The Rope

Try to track down Jim Levitt.

Blowing out a gust of air so vehemently Jenny felt it through the wire mesh, Regis gave in. “Bethy!” he called over his shoulder. “Get out here so the Misses Marple can see I haven’t murdered you.”

Snuffling and shuffling heralded the woman’s arrival. Regis stepped away from the door and guided Bethy into the place he’d been standing. Light from the porch did more to illuminate Anna and Jenny than the person behind the screen, but Bethy was moving easily and on her own; that was to the good.

“Bethy,” Anna said. “What happened?”

“I’m such a klutz,” Bethy apologized. “I slipped on the bathroom rug and hit my head.” She smiled and raised two fingers to her right cheekbone. “Smack in the eye. I’m gonna have a big ol’ shiner for sure.”

“We’ll be twins,” Anna said. Jenny was startled at the depth of kindness in her voice, especially considering Anna’s black eye had been given her by Bethy’s aborted pass on Lover’s Leap.

“Do you want to come over? Have a glass of wine and a bag of ice?” Anna had taken on a coaxing tone Jenny’d never heard before. How Bethy resisted it was a mystery.

“Regis will get me some ice,” Bethy said. Awkwardly, she smiled. “I’m okay. Really. I’m just such a klutz.”

It was clear she wasn’t coming out.

“Holler if you need anything,” Anna said. “We’ll be listening for you.”

Jenny expected this last was said as much for Regis’s benefit as Bethy’s.

The door snicked shut. The porch light winked out. “Well,” Anna said after a moment of standing in the dark.

“Yeah,” Jenny agreed. “I guess that’s that.” Together they turned and trailed back to their own duplex.

Without turning on a light or speaking a word, they flopped on their respective ends of the couch, feet up on the coffee table.

“Slipped on the kitchen rug,” Anna said flatly.

“Slipped on the bathroom rug,” Jenny said. Deeply disappointed in Regis, she added, “I can’t believe it. He was smacking her around!”

“Is this the first time?” Anna asked doubtfully.

“First time I’ve ever gotten wind of it,” Jenny said. “I’ll tell Jim, of course. I have to, but I doubt it will do any good. It’s not like Bethy called for help or we saw anything.”

“Bethy the klutz slipped on a rug and hit her head on the way down,” Anna said in the tone one might use reading a headstone.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you think she told him about trying to kiss me?”

“Maybe she did. Maybe she wanted to make him jealous. Or turn him on,” Jenny added acidly.

“I guess we should try to be nicer to her.”

“I think we are plenty nice to her already,” Jenny said.

FORTY-SEVEN

Anna and Jenny spent the next three days and nights on the lake, where they neither saw nor heard from their neighbors. For that, Anna was glad. The Candors exuded what, in her college days, had been referred to as bad vibes, an underlying sickness or misery that oozed out around the edges of conversations and interactions.

Apart, they were less toxic than they were together. When Anna and Bethy exercised, and the times they had gone canyoneering with Jim and then Jenny, Bethy seemed almost free of whatever darkness the two of them spawned at home. Since finding out Regis beat Bethy at least once—and battered wives were seldom beaten but once—Anna had made the decision to be available to Bethy Candor. Not to befriend her. Friendship built on pity had a tendency to go sour. The balance of power was too out of whack.

Being available sidestepped that pitfall. Being available was simply a matter of putting aside one’s own considerations for a time. When her lieu days came around, and Jenny headed out with Jim to potty-train the masses, Anna decided if Bethy approached her to work out she would be open-minded, if not open-hearted.

Anna didn’t have to make good on her best intentions. Bethy and Regis evidently decided Dangling Rope wasn’t the heaven it had once been. They stayed at their house in Page, not only on their weekends but during the week as well, Bethy making the long commute to Rainbow Bridge from the Wahweap Marina, Anna assumed.

Having them gone was more of a relief than Anna would have expected. As she ran and worked out on weights with Jim, joked with Gil, Dennis, and Jenny as they shared their cocktail hour at the picnic tables on their porches, she sensed the others were relieved as well. No one said anything; it was the subtle relief of a constant noise finally going silent or a small splinter finally working itself out of the ball of one’s thumb.

When, three weeks after Bethy had been screaming, Anna stepped out onto her porch on her day off, with her first cup of coffee, and found Bethy waiting, the surprise wasn’t entirely pleasant. Any bruising resulting from Regis punching her was gone. She looked calm and rested, her soft brown hair framing her face in a pixie cut that was more becoming than the thin ponytail into which she’d formerly dragged her hair.

Bethy wasn’t in uniform. She wore old, threadbare canvas trousers, sneakers without socks, and a red tank top. Her bare arms were well muscled, and she had lost more weight since Anna had last seen her.

“What are you doing here? Wednesday isn’t your lieu day,” Anna said ungraciously before she recovered from the shock of seeing her. Hurt shadowed Bethy’s eyes and was as quickly gone.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Anna apologized. “I love your hair,” she added as she took her accustomed place on the picnic table, feet on the bench in unconscious imitation of Jenny.

“Regis always liked it better short,” Bethy said, sounding almost shy. “I don’t know why I got the bug to grow it out.”

“You look great,” Anna said honestly. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Bethy looked away, squinting her eyes against the early light cresting the canyon rim to the east. She nibbled on her lower lip with child-sized teeth. Anna hadn’t noticed the small teeth before. Perhaps because Bethy seldom smiled.

“Are you still mad at me?” Bethy asked without looking at Anna. “You know, because I … well, you know.”

“I was never mad,” Anna said truthfully. “Just confused. Then, when I figured out Regis was beating you, worried.”

Bethy’s eyes flashed. She looked away quickly, but not before Anna felt the white-hot glare of anger. Whether it was at Regis for doing it, or her for noticing, she couldn’t decide.

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” Bethy said carefully, still not looking at her. “I fell down. People do, you know. Regis would never hurt me. We love each other too much.”

Rehearsed, Anna thought. “Okay,” she said. There was nothing she or anyone could do until Bethy reported it. Or Regis finally killed her.

“Anyway,” Bethy said, heaving a great sigh of relief at leaving the topic of domestic violence behind, “I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came here because I’m leaving Page tomorrow and will be gone for a while. I wanted to tell you I was sorry I did that thing on Lover’s Leap.” She looked at Anna shyly. “I just wanted you to like me is all.”

This last was said in the voice of a wistful child. Anna couldn’t help but be affected.

“I like you, Bethy,” Anna told her. “You don’t need to try so hard. Why are you leaving Glen Canyon? Your season isn’t up until the end of September.”

“I quit three weeks ago. Regis comes from money. His grandfather is, like, real rich. Regis can’t have it till he’s thirty or worse and jumps through hoops and stuff, but he gets some now, and I’ve always wanted to study cooking, you know, like a real chef school? Like in Paris? Regis wants me to have that, so … off I go to do it,” she finished with a shrug. “Regis is like that, you know, with me? He’s always doing things just to make me happy.”

And a bright, bright smile. Anna didn’t even have to work at it to see the brittle edges.

Bethy’s smile slipped, then vanished. The dream vacation smacked more of an exile. Maybe Regis had thrown