Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ Carthage and vicinity, that a woman like Arlette didn’t know; much that never made its way into print or onto TV. He was looking now, in a methodical way that horrified Arlette, for the body of their daughter—could that be possible?—in the tall grasses at the edge of the cemetery; behind larger grave markers; behind a storage shed where there was an untidy pile of grass cuttings, tree debris, and discarded desiccated flowers. Horribly, with a clinical sort of curiosity, Zeno stooped to peer inside, or beneath, this pile—Arlette had a vision of a girl’s broken body, her arms outstretched among the broken tree limbs.

      “Zeno, come back! Zeno, come home. Maybe Cressida is home now.”

      Zeno ignored her. Possibly, Zeno didn’t hear her.

      Arlette waited in the Land Rover for Zeno to return to her. She started the ignition, and turned on the radio. Waiting for the 7 A.M. news.

      “SHE’S SOMEWHERE, OBVIOUSLY. We just don’t know where.”

      And, as if Arlette had been contesting this fact: “She’s nineteen. She’s an adult. She doesn’t have a curfew in this house and she doesn’t have to report to us.”

      While Zeno and Arlette made calls on the land phone, Juliet made calls on her cell phone. Initially to relatives, whom it didn’t seem terribly rude to awaken at such an early hour with queries about Cressida; then, after 7:30 A.M., to neighbors, friends—including even girls in Cressida’s class whom Cressida probably hadn’t seen since graduation thirteen months before.

      (Juliet said: “Cressida will be furious if she finds out. She will think we’ve betrayed her.” Arlette said: “Cressida doesn’t have to know. We can always call back and tell them—not to tell her.”)

      Juliet had a vast circle of friends, both female and male, and she began to call them—on the phone her voice was warmly friendly and betrayed no sign of worry or anxiety; she didn’t want to alarm anyone needlessly, and she had a fear of initiating a firestorm of gossip. She took her cell phone outside, standing on the front walk as she made calls; peering out at Cumberland Avenue, watching for Cressida to come home. Afterward she would say I was so certain. I could not have been more certain if Jesus Himself had promised me, Cressida was on her way home.

      One of the calls Juliet made was to a friend named Caroline Skolnik who was to have been a bridesmaid in Juliet’s wedding. And Juliet told Caroline that her sister Cressida hadn’t come home the night before, and they were worried about her, and Juliet was wondering if Caroline knew anything, or had any ideas; and to Juliet’s astonishment Caroline said hesitantly she’d seen Cressida the night before, or someone who looked very much like Cressida, at the Roebuck Inn at Wolf’s Head Lake.

      Juliet was so astonished, she nearly dropped her cell phone.

      Cressida at the Roebuck Inn? At Wolf’s Head Lake?

      Caroline said that she’d been there with her fiancé Artie Petko and another couple but they hadn’t stayed long. The Roebuck Inn had used to be a nice place but lately bikers had been taking it over on weekends—Adirondack Hells Angels. There was a rock band comprised of local kids people liked, but the music was deafening, and the place was jammed—“Just too much happening.”

      Inside the tavern, there’d been a gang of guys they knew and a few girls in several booths. The air had been thick with smoke. Caroline was surprised to see Brett there—“He wasn’t with any girl, just with his friends,” Caroline said quickly, “but there were girls kind of hanging out with them. Brett was looking—he wasn’t looking—maybe it was the light in the place, but Brett was looking—all right. The surgery he’s had—I think it has helped a lot. And he had dark glasses on. And—anyway—there came Cressida—I think it was Cressida—just out of nowhere we happened to see her, and she didn’t see us—she seemed to have just come into the taproom, alone—in all that crowd, and having to push her way through—she’s so small—I don’t think there was anyone with her, unless maybe she’d come with someone, a couple—it wasn’t clear who was with who. Cressida was wearing those black jeans she always wears, and a black T-shirt, and what looked like a little striped cotton sweater; it was a surprise to see her, Artie and I both thought so, Artie said he’d never seen your sister in anyplace like the Roebuck, not ever. He knows your dad, he was saying, ‘Is that Zeno Mayfield’s daughter? The one that’s so smart?’ and I said, ‘God, I hope not. What’s she doing here?’ Brett was in a booth with Rod Halifax, and Jimmy Weisbeck, and that asshole Duane Stumpf, and they were pretty drunk; and there was Cressida, talking with Brett, or trying to talk with Brett; but things got so crowded, and kind of out of control, so we decided to leave. So I don’t actually know—I mean, I don’t know for sure—if it was your sister, Juliet. But I think it had to be, there’s nobody quite like Cressida.”

      Juliet asked what time this had been.

      Caroline said about 11:30 P.M. Because they’d left and gone to the Echo Lake Tavern and stayed there for about forty minutes and were home by 1 A.M.

      “Oh God, Juliet—you’re saying Cressida hasn’t come home? She isn’t home? You don’t know where she is? I’m so sorry we didn’t go over to talk to her—maybe she needed a ride home—maybe she got stranded there. But we thought, well—she must’ve come with someone. And there was Brett, and she knows him, and he knows her—so, we thought, maybe . . .”

      Slowly Juliet entered the house. Arlette saw her just inside the doorway. In her face was a strange, stricken expression, as if something too large for her skull had been forced inside it.

      “What is it, Juliet? Have you heard—something?”

      “Yes. I think so. I think I’ve heard—something.”

      FOLLOWING THIS, things happened swiftly.

      Zeno called Brett Kincaid’s cell phone number—no answer.

      Zeno called a number listed in the Carthage directory for Kincaid, E.—no answer.

      Zeno climbed into his Land Rover and drove to Ethel Kincaid’s house on Potsdam Street, another hillside street beyond Fremont: a two-storey wood frame with a peeling-beige facade, set close to the curb, where Ethel Kincaid in a soiled kimono answered the door to his repeated knocking with a look of alarmed astonishment.

      “Is he home? Where is he?”

      Fumbling at the front of the kimono, which shone with a cheap lurid light as if fluorescent, Ethel peered at Zeno cautiously.

      “I—don’t know . . . I guess n-not, his Jeep isn’t in the driveway . . .”

      Between Zeno Mayfield and Ethel Kincaid there was a layered sort of history—vague, vaguely resentful (on Ethel’s part: for Zeno Mayfield, when he’d been mayor of Carthage and nominally Ethel Kincaid’s boss, had not ever seemed to remember her name when he encountered her) and vaguely guilty (on Zeno’s part: for he understood that he’d snubbed this plain fierce-glaring woman whom life had mysteriously disappointed). And now, the breakup of Zeno’s daughter and Ethel’s son lay between them like wreckage.

      “Do you have any idea where Brett is?”

      “N-No . . .”

      “Do you know where he went last night?”

      “No . . .”

      “Or with who?”

      Ethel Kincaid regarded Zeno, his disheveled СКАЧАТЬ