S is for Silence

7

The service station where Violet was last seen was near Tullis, a dot-sized town you could probably miss if you weren’t paying strict attention. Several hamlets, like stars in a constellation, were clustered in a patch with small two-lane roads forming the irregular grid that connected them. Tullis was to the east on a straight line that led to Freeman and from there to the 101.

Service stations in the area were few and far between, so it was easy to see why Violet had chosen this one. At that point, she’d only had the car for one day, but she’d apparently done sufficient driving to empty her tank. Or maybe she was topping it off in preparation for whatever she did next, which is to say died or left town. I noticed myself shifting from one position to the other. She behaved like someone who was on her merry way, but to where? And more important, did she ever arrive?

When I reached the service station, I pulled in to one side and parked near the entrance to the ladies’ room, taking advantage of the facilities while I had the chance. The toilet did flush, but the hand dryer was busted and since paper towels had been eliminated in the interest of sanitation, I ended up drying my hands on my jeans while I walked around outside.

The station sat at the junction of two roads, Robinson and Twine. The afternoon was hot and still, the sunlight relentless. This was September, and I was imagining the heat in July was fierce. There were endless flat fields on all sides; some looking ragged from the harvest and some newly planted with sprigs of green. It had been late day when Violet stopped here, and it must have looked then much as it did now. The area was windy and dry, without so much as a stand of trees to provide shade. I pictured Violet’s red hair whipping across her face while she stood chatting with the fellow who pumped her gas that day. What did she think was coming next? That’s what bothered me-the idea of her intentions and her innocence.

In my car again, I headed west, turning left out of the station onto Twine Road. I passed a sign for New Cut Road and realized Tannie’s property had to be less than a mile away. Sure enough, the big farmhouse loomed in the distance, hugging the blacktop as though hoping to thumb a ride. The incongruity of the house in the flat agricultural landscape struck me anew.

Once in Cromwell, I consulted the directions Daisy’d given me. Foley Sullivan worked as a custodian for the Cromwell Presbyterian Church on Second Street. The building was plain in the nicest sense of the word, white frame with a steeple, set on a wide lawn of green. A large brick wing had been added to one end. I parked in the side lot and took the walkway to the front of the church.

Starting with the obvious, I tried one of the big double doors and I was surprised to find them unlocked. I let myself in. The foyer was empty. The doors to the sanctuary stood open, but there was no one in sight. I said yoo-hoo-type things to announce my presence, hoping to avoid any appearance of trespassing in a house of God. The sanctuary was bathed in quiet, and I found myself tiptoeing down the center aisle in response. There were elaborate-stained-glass windows on each side of the room and deep wine-colored carpeting underfoot. The massive brass organ pipes made an inverted V behind the chancel. The empty wooden pews were gleaming in the light. The air smelled of carnations and Lilies, though there were none in evidence. To the right, behind the pulpit, the choir loft was visible. At the front of the church on the right-hand side, I could see a door that I was guessing led into the minister’s study. To the left, double doors with glass uppers probably opened into the corridor that connected the church with its more modern addition.

I pushed through the double doors and found myself in a broad carpeted hallway. Sunday school rooms opened off to the right, most with folding chairs, two with low tables and chairs designed for little kids. Everything was in order. I could smell Windex, Endust, and furniture polish. I pushed through a second set of double doors into a large social hall. Long banquet-style tables had been set up, but the metal folding chairs were still stacked on rolling carts pushed up against the wall. I imagined the room could be furnished or emptied for just about any activity or any size crowd. I wondered if church members still held potluck suppers. I hoped so. Where else could you get beef-and-macaroni pies and green-bean casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup? As a child I’d been expelled from numerous denominations of Sunday schools, but I bore no grudge. As usual, thoughts of food prevailed, softening the experience to recollections as rich and sweet as warm homemade brownies.

I entered the kitchen through a swinging door, again saying “Hello?” and pausing to see if there would be a response. The room was flooded with sunlight. The counters were stainless steel, and huge soup cauldrons hung from racks above the two restaurant-size stainless-steel stoves. The white enamel sinks were snowy. I was running out of places to look. Any minute now, Foley, I thought to myself. I was so focused on finding him that when he appeared behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, I jumped and clutched my chest, barking with surprise.

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“I just wasn’t expecting it,” I said, wondering how long he’d been trailing me. The notion generated an uneasiness I had to struggle to suppress. “I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice.”

“That’s quite all right.”

