Megan Abbott - Bury Me Deep

Sure, his name tripped from tongues in ways that might, in other towns, bigger and smaller, have torn down reputation, his good name: this man, he can never now lead our school board, cannot sit on the council, run for office, run for mayor. But outsiders never would understand, would they? He is one of our own and we know things they never could in their blaring scandal-sheet Babylons. In fact, he carries a new sheen, the love object, the knightly swain, valiant is as valiant does, his acts of kindness spurring crushes, the crushes spurring jealous husbands and jealousy turned tragic, tragic. But tragedy so dogs our Gent Joe, what with that poor sick wife and he to raise two daughters virtually alone. Oh, our Gent Joe. Our Gent Joe. Who wouldn’t stand beside him? He stands for us all.

I gave for you and gave for you. I would have laid down my pasteboard life for you, Joe Lanigan. But I’m through now. I’m all through. And the nails you struck across my mouth have all been pried loose and my mouth is one hundred miles wide and here I broadcast, my voice tinny, lost but no less your reckoning-day judge, what you have done to me, to those lovely girls, to my dearest Doctor, to us all. I will speak now, Joe Lanigan, with mighty breaths, and will keep speaking until the caul you hide behind is lifted evermore.

“You’d best get on the nearest train, Mrs. Seeley. Fresh start. Heard your father wired your train fare back east. Be on that train, will you?”

“Yes, warden. Yes, I believe I will.”

They gave her a new dress of robin’s egg blue and her old shoes and purse and hat. Her hair was stripped of all peroxide and looked her own again but, squinting in her old compact mirror, she barely recognized herself.

Instead, she saw Ginny’s plummy smirk and Louise’s soft, piping cheeks and Dr. Seeley’s eyes, his eyes and all the sad tenderness they could hold, that the world could hold. He had held it all, for them both.

In the tiny mirror, she saw them and felt strong.

She felt as if her shoulders held wings and she would rise, alight, feet twittering, body rising so high…

AT MRS. GOWER’S, the house throbbing with memories, Marion sat on the parlor sofa, waiting. Mrs. Gower had left word at the prison that she should come and retrieve her belongings. Marion wondered what could be left. But the old woman appeared with a small banded suitcase, the one Marion’s father had given her on her wedding day.

Marion felt its lightness, touched its corners, its burnished latches.

“The policemen came. I gave them everything of that man’s,” Mrs. Gower said, her upper lip twitching. “Your…personal items, undergarments and such, I held them in my own quarters. It’s not right for gentlemen to go through ladies’ private things.”

Marion nearly smiled. She was remembering something. Could they still be there, tucked between her dainties?

“I knew how he was,” Mrs. Gower was saying, but Marion wasn’t listening. “The doctor. Your doctor. I could see what he was.”

SHE HELD THE LETTER in her hand. It had come five days before her release.

Dear Mrs. Seeley,

I ask you kindly if you might see me. I will be at my store. Please come.

She would see Mr. Worth. She would see Mr. Worth first. She would see him first and then she would see the other. She would see the other because she must.

She had ideas. She did not trust herself. In there, inside, she was not sound, curled tight in a cell, hundreds of letters of sympathy and calumny each day, the witchy stares of fellow prisoners, the crowded feel in her head, all the time, even when sleeping, although she did not truly sleep. She was not sound, but now she held the suitcase tight and wondered what her path would be.

THE WORTH BROTHERS MEAT MARKET was not open yet when she arrived, but she peered in the window and there was Mr. Worth, face pale at her sight.

He unlocked the door and let her into his back office. No, she did not want coffee, not even with a pinch in it, no, she did not want to pause at all. She could scarcely make herself sit in the chair opposite his desk.

The door ajar, she could smell the meat and see red edges of hanging carcasses. She could almost see them rocking, shaking even though hooked fast.

In her head she saw visions of him at one of the parties, shirtsleeves rolled up, cranking his hand organ as she warbled, when they all asked her to sing for them and Mr. Worth, “’Twas down where the bluegrass grows, your lips were sweeter than julep, when you wore that tulip, and I wore a big red rose .”

Sitting before her now, the gin was radiating from him, seemed to be leaking from his skin.

His blood-thatched eyes settled on her and he rubbed his chin.

“Mrs. Seeley, I know I’ve wronged you. I know it.”

Marion looked at him, feeling the wave of surprise only faintly. She could not hold on to anything long enough to truly feel it.

“It is not you,” she said. “You have nothing to account for.”

“When I saw what Joe was doing, I might’ve stopped it. I figured from the start you were a cat’s paw in this thing.”

“No, no,” Marion said. “I know my share in this. I have faced it.” Before jail, she could look at her guilt only in passing, a rustle in the back of her head. Now it was finally hers. She clung to it.

“At first he told me you murdered them both, but I knew you couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.”

“I don’t wish to talk about it anymore, Mr. Worth,” she said. “I don’t. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.” As she said it, she knew it was true. Joe Lanigan’s sins stacked so high. She would not let him forget them. This was what she meant to tell him. This was what she would say when she said her last piece to him and then let him live with them, if he could. But she knew he could. That was the worst of it.

“He’s got a new nurse,” Mr. Worth said. “You know about the nurses.”

“I do.”

“The last one, the St. Monessa girl, he got tired of her. Too noisy, he said.”

“I see,” Marion said, looking around at Mr. Worth’s desk, the cloudy bottle, the curling matches spent and piled thick along cigarette butts spread in a fan. She was beginning to feel dizzy.

“Elsie,” he said. “This one’s Elsie.”

The name brought a hot flicker of shame to Marion’s eyes. No surprises to be had, were there? She felt something sorrowful rustle in her chest. Elsie Nettle. She pictured the girl’s fawn face on that long-ago night, the way her leg trembled against her in Joe’s car, after everything.

“I wonder if you know this, Mrs. Seeley,” Worth said, voice softening. “When he drinks, he says things. He says he’s a lost man.” He looked her in the eye. “Says he loves you still.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Marion said, hard and rough. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Says you brought him ruin and hellfire and yet he loves you still.”

Marion, sprung back to vivid life, looked up fast and wanted to laugh. “Brought him to ruin. Oh, isn’t that a fairy tale, a dreamy little love book to end all.”

Mr. Worth looked at her warily, unsure. “But I wanted to say I’m sorry, and…your husband. I’m sorry.”

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a gun.

And she saw it was the pistol, the Colt. The very one.

“What do you have there?” she asked, thinking she might be ill. The heat, the smell of the meat, the gin swirling.

“Joe gave me this to hold,” he said. “He trusted me with everything, you see, because he knows things about me. Things I’d rather not share.”

He set the pistol lightly on the desk between them. “I don’t want him having this over you. I don’t know what he might use it for, or what you might.” He looked at her. “But, on the balance, I’d have it be with you.”