Page 21 of I Know She Was There

She heaved her load upward, muttering something as she attempted to get a better grip on the box. I tried again: “Mary?”

This time she heard me. She jerked her head up, looked around. When her gaze landed on my face, the corners of her lips rose, revealing a gnarly-toothed smile. “Hello, neighbor.”

“Get in my car. You’re getting soaked.”

“I’m just over in the lot...”

“I’ll drive you over.”

Nodding, she hurried to the back seat driver’s-side door and fumbled for the handle while balancing her box.

I leaned across the front passenger seat and opened that door from the inside. “Come around.” As she circled my hood like a vague star in a hazy gray orbit, I wondered if she’d started drinking earlier than usual.

“You’re a real lifesaver, a true gem, you know that?” she said, her words melding into a slurry stew of adjectives and nouns that answered my unspoken question about morning drinking. I thought about herstrongcoffee. She landed with a thud in the front passenger seat and heaved the large box onto her lap but couldn’t get the door shut.

The top flaps of the box were missing, revealing half a dozen alcohol bottles of assorted shapes, colors, and sizes. I grabbed the top edge nearest me and pulled the box away from her door.

“Hey, watcha doing? You’re gonna break?—”

“I’m not going to break anything,” I assured her. “Close the door, Mary.”

She nodded, reached for the inside handle. After she awkwardly pulled the door shut, I toyed with the idea of instructing her to buckle her seat belt but quickly gave up on the idea. The box took up too much room on her lap.

“Look, Mary, it’s so awful outside, I think I should just drive you home. We’ll come back to the lot and pick up your car later. What do you think?”

“I think tha’ sounds like a...”

“Good idea?”

“It’s really wet in here,” she said. “Is your car leaking?”

“Maybe.” I pressed the buttons on my door to close all the car windows.

I drove down Main, squinting through the rain pelting my windshield and trying to ignore the annoying dinging sound alerting us to Mary’s unbuckled seat belt. I risked a quick glance at her. She looked straight ahead, her gaze on the road in front of us as though she were the one driving. “Bill used to take me around,” she said. “He took me shopping.”

“That was nice of him.” I clicked my wipers to a higher setting and glanced at her.

“He was nice.” She paused, reaching up to rub the chapped slash of red under her nose that passed for lips. “Except when he wasn’t.”

I looked back at the lined pavement spread ahead of us and rolled my eyes. Things were getting bad for Mary.

“That’s why I killed him.”

My whole body jerked, my toe tapping against the brake, shooting both of us forward. Fortunately, my seat belt held me tight, and the box on her lap prevented Mary’s head from hitting the dashboard.

“Watch it, sister,” she warned, looking at me sideways.

“What do you mean youkilledhim?” I gripped the steering wheel tighter to keep the car centered in my lane. After checking that there were no other cars around, I looked once more at her.

“He left me. Said I drank too much.” Mary looked indignant, her face infused with a rosy hue. “Can you believe it? Me, drink too much? Just because I like to...”

Yes, she most certainly drank too much. I took a breath, smelling the effervescence of booze and cigarettes, suspecting Mary’s sudden confession reflected not facts but imaginings fermented from the booze.

“So, you... what? Pushed him down the stairs? Poisoned him?” I envisioned Mary tripping an elderly man already unsteady on his feet, visualized her mixing something white and powdery into his tea.

“I showed up at Bill’s apartment with his hunting knife in my hand. He’d forgotten to take it, you see, and I thought I’d give him a bit of a scare. I raised the knife right after I shoved my way in. Poor Bill. He had a heart...”

The metronomic sweep of the wipers on the windshield punctuated her statement.

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