He was tall and gaunt, with sleeves slightly too short for the length of his arms. His wrists were narrow and his hands were big. He was clean shaven, his cheekbones prominent and his jawline pronounced. His face reminded me of certain black-and-white photographs taken during the depression-haunted-looking men in breadlines, whose gazes were fixed on the camera in despair. His eyes were a deep-set blue, the orbital ridge darkly smudged. I’d seen someone else with the same demeanor, though the reference eluded me in the moment. There was no animation when he spoke. He looked out at me from some remove, a curious distance between his inner self and the life of the outside world. I could see nothing of Daisy in his features, except perhaps the marks of unhappiness for which Violet was the source. He was only sixty-one years old, but he might have been a hundred from the wariness in his eyes.

“Come on with me. I’ll show you where I live. We can talk down there where it’s private.”

“Sure, fine,” I said, and followed him, wondering at the wisdom. Alone with a guy like him in this big empty church. Daisy was the only one who knew where I was. We descended one flight of stairs to the basement level, which was dry and well maintained. Foley opened the door to what I first mistook for a large storage closet.

“This is my apartment. Help yourself to a chair.”

The room he’d shown me into was maybe ten feet by ten, white walls, gleaming beige linoleum tile floor. In the center was a small wooden kitchen table with four matching chairs. He had a hot plate and a small refrigerator tucked into a counter along the wall, a sofa, one upholstered chair, and a small television set. Through a doorway I could see a smaller room with the suggestion of a roll-away bed poking into view. I was guessing at the presence of a bathroom beyond that.

I sat down at the table. In the center was a bowl of unshelled peanuts. He sat in apparent relaxation. The gaze he rested on mine was direct but curiously empty. He indicated the nuts. “Have some if you want.”

“Thanks. I’m fine.”

He picked up an unshelled peanut, broke open one end, and tilted the kernel into his mouth. He opened the second half of the nut and ate that kernel, too. The sound reminded me of a horse crunching on its bit. He held on to the empty shell. I could see him feeling the waffled surface, the tips of his fingers moving across the edges where the fibers extended from the shell. I’ve been known to eat peanuts shell and all to eliminate the mess.

He took a fresh one from the bowl and rolled it, pressing slightly, measuring its give. His fingers might have been moving with a will of their own. Rolling, pinching. “You’re a private detective. Where from?”

“Santa Teresa. I’ve been in business ten years. Before that, I was a cop.”

Foley shook his head. “Why’s Daisy doing this?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“But what’d she say when she hired you on?”

“She’s upset. She says she’s never made peace with her mother’s leaving her.”

“None of us made peace with that,” he said. He looked away from me and then shrugged, as if in response to some inner debate. “All right. I guess we best get it over with. You can ask anything you like, but I want to say this first: Pastor of this church is the only man in town with any charity in his heart. After Violet left, I got laid off and I couldn’t get work. I did construction before, but suddenly no one would hire me to do anything. Based on what? I was never arrested. I was never charged. I never spent a day in jail in regard to her. The woman ran off. I don’t know how many times I have to say that.”

“You hired an attorney?”

“I had to. I needed to protect myself. Everybody thought I killed her, and what was I supposed to do? I had Daisy to support and I couldn’t get a paying job to save my soul. How can you prove you didn’t do a thing when the whole town believes you did?”

“How’d you earn a living?”

“I couldn’t. I had to go on welfare. I was ashamed of myself, but I had no choice. All the time we were married, Violet wouldn’t take a job. She wanted to stay home with Daisy and that was fine with me, though I could have used the help. Some months, I couldn’t pull in the money we needed to cover the bills. That was hard. There’s people who seem to think I didn’t care if I was behind on my bills, but that’s just not true. I did what I could, but once she was gone, I didn’t know where to turn. If I left Daisy for a single minute, she’d come unglued. She had to have me in her sights. She had to know where I was. She had to hang on my pant leg for fear I’d up and disappear. That’s how it was. Violet did what suited her, regardless of us. She was a self-centered woman, and mothering wasn’t something she did all that well.”

“What was?”

“Come again?”

“What did she do well? I’m asking because I’d like to get a sense of her… not just how she behaved, but who she was.”

“She was a party girl. She stayed out late and drank. Sometimes she danced.”

“What about you? Did you go dancing as well?” I asked, wondering if he was using the word as a metaphor.

“Not often enough to suit her.”

He replaced the unshelled peanut in the bowl and put his big hands in his lap under the table. I could hear a popping sound and I knew he was systematically cracking his knuckles.

“Did she have hobbies or interests?”

“Like what, did she do macramé?” he asked with a touch of bitterness. “Not hardly.”

“Cooking, for instance. Anything like that?”

