envelopes, carefully putting some into his plastic tray, shoving the others into a brown paper sack.
He waved as Doug drove by.
17
The next day the mail was normal. It had still been delivered at some odd hour before they woke up, but the mail itself was neither unnaturally good nor unnaturally bad. There was a subscription notice from _Newsweek_, a Visa bill, some junk mail. Nothing out of the ordinary, though that itself was out of the ordinary.
Doug tried to callStockley at the paper, but the secretary said he was not taking any calls. He told her to give the editor his name, and after a great deal of convincing she agreed to do so, but when she came back on the line, she informed him that it was paste-up day and that the editor refused to be interrupted by anyone. She said he'd call Doug back when he got the opportunity.
The mail was normal the next day as well, and Doug began to think that maybe he had jumped to conclusions, that he had overreacted, that he had been wrong. Tritia said nothing, but he could tell that she was thinking the same thing, and he could tell that she was relieved.
The next morning the mailbox was filled with letters. Doug went out to the mailbox before breakfast, while Billy was still asleep and Trish was watering her garden. There were ten envelopes all together, and the sheer bulk of them in the mailbox was somehow ominously threatening. Glancing quickly at their faces, he saw that few of the envelopes bore familiar addresses, and he stuffed them down the back of his pants, letting his shirt hang over the top half of the stack. Inside the house, he tore up the envelopes one by one, without looking at their contents, shoving the pieces in an empty milk carton in the garbage.
Trish walked in just as he closed the top of the carton. 'Any mail?' she asked, wiping her wet hands on her jeans.
'None,' he lied.
The next day there were no letters at all, nor any the day after that. It was almost as if he was being punished for tearing up the mail when it had arrived, as if he had rejected an offering and was to receive no more as punishment.
But that was crazy thinking.
Still, the absence of mail was somehow just as perturbing as its presence, and it made him feel strangely on edge. He had probably seen too many movies and read too many books, but he could not help ascribing a malevolent intent to this temporary respite. It felt to him like the calm before the storm, and he kept waiting for the storm to hit. He tried to finish the first wall of the storage shed, but he could not seem to concentrate and he gave it up after only an hour's work.
At the store that afternoon, he noticed that many of the people with whom he came in contact seemed tense and testy. Todd Gold, owner of the deli next door toBayless , did not even acknowledge his greeting. When Doug waved and called out 'Hi,' Gold turned curtly away and retreated into his store.
But he told Trish none of this. She seemed to be much happier since the mail had stopped coming, and though this out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality was not typical for her, was indeed entirely out of character, he did not want to drag her into what might simply be his own delusion. After all, perhaps there had been nothing strange going on, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps his imagination had overreacted to a bizarre series of seemingly interconnected occurrences that had really had nothing to do with one another.
Perhaps.
But he didn't think so.
18
Tritia felt a little better today. For the third day in a row they had received no mail, and for some reason that cheered her up. The old no-news-is good-news theory. Besides, she was going to see Irene Hill, and a visit with the old woman never failed to lift her spirits.
She turned off the highway and drove down Pine Street. She passed the Willis Women's Club and sped by the brick building guiltily. She had made a commitment to attend Weight Watchers meetings there every afternoon for six months but had not shown up since the third meeting. She had adhered to the strict diet for the first two weeks and had lost five pounds, half of her goal, but the pressure had been too much. The weigh-ins, the pep talks, the lectures, the journals, the propaganda, had all made her feel too constrained. Besides, although she could afford to lose a little on the thighs, she still had a shapely figure and she knew she looked a hell of a lot better than some of the women in town who had not signed up for Weight Watchers at all.
She saw one of those women now, Beth Johnson, pulling out of the post office parking lot. Beth waved at her, a false plastic smile on her face, and Tritia waved back.
She continued down Pine, then turned off on the dirt road just before the golf course. She continued around the small hill until she came to the small .cluster of homes adjacent to the old ranger station.
She pulled into Irene's driveway. She had first met Irene Hill when they had both worked as volunteers for the annual library book sale a few years back.
Irene had been one of the original founders of the library, back in the days when few people in the town read or wanted to read, and she had, by all accounts, been one of the major civilizing forces in the community. Even after retiring, Irene had continued her association with the library, spearheading fund-raising efforts and volunteering for book drives, patron-membership drives, and book and magazine sales. It was Irene herself, in fact, who* initially called Tritia , soliciting her help.
The two of them had hit it off instantly. They were of different generations, of course, but Irene was up on current politics and cultural events, and with her outgoing personality and boundless enthusiasm for everything, she seemed to have more in common with Tritia than with the fossilized volunteers her own age.
Tritia got out of the car and walked up the faded wood steps to the screened porch. She knocked on the door and Irene's voice sounded from the kitchen, 'Come on in. Door's unlocked.'
Tritia pushed open the door and walked inside. Irene's house was decorated with antiques, though they had not been antiques when originally purchased. The foyer was dominated by a large hall tree, and the living room contained not only antique bookcases and china cabinets but a pristineVictrola and a beautiful baby-grand piano. Tiny porcelain figures, collected for the past half-century, lined shelves on the wall. The house was warm and comfortable, filled with healthy plants, and Tritia always felt good here, happy, as though she were in some sort of sanctuary protected from the outside world.
Irene was in the kitchen, plucking leaves from a tied bunch of dried plants. She often made her own tea from a mixture of mints and flowers she grew in her garden, a wonderful brew that Doug and Billy both said tasted, like dirt.
The old woman turned around as Tritia entered the room, her fingers continuing to skillfully defoliate the dried herbs as if they worked on their own, disassociated from the rest of her body. 'How've you been, sweetie?' she asked.
'Haven't seen you in, what, two or three weeks?'
Tritia smiled. Irene was the only person she'd ever met, young or old, who could say words like 'sweetie' or 'honey' without making them sound either cloying or condescending. 'I'm okay,' she said.
'You don't sound okay. You sound kind of tired. In fact, you look a little peaked as well.'
'Stress,' Tritia said.
The old woman stopped tearing leaves and used a corner of the apron she was wearing to wipe sweat off her forehead. 'Doug?'
'No, nothing like that. It's just . . .' Her voice trailed off. 'I don't know what it is.'
'I got your card this morning.'
'Card?' Tritia felt a warning light go off in her brain. She had sent Irene no card.
'Yes. It made me laugh, but I don't know why you sent it. I'm not sick.'
Tritia felt the stability she'd begun to recapture the last few days recede, a familiar fear welling within her. She looked around the kitchen and suddenly the room itself seemed strange, the light coming in through the window not quite right. 'I didn't send it,' she said.
The old woman's face clouded over. She was silent for a moment, though her fingers continued to work. 'I was afraidofVthat .' There was no surprise in her voice, no emotion at all. It was a statement of fact, delivered straight.
Tritia moved over to the breakfast nook and sat down. 'You know, too.'
