Bryan Gruley: The Skeleton Box

Bea picked up the glass of water and drank. She set it down empty. “I’m sorry, Father,” she said. “I don’t remember.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was dark. We were way up on a hill somewhere in the woods where I’d never been before. It was a little scary, actually. I just wanted to get home.”

“Nilus told us the northeastern corner of the lake.”

“Maybe he remembers then. I don’t.”

The priest stood. Bea did, too. “Would you like my blessing, child?” he said.

“That won’t be necessary.”

He made a sign of the cross before her anyway. “I trust you’ll keep all of this to yourself,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“We may be in touch, from time to time.”

She walked up Shelby and turned right on Lafayette, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. At Woodward she turned left and walked to Sanders, the ice-cream parlor. She took a stool at the counter and ordered a Coca-Cola with ice. She took a pen out of her purse. She flipped over the placemat and, on the blank back, drew a map.

“You remembered?” I said.

We’d sat down in the pew at the very back of St. Valentine’s. A painting on the wall next to us showed a woman wiping Christ’s face as he carried his cross.

“It was impossible to forget,” Mom said. “The big stump. The double-trunk birch.”

“And you gave pieces of the map to Mrs. B and Soupy’s mom.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Louise. She was so sorry.”

“Because she’d talked to Bev-to that woman doing the history with Whistler?”

Mom looked as if she might cry again. “Louise came to me to apologize. She was a basket case. But I didn’t care. She said she hadn’t given the lady much. She so wanted my forgiveness. But I would not give it. All I could think about was my fear.”

“It’s all right, Mom.”

“No, it’s not. Never. I never should have done that to my friends. It’s just-I was alone. I wanted someone else to know, just in case.”

“In case that bastard Reilly did something.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I don’t-no. I do know. Because I didn’t want that life.”

“What life?”

“I didn’t want to be the girl who helped bury a murdered nun, who helped a murderer and the terrible men who hid him. I didn’t want to be the girl who cheated on her boyfriend. I just wanted to be Bea, Gus’s mom, and live in the yellow house on the lake, like Rudy and I had always planned.”

The shadow of a smile crossed her face.

“We used to go fishing,” she said. “Do you remember throwing your pole in the lake?”

It was a casting pole with a button on the reel that let the line out when you flung the pole forward. I was four or five years old. I hit the button but didn’t hang on to the pole. My dad was about to jump in after it until Mom grabbed him and they fell over laughing in the rowboat.

“Yes,” I said. “Pretty stupid.”

“I was happy, Gussy. That’s all I wanted.”

A happy family. I thought of my next-door neighbor, Oke Anderson, sitting down to dinner with his family. I took one of Mom’s hands.

“And you hoped the rest would go away,” I said.

“I could’ve just drawn Reilly the map. But when he said it was ‘no longer a matter for men,’ I just… I decided I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I’m not sure why. But I didn’t like what he said, or the way he said it.”

We sat there for a while, Mom’s hand in mine.

“So,” I finally said, “what happened the other night? Can you remember?”

She sighed. “I remember this. I remember sitting at the dining room table that morning and Phyllis telling me I was imagining things.”

“You were worried about the burglar not taking anything.”

“Turns out I wasn’t paranoid.”

A noise awoke Mom in her bed that night. She wondered if maybe she’d been dreaming. She’d been dreaming a lot lately. In her dreams, she could remember what she’d had for breakfast and where she’d left her handbag.

She drifted back to sleep. She didn’t know how much later, maybe an hour, maybe ten seconds, she heard a thump. She thought it came from the bathroom. Had Phyllis come over tonight? “Phyllis?” she called out. There was no answer. She thought she must have been mistaken about Phyllis being there. She went back to sleep.

She woke again later, needing to use the bathroom. She tried to push the bathroom door open but it stopped against something. She walked around to the door at the other end of the bathroom. Phyllis was sprawled across the Me Sweet Ho rug, unmoving, her eyes closed. Blood had splattered on the rug and pooled on the floor around her head. Her cell phone lay on the floor.

“Was she alive?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean you don’t think so?”

“No. She wasn’t alive.”

“How long had she been lying there?”

“I have no way of knowing. I was asleep.”

“So you called nine-one-one?”

“When I saw her lying there, I knew I was right to be afraid. I knew they’d come looking.”

Whistler hadn’t expected to find anyone there. After he slid into the bathroom and Mrs. B saw him, he must have panicked. When he’d panicked in the past, he’d put his fist through computer screens. The pinkie ring must have made the gash above Mrs. B’s eye. That’s why Dingus demanded it, I thought.

“And you called?” I said.

“Phyllis was dead, but I called. I had to hurry.”

She went back to her room. She dug the lockbox containing the piece of map, her rosary, and the newspaper clipping out of the back of the closet. She threw her boots on and ran through the big yard, across the road, and up the hill to Dad’s garage. She put the lockbox in the trunk of the Bonneville, neglecting to close the lid tightly, and stood there for a few seconds, willing herself to remember. Then she ran back to her house.

“You panicked,” I said. “And you lost your boot.”

“I couldn’t stop. I could hear a siren. I had to get back. The next morning, I saw the one boot at the back door and couldn’t remember what had happened to the other.”

“But you remembered where the lockbox was.”

“Yes.”

“And you called nine-one-one before you went up to the garage?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Just making sure you remember correctly. That’s a hike to get back before-”

“I know, Gussy. That’s how I lost my boot.”

She let go of my hand and stood and walked back to the transom. I followed, stopping a few feet behind her.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Why?”

“I might as well have killed Phyllis with my own hands.”

“No. Let it go, Mom. There was nothing-”

“Stop.” She spun to face me, her eyes filling with tears. “Stop telling me everything I did was all right. I made choices. Now my best friends are gone.”

“It wasn’t just your-”

“Stop, goddammit.” Her voice echoed through the church. “You know the truth now. All right? I told you the truth. Everyone knows the truth. Are you all happy now? Are you free? Has the truth set you free, Gus?”

I stepped close and wrapped my arms around her. I whispered into her ear, “I’m glad you told me the truth.” I held her longer and tighter than I had in years.

She sighed as she loosed my embrace. “I’m glad you’re glad,” she said. “Now can you take me home, please? I can’t stay in this place any longer.”

I dropped her at her house. Someone had plowed her driveway. I thought maybe I ought to stay awhile, but she told me she wanted to be alone. After all she’d gotten through for so long, I figured she’d get through this, too.