Skeleton Key(18)

“I don’t think it’s good to let it wait with the telephone wire being interfered with,” Eve said. “Aren’t there other things up there on those poles, electrical stuff, that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it. I just know that when the poles come down everything stops and they close off the road for half a day. You’d think they could have thought of a better way after all this time.”

“Mmm,” Eve said.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Just get the road crew out to Capernaum Road and tell them to go from there. That will take care of it. I hope you’re feeling good these days.”

“I’m fine,” Eve said.

“Everything’s a mess over at my house. It always is. Did you know that my Michael got into Harvard University?”

“No,” Eve said.

“He got a scholarship, too. And he’s going to have to take loans. But we worked it out We thought it was really important, if he could get into a good school like that he should go. And now Lisa is saying she wants to go someplace good herself. Wellesley, that’s what she’s thinking of. I don’t know how we’re going to afford it.”

“Mmm,” Eve said again.

“It’s going to be a kick anyway,” Rita said. “Both my children in the Ivy League. Or whatever it is they call those girls’ schools. I must say I never expected, when they were born, that they would both turn out to be so smart”

“If I don’t call the town, you’re never going to get a road crew out to Four Corners.”

“What? Oh, yes. You’re right. Of course you’re right I’ll hang right up. It just gets so lonely around here at night, with nobody to talk to. I wouldn’t work nights at all except that it pays so much more money.”

“The road crew—”

“Yes, yes,” Rita said. “I’ll be quiet now. I’ve got to find out what Danny Hazelton is doing. I sent him out to Faye Dallmer’s to find out what happened to her Jeep, and it’s been simply forever. More than half an hour, at least. What do you think he could be doing out there for half an hour?”

“Maybe this time somebody really stole it”

“I don’t think that’s likely. Well, whatever. I’ll talk to you later. Tell Darla I hope she’s feeling better.”

“I will,” Eve said.

The headset sent up a buzzing dial tone in her ears. Eve took it off and put it down on her keyboard. It was too dark outside. She had come to hate fall and winter in New England. Everything was always black. She turned sideways and began to punch the message—Tree down, road crew to Four Corners Capernaum Road—into the machine that sent messages to beepers.

The thing was, it had suddenly occurred to her that she was getting old. Not old old. She wasn’t ready for Social Security, or a candidate for a nursing home. She was, in fact, exactly forty-nine years old. In two months, she would be fifty. The number kept stopping her dead, every time she thought of it.

Fifty was what her mother was, the year Eve had graduated from high school—graduated in the very same class with Rita Venotti and at least a dozen other people who were still in town. Rita had a husband and two children and a house out at Mount Fair Farm. John Candless, who had been president of their class senior year, had a wife and four children and a dermatology practice in Waterbury. Even Jenna Borman, the class slut, had surprised them all by entering a convent and becoming a teacher. Now she was Sister Jenna Marie Borman, and principal of Holy Name School in Waterbury.

I should have more to show for my life than this, Eve kept thinking—and by “more” she really meant anything at all. She kept trying to remember what she had been doing for the last thirty years or so, what she had been thinking, that she could get to the age she was now and almost literally not exist. She’d had boyfriends, but none of them had ever asked her to marry them. None of them had really been all that good in the way of catches, either, but that was something else. She had had jobs, but they had mostly been jobs like this one. She had worked for a long time as a cashier in a supermarket, and then for a little longer as a nurse’s aide in a convalescent home. She had worked at Sears, too, selling perfume. It had probably been the best job she ever had—it had at least come with health insurance—but she had left it eventually, she wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t even had what she could call a lot of fun. Now she rented a three-room apartment in a cut up old house in Watertown, and came to this job here, and played the lottery, but not too much. She couldn’t play the lottery much. She didn’t have enough money.