“Shit, I was her damn boss.”
“Not Millie, Candy Meshaum.”
“No. Did you?”
“Yes,” said Lila.
“And?”
“She was a domestic abuse victim. Her husband beat her. A lot. That’s why she limped. He was a total asshole, a mechanic who made his real money selling guns. Ran a bit with the Griners. Or so it was rumored—we never managed to clip him for anything. He used his tools on her. They lived out on West Lavin in a house that was falling down around their ears. I’m not surprised she didn’t want to try to fix the place up, wouldn’t have been any point. Neighbors called us out more than once, heard her screaming, but she wouldn’t give us a word. Afraid of reprisals.”
“Lucky he never killed her.”
“I think he probably did.”
The warden squinted at Lila. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Walk with me.”
They strolled along the ruins of the sidewalk, stepping over weed-choked fissures, detouring around asphalt chunks. The little park that faced the broken remains of the Municipal Building had been salvaged, trimmed and swept. Here the only sign of time’s passage was the toppled statue of some long-deceased town dignitary. A massive elm branch—storm-tossed, surely—had knocked him off his perch. The branch had been dragged away and chipped, but the dignitary was so heavy no one had done anything about him yet. He had gone down at an acute angle from the plinth, his top hat dug into the ground and his boots to the sky; Lila had seen little girls run up him, using his backside like a ramp, laughing wildly.
Janice said, “You think her son-of-a-bitch husband torched her in her cocoon.”
Lila didn’t answer directly. “Has anyone mentioned feeling dizzy to you? Nauseated? Comes on very suddenly, and then after a couple of hours it goes?” Lila had felt this herself a couple of times. Rita Coombs had mentioned a similar experience; so had Mrs. Ransom, and Molly.
“Yes,” said Janice. “Just about everyone I know has mentioned it. Like being spun around without being spun. I don’t know if you know Nadine Hicks, wife of my colleague at the prison—”
“Met her at a couple of community potlucks,” said Lila, and wrinkled her nose.
“Yeah, she hardly ever missed. And wasn’t missed when she did, if you know what I mean. Anyway, she claims to have that vertigo thing just about all the time.”
“Okay, keep that in mind. Now think about the mass burnings. You know about those?”
“Not personally. I’m like you, I came relatively early. But I’ve heard the newer arrivals talk about seeing it on the news: men burning women in their cocoons.”
“There you go,” Lila said.
“Oh,” Janice replied, getting the drift. “Oh shit.”
“Oh shit covers it, all right. At first I thought—hoped—that maybe it was some sort of misinterpretation on the part of the newer arrivals. They’d been sleep-deprived, of course, and distressed, and maybe they saw something on television that they thought was cocoons being burned, but was actually something else.” Lila inhaled deeply of the late fall air. It was so crisp and clean it made you feel taller. No exhaust smells. No coal trucks. “That instinct, to doubt what women say, it’s always there. To find some reason not to take their word. Men do it . . . but we do, too. I do it.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“And I saw it coming. I talked about it with Terry Coombs not more than three or four hours before I fell asleep in the old world. Women reacted when their cocoons were torn. They were dangerous. They fought. They killed. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of men might see the situation as an opportunity, or a precaution, or the pretext they’d always wanted to light a few people on fire.”
Janice offered a slanted smile. “And I get accused of taking a less than sunny view of the human race.”
“Someone burned Essie, Janice. Back in our world. Who knows who. And someone burned Candy Meshaum. Was her hubby upset because his punching bag fell asleep on him? He’d definitely be the first person I’d question, if I was there.”
Lila sat down on the fallen statue. “And the dizziness? I’m pretty sure that’s also because of what’s happening back there. Someone moving us. Moving us around like furniture. Right before Essie was burned, she was in a low mood. I’m guessing that maybe someone moved her a bit before lighting her up and it was the vertigo that had her down.”
“Pretty sure you’ve got your ass on Dooling’s first mayor,” said Janice.
“He can take it. Someone washed his underwear for him. This is our new honorary bench.” Lila realized she was furious. What had Essie or Candy Meshaum ever done, except finally find a few months of happiness out of the entirety of their rotten lives? Happiness that had come at the price of nothing more than a few dolls and a converted storage space with no windows.
And men had burned them. She was sure of it. That was how their story ended. When you died there, you died here, too. Men had ripped them right out of the world—right out of two worlds. Men. There seemed to be no escape from them.
Janice must have read her thoughts . . . or, more likely, her face. “My husband Archie was a good guy. Supported everything I ever did.”
“Yeah, but he died young. You might not have felt that way if he’d stuck around.” It was an awful thing to say, but Lila didn’t regret it. For some reason, an old Amish saying occurred to her: KISSIN’ DON’T LAST, COOKIN’ DO. You could say that about a lot of things when it came to the wedded state. Honesty. Respect. Simple kindness, even.
Coates gave no sign of offense. “Clint was that bad a husband?”
“He was better than Candy Meshaum’s.”
“Low bar,” Janice said. “Never mind. I’ll just sit here and treasure the gilded memory of my husband, who had the decency to pop off before he became a shit.”
Lila let her head loll back. “Maybe I deserved that.” It was another sunny day, but there were gray clouds to the north, miles of them.
“Well? Was he that bad a husband?”
“No. Clint was a good husband. And a good father. He pulled his weight. He loved me. I never doubted that. But there was a lot he never told me about himself. Things I shouldn’t have had to find out in ways that made me feel bad about myself. Clint talked the talk, about openness and support, talked until his face turned blue, but when you got below the surface, he was your basic Marlboro Man. It’s worse, I think, than being lied to. A lie indicates a certain degree of respect. I’m pretty sure he was carrying a bag of stuff, real heavy stuff, that he thought I was just too delicate to help him with. I’d rather be lied to than condescended to.”
“What do you mean by a bag of stuff . . . ?”
“He grew up rough. I think he fought his way out, and I mean that literally. I’ve seen the way he rubs his knuckles when he’s preoccupied or upset. But he doesn’t talk about it. I’ve asked, and he does the Marlboro Man thing.” Lila glanced at Coates, and read some variety of unease in her expression.