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?”
“I can’t believe everyone refuses to acknowledge this,” she said.
Meredith glanced around the room.
“You didn’t hear this from me, okay?” she continued. “The girls, Ann and Natalie, they were biters.”
“What do you mean, biters?”
“Both of them. They had serious tempers. Like scary-time tempers. Like boy tempers. But they didn’t hit. They bit. Look.”
She held out her right hand. Just below the thumb were three white scars that shone in the afternoon light.
“That’s from Natalie. And this.” She pulled back her hair to reveal a left ear with only half an earlobe. “My hand she bit when I was painting her fingernails. She decided halfway through that she didn’t like it, but I told her to let me finish, and when I held her hand down, she sunk her teeth into me.”
“And the earlobe?”
“I stayed over there one night when my car wouldn’t start. I was asleep in the guest room and the next thing I knew, blood all over the sheets and my ear just felt like it was on fire, like I wanted to run away from it but it was attached to my head. And Natalie was screaming like she was on fire. That screaming was scarier than the biting. Mr. Keene had to hold her down. The kid had serious problems. We looked for my earlobe, see if it could be stitched back on, but it was gone. I guess she swallowed it.” She gave a laugh that sounded like the reverse of a gulp of air. “I mostly just felt sorry for her.”
Lie.
“Ann, was she as bad?” I asked.
“Worse. There are people all over this town with her teeth marks in them. Your mother included.”
“What?” My hands began to sweat and the back of my neck went cold.
“Your mom was tutoring her and Ann didn’t understand. She completely lost it, pulled some of your momma’s hair out, and bit into her wrist. Hard. I think there had to be stitches.” Images of my mother’s thin arm caught between tiny teeth, Ann shaking her head like a dog, blood blossoming on my mother’s sleeve, on Ann’s lips. A scream, a release.
A little circle of jagged lines, and within, a ring of perfect skin.