I had a new role now. A crucial one.
In my role as a detective, the aspect of my life I’d most struggled to overcome—namely, that nobody noticed me—was serving me well. I could hide in the bushes, lurk in seldom-frequented corners of the library, or conceal myself behind a rock and bear witness to the sight of two people making love on a patch of moss on a secluded island. As Regina had reminded me on more than one occasion, I seemed to be invisible.
Even at the country club, the place where I spent hours every day, bringing Jilly and Hayward to their lessons and taking my own, I came and went as if I didn’t exist. Maybe a Chris Evert–brand tennis skirt and matching top would have been enough to allow me entry into the world of the club, but I doubted this, and anyway, I didn’t own a Chris Evert tennis skirt, or any tennis skirt. In those moments when I made my way along the row of courts to the one where Jonathan would be waiting for me with a basket of balls, the only person who ever greetedme was the janitor. And Jonathan himself, of course. But even with Jonathan, I was known strictly by what took place on the tennis court.
Now, though, at least one adult had a keen interest in everything I had to say. One person paid close attention. This person was Regina.
If I could have chosen the person with whom I would find the deepest connection over my time at Wonderland, that person would have been Forrest. I would have loved more of the kinds of conversations we used to have—about books I loved, things I loved, things I worried about. But in the absence of that, I felt proud and happy that I was playing a meaningful role in Regina’s life. To Regina, I was not invisible now. I was important.
I wished certain other aspects of my life at Wonderland could be different, of course—that Jilly would clear away her own dishes instead of getting up from the table every day after lunch, knowing I’d take care of them, and that Hayward would stop staring at my chest. I wished that Forrest would invite me out on the boat again. I wished that I still got to share breakfast with him instead of eating my cereal alone, with nothing but one of those odd, wordless notes left by my place to keep me company. I wished we could go back to how it had all been—how it seemed, anyway—at the beginning of the summer, back when I had ninety-two days ahead of me at Wonderland and everything seemed simple and beautiful.
As for Regina, you couldn’t call her attitude toward me warm or tender. Maybe it would have been nice if what she offered me had fallen into the realm of motherly affection. But the truth was, I might not have known what to do with motherly affection if I’d received some. For the girl I was, coming from the place I did, getting to be Regina’s coconspirator probably worked better.
Some girls my age might’ve gotten a little shaken up, hearing of a potential plot in which the girlfriend of the father of the family she worked for wanted to kill the mother. I wasn’t one of those girls. WhatI felt first, telling Regina about Brenda’s plan, was power. What I felt after, when I saw what this had done to her, was regret.
But when it became clear to me that there was nothing I could do to disabuse Regina of her belief that Forrest wanted her dead, I gave up. I had a tennis match to think about, and my dreaded return to New Jersey, which I tried not to think about—which meant I thought about it a whole lot.
I put the rest away.
60
Queen Anne’s Lace
It was only August, but you could feel fall in the air. The days were shorter, the angle of the light hitting the water no longer quite so brilliant or strong. While riding my bike to the club now, for my daily workout on the court or the interludes I carved out for myself to hit balls against the backboard, I’d see beautiful lacy flowers in bloom along the sides of the road. City girl that I was, I didn’t know the names of flowers, but Prudence told me: Queen Anne’s lace. When they came into bloom, you knew summer was drawing to a close.
Given her past mental health issues, you might have thought that Regina’s reaction to my report on Forrest and Brenda’s tryst on the island would have sent her to bed for a week. This didn’t happen. But a change came over Regina after my disclosure to her—incomplete as it had been.
Regina became a woman on fire. Where, for most of the summer, she’d lingered in bed until ten in the morning or later, she seemed to have acquired a new and boundless, though manic, energy. Her rage seemed to provide her with a reason for getting up every morning. Now she was out of bed even before I was, sometimes.
Up until now—even after she’d learned about the affair, and after she’d come to understand it was more serious than Forrest’s previousaffairs—Regina had still maintained a certain level of affection for Forrest. Anyone could see he had this effect on her. Now, with this latest discovery, all that disappeared. Where her husband was concerned, her heart had turned to stone. Worse than that: Acid ran through her veins.
Regina’s awareness of Forrest and Brenda’s affair, and her belief in its seriousness, seemed to energize her. The old inertia vanished, along with her general lack of attention and fuzziness—replaced by laser focus. I could see it in her eyes. The way she looked at me now suggested an intensity and concentration I’d never witnessed in her before, centered on her hatred for the man she believed to be planning to commit murder—hermurder.
She didn’t say much about the changes in her state of mind and the revelation that had brought this about. I just watched her as she chewed on it, as if she had a rancid piece of meat in her mouth.
In the past, Regina could often be observed drifting through the rooms of the house without any particular destination or goal: Typewriter ... chaise lounge ... nap ... pills ... knitting ... tea, interspersed with brief interactions between herself and the children that seldom lasted more than a minute or two. At her suggestion that they play a game, Jilly and Hayward would lay out the Monopoly board or deal a hand of cards, but before the game got underway, she’d get up from the table and disappear, saying she was tired, or possibly not saying anything.
For the worst possible reason, Regina seemed to be getting her act together now. For the first time since I’d known her, she made an appointment at a salon to get her hair done. She put on well-cut blue jeans and the kind of shirt other mothers wore down at the club. She suggested to Jilly that they invite a girl from the club for a playdate. Except for the weird glow in her eyes, like a rabid wolf—or what I imagined a rabid wolf’s eyes might look like—she could pass as a normal person.
Forrest still brought her whatever pills she’d been taking, but though she made no indication of this to him, I noted that she seldomtook any of them. She placed the pills in a little glass jar she kept in a drawer of her makeup table.
She was paying more attention to her hair lately, and wearing clothes other than caftans. She still looked frail, but beautiful. One day she even asked Prudence a question: “Do you have any children?” Prudence had worked for the Emersons for many years at this point. Until now, Regina had never gotten around to inquiring.
Prudence did, actually. Four of them.
61
Close to the Chest
Days passed, bringing us closer to the end of summer. On any one of those days, I might have knocked on Regina’s bedroom door and tried again to explain with greater accuracy what had transpired between Forrest and Brenda that day on the island—not the sex part, which she understood, but what she perceived to be her husband’s participation in the plan to murder her. I could have pulled my chair alongside her chaise and spoken the words:I need to tell you something.I could have tried to play the tape for her again.
Listen to this. Not just partway. The whole thing.
But she wouldn’t have listened. And anyway, I guessed she’d probably destroyed that cassette when she ripped it out of the cassette player.
I told myself it wasn’t my business. Whatever was going on between the Emersons had nothing to do with me.
I think I was angry by this point. I was mad at Forrest for not caring about me the way I thought he did. But I was fed up with Regina too. For a while there, I’d enjoyed the sense of importance I’d gotten from being Regina’s confidante—her only friend. But I was sick of this now. Being friends with Regina wasn’t any fun. It definitely didn’t get me anyplace good. If we even were friends.
