Chapter 16 Roseate Spoonbill #5
“Yes.”
“Reenie! How dare you ask a thing like that?”
“I just do,” I said. “I’m very daring. Fortune favors the brave.”
I could hear, rather than see, her grin.
“Well, I had very specific rules. I was never with a man I found repulsive. I was never with a man I found unkind. I wasn’t attracted to any of them.
Ever. But I could do it once a week for a lot of money.
” She drew in a deep breath and sketched in the subscription plan I already knew something about: six clients, one hour a week each, three weeks a month, pay whether or not you chose to play, all special requests double or triple the price.
“One of them, we had sex twice in a year. One, we never did. He couldn’t. He just really wanted . . .”
“A woman’s total attention, right?”
“Right. Loneliness is the greatest aphrodisiac.”
“That was one guy’s theory. We don’t have to talk about this forever, or even ever again. Just this one time about all of
it. As if you were someone I was really investigating, not my friend. I want you to promise to answer every question I ask.”
She started to shake her head no, out of either reluctance or reserve, or both. “But you said this was down to me because
I never gave up. You said that. Now you want me to give up?”
“I want to put it behind me and you want me to go back there.” Her shadow ran fingers up through her tumult of dark hair,
no longer the chaste, controlled court coif. “Okay. Quick, untraceable money. And revenge. I wanted men to pay me a ton of
money to pretend I liked them. They would brag and strut and posture. They thought I was really impressed and just wished
I could be with them all the time!” There was an unpleasant pleasure in her voice. “They were like him. The good reverend,
the lying, cheating, stealing, preening, morally superior minister who took everything from Ruth and gave her nothing.”
“Do you hate men, Felicity? I could get it if you did.”
“No. I don’t. I hate a couple of men. In prison, I thought, if I ever got out, I would find a good man of my own someday.
Like you have. I want Sparrow to have a real father. Maybe I’d have another child.”
“That must have been painful, that wish, at that time, I mean.”
“Not really. I think it kept me going.”
“Do you regret anything?”
“Sometimes, I regret everything.” She sat there for a while, and then, suddenly, eerily, she took my hand. I liked the new
Felicity, easy with hugs, generous with gestures, but I still wasn’t used to her. “One thing I don’t regret is Sparrow. Whatever
I did, it was for Sparrow.”
“But Ruth would say that what she did, she did for you?”
“Oh, Reenie, I hate Ruth for it.” Something else was coming, though, and I counted backward, the way Nell and I used to do:
three, two, one . . . “And still, there is a part of me that understands it. She gave up her spirit. Her science. Everything
her own father taught her. She had to nod and smile, yes, of course, evolution was only a theory. She did it for love and
he wiped his shoes on that love. She finally lost her mind. She thought she was saving me and Sparrow from men who could have
whatever they wanted.” Felicity asked me then, “Would you stop at anything to protect your children?”
“Yes,” I said. “I would stop before I hurt someone.”
In the next second, though, I realized that no, I would not stop. If I had to, I would do wrong. If anyone threatened Nelia
or the twins, and if there was no other way, I would kill the person. I told Felicity as much and admitted that I’d then be
no better than Ruth. In passing I wondered, what did Roman Wild think about all this? He probably felt lucky to still be alive.
He easily could have been next.
Ruth’s acts were monstrous. And yet, as Felicity reminded me when she asked about my own limits, what Ruth did, she did for
love. Ruth, oh Ruth, why could you see no other way? And how was it that no one ever noticed as you imploded? Did no one care?
Or was it simply too gradual? Ruth could not have been the first eccentric teacher ever to walk a pea-soup-colored hallway
as her fine mind fell apart.
Hell is murky, I thought.
“And, okay, I never understood. Why didn’t you say anything at the trial in your own defense? Didn’t you think that made you
look guilty?”
“I absolutely did not,” she said.
What Sam said so long ago was correct. Until it was too late, Felicity literally put her faith in common sense. Hadn’t she
pleaded not guilty? She had. She was telling the truth. Would she say she was not guilty if she was, in fact, guilty? Hadn’t
she said that she wasn’t there? She was telling the truth. Hadn’t she already pointed out that she didn’t know what happened?
She was telling the truth. This was entirely in keeping with her personality. She was telling the truth. Why should she have
to repeat it?
