Lesser Crimes Read online

  "Don't worry, I'll just ascribe that horrible choice to the slim pickings in a small town."

  "Yes, something like that. It's the reason I mistrust the feeling I had this afternoon."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Which of the feelings?"

  "That you're a strong male who will make everything all right. Life just isn't like that, is it?"

  "We can be different things to each other,” James said. “You’ll be strong, and I’ll be weak at times, I’m sure. That'd be the healthy way to live.”

  Lee reached out and touched his hair. "When you were jumping up and down in the room, it was like being young again."

  "Lee, you're twenty-four. That is young. I’m ten years older, and that’s still young.”

  "I know. I just meant—"

  "You meant before bad things happened and made us all twisted?"

  "You're not twisted."

  "Foul-tempered and violent?"

  She shrugged with one shoulder. "A little bit. And I like you to be wild, I can't help it."

  "You're supposed to scold me until I become all New Man.”

  "No. You’ve got a bit of a beast. And I won't ever describe you as my best friend either, even though you do so much for me."

  "It's not friendship, silly." He caressed her thigh under the table for a moment, then put his hand back on the table, tapping it. "Come on, tell me about Billy."

  "You’ve heard part of the story. My mother moved here on her own, with Nathan — Cora's father. I stayed in Raleigh with my grandmother, since Mama wanted to start her life again. But then, when Cora was born and Nathan left, she wanted me here."

  "Out of deep maternal love, no doubt."

  "Wanted help with Cora, of course. But, James, it was just like you described back in rehab. The moment I set eyes on that little girl ... it was just as it was for you with Caitlin." She stared at him. "I just realized, that's when I began to like you. When you talked about Caitlin.”

  "Well, I liked you before that.” He gave her the cheeky grin she loved. “At the first anger session, when you said you didn't understand why we had to be told that things were a certain way, only to find out they weren't. I thought, here is a smart woman, and she has the most incredible eyes and the most amazing legs."

  They leaned toward each other, only to break apart as the waiter arrived with food. The man set down the entrées, explaining them, wished them buon appetite and left.

  "We'll dispense with good manners because I am about to faint," James said. "You can talk with your mouth full. Cora, you were saying?"

  He put spoons of bell pepper and eggplant cream on her dish and fed her pizza, biting into his own piece with gusto.

  "Cora was such a happy baby," Lee continued. "And I knew that I had to be around, because Mama started drinking a lot after Nathan left. She would drink, smoke and fall asleep, and I had to be watching her so something bad wouldn't happen. She hated to be alone, without a man in her life, and she thought she wasn't going to get another man — not one to take care of her and pay for everything. It was a tragedy, in a way, because she had been stunning once, and she wasn't as beautiful anymore."

  "She must have been only in her thirties when Cora was little."

  "Yes, but with a bad diet, worry, anger and then drinking, it was all going away fast. And I think she knew, inside, that she wouldn't ever be able to hold on to anyone for long. I think she knew that, because she kept saying all the opposite. That men wanted her, but it was our fault if they didn’t stay. That men didn't stay with women if they had children, especially not difficult children. There were men who would sleep with her, but they wouldn't stick around."

  James sat back and scowled. "Men who would sleep with her in the house, while you and Cora were there?"

  April moaning and asking to be fucked, night after night. Lee put her hands to her cheeks; did they feel so hot because of the fire?

  "And the man or men who … touched you?” he asked quietly. “Were they brought over to the house by her?”

  She had to tell him some of the sordid stuff, but not all. She knew him enough to understand he would go on an unstoppable rampage if he found out that her mother had used her as bait when she felt her looks were fading.

  “There was only one man who did that, at least when I was a child. And it wasn’t at home.”

  “Who was this man?”

  And where is he? That would be the next question. Even in the middle of her confession, Lee felt like smiling. Would James ever become so wise that he would let such things go? She hoped not, even as she hid the whole truth from him.

  “I cut his hand with a knife, and he just left. Was never heard from again.” There were other things he ought to understand as well, and she added, "My mother did stupid things, but I couldn't blame her, James. She was born in a swamp city, poor as dirt, and she got pregnant at seventeen. Her father threw her out. What did she know? But I wanted to make sure that she didn't set the house on fire with Cora in it, and that Cora stayed happy. That was all I wanted, just what you wanted for Caitlin."

  He was making a visible effort to get past what she had told him so far, and it wasn’t nearly all.

  "You met Billy then?" he asked.

  "I went to school, met Billy, and we became friends. The misfits, you know — the newcomer and the sick boy."

  "What was wrong with Billy?”

  "Congenital heart defect."

  James let out a low whistle. "That's horrible for anyone, but for a child ... He must have been very sick, then."

  "If you had seen him, all skinny and underdeveloped. James, I know your heart would have melted. He couldn't play because he'd get short of breath, and sometimes he'd outright faint. And sometimes he'd get taken to hospital because he had developed an infection. His father had left the mother with two kids, and she had to work three jobs, with all the medical bills too.”

  The rest of the food arrived, but James seemed to have lost his appetite, or part of it. His expression was somber, even angry, as the waiter laid the new dishes on the table and left.

