Borderlands Read online

  "She never wrote to us," Mrs. Grace said to Tim.

  "Oh, she did too, Mommy," Mr. Grace put in gently.

  "Never wrote, never called," Evelyn's mother continued. "We never knew where she was or what she was doing."

  "She sent postcards," Mr. Grace said. "And she did call us on the telephone every now and again. Let us know she was okay."

  "Once a year?" his wife asked challengingly. "Once a year, at best," she explained to Tim.

  "Some people are like that," Tim rationalized. "Me, I can't write a letter to save my life."

  It was a terrible choice of words, he realized immediately, but fortunately Mrs. Grace was already on another wavelength, and Mr. Grace merely nodded agreeably.

  A few minutes before nine, when no one else had arrived for more than half an hour, Mrs. Grace whispered something urgent to her husband.

  "Tim, would you mind hanging on here a minute while I take Mommy to the can?"

  "Uh, sure."

  No sooner had the old couple left the room than one of the young funeral home flunkies glanced in, checked the wall clock against his watch, and left. Charge by the minute, Tim thought sarcastically. He stood up and walked to the casket. It seemed very strange to be alone with Evvy—at her wake. Once again he was struck by how attractive she looked. And death shall have no…dimension? He vaguely recalled a line from a poem in high school English class.

  Without thinking, Tim reached to Evvy with his right hand, knowing that his body shielded the gesture in case anyone came into the room. He hesitated briefly, afraid he would make a mess of the cosmetics if he touched her face, afraid her fingers would grasp at his if he touched her hands. Trembling, he let his palm settle on her breast. The experience was so confused between the real and the imagined that he wasn't at all sure what he actually felt, a pleasantly firm young female breast or something harder and dead, a mixture of sawdust and embalming chemicals. When he removed his hand he felt a jangling rush of guilt and excitement, but he was more pleased than ashamed. He'd had his little moment of intimacy with Evvy, who had always been not only untouchable but unapproachable to him.

  "You will be there tomorrow," Mr. Grace said when he and his wife returned. It was a plea, not a question. "Won't you?"

  "Yes, of course," Tim replied, although he hadn't planned to attend the funeral as well.

  "We had to pay the funeral home for pallbearers," Evelyn's mother said. "Twenty-five dollars apiece."

  "Mommy, please."

  "I'll see you in the morning," Tim said, trying to smile comfortingly as he shook hands with them.

  "Thank you," the Graces both said as he left, "thank you.,,

  Tim called the bottling plant in the morning and told them he was taking a sick day. It was crisp and clear outside, with a hint of thaw in the air. He felt good and had slept well, which Tim attributed to the kindness he'd shown Mr. and Mrs. Grace by sitting with them for two hours and promising to attend the mass. It wasn't often he had the chance to do something nice like that for a couple of old folks. His own parents had died within three months of each other several years ago, and his only living aunt and uncle were in Scottsdale, Arizona. Mr. and Mrs. Grace needed him last night and this morning, almost as if he were a son or a nephew or an old family friend.

  But it was not just altruism on Tim's part that pleased him. The bleak circumstances of Evvy's death, the fact that virtually no one had come to her wake, the way her parents had assumed him into their tiny circle, and the feel of her breast in his hand—all of these things combined somehow to bestow on Tim a curious share in Evvy's life, and, however peculiar that might be, he genuinely liked it.

  There were more people at the funeral mass than had attended the wake, but Tim was sure that most if not all of them were just the usual band of daily churchgoers. One of the pallbearers wore a green bowling league jacket. Aside from the funeral home crew and the priest, Tim and Evelyn's parents were the only ones at her grave side. Mrs. Grace turned wobbly and started to moan when it was time to leave, while Mr. Grace struggled to maintain a semblance of glassy-eyed composure. Tim helped them both walk along the gravel path to the cars.

  "You will follow us back to the house, Tim," Mr. Grace said as he stood by the door of the funeral home Cadillac. "Oh, no, thank you, but—"

  "Please, Tim, come on along for a little while. We'll have some coffee and pastry." He put his hand on Tim's shoulder and gave a beseeching squeeze. "Mommy was up till after midnight, cooking. She couldn't sleep at all."

