Authors: Deborah Rogers
Jennifer wishes it was just another outrageous Lenise lie but she knows the truth when she hears it. And that smugness. That,
I'm so clever I can't even believe it myself
look of amazement on Lenise's face. Not to mention the relish with which she delivered the news. Jennifer had never thought to ask how or where Lenise had disposed of the items from that night. She'd assumed Lenise had burnt or tossed them into some out of county waterway.
Her only choice had been to encourage McKenzie to go to Lenise's. For the entire time McKenzie is gone, Jennifer waits at the window, hands bunched into fists, disbelief transforming into anger then into something altogether more visceral.
It's after nine when McKenzie returns. Jennifer knows something is up by the way she takes the stairs two at a time to get to her bedroom.
"Hey, what's the hurry," says Jennifer, catching her daughter in the hallway.
McKenzie turns around. There's a silver stud in her left eyebrow.
"Oh my God, is that a piercing?" gasps Jennifer.
"Lenise says it's important I express myself."
"You're twelve years old!"
"I'm sick of you judging me."
"What's next – a tattoo? Where did you get it done? You have to be over eighteen for that type of procedure."
"Lenise knows someone."
"Lenise."
McKenzie looks at her. "Are we finished?"
Jennifer thinks of the evidence that could put her away for life.
"We'll talk about this later," she says.
*
Jennifer can only watch, powerless, as McKenzie cuts a path back and forth between their houses, growing ever more distant and unruly. The hatred Jennifer feels for Lenise is like wood rot, growing steadily inside her. Or cancer, metastasizing. Or a sewer line carrying away crap and vomit and tampons and other dead or dying things, down there beneath the layers of asphalt and bedrock where it's lightless and desolate.
She wakes in the night thinking of black things. She wonders what it would feel like to suffocate someone with a plastic bag or push them in front of a moving train. Sometimes she thinks she is losing her mind.
And tonight when McKenzie comes in, Jennifer feels like she's going to scream because it's after six and the lasagna is cold but instead she pretends she's the most reasonable mother in the world and simply says, "You're late."
McKenzie looks at the food.
"You know I can't eat that. It could be contaminated."
"It's tuna."
"That's not the point. I need my own can."
Jennifer slaps down the slotted spoon a little more loudly than she intends.
"You know, it's not easy to come home after a long day's work and cook a meal no one eats."
"No one asked you to do it."
McKenzie retrieves a single serve tin of tuna from the cupboard and gets her plastic bag of cutlery from the kitchen drawer.
"I'll be upstairs if anyone needs me," she says.
*
Later, when Jennifer is about to scrape the lasagna into the trash, she gets an idea. She puts the food into a Tupperware container and crosses the road and knocks on Lenise's door.
"Can we talk?" says Jennifer.
"We've got nothing to say."
"Just for a moment."
"I don't see the point."
Jennifer doesn't move. Lenise sighs and lets her in.
"I brought you something." Jennifer holds up the lasagna then puts it in on the coffee table. "I understand why you kept the evidence. I'm not angry at you. We were both under a great a deal of pressure. But this thing with McKenzie has got to stop."
"No one's forcing her to come here."
"You know what I mean."
"Do I?"
"You're playing mind games, manipulating her. She's become impossible."
"And you think that's my fault?"
Jennifer can smell the cooling lasagna. Condensation has formed on the lid.
"You can't expect me to live with this guillotine over my head." She looks at Lenise. "Give me what you have, all the evidence. It's the decent thing to do." She pauses. "What if I didn't go to Florida?"
"I'm not an idiot, Jenny. As soon as you have it, you'll be off like a shot."
"I give you my word," says Jennifer.
"Oh no, we're past that now."
"You're being unreasonable."
Lenise pushes Jennifer toward the door. "This conversation is over."
"Come on, Lenise."
"Don't come here again," she says. "There's nothing left to say."
"She's not your daughter."
"Get out."
"I won't let you take her!" Jennifer picks up the lasagna and throws it at Lenise's head. She ducks and it lands on the wall behind her.
"Have you lost your mind!" Lenise gapes at the pulp sliding down the wall.
"Take a good look, Lenise, because the next time I won't miss."
Theoretically, the evidence could be anywhere, stowed away in a benign bus station locker or buried beneath some Wisconsin landmark, but that isn't Lenise's style. She'd want to keep it close, in the house, where she has easy access, where it's weatherproof, where she can grab it at a moment's notice and wave it in Jennifer's face.
Saturday afternoon McKenzie announces she's going to the mall.
"You're too young to go by yourself."
"Lenise is taking me."
"Of course she is."
"Don't start."
Jennifer waits until they leave and ducks across the road. From memory, the spare key was kept around the back, buried in an old coffee can filled with bottle caps – Lenise had shown Jennifer after the first incident with Hank in case she ever needed to get inside in a hurry. And there it was, right behind the garden hose.
Jennifer fishes inside the can and the caps rattle against the tin but she can't feel any key so she tips the contents onto the grass and fans them out. Nothing.
