“Shh!”
“I’m outtie.” Alice steps down from the porch as the door creaks open.
“Mrs. Jessup?” I ask.
Behind the screen stands a woman no taller than five feet. She wears an orchid-and-green calico housecoat with a yoke collar and snap front, and Keds sneakers, baby toes pushing through holes on the sides. Her pink forehead is smooth, exposed by a shock of white hair combed straight back, and her mouth is tucked and lined. Enormous glasses magnify low-set blue eyes.
“Girls, is it? I wouldn’t have answered if it was boys.” Her voice is crusty from underuse. “What do you want? Money for soccer? Softball? What?”
“We’re not here to sell you anything. My name is Julia.” I clear my throat. “Julia Spunk. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
She looks me up and down, rubbing her gums together. “Am I supposed to know you?”
My plan to tell her I knew Donald from work might not pass muster, because she seems sharp. I go with the truth.
“I’m one of the girls from the woods.”
Alice catches her breath. Yvonne can’t hear it, but she heard me, because her eyes grow enormous and she backs into the house.
“What do you want from me?” she cries, her hand feeling for a metal walker I didn’t see before.
“Nothing!” I say in a rush. “I’m not here for anything bad. Your son … your son didn’t hurt me. Not really.”
Her head starts shaking, a loose-necked bobble, and I wonder if this is a mistake.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss,” I blurt.
She sputters. “You’d be the only one who said it.”
Alice touches my arm. “We should go.”
“You live here alone, don’t you?” I say. “I mean, since Donald passed?”
“I have a big dog and a panic button linked to 911 right in my pocket!” She pats her coat pocket. I have stumbled onto her list of things intruders say to figure out if you’re home alone before they burglarize/rape/murder you. I’ll chew on the irony that Yvonne Jessup should be concerned about such things another time.
She moves to slam the door.
“Wait!” I shout. “What I meant is, it must be very lonely, with just your memories. I was hoping you could share some of those memories with me. My therapist says that viewing Donald as a human being will help with my recovery. But I don’t know anything about him besides what the press says. That he was a terrible monster who attacked women, and may have killed one.”
Yvonne’s eyes flare behind her glasses. “My Donny wasn’t capable of killing anyone. He had his demons. But he would never kill anyone. I will go to my grave saying that.”
“We should leave,” Alice whimpers.
“That witch Paula Papa-whatever!” Yvonne shouts. “Made him out to be a murderer when the police said he didn’t kill that girl, she fell into a hole and got stuck! The evidence was right there!”
I hear a noise and turn slightly. A group of boys in striped shirts walking from the soccer field next door nudge each other and stare. I look back at Yvonne. “May we come in, Mrs. Jessup?”
“No, Julia,” Alice whispers.
Yvonne crosses her short arms and rests them on her belly. “Tell me why I should let you in here?”
My belly roils, the black thing pokes. How dare you, old woman?
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I say, looking hard at her.
She stares at us for a minute, gumming silently. Finally, she throws her walker in front of her, its feet sliding on tennis balls, and shuffles into a dark living room.
I follow while Alice stays on the porch. “Alice!”
She bends her knees inward and bounces, like she needs to pee. I grab her by the arm and drag her inside, past center stairs rigged with an electronic moving chair. We follow the creak-drag sound into a living room. The smell is antiseptic with an herbal, Tiger Balm tinge. The living room has heavy mauve drapes over dingy yellow sheers, and it’s dark but for lamps in the corners, which Yvonne doesn’t bother to turn on. At some point, someone made it possible for all of Yvonne’s most basic needs to be met in here, including a tiny, humming refrigerator set on the fireplace hearth, and a toilet, which Alice stands next to looking like she might die.
Yvonne heads for a blue chair, its arms rubbed silver. I choose the couch, patterned with faded bouquets that match the drapes. Alice sits as far as possible on the couch’s edge looking weepy. Yvonne abandons the walker and sits with a grunt, lacing her fingers and resting them across her tire-bump of a chest. The chair and its matching ottoman are positioned across from a flat-screen TV hung on the wall behind our heads. On the fireplace mantel framed in brass are photographs of a young Donny, looking away from the camera. Thick glasses appear around the age of nine or ten. The pictures stop around age eleven.