“Somehow, I doubt it.”
“I don’t,” Liz said. “The thing is, I’ve always been like that. My record at Vassar wasn’t all that good, either. I got into graduate school on the strength of my Graduate Record Exam and some recommendations. I wasn’t ever like Maris. I didn’t shine, you know. I wasn’t brilliant. I didn’t—earn any of it.”
“What?”
“I didn’t earn any of it,” Liz said. “If you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, don’t bother. Jimmy’s already done it and so has Mark. But it’s true. Everything that happened, you know, CNN and Columbia and the doctorate, I didn’t earn any of it. They just sort of happened. I can think of a dozen people who are better than I was at all these things who just didn’t make it, and there’s no sensible reason for why. It’s all chance and circumstance and sheer dumb luck. Like Jay getting some weird cancer that nobody had ever heard of and dying at forty-four. Like Maris, really. Chance and circumstance.”
“You know,” Gregor said slowly, “that’s a very dangerous attitude for somebody in your position to have.”
“Is it?”
“I’d say so, yes. You leave yourself open to a lot of nastiness that way, and you aren’t in a position to protect yourself.”
“I don’t see that I have anybody to protect myself from.”
“Don’t you?’
Liz waved a hand in the air. “Oh, Maris. All right. Maris. But none of you understand. She really doesn’t mean any harm by it. She’s just upset, and depressed, and ashamed, I suppose, and so she lashes out at me because I’m convenient. I don’t understand why it is that people can’t see that she’s in so much pain. It’s like watching a child who’s been run over by a truck and is taking a very long time to die. That’s an image, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s a faulty analogy. From what I saw, Maris Coleman isn’t a child, and she hasn’t been run over by a truck. She’s a middle-aged alcoholic with a mean streak.”
“I know. But she’s still a child who’s been run over by a truck, and if the world were a just and honorable place, she’d be the one in this position and I’d be the one in hers. I don’t know why things don’t work out the way they’re supposed to. I just know they don’t.”
“And if things had worked out the way they were supposed to,” Gregor said, “what would have happened to you?”
“I’d still be an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster.” Liz laughed. “Except I wouldn’t be. I was a terrible editorial assistant. I was disorganized. I was stubborn. I was a mess. Listen, I think that’s Jimmy getting out of the shower. I’m going to go check on him. Get yourself whatever you want. Finish the sandwiches. Rummage through the refrigerator. You must be starving.”
“I’m all right,” Gregor said.
Liz stood up. “And don’t worry about Maris,” she told him. “Maris is not somebody you have to worry about. She’s helpless, really. And harmless, in spite of all that nonsense with the tabloids. I’m just trying to make sure she doesn’t disintegrate completely.”
Gregor thought about saying that it wasn’t Maris Coleman’s disintegration he was worried about, but he didn’t. A moment later, Liz Toliver was gone, her footsteps almost inaudible on the back hall carpet. Gregor picked up a triangle of ham and Swiss on rye and wished, for the hundredth time since he’d arrived in Hollman, that he had Bennis with him to hold his hand. In some ways, he was even beginning to wish he’d never left Cavanaugh Street. He looked at the ham and Swiss and thought about Chris Inglerod’s body lying out on the lawn with the intestines strung out on the grass like ribbons. He put the sandwich back on the tray and stood up.
He would go down to his room and get ready for bed, and then he would call Bennis again to see if she would talk to him until he could go to sleep.
TWO
1
The news got through, even though it wasn’t supposed to. Coming downstairs to open the shop, Emma couldn’t even remember who’d told her, although there had been enough phoning back and forth during the night, and enough getting up one last time to turn the television on and see if there was just a little more news. Emma had even called the girls, late, to make sure they were all right. It made her cold to think of what went on in the world. She was sure it had not been that way when she was growing up, not even if you took into account what had happened to Michael Houseman. At least Michael hadn’t been left with his guts spilling out onto the ground in broad daylight—and it had to be broad daylight, Emma thought, because the man on the news said the body had been found at just about six, and it was still light at six. The details had been dancing through her head all night. She had lain awake next to George for at least two hours, thinking odd things that there was no point to: that she should have gone to the junior-senior semiformal that first year with somebody besides Carl Pittman; that she should have let Tiffany get a second piercing in her ears when she’d first wanted it, when she was fifteen; that Chris had become snobbish and annoying in the years since high school. The images would not go away, no matter how hard she tried to make them. Chris in the Volvo out by the farmer’s market stand on Hawleyville Road. Chris in polo shirt and golf skirt buying a paper at the register in JayMar’s. Chris checking her eighteen-karatgold bought-from-the-Tiffany-catalogue watch for the fifteenth time, as much to make sure everybody saw what she was wearing as to check the time.