  "I would take Billy around,” Lee said. She wanted to tell the story now and be rid of it. At least in part. “But he couldn't walk very far. If he got sick, I'd go to his house to stay by him. And then at fifteen, when Caleb and I began dating — well, I didn't see Billy all day like before, but we were still best friends. And I have to say, Caleb was good about that. He had known Billy all his life, so he would help me take Billy around, or go visit him with me.”

  “Glad to know he wasn’t all bad.”

  “No, not all bad. We were just very different. He couldn’t understand me, but I guess I couldn’t understand him either. And then I came down with meningitis, and my mother couldn’t take care of me. There was no money for the hospital, so she swallowed her pride and went to my grandmother, and I was sent back to Raleigh. When I returned home, a few months later, Joe was living there.”

  “And what about Joe?” James asked when she stopped talking.

  It took her a moment to raise her eyes; James could read the truth in them by now, and she didn’t want him to.

  “I knew Joe from before,” she said. “He wasn't a bad man, but he and Mama fought like cats and dogs. I could see Cora changing, becoming more anxious. She would jump a foot high when she heard the front door, knowing it was Joe coming back from work. It wasn't him so much, it was that she knew the fights would start."

  Lee stopped for a moment and sipped her wine. Her throat hurt from speaking of things she hadn't told anyone in a long time.

  "It's horrible to wake up with that cold anxiety, wondering if someone is going to be mad, if there will be screaming, if someone will try to hurt someone else or you. I wanted to take Cora away. By that time Billy inherited half a house because his mother died, and his sister had already married and gone to live with her husband. Billy told me we should get married too and put all we had together, and then I could convince my mother to let me bring Cora.”

&nb
sp; “Is that all it was?”

  "Yes. Billy and I grew up together, and he could hardly walk a few steps without being out of breath. That’s all it was.”

  “How did the redhead take it?”

  “We had split up by that time,” Lee said curtly. “I married Billy and left school so I could work and get Cora. But that was 2012, and the recession was bad around here. It was bad. Two factories I worked at just closed, from one day to the next, and so many people were without jobs. Not Joe, though. He was a traveling salesman, making commission, and he kept bringing money home somehow.”

  James listened to her in silence; she knew there wasn't much he or anyone could say. More people in the world lived like she had lived — or worse — than otherwise.

  “I was going around trying to find a job that paid something decent. That's when I tried Greensboro, and that man hired me to sing. I was so happy! Because it was a better job, doing something I loved, and I would get tips. And you know how dreams are, I thought that maybe my voice really was special. Maybe someone would hear me. Or I'd put money aside to make a tape, or something. That's why I was so angry at Hunter, not just because he touched me, which was bad enough. But the worst thing is to get hope when you're in despair and then have it taken away. I understood what so many women do, at a moment like that. But I couldn't do it.” She looked at the fire, adding, “Although I guess I did something worse later.”

  James took her hand. “Lee, I’m so ashamed.”

  "I’m the one who’s—”

  “Stop. Don’t say that.”

  “Most women never resort to dishonesty, James, no matter how poor they are. I may be a criminal, but I won’t be a hypocrite.”

  Giving her hand a shake, he didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “Go on.”

  "That's all, really. Billy and I just wanted to take care of each other, and of Cora. We wanted to be away from the crazy grown-ups, you know? We thought we would manage things better than they had."

  Picking at the corner of the wine label, James said, "And then Joe was found dead."

  "Yes."

  He looked at her. "And you won't tell me what happened that night?"

  "Let it be, James."

  "Even if you go to jail?"

  "You don’t understand—”

  "If you go to jail, do you think Cora will be happy?"

  "At least she won't ever have to come here. She will have a normal life, with normal problems — nothing to do with poverty and murder."

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Almost nine o'clock. I guess it's sacrifice time."

  "Do you really think I like sacrifice?"

  He took a deep breath. "No, Magpie. I think you were born in a sorry situation, and you tried very hard to make it better."

  "Well, I guess that I didn't do any better than the grown-ups. We can only try to be decent, even if we fail."

  "What do we know?"

  “Not much, I guess.”

  They sat in silence as he stroked her hand with his thumb, until live music began drifting to them from the main room. A male voice sang, accompanied by a guitar. James hummed, then sang along,

  Comm'è calma 'a muntagna stanotte!

  Cchiù calma 'e mo nun ll'aggio vista maje!

  Lee smiled, remembering a cantina in Mexico, and asked as she had asked then, "What does it say?"

  "It's an old Neapolitan song. He's talking about the mountain, how beautiful and calm it is. 'Everything is sleeping, everything is sleeping or dying — but I alone am awake, because love never sleeps.' "

  "How does he say it?"

  "E tutto dorme, tutto dorme o more, e i' sulo veglio, pecché veglia ammore."

  "That's beautiful, but it's sad."

  "Yes." He looked at her intensely, as if he were going to say something, but his eyes dropped away after a moment. "Enough for today, don't you think?”

