Skeleton Key(9)

Faye had decided to go out tonight because the moon was full, even if she couldn’t see her fullness. She had closed up the small shop she had had built right next to the edge of the Litchfield Road and made sure that all the doors were locked. This close to Halloween, she couldn’t be too careful. Then she had gone back to the house and picked up Zara Anne, who was sitting in the kitchen as usual, trying to read a book. Zara Anne was the latest in a long line of Faye’s lovers, each picked for her supposed commitment to Preserving the History of the Crafts, and each stupider and more leaden than the last. Zara Anne was thin, as well, as skeletal as some of the white trash women Faye sometimes saw buying beer at the gas station at Four Corners—except that Faye would never call anybody “white trash.” People were not trash, not even if they were men, and calling these people white would have been superfluous. One of the truly shocking things about this part of Connecticut was that it was practically all white, and mostiy Anglo-Saxon white on top of it. Maybe the ethnic people didn’t feel comfortable here, or maybe they were just too smart to get stuck in the snows that hit so regularly during the winter. The first snow of this year was very close. Faye had been feeling it coming on all day. If the bad weather started this early, there would be hell to pay by Christmas, which was when most of the towns would run out of money to plow the roads. Then they would plow the roads anyway, and there would have to be town meetings to impose surcharges that would make up the difference. It was as if nobody thought of planning ahead.

When Faye came into the house, Zara Anne was watching some news program on channel 8. That meant it had to be eleven o’clock, which seemed to be damned near impossible. Faye took the white gauze scarf off her head and put it down on the little table in the hall. Her earrings tinkled like wind chimes, mostly because they were like wind chimes, tiers of metal that knocked against each other. All of Faye’s jewelry was big and bright and loud. It contrasted well with the skirts and sweaters she wore, which were always in blacks and navy blues, to disguise the fact that she was getting a little thick around the middle, now that she had reached the menopause. She wasn’t getting really fat, though, only just a little thick around the waist. She couldn’t help feeling proud of herself for that. Sometimes she wanted to take Zara Anne by the neck and wring the life out of her. At least it would be some kind of change, when Zara Anne was usually as placid and immobile as a rock sealed into a vacuum chamber.

“I thought we’d go out and cast stones,” Faye said, as she came through the hall into the living room.

Zara Anne was sprawled out on the couch with her legs twisted into something vaguely yoga-ish, covered in a batik cotton something whose colors all looked vaguely wrong. Faye had no idea what Zara Anne called the things she wore—dresses, maybe, or saris, or wraps—but she’d always thought there ought to be something special to say about them, as if they were an art form of their own. Fay had no idea where Zara Anne got them, either, since Zara Anne didn’t drive and never wanted to shop.

“I thought…” Faye started again.

Zara Anne moved her entire body sideways, as if she could no longer move just her neck. “Somebody took the Jeep again,” she said. “I heard them.”

“Excuse me?” Faye said.

“Somebody took the Jeep again.” Zara Anne hauled herself forward, so that she was almost sitting up. Why couldn’t she move the way normal people moved? Why did she always look like a robot? “They came in the garage. It was hours ago. When the other news was on. I heard them.”

“And you didn’t come and get me?” “The other news” would mean the six o’clock, or maybe even the five-thirty.

“You were working. And besides. You’d already said. It’s because it’s Halloween. And they always bring it back.”

This made sense, although it didn’t seem to. In the weeks around Halloween, Faye’s Jeep did get stolen, on and off, by kids who liked to trawl it up and down the blacktops. That was because it was a regular Jeep with a regular Jeep engine, but fitted out with extra large farm vehicle wheels, so that Faye could drive it around her back lot whenever she needed to. She’d had it customized that way at Z & J’s in Danbury, to use for gardening. She had an ordinary car—a little Escort with a hatchback—that she used for actually driving on the roads.

Now she went to the door that led to the garage and opened it. The space where the Jeep usually sat was empty. The Escort was where it always was. She closed the door again and went back down the hall to the living room. Zara Anne was still watching television. Zara Anne still hadn’t moved enough to be occupying any really new space.