“Hello?” I called out, rousing Amma, who waggled her fingers at me. Two of the three blondes looked up, then lay back down. John cupped some pool water in his hands and rubbed it across his face before turning the corners of his mouth up at me. He was tracing back the conversation, guessing how much I’d heard. I was equidistant from each side, and walked toward John, sat a good six feet away.
“You read the story?” I asked. He nodded.
“Yeah, thanks, it was nice. The part about Natalie at least.”
“I’m here to talk a little bit to Meredith today about Wind Gap; maybe Natalie will come up,” I said. “Is that okay by you?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Sure. She’s not home yet. Not enough sugar for the sweet tea. She freaked, ran off to the store without makeup.”
“Scandalous.”
“For Meredith, yes.”
“How are things going here?”
“Oh, all right,” he said. He began patting his right hand. Self-comfort. I felt sorry for him again. “I don’t know that anything would be any good anywhere, so it’s hard to gauge if this is better or worse, you know what I mean?”
“Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,” I offered. He turned and stared at me, blue eyes mirroring the oval pool.
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Get used to it, I thought.
“Have you thought about getting some counseling, seeing a therapist?” I said. “It might be really helpful.”
“Yeah, John, might quell some of your urges. They can be deadly, you know? We don’t want more little girls showing up without their teeth.” Amma had slipped into the pool and was floating ten feet away.
John shot up, and for a second I thought he was going to dive into the pool and throttle her. Instead, he pointed a finger at her, opened his mouth, closed it, and walked to his attic room.
“That was really cruel,” I said to her.
“But funny,” said Kylie, floating by on a hot pink air mattress.
“What a freak,” added Kelsey, paddling past.
Jodes was sitting in her blanket, knees pulled to her chin, eyes trained on the carriage house.
“You were so sweet with me the other night. Now you’re so changed,” I murmured to Amma. “Why?”
She looked caught off guard for a split second. “I don’t know. I wish I could fix it. I do.” She swam off toward her friends as Meredith appeared at the door and peevishly called me in.
The Wheelers’ home looked familiar: an overstuffed plush sofa, a coffee table hosting a sailboat replica, a jaunty velvet ottoman in lime green, a black-and-white photo of the Eiffel Tower taken at a severe angle. Pottery Barn, spring catalog. Right down to the lemon yellow plates Meredith was now placing on the table, glazed berry tarts sitting in the center.
She was wearing a linen sundress the color of an unripe peach, her hair pulled down over her ears and held at the nape of her neck in a loose ponytail that had to have taken twenty minutes to get that perfect. She looked, suddenly, a lot like my mother. She could have been Adora’s child more believably than I. I could feel a grudge coming, tried to keep it in check, as she poured us each a glass of sweet tea and smiled.
“I have no idea what my sister was saying to you, but I can only guess it was hateful or dirty, so I apologize,” she said. “Although, I’m sure you know Amma’s the real ringleader there.” She looked at the tart but seemed disinclined to eat it. Too pretty.
“You probably know Amma better than I do,” I said. “She and John don’t seem to…”
“She’s a very needy child,” she said, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, straightening her dress. “Amma worries she’ll shrivel up and blow away if attention isn’t always on her. Especially from boys.”
“Why doesn’t she like John? She was implying he was the one who hurt Natalie.” I took out my tape recorder and pressed the On button, partly because I didn’t want to waste time with ego games, and partly because I hoped she’d say something about John worth printing. If he was the prime suspect, at least in Wind Gap minds, I needed comment.
“That’s just Amma. She has a mean streak. John likes me and not her, so she attacks him. When she’s not trying to steal him away from me. Like that’s going to happen.”
“It seems a lot of people have been talking, though, saying they think John may have something to do with this. Why do you think that is?”
She shrugged, stuck her lower lip out, watched the tape whir a few seconds.
“You know how it is. He’s from out of town. He’s smart and worldly and eight times better looking than anyone else around here. People would like it to be him, because then that means this…evilness didn’t come from Wind Gap. It came from outside. Eat your tart.”
“Do you believe he’s innocent?” I took a bite, the glaze dripping off my lip.
“Of course I do. It’s all idle gossip. Just because someone goes for a drive…lots of people do that around here. John just had bad timing.”
“And what about the family? What can you tell me about either of the girls?”
“They were darling girls, very well behaved and sweet little things. It’s like God plucked the best girls from Wind Gap to take to heaven for his own.” She’d been practicing, the words had a rehearsed rhythm. Even her smile seemed measured: Too small is stingy, too big is inappropriately pleased. This smile just right. Brave and hopeful, it said.
“Meredith, I know that’s not what you thought about the girls.”
“Well, what kind of quote do you want?” she snapped.
“A truthful one.”
“I can’t do that. John would hate me.”
“I wouldn’t have to name you in the article.”
“Then what would be the point of me doing the interview?”
“If you know something about the girls that people aren’t saying, you should tell me. It could direct attention away from John, depending on what the information is.”
Meredith took a demure sip of tea, dabbed at the corner of her strawberry lips with her napkin.
“But could I still get my name in the article somewhere?”
“I can quote you elsewhere by name.”
“I want the stuff about God plucking them to heaven,” Meredith baby-talked. She wrung her hands and smiled at me sideways.
“No. Not that. I’ll use the quote about John being from out of town and that’s why people are so gossipy about him.”
“Why can’t you use the one I want?” I could see Meredith as a five-year-old, dressed as a princess and bitching because her favorite doll didn’t like her imaginary tea.
“Because it goes against a lot of things I’ve heard, and because no one really talks that way. It sounds fake.”
It was the most pathetic showdown I’ve ever had with a subject, and a completely unethical way to do my work. But I wanted her fucking story. Meredith twirled the silver chain around her neck, studied me.
“You could have been a model, you know?” she said suddenly.
“I doubt that,” I snapped. Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.
“You could have. I always wanted to be you when I grew up. I think about you, you know? I mean, our moms are friends and all, so I knew you were in Chicago and I pictured you in this big mansion with a few little curly tops and some stud husband investment banker. You all in the kitchen drinking orange juice and him getting in his Jag and going to work. But I guess I imagined wrong.”
“You did. Sounds nice, though.” I took another bite of tart. “So tell me about the girls.”
“All business, huh? You never were the friendliest. I know about your sister. That you had a sister who died.”
“Meredith, we can talk some time. I’d like that. After this. But let’s get this story, and then maybe we can enjoy ourselves.” I didn’t intend on staying more than a minute after the interview wrapped.
“Okay…So, here it is. I think I know why…the teeth…” she pantomimed extraction.
“Why?”