The way she saw it, it would look even more suspicious if she kept yammering on about her innocence. You couldn’t prove you
hadn’t done something!
Sam pleaded with her.
Any other person, he said, would be in a plane dragging a banner that read, I Did Not Do It. But Felicity didn’t know the
rule of courtroom advocacy, which was to state your case, get other people to state your case for you, and finally, state
your case again. How would she know? She didn’t watch crime dramas or read them. She’d never done anything that needed a legal
defense, including now.
As the trial proceeded, Felicity realized that the physical evidence or lack of it, all the mistakes, all the erroneous beliefs,
all that reflected back on her. She could have called a halt right then. She could have asked for time to tell the whole truth.
But even if she were believed, in that truth was danger, and not just for herself. So she was trapped. She said nothing.
Her eyes squeezed shut, Felicity whispered, “I was one hundred percent wrong. What a fool. What a fucking conceited fool I am. Oh, Reeno, when I let myself go there, I feel like I’m dying.
Because would it have made a difference?
What if it would have changed one person’s mind? I was trying not to make it worse.
“And afterward, I thought, what if I just said, ‘Wait, wait, oh wait, I think I’ve given you the wrong impression. Because
I actually don’t know what happened. I just found him, that’s all.’ What if you were on a jury? Wouldn’t you say, ‘Well, this
changes everything! All she did was stumble across this dead guy, and sure, she knew him, and sure, it was in her apartment . . .
but gosh, Miss Wild, sorry for the mix-up’? If you were, say, a prosecutor, wouldn’t you have believed me?”
Felicity had followed her misguided trust in fair play down a one-way street straight into a brick wall.
There was nothing more to discuss. I decided to say something wise and compassionate, but in keeping with the ways of human
beings, settled for something selfish.
“Okay, this is crazy. I sound like I’m in sixth grade. Ruth told me that you used to laugh at me behind my back. She said
you never respected me. I was just the neighbor, there when you needed her.”
The last closed door between us slammed open. Felicity rested her forehead on her hands. For a moment, the only silence was
our own. Together, we listened to a soundtrack of car alarms, barking dogs, a mother bellowing that this was the very last
warning, the rumble of the ice machine, proof that so much of what happened all around us happened unobserved.
“Well, if I ever felt that way, you’d have known it.” Felicity got up and faced away from me, her hands kneading her lower
back. “I’m the one who relied on you, Reenie. You were my human credential. And that thing, that night at the reservoir? I
did that because . . .”
“You did that because you are good.”
“I did that because you are good,” she said.
And there we were, events of the world having reshuffled the deck so that my former icon was my current acolyte.
What I knew about human nature could have filled an eyedropper.
And speaking of stupid and conceited, what kind of nutcase would step into the house with a murderer who could be in Puerto Rico by the time anyone found my body?
This long and newsy chat between friends would not end with police cars and handcuffs.
Every time I thought of Ruth, my mouth dried up and my heart raced like a rabbit.
Back when I asked Ross, did people really change, I never thought of Ruth.
Was Ruth the icy executioner always there, inside the Ruth I’d grown up with? What about the rest of us? Did we put on civilized
behavior like a disguise to hide our claws?
Felicity walked back inside to check on Sparrow. I heard water running and a few muffled notes of conversation. Felicity came
back outside, drying her hands. “She’s reading The Forbidden Library. She says she picks out all her own books, mostly grown-up books. I wish I had been that kind of kid who picked out my own
books when I was ten.”
“You did,” I reminded her. “You picked out mine, too.”
Felicity sighed. “With the approval of Ruth and the good pastor.”
Not too many minutes later, we’d run out of talk. We fell asleep side by side on the bed.
The next morning, we decided to go to a grocery store. Felicity whispered, “We have to make sure we have truly organic food.
We can’t give her frozen pizza again, I feel like I’m sinning against some sort of religious doctrine, and I don’t mean the
Starbright kind.”
In the brassy dazzling light of a tropical morning, we drove a few blocks to one of those eerie grocery stores where oranges are the size of grapefruits and grapefruits are the size of melons and there are giant photos on banners of families prepping chopped pineapple and shredded coconuts for the sheer animal joy of it.
Sparrow picked out hummus and carrots, all-organic mac and cheese with wheat pasta, raw almonds, and raisins, and she asked if she could have juice instead of water “just this time.”