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18

McCoy

Plenty of McCoys in the Greensboro phone book. Calling from a pay phone at the grocery store, twenty-five cents at a time, was tedious work.

The same conversation, over and over. "I'm looking for the family of Lanny McCoy.... He would have been in school at UNCG back in '85.... No, I never met him, but my wife did.... Sorry for bothering you.... Thanks for talking to me.... Sorry for.... Family of Lanny McCoy who went to UNCG back in '85...."

Going on maybe four hours of sleep, Don had a hard time staying awake between calls. A hard time listening to what people were saying. A teenage kid walked by talking loudly to his girlfriend. "The X-Files is a crock. The government couldn't have secret UFO stuff because the government can't keep a secret, period!" He almost missed hearing the soft voice on the other end of the phone say, "You knew him?"

So there was a pause in the conversation before he realized that maybe he was hitting paydirt. "Actually, not me," he said. "My wife knew him. Good friends with him and his girlfriend in those days, what was her name? Missy? Lissy?"

"Oh, yes, that dear girl, that poor girl."

"Poor girl?"

"So broken-hearted. Oh, you don't know, do you? Of course not. Lanny's gone. All these years."

"Gone?"

"You don't—you haven't seen him, have you?"

"No ma'am, I'm sorry."

"Can't help hoping. Silly, isn't it? To hope that a phone call out of the blue...."

This was it. And he wouldn't get anywhere on the phone. "Mrs. McCoy, I don't mean to intrude, but can I come over?"

"Oh, I wish you would."

As soon as she said the address, Don knew half the history of the family. It was a tiny crackerbox house on a street of crackerbox houses, in a neighborhood built by Cone Mills for their textile workers. A strategy for keeping the unions out. The paternalistic employer provides workers with homes and they're grateful; meanwhile, labor agitators get evicted, not just fired, so their families are out on the street. Very effective disincentive. But when times changed, the company sold the houses to the workers at a better than fair price, and now those factory families or their children or grandchildren kept immaculate yards around those tiny houses, their labor insisting that the size of the houses did not tell you about the class of the people inside. These were solid people, working people, salt of the earth. And for one of these families to send a child to college was still a big deal, even in the days of student loans and government financial aid. Lanny must have been the bearer of the McCoy family honor, their hope, their ambition.

Mr. and Mrs. McCoy were white people in their late fifties, her hair gray, his graying. They ushered him into a tiny living room filled with furniture covered with doilies and throws. The fireplace mantle was covered with knickknacks, including a couple of Hummels and a Lladro that must have been the markers of special occasions. The pride of place in the center of the mantle went to a framed eight-by-ten of a young man with longish hair and a great smile. No sooner had Don sat down than Mr. McCoy took down the picture and handed it to him.

"That's our Lanny," he said. "Senior picture from high school."

"Nice-looking boy."

"He was the first of our family ever to get to college," said Mrs. McCoy. "And he was with that nice girl, too—we were sure they'd get married."

"You just never know," said Mr. McCoy, shaking his head.

"Nice girl?"

"You mentioned her on the phone," said Mrs. McCoy. "Felicity Yont."

"Lissy," said Mr. McCoy.

"Then they didn't get married?" asked Don. "We all assumed that they would."

"It just broke her heart," said Mrs. McCoy. "She came over here crying and crying about how he ran off with her roommate."

Ran off with.... This was not the story Don had expected to hear.

"A snake in the grass, that's what that one was," said Mr. McCoy. "The librarian steals the man? What a joke."

"And you don't know where they're living now?"

"We've never heard from him since." Mrs. McCoy broke down in tears.

After a delicate pause to show respect for his wife's grief, Mr. McCoy said softly, "I don't expect they're together. A woman like that, she's got no loyalty. She probably left him cold somewhere."

What could Don say? What would be gained by telling them that in fact Lissy murdered that very roommate, who certainly did not run off with anyone because she was still haunting the house where they roomed together?

The only sound was Mrs. McCoy's soft crying. Her husband gave her a handkerchief.

"I'm sorry I made you think of your loss again," said Don.

"Oh, young man, we think of Lanny every day," said Mrs. McCoy.

Mr. McCoy nodded sadly. Don suspected he carried handkerchiefs solely to deal with his wife's tears.

Don hated deceiving these people, but it was kinder than the truth. "My wife always assumed Lissy and Lanny must have ended up together."

