Pretty soon you came, Andy, along with Frank, and I went down to our nice new police station a little later n made a statement. That was just yest'y forenoon, so I guess there's no need to reheat that hash, is there? You know I didn't say anything about the slip, n when you ast me about the rollin pin, I said I wasn't really sure how it'd gotten there. It was all I could think to say, at least until someone come along n took the OUT OF ORDER sign offa my brains.
After I signed the statement I got in my car n drove home. It was all so quick n quiet-givin the statement and all, I mean-that I almost persuaded myself I didn't have nothing to worry about. After all, I hadn't killed her; she really did fall. I kept tellin myself that, n by the time I turned into my own driveway, I'd come a long way to bein convinced that everything was gonna be all right.
That feelin only lasted as long's it took me to get from the car to my back door. There was a note thumb-tacked on it. Just a plain sheet of notebook paper. It had a smear of grease on it, like it'd been torn from a book some man'd been carryin around in his hip pocket. YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY WITH IT AGAIN, the note said. That was all. Hell, it was enough, wouldn't you say?
I went inside n cracked open the kitchen windows to let out the musty smell. I hate that smell, n the house always seems to have it these days, no matter if I air it out or not. It's not just because I mostly live at Vera's now-or did, at least-although accourse that's part of it; mostly it's because the house is dead… as dead as Joe n Little Pete.
Houses do have their own life that they take from the people who live in em; I really believe that. Our little one-storey place lived past Joe's dyin and the two older kids goin away to school, Selena to Vassar on a full scholarship (her share of that college money I was so concerned about went to buy clothes n textbooks), and Joe Junior just up the road to the University of Maine in Orono. It even survived the news that Little Pete had been killed in a barracks explosion in Saigon. It happened just after he got there, and less'n two months before the whole shebang was over. I watched the last of the helicopters pull away from the embassy roof on the TV in Vera's livin room and just cried n cried. I could let myself do that without fear of what she might say, because she'd gone down to Boston on a shopping binge.
It was after Little Pete's funeral that the life went out of the house; after the last of the company had left and the three of us-me, Selena, Joe Junior-was left there with each other. Joe Junior'd been talkin about politics. He'd just gotten the City Manager job in Machias, not bad for a kid with the ink still wet on his college degree, and was thinkin about runnin for the State Legislature in a year or two.
Selena talked a little bit about the courses she was teachin at Albany Junior College-this was before she moved down to New York City and started writin full time-and then she went quiet. She n I were riddin up the dishes, and all at once I felt somethin. I turned around quick n saw her lookin at me with those dark eyes of hers. I could tell you I read her mind-parents can do that with their kids sometimes, you know-but the fact is I didn't need to; I knew what she was thinkin about, I knew that it never entirely left her mind. I saw the same questions in her eyes then as had been there twelve years before, when she came up to me in the garden, amongst the beans n the cukes: “Did you do anything to him?” and “Is it my fault?” and “How long do I have to pay?”
I went to her, Andy, n hugged her. She hugged me back, but her body was stiff against mine-stiff's a poker-and that's when I felt the life go out of the house. It went like the last breath of a dyin man. I think Selena felt it, too. Not Joe Junior; he puts the “pitcher of the house on the front of some of his campaign fliers-it makes him look like home-folks and the voters like that, I've noticed-but he never felt it when it died because he never really loved it in the first place. Why would he, for Christ's sake? To Joe Junior, that house was just the place where he came after school, the place where his father ragged him n called him a book-readin sissy. Cumberland Hall, the dorm he lived in up to the University, was more home to Joe Junior than the house in East Lane ever was.
It was home to me, though, and it was home to Selena. I think my good girl went on livin here long after she'd shaken the dust of Little Tall Island off her feet; I think she lived here in her memories… in her heart… in her dreams. Her nightmares.
That musty smell-you c'n never get rid of it once it really settles in.