“She fixed things out of cans. Tamales wrapped in paper. Sometimes she didn’t even bother to dump them in a pan and put them over heat. I know I sound negative and I apologize. She might have had good qualities, just none I could see. She was beautiful, I’ll give her that. She had her hooks in me deep.”

“Why’d you stay?”

“Dumb, I guess. I don’t know, it seems so long ago. Sometimes I can hardly remember what it was like. Not good, I know. Why I stayed was I loved that woman more than life itself.”

“I understand,” I said, though the statement was preposterous, given what I’d heard.

He went on. “Anyway, I’m not the only one who had complaints. She wasn’t happy, but she stayed on, too. At least until she went.”

“Daisy tells me you believe she was having an affair.”

“I know she was.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Aside from the fact that she told me?”

“Really. What’d she say?”

“She said he was twice the man I was. She said he was a tiger in bed. I don’t want to go into that. She cut me to the quick, which is what she intended.”

“Maybe she was making it up.”

“No, ma’am. Not her. There was someone all right. You can trust me on that.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“No.”

“There was no one you suspected even the tiniest bit?”

He shook his head. “At first, I thought it was someone from Santa Maria or Orcutt, somewhere like that, but there was never a claim from anyone else about a missing spouse, which is why no one gives credence to anything I say.”

“Let’s talk about you. What’s your story?”

“I don’t have a story. Like what?”

I shrugged. “Were you ever in the military?”

He shook his head, his expression sour, as though I was adding one more item to his list of grievances. “Army wouldn’t take me: 1941 when the war broke out, I was fifteen years old. As soon as I turned eighteen, I tried to enlist, but the physical messed me up. Teeth were bad. You were supposed to have six biting teeth and six chewing teeth lined up right. I didn’t get mine fixed until later. By then, I could see how being in the army wasn’t such a hot idea. Bunch of boys from around here went off and never did come back.”

“Daisy told me Violet was fifteen when you married her.”

“Bet she told you why, too.”

“I know she was pregnant. Did you ever think about putting the baby up for adoption?”

“Violet would have done that or worse, but I stood in her way. I wanted that child. I wanted to get married and raise a family. She acted like I forced it on her, which maybe I did, but I thought she’d adjust.”

“Fifteen is young,” I said, stating the obvious to keep the conversation afloat.

“Violet was never young. She told me once she was fooling around by the time she was twelve. I wasn’t the first to have her and I certainly wasn’t the last.”

“Did that bother you?”

“Her past? I didn’t care about that. What bothered me was everything she did after. You probably heard I hit her, but there’s two sides to every story. She was unfaithful-time and time again-and I defy any man who says he can live with a thing like that. Could you live with it?”

“That’s what divorce is for,” I said, blandly.

“I know, but I loved her. I didn’t want to live without her. I thought I might knock a little sense into her. That’s all I was trying to do. I know I was wrong. Sometimes I can’t believe I ever thought that way, but I did. She was stubborn… willful… and she never changed her ways. I was as good to her as I knew how and she left us anyway. About broke my heart.”

“And you’ve never remarried?”

“How could I? I have nothing to offer. I can’t say I’m divorced, can’t say I’m a widower. Not that any woman’s asked. Once Daisy left home, I took this job. Pastor gave me a place to live and I’ve been here ever since.” He was silent for a moment, emotion churning under the surface.

“Tell me about the car.”

“I can tell you exactly. Her and me had a fight. I forget now over what. I tore down a panel of her lace curtains and she went berserk, tore down the rest and threw them in the trash. She went over to the Moon and I followed her. We started drinking and she calmed down some. I thought everything was okay, but that’s when she up and told me she was leaving me. She said it was over and she’d be gone the next day. I didn’t believe a word. Violet said things like that every other week. This time she was crying so hard it tore me up. I was sorry for what I’d done. I knew those lace curtains meant something to her. I wanted to make up for that and everything else.

“She’d seen the car a couple days before and that’s all she talked about, so I went down to the dealership and bought it. I drove it home that same day and parked it out in front, then went in and told her to look outside. When she saw the car, she was like a little kid. It’s the happiest I’d ever seen her.”

“When was that? What date?”

“July third. Day before she left.”

“Did she talk about going somewhere, a road trip?”

“Not a word. She was nicer than she’d been in a long, long time, so I thought things were fine. We spent Saturday morning together, the three of us-her, me, and Daisy. I had a job of work to take care of in the early afternoon, but after that I came back and we did some stuff around the house. At five, she fixed Daisy’s supper-bacon and scrambled eggs, which was Daisy’s favorite. Violet had a babysitter coming at six. She was going to put Daisy in the bath and get her ready for bed. She wanted to change clothes and she said we’d meet at the park in time for the fireworks.