"Maybe our boy is alive, maybe not," said Mr. McCoy. "I don't know what we did to make him leave us without a word." He stood up to keep himself from crying openly. So... maybe the handkerchiefs weren't just for her. "I guess we've disappointed you," he said.

Don could take a hint. Besides, he'd learned what he came to learn. There'd be no address from these people. "I appreciate your time. I'm just sorry that... I'm sorry." He got up, shook hands with Mr. McCoy, and took the one step that was needed to get him to the door.

Mrs. McCoy rose to her feet.

"Don't be sorry, young man," she said. "Don't. It's good to remember a child you loved, even if you've lost him."

He thought of his own tears, his own rage, his years of hiding in old houses from himself and the whole world. The pain he had suffered... and yet she was right.

"I know," said Don. Almost he told them about Nellie. But he couldn't. In this home, there was only one lost child to be remembered. There were other places where Nellie's memory was the foundation of life. After ten years, they still shed tears for their boy. The edge of grief never lost its sharpness. And yet... there was a nobility about their suffering. Their child still lived in them as a light of goodness. If Lanny were still around, they would not have the grief; but they would not have the illusion, either. Just as Don would never hear a teenage Nellie shout at him what a terrible hateful man he was, how he was trying to ruin her life. She would never wreck his car, never fight with him over whether she would or would not wear that outfit on a date. The lost child remained a dream of a child. A sweet ghost haunting the memory. The tears that came were not bitter for these people. It was a sweet grief they felt. They had lost him, but once they had him, such a good child, they had him and he still gave shape and meaning to their lives.

He hadn't bargained on learning so much from these people.

Mrs. McCoy came to him in the doorway, took his hands, held them in hers. "I believe you do know," she said.

Out in his truck, driving back through the streets of Greensboro, Don got caught up in the traffic of teenagers from Page High School racing to get to the Weaver Center downtown for special classes that no one high school in the city could afford to teach. The kids called it the "Weaver 500," and drove like stock car madmen. Don wasn't exactly moseying down Elm, but they were whipping around him to pass at fifty or sixty on what was, after all, a residential street through this part of town. Miracle that more of them weren't killed.

He imagined talking to Nellie when she got her license. "I don't care how late you are," he'd have said. "You got twenty miles an hour over the limit for three blocks, do you know how much time you've saved? Exactly none. But in the meantime you've put your life, everybody else's lives at risk. Better to be late. Always be late. I'll never be mad at you for being late. Just be safe. Be safe."

It was blinding him, the tears that came when he thought this way, when he imagined the kind of father he might have been. The father he would never be. Even if he married someone and had children, none of them would be Nellie. That ache would never be eased. Besides, look who he fell in love with lately. A woman who couldn't trust herself with her own children. Then a dead woman. Nope, he wasn't exactly picking the child-rearing type. Nellie was it. Because he knew how much it cost to lose one. Couldn't put himself at risk like that again.

It was obvious, of course, that Lanny McCoy was dead. When Lissy told his parents that story about him running off with Sylvie—how ludicrous to imagine even if Sylvie hadn't been dead!—it could only mean one thing. Lissy knew that neither of them would ever be showing up to contradict her story. How did it play out? Did she tell Lanny what had happened, and then he got all these crazy ideas about going to the police and pleading self-defense? He could imagine him earnestly telling her, "She hit you with a rock, you had to defend yourself," but Lissy would know that the prosecutor would have an expert testify that you had to hold onto the victim's throat so, so, so long in order to strangle her. Strangling is never a crime of passion, the prosecutor would say. It's a cold-hearted crime. It's a crime of icy hate. So what could Lissy do? She lures Lanny somewhere, maybe even tells him she wants to show him the body, but they're down in that gully maybe, and suddenly there's a rock in her hand, a blow to his head.

Or maybe she never talked to him at all. She knew already that she couldn't afford to have anyone else who knew about that tunnel. The body couldn't be found until she was long gone. Lanny never got a choice. Because a woman like Lissy, she doesn't love anybody. Lanny was good for sex and drugs. But expendable. So she went up to the kitchen and got a knife and was waiting for him when he arrived. For all Don knew, his body was farther down the tunnel.