She tries both the front and back doors just in case they're unlocked. No luck. She searches for another opening, testing each window for loosened latches, but everything's secured tight.
Then, up there on the second floor, the bathroom window is open with the slimmest of gaps. The window itself is tiny, not much bigger than a shoe box, and Jennifer can't be sure she will fit, but it's the only chance she's got.
She gives the trellis a shake. The wood is thin and brittle in places. The honeysuckle once so lushly tangled between the elfin triangles is, to all intents and purposes, dead. She checks that the timber is screwed securely to the house then gets a toehold and hoists herself up. The dead plant spikes her palms and the wood trembles under her weight. But she continues upward like a rock climber, toe-hand, toe-hand, vigilant for any loose screw, any fracture in the weathered wood.
About halfway up, she freezes. The sound of a vehicle. She risks a glance over her shoulder and realizes just how exposed she is. Even though she's on the non-street side of the house, anyone who looked up would see her here, a grown woman stuck between the first and second floors, clinging to a trellis. The CenturyTel van draws near and she presses her body close to the house and prays for the vehicle to pass. It does, carrying on up the road, turning left into Raybourne Street.
She continues upwards, mindful of the time, picking up pace, the trellis creaking beneath her. When she reaches the bathroom window, she sees just how small it is. She pulls it open as far as it will go and pushes her head and shoulders through until she is half-in half-out, her midriff pressing awkwardly into the aluminum sill. Below her is the toilet, lid shut. The rest of the bathroom is neat and silent and smells of lavender. Her upper arms scrape against the wood as she squeezes through and she knows in a few short hours there will be bruises.
Jennifer dismisses the bathroom as a possible hiding place and goes downstairs instead.
Methodical is best. She begins with the laundry, searching behind the washing machine and dryer and cabinets then moves on to the kitchen, which takes forever because of the large number of cupboards to check, then into the living room where she inspects the ottoman with the flip-top lid, boxes in a book case and old steamer trunk in the corner. When that produces nothing, she goes upstairs to the attic.
She hadn't thought to bring a flashlight. But she sees there's no need because on the opposite side is a small, dust-crusted window which lets in enough light to show that, apart from a large mummified rat lying on top of a wooden rafter, the space is empty.
Disappointment washes over her.
She slips the manhole cover back in place, careful to wipe away fingerprint smudges with her sleeve, and returns the ladder upright.
She stands on the landing with growing unease. They would be back soon. She hurries to the two spare rooms, hunts through both, finds nothing, then moves on to the final location. Lenise's bedroom.
Jennifer pauses at the door. Lenise's most intimate space. Compared to the rest of the house with its homely objects and nods to Lenise's African past, the room is bare. There's nothing on the walls, no photographs, no paintings, no artifacts, just one chest of drawers and a nightstand next to a neatly made double bed. Laid out across the foot of the bed are a pair of plain cotton pajamas, and a checkered cloth dressing-gown graying at the cuffs.
Jennifer hunts through the orderly wardrobe, examines a shoe box of documents and looks behind three short piles of folded sweaters. She rummages through the dresser, between the inner-sprung mattress and bed, then under it. There's no sign of the evidence anywhere.
Frustration courses through her. She's never going to find it.
Something catches her eye. The carpet against the wall on the far side of the room. A barely perceptible rise. She goes over, bends down and runs a finger along the seam. To her amazement, the edge of the carpet lifts up. She flips back the triangle, exposing unpolished floorboards, three of them, loose to the touch.
Heart humping in anticipation, she stands up and presses her heel on the right end of the boards and they lift up. She stacks them to one side and looks into the hole. Apart from a bent nail and a bunch of wood dust it's empty.
*
Sometime after midnight the phone call comes.
"I know you were here," Jennifer can almost hear the smile. "You'll never find it."
Then the flat dial tone. It's as if all the oxygen has been sucked from the air.
Jennifer blinks into the fading light. She's finished work early and needs a place to think, so she's come here to Lake Shore Park, a vast green space bordering Lake Mendota close to Wisconsin University. Jennifer can't see into the lake like she can in the warmer months, when the water is clear as glass, when she can pick out the large grey river stones, the shimmer of a fish, the crisp glint of a soda can. Today there's thickness and murk and leaves floating on top, and a smell, as if something has soured beneath the tangle of black river weed.
Out in the center of the lake she sees a sailboat and a man moving about on deck. It must be cold – the sails fat with wind, skipping over the choppy water, brooding skies above him. If there's a storm coming, he's ignoring it.
For a second, she swears the ground beneath her bumps as if she is on a jetty and not a park bench fixed to a concrete platform, which is itself, fixed to the hard earth. Just to make sure, she glances down at the ancient seat, with its wooden slates and hexagon screws and paint tiers of blue, white and green and maybe black. Beneath her finger tip someone has etched words. Chicken Salt. She looks closer. Chicken Shit.
Jennifer stands, turns her back on the lake, pulls her coat tight and takes the path lined with willows and river birch and white oaks. She hears the crunch of running footsteps and moves to the side to let the runner pass.
"Jennifer!"
