Aubrey introduced us. She told her we were from the newspaper in Hannawa. She also introduced Eric, who had escaped from the car and was now sitting on the lawn with a malnourished cat in his lap.
“We just met your father,” I said.
Jeanie looked at me with empty eyes. “Did you?”
Aubrey got back to business. “I guess you know Sissy is in prison for murder?”
“I do.”
“Had to be a shock, huh? Your cousin arrested for murder?”
“It was.”
“And how did you first hear about it? Read about it? See it on TV?”
The children were banging on the door, wanting out. Jeanie ignored them. “I saw it on TV. I don’t get the paper.”
From the wry curl on Aubrey’s lips I gathered she was not surprised that Jeanie did not subscribe to a newspaper. “But you must have known about it before you saw it on television,” Aubrey said. “News like that would spread through a family pretty fast.”
Jeanie’s face wrinkled with bewilderment, or guilt, or fear, or some other agonizing emotion. Apparently she did not want to tell the truth any more than she wanted to lie. “Sissy told me herself.”
Aubrey was delighted to hear that. “Before her arrest or after?”
“I think before.”
That delighted Aubrey even more. “And she said what?”
“That she’d just killed a man. That it was likely she’d have to spend the rest of her life in prison, if not be put to death. I didn’t know it was that famous preacher until I saw the TV.”
“And she told you to watch after her child?” Aubrey asked.
Jeanie’s once-empty eyes were now cloudy with tears. I gave her the pack of Kleenex from my purse.
“That’s right,” Aubrey continued, “we know about the daughter.”
“Ain’t nobody supposed to know.”
Aubrey pointed with her chin at the children playing inside. “Which one is hers?”
“The oldest girl. Rosy.”
“She doesn’t know Sissy is her mother, does she?”
Jeanie shook her head.
“And when Sissy called you that day-she told you not to say anything about Rosy to the police, right?”
“Ain’t nobody supposed to know,” Jeanie said again.
“So Rosy thinks you’re her mother. And thinks Sissy is Aunt Sissy.”
Jeanie nodded as if she had a hundred girls to raise.
“It’s really wonderful of you,” I said.
She seemed to appreciate that. “What’s one more?” When she tried to give the Kleenex back I told her to keep it.
Aubrey kept pressing. “So, did Sissy visit all Thanksgiving weekend?”
“Just Thanksgiving Day.”
“Is that what you told the police when they talked to you?”
“It is.”
“But that’s not true, is it?”
“Just Thanksgiving Day.”
Aubrey pulled out her notebook and slipped it under her arm. A threat to start recording Jeanie’s untruths for all the world to read. “Let me get a clear picture of this,” she said. “Sissy has a daughter one hundred and fifty miles away. A daughter she aches to see, even if it’s just as Aunt Sissy. And when the four-day Thanksgiving weekend comes, she drives down for one lousy afternoon? Eats some turkey and says bye-bye? Goes home and kills a man?” She pulled out her pen and tapped it on her nose. “She stayed the whole weekend, didn’t she?”
Jeanie watched the pen bounce. “I told the police it was just the one day.”
Aubrey pulled the cap off the pen with her teeth. She held it there like a tiny cigar. “And the police accepted your lie because they didn’t have any reason not to. Because they didn’t know about Rosy. Because they wanted to corroborate Sissy’s confession as fast as they could. Because they’re boneheads.”
Jeanie was crying into her hands now. “Why can’t you believe me?”
Aubrey slipped her pen back into the cap. “Because we’re not boneheads, Jeanie. Because we know Sissy had an alibi for that Friday night. Just like you know it. Because we fucking care.”
Aubrey’s crudeness made Jeanie cry all the more. Because she was not a crude woman. Because she was a good woman caught between the truth she wanted to tell and the lie she had promised to tell. “I care, too.”
Aubrey handed me her notebook and took Jeanie in her arms. She guided her down to the first step and sat next to her. “Who was at your house for Thanksgiving dinner then? Sissy? Your parents? Your kids and your husband?”
“Just me and Sissy and the girls. I don’t have a husband no more and I don’t see my parents any more than I have to.”
“And now you don’t have Sissy anymore,” Aubrey said.
My but Aubrey was good. I was beginning to feel my own eyes water up. I kneeled in front of Jeanie and patted her hands. “Why did you lie for her, dear?”
“Because she was in trouble and I knew she didn’t want that trouble spreading to Rosy. And I guess I figured if Sissy confessed to killing that preacher it was for a reason. I figured she must have been mixed up in it some way.”
None of us said anything for a long time. We just rubbed our eyes and watched Eric play with the cat. The warm May sun was sprinkling across the steps. “Just to get it all straight,” Aubrey finally whispered, “Sissy was here that Friday night?”
“She was.”
“And when the police came to see you, you told them she wasn’t?”
“That’s right.”
“They didn’t press you? The way we did?”
“They was here about five minutes.”
“We know they talked to your father. Do you know if they talked to anybody else? Other relatives? Your neighbors?”
“They just got in their car and drove off.”
“Fucking boneheads,” Aubrey hissed.
This time Jeanie laughed. The weight of the world was off her shoulders. At least some of it was.
We talked with Jeanie for another half hour or so. We told her what we knew of Sissy’s new life at Marysville. She told us about Sissy’s childhood in Mingo Junction. It was not a childhood anyone would want. Sissy was eleven when her mother died. Her mother was with her latest boyfriend, driving home fast and drunk from a bar in East Liverpool, on a black November night, when a bend in a road that had always been there sent them into the Ohio River. Sissy went to live with her aunt and uncle, Jeanie’s parents. It was not long before her uncle started cornering Sissy in dark corners of the house when no one else was around. It went on for years. “He used to bother me like that, too, until Sissy came to live with us,” Jeanie said. At fourteen Sissy started drinking. Got into drugs. Got into beds and back seats with any boy who wanted to. When she was seventeen she escaped to Hannawa, to its strip bars and its by-the-hour motels, finally finding her way to the Heaven Bound Cathedral. “I think having Rosy is what finally turned her around,” Jeanie said. “Even if she couldn’t raise her baby herself, she could behave better for her.”
“Being the girlfriend of a married preacher isn’t exactly behaving,” I pointed out.
“It was an improvement over what she was,” Jeanie said.
We headed for home, taking the same zig-zag route we came on. In the town of Wellsville, Eric made us stop at a convenience store for Mountain Dew and Doritos. I bought a little bag of cashews and Aubrey bought some M amp;Ms. The chewing got us talking.