Then she went to his parents and told them a story that would hold them for a while. A few days. Long enough to get away. Only instead of a few days, it held them for years. Because Lanny had never told them about the tunnel. And since the house was closed, why would they dream of looking there in the cellar? No, Lissy's secret was safe in that old house. Until now.

He had to laugh at his own pretension. Until now? What a joke. Her secret was still safe. Sure, he could go to the police and tell them he found a body in the tunnel. But how could he possibly explain anything about it? Everything he knew, he learned from a ghost. The dead woman was not going to be acceptable as a witness. Nobody was going to take her deposition. So they'd have a body and no leads and that would be it. They probably wouldn't even figure out who it was. Sylvie was never reported missing, except to the McCoys, and to them she was missing because she ran off with their son. The story of the body found in the basement could play for a day in the local paper and on the TV news—they'd find a way to sneak footage of that corpse onto the screen—but no one would ever make the connection. Or if they did, nothing would come of it. The trail was too cold.

Lissy actually went to Lanny's parents and wept as she told them her lies. Cried as if her heart were breaking, when in fact she murdered the two people she was slandering. Don boiled with rage against her. This Lissy Yont—for sheer gall she topped even Don's ex-wife when she testified how the baby couldn't be Don's because he only had sex with his secretaries at the office.

He got to Friendly Avenue and headed west, but instead of turning south into the College Hill area where the Bellamy house was, he drove on to the grocery store where he'd been making his phone calls. The huge new Harris Teeter—the local pundits were now calling it the Taj Ma-Teeter—had a pretty good deli. He went in and bought vast quantities of basic food. The soup of the day in a tub the size of a paint can. Another container of potato salad, another of fruit salad. Don remembered how much food could disappear when it was carried upstairs to Gladys. He had to talk to the Weird sisters, and so he needed a serious peace offering. He stopped in the bakery and bought a cheesecake. None of the food would be as good as what they made themselves—but if they were as weary and sick as Miz Judea or whoever it was said this morning, they'd be glad of the break from cooking.

Don pulled up in front of the carriagehouse instead of parking around the corner beside the Bellamy house. He got the bags of food out of the cab and carried them up to the porch.

It took even longer to get someone to answer the door this time. Naptime? Or both of them upstairs with Gladys, and now so feeble that getting down the stairs took forever? He wasn't going to give up, though. He pounded on the door, he rang the doorbell over and over. Finally the door opened, and not a crack, either. Miz Evelyn stood there, haggard, stooped, her eyes bloodshot and angry enough to kill on the spot. "Who the hell do you think you are!" she demanded.

"I'm lunch," he said, holding out the bags. "It's only Harris Teeter deli stuff, but it's edible and you didn't have to cook it."

"After what you done—"

"I didn't believe you. I'm sorry now, but I just couldn't believe in it then."

Her face was the picture of scorn. "Fine to be a skeptic when other people pay the price for it."

"Eat the food," he said. "Get some rest. Please let me come back and talk to you."

"Why, when it takes you two damn months to believe what you're told?"

But she took the food. He offered to carry it to the kitchen for her, but her lip curled in disgust. He clearly wasn't welcome in this house anymore.

"Can I come back later?" he asked.

"You can hang yourself for all I care," she said. "In fact, there's rope in the shed out back. Feel free." She smacked the door with her butt and it closed in his face.

Couldn't blame them. But despite her tough words, she had taken the food. And she knew that he believed them now. Sooner or later they'd let him come in and ask his questions.

Only when he got to the front door of his own house and Sylvie opened it wide for him, only then did he realize that he hadn't bought any food for them.

Which was stupid. She didn't need food. He was famished, after all of yesterday's work and missing dinner besides. But he could grab something later. He sat down with Sylvie in the alcove and told her about his conversation with the McCoys. She reached the same conclusion he did. "Lissy killed him," she said.

"She's a nasty one all right," said Don. "If you had any doubts about the moral difference between the two of you—"

"Yes," said Sylvie. "She kills to cover her crime. I hide."

"You hid to cover her crime."

"Poor Lanny. He was an ass, but he might have grown out of it."

"I realized something," said Don. "A little fact about murder that you often overlook. It's always somebody's child who dies."

"Not me," said Sylvie. "I'm nobody's child."

He held her hand. You're mine now, he was saying. Not my child, but mine. To miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful.

"I don't know what to do, now, Sylvie," he said. "I don't know how to find her. I just can't imagine Lissy is still living under her own name. She told her lies to the McCoys and then she took off. She could be anywhere. Any country."

