varnished wood floor and pale light streaming in through the tiny-paned windows. The man inside was standing near the windows, with a long pipe in his hands. On one end of the pipe was a bubble of blue glass and he was spinning it rapidly over a flame. As I watched, the blue sphere flattened and became a disk. He laid it aside and turned to me.

“What can I do for you?”

“I wonder if you know an artist named Karl Devize?”

He was a young man in jeans and a plaid shirt, cheerful and unremarkable. But his open, friendly face shut down when I mentioned Karl’s name.

“Are you from the Health Department or the police?” he asked, carefully turning down the flame.

“Well—neither. I’m just looking for a girl and I think Karl might know where she is.”

“The last time I saw Karl, he was drunk out of his mind, puking in the hallway,” the young man said. “I’d be surprised if he answered his door these days. We’ve been trying to get him out of the building for the past three months. He’s supposed to be evicted next week. That’s probably why he’s not around.”

“So you wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been gone last night, would you?”

“No, I make a point not to notice what he’s up to. It’s usually too disgusting. When he first moved in he was pretty obnoxious, but he was interesting at least. Now he’s just sloppy.”

“What changed him?”

“Drugs and drink, simple as that. I gather he was dealing drugs for a while. I don’t know if he does now. I can’t imagine he’s together enough for that.”

“Did you ever see a couple of young girls hanging around here, a Black girl and a white girl, about fifteen?”

The man snorted. “Not exactly. He’s a faggot, for one thing. There used to be young boys sometimes, you’d meet them in the hall. But now I think he’s just in love with alcohol.”