  It took them half an hour to drive back to the house, and they didn't speak or touch. At home he stood at the French doors of the living room and looked out at the night; there weren't city lights nearby, and the stars seemed brighter there. Lee changed into a nightgown upstairs, and when she returned to the living room he was sitting in the dark, nursing a drink. She straddled him on the sofa, opening his shirt to feel his chest.

  "Now you don’t move,” she said.

  He put his hands under her gown to caress her and closed his eyes as she moved. Later, when they got cold, he carried her up to bed, but lay with his back to her. He was thinking.

  "You'll go to Billy," he finally said.

  "Yes. My mother told me he's not well."

  "I'll drive you there tomorrow."

  Lee let the silence settle for a moment before she asked, "And then, what will happen?”

  "Then, if he is very sick, you'll want to take care of him." He turned to face her, stroking her cheek. "And it will be hard for me to sit around wishing for a boy to die so I can have you."

  She was so sick of pain and damned sacrifice, but she managed to say, "I know. I wouldn't expect it of you."

  NINE

  Ten days later, James faced his old, irrepressible friend Attie across the table of a fashionable London restaurant.

  "What are you doing?"

  "What am I doing?" Attie asked with wide, innocent eyes.

  "I don't know, but I might strangle you for it."

  Attie glanced around at the two women who were retreating together toward the bathroom.

  "I’ll bet my family heirlooms that they are discussing the chances of Cathy getting you into bed tonight."

  "You're a complete idiot," James stated flatly.

  He felt tired as he looked past Attie at the street, where Londoners huddled against the snow. Caitlin was happy that they'd have a white Christmas, although the next day, December 24, would probably be as gray and grim as that day had been. Still, they'd be together, cook and open presents. They'd probably watch some special on TV and nap, then wake up to more food. It would be good and quiet.

  He just wondered why the hell Attie had shown up not only with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Caroline but with another woman.

  "You're glum," Attie said.

  "You're boring."

  "No, you're boring."

  "On the contrary, I was all ready to get sloshed and exchange fun stories with you and Caroline, and you bring a stranger."

  "It's not a good look, a table for three. I'm sure there is some superstition against it somewhere. And she is a very attractive stranger, you might add." Attie grimaced. "Please tell me that love hasn't made you blind."

  "No, she is very attractive."

  “And it doesn’t lift your spirits?”

  If only things were that simple.

  Hearts didn’t really break, or James’ might have six days before, as he sat in a parking lot in Greensboro watching Lee help Billy out of a car.

  James had bought her the car, because she had to shuttle Billy back and forth to his doctor appointments. He had helped her pay for a specialist, because Billy was much more ill than Lee had ever seen him. On the phone, her voice was garbled as she fought to control her tears, because Lee didn’t like to cry.

  It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to seem weak: she was horrified that her husband, her best friend, should be so sick — and that instead of caring for him, she had been running from the law.

  Five years ago, Lee had faced an impossible situation: if she had stayed, she would have been convicted of Joe’s murder, and she would have been no help to Billy — and no help to Cora. She would have been in prison, perhaps a hindrance to people who already bore heavy burdens.

  Watching her face as she helped Billy shuffle into the clinic, James could see how much she cared for him. He had been her only friend. He had been the only person apart from Cora who had loved her and not expected something from her: a young man so frail that his clothes looked uninhabited, like the clothes on a ventriloquist's dummy. What could Billy's love do for Lee, except make her even mo
re inclined to forget herself?

  What could the love of a mother like April, a she-wolf according to Paxton, do?

  How could the love of a child like Cora help Lee?

  Billy moved with infinite slowness, taking a deep breath at every step. He had been Lee’s only support, and he couldn’t even walk on his own.

  “Fuck,” James muttered, his fingers on the door handle. He would get out of the car and help them.

  He would set up a sick room for Billy in the house he had rented, and then he could help Lee every day.

  But he didn’t open the car door or move as the couple disappeared inside the building. No one would understand, not in a small city like Lee’s, that a woman and her lover should take care of her husband; especially when the woman stood accused of murder.

  The best thing he could do for Lee was to leave, and monitor things from far away. Or was that the best thing he could do for himself?

  It didn’t feel like either as he sat far from her, in London; and Cathy wouldn’t make him stop thinking of Lee. No, not even for a second.

  "Look, you did something heroic for a fascinating woman, who is now stuck with a husband in a scenario from Deliverance meets Real Crimes of America,” Attie said. “But if you're here and not there, Saint, it's because you can hardly do more than you've done. The woman of many names has the best legal team you could find. Seriously, what else can you do? Be a monk for the rest of your life?"

  "Not that long, no.”

  "No, because you're hoping things will get sorted out soon? Hoping for a death?"

  "Don't be a prick."

  "A death and an acquittal."

  James' eyes moved to the window again, and he didn't realize how hard he was frowning till Attie tapped his forehead. "You have it bad, my friend."

  "Fuck off."

  "That is precisely the way out of your funk and, as your friend, I'm only trying to shove you in that direction, so you get there soonest. What is femme fatale's name, anyway? Not Vivien, I know that."

  "Her name is the one thing I'll never disclose."

  "Why?"

  "You'd never leave me alone about it."

  "It's not heaven spelled backwards, is it? Is it a food item, like Apple or Celery?”