The woman she saw today, parked across the street in a truck—Savannah was pretty sure it was Pauline. But, as Gregg says, it’s not the first time lately that she thought she saw her and why would Pauline be driving a big truck like that. Maybe when you fear something, you see it hiding around every corner. And Savannah has always had an uneasy feeling around Pauline. That look she gave her, when the man at the Bel-Loc said they could be sisters. She is not a woman who will tolerate rivals, Savannah thinks, adding some ice cubes to her drink. Which is a problem because Pauline is always going to have rivals. It’s not her looks, it’s her lack of confidence, pure and simple. She already has a rival in Jani.
Oh, and now come to find out that she had a past. Gregg told Savannah that he found out this summer that Pauline was that woman who killed her husband and lied about it. Something like that. Savannah went all over cold, hearing that. Imagine, her sweet son lying in bed next to that woman. Thank God they’re getting divorced. They better be getting divorced.
Savannah puts her feet up on her hassock. Her just-so house is beginning to look a little worse for wear. It’s no place for a sticky toddler. Much as it pains her, Savannah has to put Gregg on notice that this is a temporary arrangement. She loves her grandchild, but she didn’t sign up for another round of this every day shit. She has served her time.
28
A song plays in Adam’s head as he looks at the gas gauge on his truck. Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O? Half full. That’s consistent with a trip to Dover. Only the odometer isn’t. The truck has turned over to thirteen thousand miles, which means she traveled more than two hundred miles yesterday. Did she really think he wouldn’t check the mileage?
Yes, you sick fuck. Because she thinks you believe every word she says. Which means she either trusts you or she’s playing you for a fool.
In which case: Yes, you dumb fuck.
Either scenario, he’s hosed. If she loves and trusts him, he can never reveal to her the real reason they met. And if she’s playing him, he’ll end up another chump, abandoned at best.
This much is clear: Polly returned from wherever she was in a mood that is new, at least to him. It’s as if she’s changed her hair color, but by no more than a shade. Always self-contained, she now carries the air of someone with a secret, a pleasant one. She smiles without seeming to be aware of it, hums in careless moments. They get up, go to work, come home, make love.
Everything is the same as it was.
Or is it?
It takes him a few days to pick up on the changes. She doesn’t read the real estate ads anymore. Strange, he used to hate seeing the paper lying on the table, the house ads circled in bright blue marker. But now that she’s stopped, he feels unnerved. Why has she stopped planning for the future, their future? She no longer talks about B and Bs, or what the High-Ho could be in the hands of an ambitious young couple. She doesn’t push him to add new dishes to the menu. She doesn’t brainstorm about specials or theme nights.
In bed, she is more passionate than ever.
Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O? What do you know, my Handsome Polly-O?
Polly-O. His mother had sung that old folk song to him in her off-key yet pleasant warble of a voice. She had an autoharp. Of course she did. And, once again, the world has caught up to his mother, with people going crazy for this album by a pretty young bluegrass artist. When Adam was young, he hated his parents’ music, but then—teenagers are supposed to hate their parents’ music. Does it still work that way? If he had a kid, how could the kid dare to say no to the Clash and the Pogues and Elvis Costello? A kid would have to tie himself in knots, making a case against the musicians Adam loved in his teens and twenties, still loves.
But the next generation would do it, if only out of sheer perversity. God, the shit on the radio now, those awful “boy” bands built on a formula as old as the Monkees—a cute one, a brainy one, a quirky one, an ugly one.
He is cleaning up after a slow Wednesday, although business had picked up a bit when early diners reported around town that he was serving “chicken casserole.” The dish was, more accurately, a chicken lasagna, made with heavy cream and about four pounds of cheese. It tickles him, he has to admit, when he gets a burst of locals late in the shift because word has traveled about how good tonight’s special is. But it reminds him, too, what life in a small town is like. There are three or four families who “matter,” at least in Belleville. There’s one in particular whose name is on everything, the Langleys. They were here tonight, swanned in like the king and queen of homecoming, their loyal court in attendance. But their approval matters, and he slaved over their plates as if the New York Times restaurant critic were out there.
No, the small-town life is not the life for him, which sounds like another song his mother might have sung. How he misses his parents, those sad, sweet hippies who ate macrobiotic, smoked dope, and died before they were sixty—a heart attack for him, a stroke for her—because some people do everything right and still don’t catch a break.
And maybe that’s Polly, he thinks, looking at her, closing down the register at the bar. Maybe she just had shitty luck all these years. He watches her count the cash. She’s so loving with the money. It’s as if every bill is a child on its way to school, each one needing a last loving touch—a cap adjusted on this one, a smear of toothpaste wiped from the corner of that one’s lips. She is especially solicitous of her tips, tucking them into her billfold snugly.
Why aren’t you tucking your own child into bed at night, Handsome Polly-O? Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O?
And maybe because his thoughts keep going to music tonight, or maybe because she’s swaying a little, as if lost in a private dance, he goes over to the jukebox and drops a quarter in. He doesn’t want to agonize over a pick, so he punches in a random combo, AA:11. He knows the song from its first notes. “I’d Like to Get to Know You.” 1968. A deeply uncool song. But he was eleven in 1968. He would have killed to slow-dance with a girl to this song, to any song.
He turns and opens his arms to her and she doesn’t have to be asked. Oh, how I love you, Quiet Polly-O, with all your secrets and silences. They move through the restaurant as if it were a ballroom. Jorge comes out of the kitchen to watch, then disappears as if he’s caught them fucking. Their dance is that private, that intimate. I’d Like to Get to Know You. He would, he would. He wants to know her and he wants her to know him. He was hired to get to know her. Those were his literal marching orders. Get to know her, Irving had said. Insinuate your way into her life. Look for inconsistencies. Is she living large in any way? I need to figure out if she’s tapped into the money, or if it’s out there somewhere, waiting for her. We have to get to her before she wastes that poor child’s money. She’s done this before. She and her husband used me to run a very sophisticated insurance scheme.
He realizes now that Irving planned to blackmail Polly. He thought she would pay to keep her safe new life, that she would be terrified of her husband knowing about her past. When she bolted, he lost his leverage. But it’s also evident now that Adam was working for a bad guy. Had worked. He ended the relationship the Tuesday after Labor Day, told Irving that he clearly wasn’t going to be able to deliver the information Irving wanted—the proof that she even had money, much less where she was keeping it. Adam hadn’t started out to work for a bad guy. He thought he was on the right side. He had been told that a woman had stolen money from her stepdaughter. When Adam had confronted Irving with his lies, he seemed to shrug, said he always thought the girl was a stepdaughter because Polly had been so unloving with her, so distant. And, after all, she had in fact murdered her husband. Was it so wrong to think she was capable of screwing over her own daughter?
She did kill a man. That’s not up for debate.