90 The Pane Is Unbarable
The Pane Is Unbarable
We couldn’t leave town yet after all. The police wanted to talk with me. Because I was the person who’d found Regina’s body, and because, other than her husband, I was the one who’d spent the most time with her in the weeks leading up to her death, they had a few questions for me.
Sitting in the front seat of our Pontiac, next to my father, I looked out the window at the now familiar landscape: Red, white, and blue begonias lining the drive. My yellow bike parked in its spot. For once my father had turned the music off in the car. No cassette playing. Neither of us spoke.
It seemed pretty obvious to everyone at that point that Regina’s death was a suicide. Everyone knew she’d been depressed for years. Everyone knew there had been pills and doctors and a hospitalization or two. For years they’d heard Regina talk about killing herself.
“It’s just a formality, but we’d like your daughter to answer a few questions,” one of the police officers who stopped by the house that morning had told my father. “Stop by the station on your way out of town.”
They’d found a typewritten note next to Regina’s body. In it, she’d expressed her love for her husband and children, and her parents, and Prudence—even me. The note said how sorry she was. The pain of living had just become too great.
There was just one problem with this note.
The investigator who’d come down from Augusta to assist the local police led me into a small room then. We were alone, just the two of us.
“I know this has got to be hard on you,” he said. “At your age, a girl should be thinking about hanging out with her friends and getting on the cheering squad.”
Not exactly, but never mind. No need to elaborate.
“We understand that Mrs. Emerson chose to use a typewriter when she wrote her daily reminders to the family,” he said.
“I get that part. But the spelling in the final note we found next to her body struck us all as pretty unusual. Particularly for a college graduate. I gather she went to one of those Ivy League schools.”
He passed the note across the desk to me. I scanned a few sentences.
The pane is unbarable. You mene evrything to me. I just reched the point ware there is no way out . . .
I knew someone who spelled this way. It was Forrest, of course. Forrest, who was barely literate. From someplace deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed, a wave of pure, hot protectiveness rose up in me.
“Regina took a lot of drugs sometimes,” I said. “Last night she probably took more than usual. Maybe that made it hard for her to write very well.”
Officer Reynolds nodded, but he looked dubious.
“We’ve obtained some examples of communication written by Mr. Emerson to members of the club the Emersons belonged to, as well as samples of his communications with others in the community,” the police officer said. “It appears Mr. Emerson is greatly challenged by writing the English language.”
“Forrest is a smart person,” I said. I didn’t see where he was going, but I sensed trouble. “He’s good at a lot of things. He’s just a really bad speller. There are kids like that at my school.”
“Nobody’s arguing this point, Frances,” Officer Reynolds said. “The Emersons’ cook also provided a few notes written to her by Mrs. Emerson’s husband. The kinds of errors displayed in the alleged suicide note appear virtually identical to the kinds of errors we’ve noted in Mr. Emerson’s writing.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” I said. But I did, actually.
“We have to wonder if somebody other than Mrs. Emerson might have written this alleged suicide note,” Officer Reynolds said. “Someone who wanted to leave the appearance that Mrs. Emerson had taken her own life.”
I could feel myself starting to get dizzy. We were seated at a desk as we spoke. I held on to the sides of it.
“Regina acted funny when she took her pills,” I repeated. “She probably took a lot of pills that day.”
Wasn’t this obvious? She took so many pills they killed her.
He nodded and wrote something down on his notepad.
“Do you know anything about a recent change to the Emersons’ life insurance?
” he said. “We’ve learned that an insurance agent paid a visit to the family home recently to amend the family’s policy.
When I spoke with Mrs. Emerson’s father this morning, he mentioned that it’s his understanding this revision came at the suggestion of Mr. Emerson.
You may have been present for his visit? ”
“Some man with a briefcase showed up one time. I don’t know about life insurance,” I said. “I’m fourteen.”
I was turning fifteen the next week. But suddenly I wanted to be younger. Young enough that nobody would ask me these questions.
I wanted to be gone, actually. Anywhere but in this room, at this police station, talking with Officer Reynolds.
There were more questions. Many of these.
Now I knew what it meant when girls in my class talked about cramps, and how weird they felt when they got their period.
In all this time, there had been no opportunity to get to a drugstore and buy sanitary pads.
For twenty-four hours now, I’d been stuffing wads of toilet paper into my underwear.
I could feel the blood seeping into my pants.
“And how would you describe Mr. Emerson?”
Describe him? (Handsome? Funny? Wonderful? My favorite person in the universe?)
“Nice,” I told him. “You know. The usual.”
“Was he a good father?”
“Oh, yes.” I did not add here that I wished he had been mine.
When Officer Reynolds asked me to characterize Forrest’s relationship with Regina, I told him about how considerate he was to her all the time. How patient. “He was always keeping track of her pills,” I said. “Every time she needed some pills at the drugstore, he picked them up for her.”
Uh-huh. The officer gave me a look.
“And how would you characterize his relationship with you?”
“Good,” I told him. “Forrest always . . . took an interest in me.”
“Took an interest?”
“He listened to me,” I said. “He paid attention.”
“Would you say Mr. Emerson loved you?”
“Not in a boyfriend-girlfriend way. He just . . . loved me.”
The one he really loved was Regina, I told the police officer. A thought came to me then, supporting this.
“He even has a tattoo with her name on it,” I told him.
Interesting. “Where on Mr. Emerson’s body is this tattoo located?” he asked.
I had to tell him then.
“He showed you his naked buttocks?”
Oh god. Nothing was coming out the way I wanted it to.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “I want my dad,” I told the police officer. I don’t know if I’d ever said those words before, or if I’d ever had that thought.
