Paper Doll

chapter thirty-six

WILLIAMS COLLEGE WAS located in Williamstown, in the far northwest corner of Massachusetts. The ride out was more than three hours whether you went on the Mass. Pike or Route 2. On the one hand, if you got behind some tourist in the two-lane stretches of Route 2, the trip became interminable. On the other hand, Route 2 was better-looking than the Mass. Pike and there was not a single Roy Rogers restaurant the whole way.

Susan and I had a reservation in Williamstown at a place called The Orchards where they served home-baked pie, and we could have a fire in the bedroom. While I talked with the Tripp children, Susan would visit the Clark Museum.

We drove out on Route 2. Susan had a new car, one of those Japanese things she favored that were shaped like a parsnip, and mostly engine. This one was green. She let me drive, which was good. When she drove, I tended to squeeze my eyes tight shut in terror, which would cause me to miss most of the scenery that we had taken Route 2 to see in the first place.

I met Chip and Meredith Tripp in the bar of a restaurant called the River House, which, in the middle of the day, was nearly empty. Chip and I each had a beer. Meredith had a diet Coke. Chip was cooler than kiwi sorbet, with his baggy pants, and purple Williams warm-up jacket, his hat on backwards, and his green sunglasses hanging around his neck. Meredith was in a plaid skirt and black turtleneck and cowboy boots. As before, she had on too much makeup.

“I need to talk with you about your mother,” I said.

Chip glowered. Meredith looked carefully at the tabletop.

“What I will tell you can be confirmed in most of its particulars, by the police. So we shouldn’t waste a lot of time arguing about whether what I say is true.”

“So you say, Peeper.”

Peeper. I took a deep breath and began. “First of all, it is almost certain that your mother was not in fact Olivia Nelson.”

Meredith’s eyes refocused on the wall past my chair and got very wide.

Her brother said, “You’re full of shit.”

“Did either of you ever meet any of your mother’s family?”

“They’re dead, asshole,” Chip said. “How are we going to meet them?”

I inhaled again, slowly.

“I’ll take that as no,” I said and looked at Meredith. She nodded, her head down.

“Have you ever heard of anyone named Cheryl Anne Rankin?”

Chip just stared at me. Meredith shook her head.

“Do you know that your father is encountering financial difficulty?” I said.

“Like what?” Chip said.

“He’s broke,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Chip said.

I nodded slowly for a minute, and inhaled carefully again.

“Did you know that your mother was promiscuous?” I said.

“You son of a bitch,” Chip said. He stood up.

“On your feet,” he said. I didn’t move.

“Hard to hear,” I said. “I don’t blame you. But it has to be contemplated.”

“Are you gonna stand up, you yellow bastard, or am I going to have to drag you out of your chair?”

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

And Chip heard something in my voice. It made him hesitate.

I tried to keep my voice steady.

“I am going to find out how your mother died, and the only way I can is to keep going around and asking people questions. Often they don’t like it. I’m used to that. I do it anyway. Sometimes they get mad and want to fight me, like you.”

I paused and kept my eyes on his.

“That’s a mistake,” I said.

“You think so,” he said.

“You’re an amateur wrestler,” I said. “I’m a professional thug.”

Meredith put her hand on Chip’s arm, without looking at him.

“Come on, Chip,” she said. There was almost no affect in her voice.

“I’m not going to sit around and let him talk about her that way.”

“Please, Chip. Let him…” Her voice trailed away.

I waited. He glared at me for a moment, then slammed his chair in against the table. “Fuck you,” he said to me and turned and left.

Meredith and I were quiet. She made an embarrassed laugh, though there was nothing funny.

“Chippy’s so bogus, sometimes,” she said.

I waited. She laughed again, an extraneous laugh, something to punctuate the silence.

“You know about your mother?” I said.

“Dr. Faye says we all do and won’t admit it. Not about her being somebody else, but the other…”

I nodded.

“Daddy would be up in his room with the TV on,” Meredith said in her small flat voice. “Chip was at college. And she would come home; I could tell she’d been drinking. Her lipstick would be a little bit smeared, maybe, and her mouth would have that sort of red chapped look around it, the way it gets after people have been kissing. And I would say, `You’re having an affair.”‘

“And?”

“And she would say, `Don’t ask me that.‘ ”And I would say, `Don’t lie to me.“’

I leaned forward a little trying to hear her. She had her hands folded tightly in front of her on the tabletop and her eyes were fastened on them.

“And her eyes would get teary and she would shake her head. And she’d say, `Oh, Mere, you’re so young.‘ And she would shake her head and cry without, you know, boo-hooing, just talking with the tears running down her face, and she’d say something about `life is probably a lie,’ and then she’d put her arms around me and hug me and pat my hair and cry some more.”

“Hard on you.”

“When I came to school,” she said, “I was having trouble, you know, adjusting. And I talked with Jane Burgess, my advisor, and she got me an appointment with Dr. Faye.”

“He’s a psychiatrist?”

“Yes.” The word was almost nonexistent, squeezed out in the smallest of voices. Her Barbie doll face, devoid of character lines, showed no sign of the adult struggle she was waging. It remained placid, hidden behind the affectless makeup.

“Know anything about money?” I said.

“Sometimes they’d fight. She said if he couldn’t get money, she would. She knew where to get some.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. He’d just go upstairs and turn on the television.”

“What would she say?”

“She’d go out.”

“You don’t know what her plan was? For money?”

“She always just said she knew where to get it.”

“How long did you live like this?”

“I don’t know. All the time, I guess. Dr. Faye says I didn’t buy the family myth.”

I put a hand out and patted her folded fists. She got very rigid when I did that, but she didn’t pull away.

“Stick with Dr. Faye,” I said. “I’ll work on the other stuff.”

Susan and I were in the dining room at The Orchards, Susan wearing tight black pants and a plaid jacket, her eyes clear, her makeup perfect.

“There’s a beard burn on your chin,” I said.

“Perhaps if you were to shave more carefully,” Susan said.

“You didn’t give me time,” I said. “Besides, there are many people who would consider it a badge of honor.”

“Name two,” Susan said.

“Don’t be so literal,” I said.

There were fresh rolls in the bread basket, and the waitress had promised to find me a piece of pie for breakfast. We were at a window by the terrace and the sun washed in across our linen tablecloth. I drank some coffee.

“It is a lot better,” I said, “to be you and me than to be most people.”

Susan smiled.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Especially better than being one of the Tripps.”

“What I don’t get is the girl, Meredith. How did she escape it? She’s very odd. She’s obviously in trouble. Most of the time she’s barely there at all. But she’s the one that will look at it, that doesn’t buy the family myth.”

“There’s too much you don’t know,” Susan said.

“I may have that printed on my business cards,” I said.

The waitress appeared with a wedge of blackberry pie, and a piece of cheddar cheese beside it.

“My father used to have mince pie for breakfast,” the waitress said, “almost every Sunday morning.”

“And sired beautiful daughters,” I said.

The waitress smiled and poured me some more coffee, and gave Susan a new pot of hot water, and went off. Susan watched me eat the pie. She was having All Bran for breakfast, and a cup of hot water with lemon.

“What will you do,” Susan said, “now that you’re fired?”

“I’ll probably go back down to Alton,” I said. “And ask around some more.”

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Most of the cat is out of the bag, by now. There’s not much reason to try and run me off.”

“You think Alton is where you’ll find out?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know where else to look.”