She turns around. Detective North, flushed and breathing heavily.
"Rosemary said you might be here."
"Did she."
"Yes."
"The clinic gets stuffy."
She continues on and he falls in next to her. "It's a nice spot."
"Summer is better. Everything's so lifeless in winter."
"Resting, not lifeless. Getting ready for rebirth."
"Poetic," she says.
He zips up his coat. "I wouldn't go that far."
She wonders what he wants, whether she had screwed up again, whether Lenise had finally dropped her in it.
"You haven't left for Florida," he says.
"Not yet."
She can feel him staring.
"How's McKenzie?" he says.
"Fine."
"Really?"
"No."
"Counseling?"
"She won't go."
"Listen, about before. I gave you a hard time with the money thing."
She shrugs. "You're just doing your job."
He pauses. "You came to us," he says.
"Yes, I did."
"And why would you do that if you had anything to hide?" He waits. "Then again maybe it was to throw us off, maybe you were being clever."
"Clever?"
"Yes."
"I couldn't imagine anyone pulling the wool over your eyes, Detective."
"It happens."
"I find that hard to believe."
He scratches his bottom lip with his thumb. "I'm not bullet proof."
She looks at him.
"I saw you with your father," she says.
He stops beneath a Californian Redwood and looks into the woods. "Pop wanders," he says. "Dementia."
"Sorry."
"It is what it is."
"He lives with you?"
"Of course."
"Why do you do this job?" she says. "Do you get a rush from catching the bad guys?"
"That's got nothing to do with it. I told you before – it's about the search for the truth."
"What are we doing here Detective? Are you trying to lull me into a false sense of security?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"Is this your way of eliciting some sort of confession? Some friendly chit-chat on a woodland walk? Get the suspect to open up, drop her guard? They teach you this on some Quantico course?"
"Suspect?"
"Well, I am aren't I?"
"I'm not sure, but I know you're holding something back."
"You're imagining things."
He nudges a rock with his tan brogue.
"It's true what they say, you know, you can tangle yourself in knots so much you forget what you've said before and end up giving yourself away. The truth is so much easier. The truth is better for everyone."
"Is it?" She walks on then stops. "What if I told you something? Would you have to report it?'
He looks at her evenly. "Depends on what it is."
"That means yes."
"I can help you."
"What if I don't need your help?"
He touches his collar. "Your daughter. She deserves to know what happened to her father."
"Leave McKenzie out of this."
Overhead a bird flits from branch to branch, watching them.
"It's too late for that," he says.
She turns away.
"I have to get back."
As she strides off he calls out – "The thing about chickens, Jennifer, is that eventually they come home to roost."
*
She finds the place. The apartment block is not much more than a framework yet. The graphic on the sign shows pictures of up-market condos and urges people to get in quick. They look nice – all open plan and floating staircases – maybe there's an apartment like this in Florida for her and McKenzie.
A crew of about twenty in steel-capped boots and hard hats and high visibility vests are doing various jobs. Jennifer gets out of her car and walks onto site, ducking through the temporary fencing. It's noisy with the radio blaring, the band saw whirring, the nail gun popping. She feels obvious but no one seems to notice her.
It takes awhile to pick him out. He's deep in concentration, nailing planks to a side wall, about six levels up, hooked in with a climber's harness. She walks over and calls up to him, raising her voice above the din.
"Can I talk to you?"
Cody looks down. Confusion clouds his face.
"I'm working." Then, "Something happened to Ma?"
"She's fine. I just want to talk to you."
"My break's in twenty minutes."
"I can wait."
She takes a seat by the temporary office and is told to shift by a grumpy man in a flap jacket because it's too dangerous. She moves near the fence and the pallets of wood and plastic bags of insulation and a huge wheel of cabling.
Cody unhooks himself and climbs down the ladder and disappears into a port-a-potty then comes over, flicking a tab from an energy drink.
"What's this about?" he says, knocking it back.
"Your mother told me you were working here. Oh, and, congratulations," says Jennifer, "on the baby. Lenise couldn't be happier."
"She said that?"
"Of course."
He bites into a granola bar.
"Do you know what you're having?" she says.
"Girl."
"I'm sure you'll be a good father."
"You don't even know me."
She nods at the construction site. "You're working hard. That's a good start."
"What's this about?"
"Your mother and I – we've become friends." She pauses. "I know it's weird, with the dog and everything, but it just worked out that way."
"What's that got to do with me?"
"I want to offer her a job at my optometry clinic, as a receptionist."
"So do it."
"I can't have her working for me if there's work permit issues – I'd lose my license. I didn't want to ask her directly yet because well – you know how she gets – offended."
"We're not illegals, if that's what you're worried about."
"You're both entitled to work?"
He picks a raisin from his teeth. "Yes."
"Your green cards are legitimate?"
"I said yes."
He gets up and throws the granola wrapper and can into a wheelie bin.
"I have to go."
She goes after him. "And your father?"
"And my father what?"
"He's here too, in the States?"
Cody stares at her. "She never told you?"
Jennifer shakes her head.
"My father disappeared when I was ten."