“We’re almost finished,” Officer Reynolds told me. “You can see your father in just a few minutes.”
I wanted my dad right then. Not in five minutes. Or maybe I just wanted to get out of there.
“One of our other officers is talking with your father,” Officer Reynolds told me. “I gather the two of them—your father and Mr. Emerson—grew up together. It seems Mr. Emerson had some run-ins with the law when he was younger.”
I told him how Forrest’s family didn’t have much money. Of course, everything changed for him once he married Regina.
“That’s when he changed his name,” Officer Reynolds said. “Did that ever strike you as odd?”
The room felt hot. The blood still coming out of me felt warm and sticky in my underpants. I tried to think about the tennis court where I had my lessons with Jonathan.
I’m standing at the baseline, preparing to serve. I keep my eye on the ball. Nothing else matters.
“We understand how young you are, Frances. But it appears you played an unusual role in Mrs. Emerson’s life over the course of this past summer. Not the normal kind of job for a babysitter.”
An unusual role?
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “We found a notebook on the bed, next to Mrs. Emerson’s body.”
He took it out now. The little spiral notebook I’d kept in my pocket when I was pretending to be Nancy Drew. Back when this whole thing seemed like an exciting game. Or a play I got to be in. With me in the starring role, for a change.
“This notebook seems to document the details of some sort of relationship between Mr. Emerson and a woman named Brenda. Would you know anything about this notebook?”
I just sat there.
“You probably know from watching television that law enforcement professionals are able to determine the identity of the author of a document based on the expertise of a handwriting analyst,” he told me.
“It wouldn’t be difficult to prove that you were the author of these notes. That this was your notebook.”
“She just wanted me to find out a little information,” I said. I could feel everything tumbling down around me.
“We found a set of Polaroid photographs. Of Mr. Emerson and a woman who isn’t Mrs. Emerson.
We haven’t identified her yet, though I’m guessing you may be able to assist us with that.
I’m guessing this may be the ‘Brenda’ referred to in these notes you appear to have written.
We’re also in possession of a tape recording. Also made by you, perhaps.”
More blood. It was still seeping out of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t actually apologizing to the police officer, though that’s what he thought, probably.
I was sorry the things I said made Forrest sound like a bad person.
I was sorry I hadn’t done a better job with the questions.
I was very, very sorry I had misled Regina when I first told her about Brenda’s plan to make it look like she had killed herself, sorrier than I could ever say that I’d let Regina believe Forrest was in on that plan.
It didn’t matter that I’d tried to explain, afterward. It was too late by then.
“It’s all my fault,” I said.
“Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” the police officer told me.
For a few minutes there, he had sounded like the principal at my school when you got called in for detention.
Now he was nice again. He sounded like someone who felt genuinely bad about all I’d been through.
He passed me a box of Kleenex. They’d probably taught him to do this at police school.
“I’ve got a daughter about your age,” he said. “We all know you’re young. We just need you to help us. Concerning this Brenda, for instance.”
“She’s a terrible person,” I said. “She said some awful things. I thought Regina should know about it. To protect her.”
“It won’t be difficult to locate Brenda,” he said. “We’ll be speaking with her, I have no doubt.”
This was the moment I could feel myself giving up.
There was no way of figuring out anymore which things to say to help Forrest and which ones would only get him in more trouble.
By this point, I’d already observed how some of the things I’d said, hoping to make him look better in the eyes of the police officer, ended up having the opposite effect.
Maybe it would be better to lay it all out. The main thing was that Forrest hadn’t killed Regina. It seemed to me at the time that maybe the best strategy was to explain the whole story so the police officer would understand.
“Brenda told Forrest that Regina would probably kill herself someday anyway,” I told him. “She told Forrest they should encourage her to do that.”
“And you told Mrs. Emerson about this?” Officer Reynolds said.
I nodded. “But Forrest wasn’t ever part of that,” I told the officer. “When Brenda said she wanted to kill Regina and make it look like she killed herself, Forrest didn’t go along with it. He got mad at her.”
“So Brenda and Mr. Emerson were carrying on some kind of relationship?” he asked me.
“I guess you could say that.”
“And where did this take place?”
“There was this patch of moss,” I said. Among other locations.
A deep wave of weariness came over me. More than that, exhaustion. I’d barely slept the night before. I had a hangover. Nothing I told Officer Reynolds came out the way I meant it to. Everything I said made it worse. I was still bleeding. Regina was dead.
I couldn’t try anymore. Didn’t care.
Officer Reynolds placed his hand on my shoulder. “You must be hungry,” he told me. “Have some M&M’s.
“And when you told Mrs. Emerson about Brenda’s idea that she and Mr. Emerson should ‘encourage’ Mrs. Emerson to take her own life, what did Mrs. Emerson have to say?” he asked me.
I had no response to offer him. The blood had soaked through the wad of toilet paper.
My blue jeans would have a stain in the back now.
Out in the hallway, my father, who always said the wrong thing even when he hadn’t had a drink, was probably telling one of the other officers about the time he and Howie stole their high school mascot, a stuffed bobcat, and set it on some railroad tracks.
For some crazy reason, I heard the voice of Teddy Ruxpin repeating that one dumb sentence, over and over.
Can you be my special friend? Jonathan, beside me on the service line, reminding me to breathe.
Madonna, singing about being touched for the first time.
“Just because Forrest and Brenda had sex,” I said, “that didn’t mean he wanted Regina to die.”
I’d said it now. Maybe I hoped that once the words were out, Officer Reynolds would stop asking all these questions. Maybe I thought I’d feel better to have it out and finished. But I only felt sicker.
“I think I have to throw up,” I told him.