  Tim sighed inwardly. It didn't seem right that Evvy's folks should have to return directly home alone. It was bad enough for them to have to forego the normal post-funeral reception with its sustaining presence of family and friends, but to have no one, no one at all, even to share a cup of coffee with, after they'd just buried their daughter—that was simply too much.

  "Sure," Tim agreed. "I'll follow you."

  The Grace home was a cramped little asbestos-shingled house of the working-class thirties vintage. Not much, but no doubt it had seemed palatial, even miraculous, when it was built and first occupied during the Depression. Easy to imagine a girl like Evvy desperate to escape from here. But for Tim there was something nostalgically comfortable about it—he had grown up in much the same sort of place, and not nearly so far from this one as he had thought. When you go back to the old neighborhood the distances collapse, the yards shrink, and houses that once looked big turn into boxy chicken coops.

  Tim and Mr. Grace sat in the living room and chatted, while Mrs. Grace brewed the coffee and prepared a platter of pastries. It was desultory, inconsequential talk about Rome, the old days, and the rapidly changing times that had overtaken everyone. Tim and Mr. Grace were in agreement that most of the changes were not really for the better. Astroturf, for instance.

  It was not until Mrs. Grace had rejoined them, and they were all sipping fresh-perked coffee and nibbling delicious sesame-rum sweetcakes, that the conversation finally gathered itself around the subject of Evelyn. It was soon clear to Tim that there was a huge, aching mystery at the center of their existence and that it had to do entirely with the missing years of Evelyn's life, from the day she'd left home years ago until the day before yesterday, when she'd been air-freighted back to her parents. Everything in between was a cloud of unknowing, a dense fog broken only by the occasional spark of a phone call here, a postcard there—which, perversely, enhanced the darkness rather than illuminated it.

  Evvy was a riddle to Tim as well, but he had been thinking about her quite a bit these last couple of days. Not logically, but intuitively, since they'd finally crossed paths only because of her death and his curiosity. There were some things he knew, others that he deduced or reasoned out for himself, and, most of all, there was everything he found himself wishing, imagining so it amounted to the same thing in the end. Evvy was in the purely residual phase of her incarnation, so it was up to him.

  "I didn't want to go into it last night, at the wake," Tim said. "There wasn't enough time, and I didn't know how you would take it, but I do want to tell you. Evvy and I were good friends for many years. Ever since high school, in fact, and—"

  "Evvy? Who's Evvy?"

  "Evelyn, Mommy. Hush now, let the boy talk."

  Mr. Grace leaned forward in the seat, every aspect of his presence fixed intently on Tim. Mrs. Grace was annoyed at her husband for his rare show of assertiveness, but she said nothing about it and made an effort to pay attention.

  "Well, what can I say," Tim went on hesitantly. "Evvy and I were good friends, ever since high school. Of course, we did lose track of each other for a while after that, but when I got out of the army I thought I'd stay on the West Coast for a while, see if I could find a good job there, and we ran into each other again. We went out a lot, had fun together, that kind of thing. She was busy trying to make a career for herself, and in the meantime I'd found decent work at a defense plant, but we still managed to get together a couple of nights a week, and on weekends. And�
�well, we got pretty serious, and there were times when I was sure we'd get married and settle down to a more normal life, you know? But something or other always seemed to get in the way of it. So, it was an off-again on-again type relationship, but even when it was off we were still great friends. I always loved Evvy, no matter what, and I think she loved me most of the time. I know she did. But we never managed to get it to the next stage. I wish that we had. We stayed in touch up until a couple of months ago, when I decided that it was never going to work out, and I was ready for a change in my life, so I made up my mind to move back here. We talked maybe once or twice on the phone, right after I moved, but that was it."

  Mr. Grace's mouth was slightly open, and his throat muscles worked mightily either to shut it or to say something, but he did neither. Mrs. Grace appeared to be no less fascinated by what Tim had said, but she didn't look as completely surprised as her husband did.