“I stopped by the Blue Moon on the way. I’ll admit I had a couple of beers… more than a couple, if you want to know the truth. By the time I got to the park, it was almost dark and the fireworks display was about to begin. I looked everywhere for her and finally took a seat and enjoyed the show by myself.”

“People saw you there?”

“Yes, indeed. That’s one thing people had to give me. Livia Cramer was sitting right there talking to me, big as life. When I got to the house, I could see the car wasn’t in the drive. I went in and realized Violet was gone as well.”

“But the babysitter was there, yes?”

“That’s what she says. My thinking wasn’t all that clear.”

“Why was that?”

“I had a couple more beers at the park and then stopped off at the Moon on my way home. That’s why I wasn’t too steady on my feet. I went in the bedroom and laid across the bed. I didn’t look in Daisy’s room because it didn’t occur to me. I thought she was out with Violet, riding in the car. I figured Violet changed her mind and decided Daisy should see the fireworks. Next thing I know it’s morning and Daisy’s tugging on my hand.”

“And then what?”

“Then I went through the roughest two days of my life. Sunday morning, I called the sheriff’s department to see if they knew anything. I thought she might have been arrested, or in a car wreck. Deputy said no, but if I hadn’t heard from her by Tuesday, I could come in and file a missing-persons report, which is what I did when she hadn’t come back. I gave up drinking that day and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.”

“And she never got in touch?”

“Not a call. Not a postcard. No word of any kind from that day to this.”

“Why’d you keep making payments on the car?”

“To show I loved her. To show I was sincere about changing my ways. I believed she’d come back, and on the day she did, if she ever did, I wanted her to know that I’d never lost faith.”

“It didn’t make you angry to have to pay for the car she went off in?”

“It made me sad, but in a way… if she had to go… I was happy she had that. Like a parting gift.”

“By then, everybody thought you’d done something to her.”

“That’s been my burden to bear and I hope I’ve done it like a man. I might sound bitter, but it’s not about her. It’s about the fact that I’ve been judged and condemned.” he reached for the bowl of peanuts and took one, then changed his mind and put it back. The dark sunken eyes came up to mine. “Do you believe me?”

“I don’t have an opinion. I’ve been on this one day. You’re only the second person I’ve talked to so I’m not in a position to believe or disbelieve. I’m gathering information.”

“And I’m telling you what I know.”

“What about the fifty thousand dollars she was said to have?”

“That was after Daisy’s birth. I don’t know the details except the labor went on for hours. Her water broke at nine o’clock on a Friday night, but nothing much went on. She was having contractions now and then, but she wasn’t in much pain. She thought it might not be as bad as she’d heard. I don’t know why but the minute any woman finds out she’s pregnant, other women haul out some terrible tale about how hard it was, how somebody’s cousin ended up hemorrhaging to death, about babies born deformed. She was scared to death and she wanted to hold off going to the hospital as long as she could. We stayed up all night playing cards-gin rummy-and she played me for a penny a point. I think she took something like fifteen dollars off me. After a while, the pains started coming harder and she got so she couldn’t concentrate. I told her we ought to go and she finally gave in. We got to the hospital and they took her off to the labor room. That was at six A.M. The nurse came out and said she was only four centimeters dilated, so they took me in the back and let me sit with her. She was suffering something awful, but the doctor didn’t want to give her anything for pain for fear it’d slow her down. Noon, I went out to get something to eat. I got back to the waiting room as the doctor arrived. The nurse had called him because she didn’t think Violet’s labor was progressing like it ought. I don’t know the particulars about what happened next. I know something went wrong and Dr. Rawlings was at fault. Daisy was okay. She was finally born around seven that night by forceps. There were female complications and the upshot was that he removed Violet’s womb. There she was, sixteen years old, and she could never have another child. I don’t think she gave a hoot about that, but she saw the opportunity to get some cash. I think she sued him for half a million dollars and got considerably less. She was tight-lipped about that and never would tell me the amount. She said the money was hers and it was none of my affair. Said she earned it the hard way and she wanted to make sure I never got my hands on it. She wouldn’t put it in a regular savings account because she was afraid of community property laws. She got a safe deposit box and kept the cash in there. I told her it was foolish. I said she ought to invest, but she was adamant. I think the money made her feel powerful.”

We sat and stared at each other while I digested the information. Finally, I said, “I appreciate your candor. At the moment, I can’t think what other ground we need to cover. I may have questions for you later on.”

“I understand,” he said. “All I ask is you’ll keep an open mind.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “And if further questions come up, I hope I can talk to you again.”

“Of course.”