"So," said Sylvie. "So we don't find her."

"But we have to," said Don. "I don't know how we can set things to rights without her."

She stroked the wood of the bench. "So work awhile this afternoon. Maybe some idea will come to you."

He shook his head. "I can't work on the house anymore," he said. "Not till I know what's needed."

She flinched. "Don, it's the house that's making me real. Keeping me alive."

"But it's killing the women next door."

She looked at him searchingly. "Don?"

"Don't ask me to do that, Sylvie," he said. "Think what you're asking. Those old ladies may be crotchety and strange but I can't just forget them and finish the house and it kills them or enslaves them completely or... You're solid now, Sylvie."

She nodded. "I know, I wasn't... I didn't mean for you to forget them, I just... I can feel the hunger of the house."

"So can they."

"It wants you to go on. Can't you feel it?"

He shook his head.

"Well that's good," she said. "You're still free, then."

"I've got to find a way to set things right. Not to decide between the dead woman that I love and a couple of strange old ladies I like a lot."

She giggled. "Did you ever think you'd say a phrase like 'the dead woman that I love'?"

He stroked her neck, the part of her shoulder left bare by the neckline of the dress. "Nor did I ever think that the most beautiful woman I ever met would disappear if she ever went outdoors."

"Strange times," said Sylvie.

"Strange but good," said Don.

"Good?"

"This is completely selfish of me, but if you hadn't been killed in this house and trapped here and... you think a college graduate librarian would ever look at a man like me?"

She shook her head. "But then, think of the hard road you had to travel to bring you here."

"Come to think of it," said Don, "if our meeting and falling in love with each other—that is what happened, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Well if that was part of some cosmic plan, then I got to say that's one hell of a lousy planner. Somebody should fire that guy."

"Let's be honest," said Sylvie. "If we could undo the bad things—I wasn't murdered, and you didn't lose Nellie—and the price of doing that was that we never met each other and never loved each other..."

Don didn't need to answer. They both knew that they'd do it in a hot second.

"That doesn't mean this isn't real," said Sylvie. "Just because our lives might have gone another way. A better way. Doesn't mean that we don't love each other now. I mean, it did go this way, and we can't trade this for that or that for this, so..."

She couldn't figure out how to end what she was saying, so he kissed her and solved that one small problem. Anything that could be solved with a kiss, he could do that. Trouble was, it was a very small list of very minor problems.

"It's Gladys who'll know," he said. "If anybody does. She had the power to get those old ladies out of here. To keep them out this long. If there's any way to keep you alive but get you out of this house..."

"There isn't," said Sylvie. "She couldn't even get those ladies farther than the carriagehouse. What can she do for me?"

"Hey, it's just a lot of old wives' tales, right?" said Don. "But I'll tell you, everything they told me has turned out to be right. I'm not going to make the mistake of underestimating any of those old wives."

"Think they've finished the food you brought them?" asked Sylvie.

"You had to remind me of food."

"So go eat," she said. "And when you come back, see if they'll let you in and give you some answers. Even if the answer is that there's nothing you can do for me, at least we'll know."

He paused at the door. "Do you really think God has anything to do with this?" he asked.

She shrugged.

"I mean religion is all about life after death and right and wrong, right?"

"I guess we know there's a life after death," she said.

"But the will of God and all that," said Don. "I just don't see how the will of God could possibly have anything to do with this."

"I don't know, Don. I wasn't a believer."

"I was raised that way, but when Nellie died I decided that was all the proof I needed that God didn't exist or if he did then he didn't care about us at all." Even saying this much about Nellie brought tears to his eyes and he had to swallow hard. "But now here you are. Here you are. A spirit, alive when your body's dead. So where does God come into it? Is he out there somewhere, working to make it so that in the long run, the really really lo-o-o-ong run, everything comes out even?"

"I don't think so," she said. "I mean, maybe he's out there." She walked to him, touched his chest, right over his breastbone, right over his heart. "But maybe he's in there. Making it all come out right."

Don shook his head. "I don't think God is in there." He lifted her hand from his chest and kissed it. "But you are."

He went out to the car and his legs felt loose and rubbery under him. He was a little dizzy. Either he was very hungry or he was in love. A quarter pounder with cheese would settle the question.