Читать книгу The Coffins of Little Hope - Timothy Schaffert - Страница 10

The January afternoon I was summoned to Daisy’s farm, on the pretense of writing Lenore’s obit, Daisy welcomed me in and brushed the snow off my disgraceful fur coat, a mink that had long been on its last legs. She helped me to unravel the wool scarf I’d wrapped around my head, fussing with it when it caught on the wings of my dragonfly hairpin. She stuffed the scarf into a sleeve of my coat and hung the coat on the corner of the open closet door.

We sat at the kitchen table with cups of coffee, and after she told me stories of Lenore’s childhood, all stories I’d heard before, she poured more coffee into my cup, though I’d yet to drink a sip. The coffee smelt burnt somehow, and it spilled over the brim. I held my hand above the rising steam in hopes of nursing my stiff joints.

Daisy pulled a thin cardigan tight over her shoulders. She wore a wispy blue dress meant for summer. She had a craggy, haggard beauty, all her troubles having taken their toll. Even sitting still and shivering, she had a bitter edge, a low-level fierceness. Middle age had rendered Daisy wasted and lovely both.

Daisy bit at the dry skin of her lip.

“Your lip’s bleeding, sweetie,” I said.

Daisy took the tissue tucked into the cuff of her sweater and dabbed at her lip. She pulled the tissue away to check the spot of blood, then dabbed again, then checked again. She kept dabbing and checking until the spots of blood shrank away.

“I know you’re not going to print what I’ve told you,” Daisy said, gesturing toward my notes in my steno pad, making a little scribbling motion in the air.

I removed my reading spectacles, partly for effect—like a doctor pained by the diagnosis he’s delivering—and partly because of the glasses’ weight on the bridge of my nose. I set them atop my notebook. “No,” I said, “we won’t print it.” I took off my watch, heavy on my wrist. How many more winters until my bones simply shattered beneath the weight of my skin? I lifted the dragonfly hairpin from the knotted braid atop my head. The insect’s hooked legs had felt snagged in my hair, yanking at my scalp with my every nod. “I won’t be writing an obituary for Lenore.”

“Then what’d you come here for?” Daisy said, looking up at me with genuine interest.

“I thought it might help you,” I said. “I want to help you.” Help her, I thought, sneering to myself, even then. We were the ones who’d done all the damage, every last one of us. How could any of us help? I unclasped the cluster of rhinestones clipped to my left earlobe, a cumbersome piece of costume jewelry, and placed it among my other things. I hear best with that ear. “Daisy, I think you’re hurt, is what I think. I think your heart is broken. Do you think my heart’s never been broken? I know what such a thing does. If there’s anything I know from this life, I know what heartbreak does.”

Daisy said nothing, only stared at my undrunk cup of coffee. I then felt compelled to drink it. I leaned over to sip off the excess before lifting the cup. The coffee tasted humid, like the smell of a dishcloth left in the sink.

“Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, Mrs. Myles,” Daisy said.

“Please,” I said, putting my chin in my hand and leaning forward, my good ear out.

“I lied,” she said. “I don’t really think Lenore is dead. I wanted you to write her obituary, and to print it, to wake everybody up. People would be disgusted by it, an obit for Lenore; I know they would. And they’d care about her again. Because, Mrs. Myles, I know he didn’t kill her. He loved her. That’s why he took her. She’s somewhere alive, and afraid.”

Finally a tear rolled down her cheek and over the pout of her lower lip. I was unmoved. Maybe I didn’t want to help her at all. Maybe I just wanted to hear a confession, and I wanted to be the one to tell the truth to others. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll still have this infantile need to know everything before everyone else.

None of this was an effort toward closure. It seemed just another beginning in a story that was all beginnings. And that was probably why my little town couldn’t get enough of it. We were so tired of endings.