south. In a way, it was like their father's old rhyme: one went north, one went south, one couldn't shut her everlasting mouth. Lisey herself was about five miles away. Mrs. Jones, who lived across the road from Mandy's weather-tight little Cape Cod, would have known well enough to call Canty first, and not just because Canty was closer in terms of distance, either.
Screaming and carrying on and breaking stuff.
'How bad is it this time?' Lisey heard herself asking in a flat, strangely businesslike tone of voice. 'Should I come?' Meaning, of course, How fast should I come?
'She's…I think she's okay for now,' Darla said. 'But she's been doing it again. On her arms, also a couple of places high up on her thighs. The…you know.'
Lisey knew, all right. On three previous occasions, Amanda had lapsed into what Jane Whitlow, her shrink, called 'passive semi-catatonia.' It was different from what had happened
(hush about that)
(I won't)
from what had happened to Scott in 1996, but pretty damned scary, all the same. And each time, the state had been preceded by bouts of excitability—the sort of excitability Manda had been exhibiting up in Scott's study, Lisey realized— followed by hysteria, then brief spasms of self-mutilation. During one of these, Manda had apparently tried to excise her navel. She had been left with a ghostly fairy-ring of scartissue around it. Lisey had once broached the possibility of cosmetic surgery, not knowing if it would be possible but wanting Manda to know she, Lisey, would be willing to pay if Amanda wanted at least to explore the possibility. Amanda had declined with a harsh caw of amusement. 'I like that ring,' she'd said. 'If I'm ever tempted to start cutting myself again, maybe I'll look at that and stop.'
Maybe, it seemed, had been the operant word.
'How bad is it, Darl? Really?'
'Lisey…hon…'
Lisey realized with alarm (and a further sinking in her vital parts) that her older sister was struggling with tears. 'Darla! Take a deep breath and tell me.'
'I'm okay. I just…it's been a long day.'
'When does Matt get back from Montreal?'
'Week after next. Don't even think about asking me to call him, either—he's earning our trip to St. Bart's next winter, and he's not to be disturbed. We can handle this ourselves.'
'Can we?'
'Definitely.'
'Then tell me what it is we're supposed to be handling.'
'Okay. Right.' Lisey heard Darla take a breath. 'The cuts on her upper arms were shallow. Band-Aid stuff. The ones on her thighs were deeper and they'll scar, but they clotted over, thank God. No arterial shit. Uh, Lisey?'
'What? Just str…just spit it out.'
She'd almost told Darla to just strap it on, which would have meant zip to her big sister. Whatever Darla had to tell her next, it was going to be something rotten. She could tell that by Darla's voice, which had been in and out of Lisey's ears from the cradle on. She tried to brace herself for it. She leaned back against the desk, her gaze shifted…and holy Mother of God, there it was in the corner, leaning nonchalantly next to another stack of liquor-store boxes (which were indeed labeled SCOTT! THE EARLY YEARS!). In the angle where the north wall met the east one was the silver spade from Nashville, big as Billy-be-damned. It was a blue-eyed wonder she hadn't seen it when she came in, surely would have if she hadn't been in a lather to grab the phone before the answering machine kicked in. She could read the words incised into the silver bowl from here: COMMENCEMENT, SHIPMAN LIBRARY. She could almost hear the southern-fried chickenshit telling her husband that Toneh would be rahtin it up for the year-end review, and would he like a copeh. And Scott replying—
'Lisey?' Darla sounding really distressed for the first time, and Lisey returned to the present in a hurry. Of course Darla sounded distressed. Canty was in Boston for a week or maybe more, shopping while her husband took care of his wholesale auto business—buying program cars, auction cars, and off-lease rental cars in places like Malden and Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin. Darla's Matt, meanwhile, was in Canada, lecturing on the migration patterns of various North American Indian tribes. This, Darla had once told Lisey, was a surprisingly profitable venture. Not that money would help them now. Now it was down to just the two of them. To sister-power. 'Lise, did you hear me? Are you still th—'
'I'm here,' Lisey said. 'I just lost you for a few seconds, sorry. Maybe it's the phone—no one's used this one for a long time. It's downstairs in the barn. What was going to be my office, before Scott died?'
'Oh, yeah. Sure.' Darla sounded completely mystified. Has no smucking idea what I'm talking about, Lisey thought. 'Can you hear me now?'
'Clear as a bell.' Looking at the silver spade as she spoke. Thinking of Gerd Allen Cole. Thinking I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias.
Darla took a deep breath. Lisey heard it, like a wind blowing down the telephone line. 'She won't exactly admit it, but I think she…well…drank her own blood this time, Lise—her lips and chin were all bloody when I got here, but nothing inside her mouth's cut. She looked the way we used to when Good Ma'd give us one of her lipsticks to play with.'
What Lisey flashed on wasn't those old dress-up and makeup days, those clunk-around-in-Good-
Ma's-high-heels days, but that hot afternoon in Nashville, Scott lying on the pavement shivering, his lips smeared with candy-colored blood. Nobody loves a clown at midnight.
Listen, little Lisey. I'll make how it sounds when it looks around.
But in the corner the silver spade gleamed…and was it dented? She believed it was. If she ever doubted that she'd been in time…if she ever woke in the dark, sweating, sure she'd been just a second too late and the remaining years of her marriage had consequently been lost…
'Lisey, will you come? When she's in the clear, she's asking for you.'
Alarm bells went off in Lisey's head. 'What do you mean, when she's in the clear? I thought you said she was okay.'
'She is…I think she is.' A pause. 'She asked for you, and she asked for tea. I made her some, and she drank it. That was good, wasn't it?'
'Yes,' Lisey said. 'Darl, do you know what brought this on?'
'Oh, you bet. I guess it's common chat around town, although I didn't know until Mrs. Jones told me over the phone.'
'What?' But Lisey had a pretty good idea.
'Charlie Corriveau's back in town,' Darla said. Then, lowering her voice: 'Good old Shootin' Beans. Everyone's favorite banker. He brought a girl with him. A little French postcard from up in the St. John Valley.' She gave this the Maine pronunciation, so it came out slurry-lyrical, almost Senjun. Lisey stood looking at the silver spade, waiting for the other shoe to drop. That there was another she had no doubt.
'They're married, Lisey,' Darla said, and through the phone came a series of choked gurgles Lisey at first took for smothered sobs. A moment later she realized her sister was trying to laugh without being overheard by Amanda, who was God knew where in the house.
'I'll be there as quick as I can,' she said. 'And Darl?'
No answer, just more of those choking noises—whig, whig, whig was what they sounded like over the phone.
'If she hears you laughing, the next one she takes the knife to is apt to be you.'