  Tim had paused to catch his breath—and his wits, he could only hope. He had said enough, too much, and it had taken off on him at once. It had seemed harmless enough. All he wanted to do was to give them something to cling to, a few dressed-up facts to fill in some of the vast blank spot that Evvy had left them. But no sooner had he started then the story took on a life of its own and became an account of his long love affair with Evvy. Is that crazy or what? Tim wondered.

  But he had enjoyed it, too. Such an extraordinary thrill, to hear those things, to know that they were rising from a buried part of his brain. That they put him into Evvy's life, and Evvy into his. Tim marveled that he hadn't contradicted anything he had said previously to Mr. and Mrs. Grace. But it was clear to him that they'd accept whatever he told them. They just wanted to hear as much as they could about their daughter, and that was the problem. Tim had merely opened the door.

  "Go on," Mrs. Grace prompted.

  "Yes, please, Tim. Tell us more."

  Reluctant, feeling trapped by his own good intentions, but at the same time secretly delighted, Tim continued to elaborate his impromptu saga of Evelyn Grace's missing years. Her efforts to make it as a folk singer, then as a rock singer, finally as a country and western singer. Her two or three nonspeaking parts in forgettable movies. The picture of Evvy perched atop a Harley that was used for the front cover of a biker magazine. Another one, showing her menaced by a man with a knife, that appeared in a true-crime magazine. The in-between jobs, waitressing in some pretty good restaurants and nightclubs, serving drinks in an L.A. airport bar, that sort of thing. The occasional respite taken in the unemployment line, recharging her batteries for the next time around. Nothing too shabby, nothing unrespectable, but never any breakthrough. The long hard road of a pretty young woman chasing her ambition down the years in Los Angeles.

  Woven throughout, like a bright gold thread, was Tim's love for Evvy and her sometime love for him. Tim went on about how he was still sad that they'd never been able to make it a permanent relationship, a marriage, how he had learned to accept that. Now he consoled himself by thinking of the happier memories he had of Evvy and by reminding himself that in spite of her weaknesses and failings she had been a good person.

  Tim wanted to finish there, on the kind of life-affirming note people strive for in funeral situations. He felt tired, and it seemed as if he had been talking for hours. But Evvy's mother and father were not quite through with him yet.

  "The end, Tim," Mr. Grace said softly. "You have to tell us what happened to her at the end."

  "Yeah, what about the drugs," Mrs. Grace demanded.

  "Oh, well. Some of the movie people she knew, I guess they introduced her to cocaine somewhere along the line, and then the harder stuff. I tried to get her off it, but once you're hooked it's rough. You have to make a total commitment, and Evvy could never bring herself to that point where she was willing. That's the main reason why I had to give up, at last, and get out of the scene altogether. I couldn't change her, and I couldn't bear to watch what was happening to her, so I packed up my stuff and came back here. And she let me go. The guy who was supplying all her drugs meant more to her than I did."

  "Did he use her?" Mrs. Grace asked. "They get them hooked, and then they use them."

  "I don't know about that," Tim replied. He didn't like this because it tainted his own newly developed feelings for Evvy. It was probably unavoidable—she had died of a heroin overdose—but it seemed too distasteful. "All I know is I lost her. We all lost her in the end."

  Mr. Grace looked subdued and thoughtful in the long silence that followed. Mrs. Grace seemed to be formulating some response but it never reached the stage of spoken words. Tim was about to leave when Evelyn's father took him aside.

  "Come with me a minute," he said, leading Tim up a narrow flight of stairs. They went into a small bedroom. Obviously it had been Evvy's. "Tim, they sent back these two boxes of things with her. Personal effects. Not much, as you can see, but I was thinking maybe you'd like to take a minute and look through them. You might find something in there, some little keepsake, to take home and remember her by."

  Tim was going to refuse, but it would probably be rude to do so. Besides, he liked the idea too much.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "Feel free, take your time," Mr. Grace added. "Come on down when you're finished."

  "Okay."

