And do you know what? Brandon Milheron admires me, and he admires the Way I handled myself after Gerald dropped dead. Yes he does. I have seen it on his face time after time, and if he drops by this evening, as he usually does, I am confident I will see it there again. Brandon thinks I did a damned good job, a damned brave job… for a woman. In fact, I think that by the time we had our first conversation about my hypothetical visitor, he had sort of decided I’d behaved the way he would have in a similar situation… if, that is, he’d had to deal with a high fever at the same time he was trying to deal with everything else. I have an idea that’s how most men believe most women think: like lawyers with malaria. It would certainly explain a lot of their behaviour, wouldn’t it?
I’m talking about condescension-a man-versus-woman thing-but I’m also talking about something a hell of a lot bigger and a hell of a lot more frightening, as well. He didn’t understand, you see, and that has nothing to do with any differences between the sexes; that’s the curse of being human, and the surest proof that all of us are really alone. Terrible things happened in that house, Ruth, I didn’t know just how terrible until later, and he didn’t understand that. I told him the things I did in order to keep that terror from eating me alive, and he nodded and he smiled and he sympathized, and I think it ended up doing me some good but he was the best of them, and he never got within shouting distance of the truth… of how the terror just seemed to keep on growing until it became this big black haunted house inside my head. It’s still there, too, standing with its door open, inviting me to come back inside any time I want, and I never do want to go back, but sometimes I find myself going back, anyway, and the minute I step inside, the door slams shut behind me and locks itself.
Well, never mind. I suppose it should have relieved me to know my intuition about the telephone lines was wrong, but it didn’t. Because there was a part of my mind which believed-and believes still-that the bedroom telephone wouldn’t have worked even if I had crawled behind that chair and plugged it in again, that maybe the one in the kitchen was working later but it sure as hell wasn’t working then, that it was get the hell away from the house in the Mercedes or die at the hands of that creature.
Brandon leaned forward until the light at the head of the bed shone full on his face and he said, “There was no man in the house, Jessie, and the best thing you can do with the idea is let it drop.”
I almost told him about my missing rings then, but I was tired and in a lot of pain and in the end I didn’t. I lay awake for a long time after he left-not even a pain-pill would put me to sleep that night. I thought about the skin-graft operation that was coming up the next day, but probably not as much as you might think. Mostly I was thinking about my rings, and the footprint nobody saw but me, and whether or not he-it-might have come back to put things right. And what I decided just before I finally dropped off, was that there had never been a footprint or a pearl earring. That some cop had spotted my rings lying on the study floor beside the bookcase and just took them. They’re probably inthe window of some Lewiston hockshop right now, I thought. Maybe the idea should have made me angry, but it didn’t. It made me feel the way I did when I woke up behind the wheel of the Mercedes that morning-filled with an incredible sense of peace and well-being. No stranger; no stranger; no stranger anywhere. Just a cop with light fingers taking one quick look over his shoulder to make sure the coast is clear and then whoop, zoop, into the pocket. As for the rings themselves, I didn’t care what had happened to them then and I don’t now. I’ve come more and more to believe in these last few months that the only reason a man sticks a ring on your finger is because the law no longer allows him to put one through your nose. Never mind, though; the morning has become the afternoon, the afternoon is moving briskly along, and this is not the time to discuss women’s issues. This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert.
Jessie sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, absently aware that the tip of her tongue was stinging from tobacco overload, that her head ached, and that her kidneys were protesting this marathon session in front of the Mac. Protesting vigorously. The house was deathly silent-the sort of silence that could only mean that tough little Megan Landis had taken herself off to the supermarket and the dry-cleaner’s. Jessie was amazed that Meggie had left without making at least one more effort to separate her from the computer screen. Then she guessed the housekeeper had known it would be a wasted effort. Best to let her get it out of hersystem, whatever it is, Meggie would have thought. And it was only a job to her, after all. This last thought sent a little pang through Jessie’s heart.
A board creaked upstairs. Jessie’s cigarette stopped an inch shy of her lips. He’s back! Goody shrieked. Oh, Jessie, he’s back!
Except he wasn’t. Her eyes drifted to the narrow face looking up at her from the clusters of newsprint dots and she thought: I know exactly where you are, you whoredog. Don’t I?
She did, but part of her mind went on insisting it was him just the same-no, not him, it, the space cowboy, the specter of love, back again for a return engagement. It had only been waiting for the house to be empty, and if she picked up the phone on the corner of the desk, she would find it stone dead, just as all the phones in the house by the take had been stone dead that night.
Your friend Brandon can smile all he wants, hut we know the truth,don’t we, Jessie?
She suddenly shot out her good hand, snatched the telephone handset from the cradle, and brought it to her ear. Heard the reassuring buzz of the dial-tone. Put it back again. An odd, sunless smile played about the corners of her mouth.
Yes, I know exactly where you are, motherfucker. Whatever Goodyand the rest of the ladies inside my head may think, Punkin and I knowyou’re wearing an orange jumpsuit and sitting in a County jail cell the one at the far end of the old wing, Brandon said, so the other inmatescan’t get to you and fuck you up before the state hauls you in front of ajury of your peers…if a thing like you has any peers. We may not heentirely free of you yet, hut we will he. I promise you we will be.
Her eyes drifted back to the VDT, and although the vague sleepiness brought on by the combination of the pill and the sandwich had long since dissipated, she felt a bone-deep weariness and a complete lack of belief in her ability to finish what she had started.
This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert, she had written, but was it? Could she? She was so tired. Of course she was; she had been pushing that goddamned cursor across the VDT screen almost all day. Pushing the envelope, they called it, and if you pushed the envelope long enough and hard enough, you tore it wide open. Maybe it would be best to just go upstairs and take a nap. Better late than never, and all that shit. She could file this to memory, retrieve it tomorrow morning, go back to work on it then-
Punkin’s voice stopped her. This voice came only infrequently now, and Jessie listened very carefully to it when it did.
If you decide to stop now, Jessie, don’t bother to file the document. Justdelete it. We both know you’ll never have the guts to face Joubert again-not the way a person has to face a-thing she’s writing about. Sometimesit takes heart to write about a thing, doesn’t it? To let that thing out ofthe room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.