Banshee

Chapter Eleven

There was no funeral. The coffin was a plastic box with a handle like a suitcase, and the taped organ music could hardly be heard above the laboring engine of the burial boat, Valhalla, as it fought a heavy sea to get beyond the two-mile limit. Coast Guard regulations for a boat that size permitted no more than five mourners, and of these, two were seasick before the boat left the dock. The captain of the Valhalla had wanted to postpone the trip until a calmer day but Howard, the executor of Ben’s estate, insisted that the ashes be disposed of as soon as possible.

And so Chizzy hung over the rail with a handkerchief provided by Michael held to her mouth. Standing beside her, Quinn alternately sobbed and threw up. She had come on board carrying a single white rose but it had disappeared during her first upheaval, and so there were no flowers.

There was no eulogy. Kay put her hand on the plastic box and said, “Good-bye, Ben.” The box was dropped overboard and almost immediately disappeared among the whitecaps.

A crewman provided towels for the two seasick women and told them to breathe deeply and pinch their left earlobes.

“That’s silly,” Chizzy said, but she obeyed instructions because she would have done anything, within reason or without, to improve her condition.

Quinn kept gasping and sobbing about the white rose she had bought for Ben at a real florist’s and lost overboard.

“A rose won’t do him any good if he’s guilty,” the crewman said. “And if he’s got a clean slate he won’t need flowers.”

“Guilty? Guilty of what?”

“There’s talk.”

There was talk. From the sagging frame dwellings of the barrio to the mansions on the bluffs overlooking the sea.

When Howard went to work in the mornings a sudden hush fell over the office as if he had interrupted a secret session, a kangaroo court. When Kay’s friends called they said the right things but some of their voices carried half-tones of suppressed excitement, and others sounded tight as though questions were being swallowed.

There was talk.

Ernestina, the maid next door to the Hyatts, heard about it at La Casa de la Raza and came over to ask Chizzy for the real truth.

Chizzy was severe with her. “You mustn’t listen to gossip.”

“I no listen. My ears, they listen.”

“Okay, I’m talking to your ears, so pay attention. Benjamin York was a fine young man, pure as the driven snow.”

“Snow, huh? White stuff?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. You know what snow is. You Mexicans waste a lot of time pretending you don’t understand.”

“I understand good,” Ernestina said, and proved it that night at the Casa by informing her friends that Ben was a cocaine addict who could afford to buy the pure stuff which had then driven him to crime.

Dru heard the talk at school and at home.

At school the talk was direct. She was sought out in the halls before classes began and in the cloakrooms at recess where the older girls gathered to smoke and discuss sex and its deviations.

“Did you really know him?”

“I saw him all the time.”

“Oh, my God, maybe you were almost murdered.”

“Maybe,” Dru said. “Almost.”

“Just imagine, almost being murdered.”

Everyone imagined, shuddered, puffed and blew the smoke out the windows with a hair dryer.

“Were you ever alone with him?”

“Sure.”

“Did he ask you to take your clothes off?”

“I think he sort of hinted.”

“Did he ever touch you in any of those places you’re not supposed to let anyone touch?”

Dru, torn between the truth and her new celebrity status as the girl who was almost murdered, chose to compromise:

“I didn’t let him.”

“Couldn’t you tell he was a sex maniac?”

“My parents never allow me to go to movies about sex maniacs so I don’t know what one looks like.”

In the discussion that followed it was agreed that parents were grossly unfair and stupid not to permit young people to attend whatever movies they wanted to in the interests of furthering their education.

The talk Dru heard at home was indirect. Ben’s name was not mentioned in her presence, but she was well aware they talked about him after she went to bed. And so, when reminded of bedtime, she dutifully went up to her room, put on her nightclothes and turned up the volume of her television set. Then she crept back downstairs in the dark.

Vicki and John were in the den where they often went to hold conversations they meant to be kept private behind the heavy oak door. But tonight the fire John had set in the fireplace burned too fast and overheated the small room so the door had to be opened. It was a stroke of luck for Dru. Barely halfway down the steps she could hear their voices quite clearly, mostly Vicki’s with its high-pitched twittering persistence:

“—from Darien Angelo whose first cousin works in the D.A.’s office so it must be true.”

“Why? What does she do in the D.A.’s office, read minds?”

“She pays attention. She listens.”

“And tells.”

“She doesn’t tell just everybody, only her relatives.”

“And they tell everybody.”

“Stop being so negative and you might learn something,” Vicki said. “Officially, the case of Annamay’s death is still open. But unofficially there isn’t a person in the department who’s not convinced that Ben killed himself out of remorse for his crime.”

“Which one, speeding or drunk driving? That’s all that can be proved against him.”

“Are you going to keep on like this, taking his side?”

“I’m trying to be fair.”

“Fair? What’s fair anymore in this world? The word doesn’t have any meaning.”

“Not with Darien Angelo’s first cousin in the D.A.’s office.”

“Very well, if you won’t listen, I won’t talk,” Vicki said, and for nearly half a minute she didn’t. Then, “I spent the afternoon over at Kay’s house. She and Howard refuse to discuss Ben’s death, even with me, Kay’s own sister. But I can’t help feeling it’s the best thing that could have happened as far as their marriage is concerned.”

“That’s your opinion, is it, that Ben did everyone a favor by driving over a cliff?”

“Not everyone, of course. I’m sure that Quinn woman is suffering to a certain extent. But on the whole, I think it’s all for the best.”

“You,” John said, “are a very crude little lady.”

“And you science freaks are so skeptical you won’t face facts until all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed.”

“Toss me a fact.”

“I already did. Ben’s death is drawing Kay and Howard closer together. I could see it happening right in front of my eyes.”

“Are you sure you haven’t got your t’s dotted and your eyes crossed?”

“Make all the sardonic remarks you like. Kay and Howard are acting like — well, like married people again. They seem to be back where they started. Maybe they’ll even adopt a child, though frankly I can’t see why people are so hyped on having kids. I mean, look what can happen.”

And Dru, crouched on the steps listening, thought, She means me. I’m what happened.

She went upstairs to her room, turned off the television set and climbed into bed. There was a cold hard lump in her throat like an ice cube that couldn’t be swallowed, couldn’t be coughed up, wouldn’t melt. Look what can happen. She means me.

Dru pulled the covers up over her head, over her ugly face, her stringy brown hair, her beady little eyes, her nose that was too big and her chin that was too small.

She means me. I happened.