  Tim waited as the old man's footsteps faded away. Then he sat down on the bed, Evvy's bed. For a moment he pictured her as the most gorgeous girl in high school, the way she had been then. In this room. In this bed. He remembered seeing her at the lake on the day after the senior prom. She was with her crowd, and she was wearing a bikini that would be demure by today's standards. No one had a tan in June. Evvy had snowy blonde hair, long pale thighs.…It was sweet for Tim to pause there, to enjoy once again the permanence of her beauty.

  Not much was right. The two cardboard cartons were filled for the most part with cheap clothes. Sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, socks. No dresses, no jackets, nothing very good. Evvy had had very little left at the end, her flimsy life stripped down to the minimum. He had to find something he could show to Mr. Grace and thank him for. The cheap plastic barrette would do nicely—and it still smelled of Evvy's hair (or at least her hairspray).

  Tim reached down to the bottom of the second box and pulled up a handful of bras and panties. Startled, he dropped them, but then he relaxed, smiled, and allowed himself to examine them. They were blue and lavender, not a white in the bunch. Evvy's bra size was 36C, for breasts that were ample but not excessive. Tim had been aware of that as far back as ninth grade and as recently as last night. He held a pair of delicate purple cotton briefs up to his face—God in heaven, they still had the delicious unwashed scent of her in them!

  Tim quickly shoved the panties into his jacket pocket, and then carefully rearranged the other things back in the boxes. He held the barrette conspicuously in his hand and went downstairs. Mrs. Grace was still sitting where he had left her. She gave him a strained smile as he came into the living room. He started to say something to her.

  Bong! and bong! again, before he even hit the carpet. Bong! Bong! Bong! His hands were useless floppy things and his vision skittered away like marbles on a hardwood floor.

  "The flat part, the flat part," Mrs. Grace warned. "Not the edge. That's my best skillet."

  Tim's empty hands were bound together behind him with some sticky plastic stuff—packing tape, he realized dimly. And then his feet. His head wouldn't clear, but he tried to speak; it was impossible to put words together. He tried to focus his sight on the plastic barrette, which he was aware of, somewhere, near his face on the floor.

  "Son of a bitch," Mr. Grace wheezed, his voice high-pitched, almost strangled, but with a nervous edge of triumph in it. "You could have saved her. You were the only one who could have saved her. We couldn't talk to her, we couldn't do anything with her. That's the way it is sometimes between parents and kids, you just can't do anything. No matter what you try, it doesn't work. But you could have saved her. Yo
u loved her, but you walked away and left her there to die. You left her there with that other son of a bitch, who was pumping dope into her."

  "Least he could've done was make her call home once a week," Mrs. Grace remarked.

  "Washed his hands of her, that's what he did."

  Again Tim tried to speak, but as soon as he opened his mouth he was kicked in the jaw. His tongue hurt and he tasted his own blood. He felt the old man's hands on his body, emptying each of his pockets. Oh no, don't do that.

  "Where's his car keys? Here we go…. Look at this, Mommy, look. The son of a bitch was trying to steal Evelyn's underwear. Didn't want to bring her home, no. Just her Underpants'd do."

  "Whispering Jesus," Mrs. Grace responded.

  Tim listened as Mr. Grace explained to his wife that he was going to drive Tim's car into downtown Rome, leave it there, and then walk back to the house. She was to do nothing until he got home, except hit Tim with the skillet again if he tried to cause trouble for her.

  Move his car? That was bad. But I can get out of this, Tim told himself. Even if she is half gone, I can talk to her, I can distract her, confuse her, and work myself free. I should have known, he thought. The one thing he had steered clear of in his story was why Evvy had cut herself off from these people, to the point where she communicated with them only once or twice a year, and then by postcard or telephone. It had seemed too delicate to mention, and he had no idea of what might be involved, but now it came to him: Evvy might have had her reasons. Tim's mistake may have been to assume, like everyone else, that Evvy had been a bad child, selfish, uncaring, neglectful of her parents. Now he knew that there must have been another side to the story, Evvy's side, and he was stuck in it.