I explained to her I was looking for information about a woman who used to live here—a long time ago, but maybe she still had family in the area. “Opal Doucet,” I said. At first I pronounced it “Do-Say,” but then I corrected myself.
“She’s dead, I’m sorry to tell you.”
“I know that,” I said. “I just visited her grave. Puny, compared to her husband’s.”
“I wouldn’t be too keen on buying a fancy headstone either if someone tried to poison me.”
“Jagr?”
“You knew him?”
I shook my head. Roxanne waved me on through the store, and we went back to the register, where she took a drink from a giant Styrofoam cup.
“Well, everyone around here knew him. Richest man in town, anyway—you saw his big penis monument. A doctor who worked at the old hospital. You probably passed it on the way in, big sandstone towers. Not open anymore, obviously. Well, his wife up and used his own medicine on him. Put some poison in his drink and watched him gulp it down.” She slurped her drink. “He got sick as a dog. Almost died. Then she ran away.”
“To Cincinnati,” I said.
“You know the story, then? People think there’s some answer in big city life.”
“Most people think it’s small.”
“I don’t know the whole thing—just bits and pieces I put together or heard over the years, but gossip’s the best way to get to the truth of the matter, don’t you think? Apparently, she got into some trouble down there. Took up with some other man. Her brain wasn’t right. Too many narcotics rotted it, made her hear voices and all. She was some kind of druggie. That’s why her husband brought her back and had her committed to that loony bin hospital where he worked.” She took out a compact and adjusted her hair. “Now you’re looking at me all funny. What?”
I was trying to make sense of it. A poisoning. An affair. Voices. Drugs. It sounded like an episode ofStars and Shadows.
“It’s just, Opal Doucet’s name is on a memorial plaque, right in front of the Earthshine factory.” I thought of that plaque now and of the day of the Grand Re-Opening Ceremony when Bertie bought me that dress, yellow, the same shade as the Earthshine canister.
“Well, I don’t know anything about that,” she said, then: “The Soap for Women! Can you believe what they’re saying about it now? Not that I trust all those Jane Doe people. Just want attention, don’t you think?”
On my way out of town, I pulled my car over to that old hospital. Nothing remained of it except three sandstone towers, like ancient ruins. An arched door at the bottom and two squares for windows at the top had been filled in with mortar. Now, nobody could get in or out. I stood there for a while, surveying the turret. It looked like a witch’s hat, a ledge where the brim would be.
I can’t say I felt a sense of déjà vu, but I feltsomething. A warmth in my chest. Wind in my hair. Exhilaration. Relief. Looking back, I wish I could say this was the moment I knew what Halley had set me on a path to discover, but it wasn’t. IbelievedOpal Doucet had been connected to what happened to the Jane Does, and to me. IfeltBertie was complicit.
But I didn’tknowit.
So often women doubt what they know because of their way of knowing it. Since elementary school I’d been trained to think only facts mattered. That’s what those lawyers at the deposition wanted from me. Information. Not how I felt, but what I knew.
I needed to speak with Charlie. There could be a simple explanation. A factual error. I remembered pictures I’d seen of Bertie inThe Juggernaut. In one, she’s standing at the Tuttle Foundling Hospital, distributing packages to a group of new mothers, each holding a bundled infant. In another, she’s standing on the picket line of the Earthshine Strike in solidarity with the workers.
Halfway home, I pulled over to a telephone booth, got out, and dialed Charlie. Carol, his secretary, picked up. “He’s not taking calls,” she said.
“It’s Nona,” I said. The inside of the booth had been tagged with graffiti.What did they take from you?someone had written on the glass in marker. Beneath it someone else had written:Twenty-five cents.
“I know who it is,” Carol said. “It’s just, the girls—the Jane Does—the protesters… That article in theInquisitor… Mr. Longworth instructed Charlie to talk to nobody. Not without his clearance first.”
“But…”
“Not even you, Nona. Sorry.” Silence on her end. Some shuffling of papers. I thought she was about to hang up, but then she spoke again, quietly. “Mr. Longworth’s been trying to reach you about that deposition next week.”
“I know,” I said.
“He’s pulled some strings. He found some loophole. You don’t have to testify anymore. What a relief, I’m sure—but you didn’t hear it from me, okay? He wanted to tell you himself.”
I didn’t respond, just pressed the phone to my ear. Outside, cars whizzed by on the road. From inside the phone booth, they sounded like horseflies.
“Nona?”
I hung up.
