The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes Part 20

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Summer 1978 Eve put on denim cutoffs and a white tank top, then checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her hair almost reached her shoulders now, and the humidity was making a dark frizzy mess out of it. She pulled it back, securing it with a long barrette at the nape of her neck.

She was only taking one cla.s.s-Psychology 101-during the summer, but her financial-aid application had been approved and she would be able to take several more in the fall, with an eye to becoming a full-time psych major the following year. As it turned out, there was no school of social work at UVA, but she was not as devastated by that news as she would have predicted. Her confused feelings about Tim marred her desire to follow in his footsteps.

Marian had provided her with not only a transcript from a high school in Oregon, but SAT scores that rivaled those earned by CeeCee Wilkes. The doc.u.ments appeared as if by magic one morning, much the way her birth certificate and driver's license had appeared at Naomi's. Eve asked no questions. She simply made copies of them and filled out her application for school.

She loved her cla.s.s, reading far beyond what was required, devouring books on Freud and Jung and Erikson, and she'd completed the main textbook by the end of the second week. She read over breakfast in the morning and during her break at the diner and while she rocked Cory to sleep. She'd intended to be invisible in the cla.s.sroom-she had no desire to stand out anywhere in her life-but she quickly became the professor's clear favorite. Her cla.s.smates didn't seem resentful in the least. Instead, they turned to her as a leader, asking her, "What was yesterday's a.s.signment?" or "What's the difference between the sensorimotor stage and the pre-operational stage?"

She knew all about the sensorimotor stage, since she was witnessing it at home every day. Cory would try to grab the mobile hanging above the crib, and she delighted in turning the switch for the overhead light on and off, on and off. She could play a game of peekaboo for hours. On the down side, she was starting to show signs of separation anxiety, crying whenever Eve left for school or work. It was a normal stage of development, Eve knew from her studies, but she was awed by the knowledge that she'd become that huge and irreplaceable person in Cory's life: her mother.

Downstairs, she found Marian in the kitchen making tuna salad, while the twins colored and Cory supervised everyone from her bouncy chair. Bobbie's little girl, Shan, was in day camp for much of the summer, and Eve knew Marian was happy to have one less child to care for. The week before, she'd announced that she was retiring from the day-care business, although, she was quick to a.s.sure Eve, she would still watch Cory while Eve was in school.

"I want to take painting lessons," Marian had said. "Maybe cello lessons. I've always had a yearning to play the cello, if these gnarled old fingers will let me."

Eve lifted Cory out of the bouncy chair and spun her around, and the little girl squealed and giggled, the sound as light and tinkling as wind chimes.

"Do you want your lunch?" Eve asked her. She lowered Cory into her high chair. "What would you like? Peas? Carrots? Chicken?"

Cory grinned her toothless grin. She was a skinny little thing, though very long: ninetieth percentile, according to the pediatrician. "She's a natural ectomorph," he said when Eve asked if her low weight was a problem. "We should all be that lucky."

Marian spread the tuna salad on white bread for the boys. "There's mail for you on the table," she said.

Eve picked up the small envelope. The only mail she ever received at Marian's was from the university, but this looked more like a wedding invitation, the envelope thick and cream-colored. Her name and address were typewritten, but there was no return address, only an Oklahoma City postmark. A little unnerved, she opened the envelope and gasped.

Inside were three folded hundred-dollar bills and a small typed note. For the baby, For the baby, it read. it read.

She dropped the money as if it burned her, then looked at Marian. "Is this from you?" she asked.

Marian bent over to pick up the bills and set them on the table. "Of course not." She looked at the note. "I'd just give you money. I wouldn't mail it."

Eve thought of the customers she'd met at the diner who knew she had a child, and of Lorraine, with whom she'd become good friends but who couldn't possibly spare three hundred dollars. She thought of her psychology professor, who admired and encouraged her and who knew she had a baby to care for. But Oklahoma City?

And then she thought of the last time she'd received unexpected money in the mail.

Marian read her mind. "Cory's father?" she asked.

"I don't know." Eve sank into a chair, touching the money she'd imagined Tim had held in his own hands. She still looked for Tim in every white van she saw. When she was being honest with herself, she knew she was still waiting for him as well. She wanted to see him, to have him explain away the idea that Bets had been his girlfriend. She still talked to him in her mind as she waited for sleep, telling him what she was learning, knowing he'd be happy for her that she was finally in school. Sometimes she dreamed about him. They were good dreams-not like the nightmares about Genevieve that continued to jolt her awake in the middle of the night. Some days she could barely remember what he looked like. Other days, she found him in the face of every man she saw.

She felt happy these days, yet there was always an undercurrent of sadness just below the surface. Sometimes she would feel it there and not even know its source. Then she would remember: A dead woman. A kidnapped baby. She couldn't even list the charges that would be brought against her if she were ever caught. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them now.

"Spend the money on Cory," Marian said, touching the bills where they rested on the table. "It doesn't matter where it came from. It's hers now."

At work that evening, two police officers came into the diner. It wasn't unusual to see cops there, and Eve's heart no longer skipped a beat when she spotted a few of them seated among the customers. The first time she saw a policeman walk through the front door, though, she'd dropped the coffeepot she was carrying, sending coffee and shards of gla.s.s all over the floor. Nothing like attracting attention. But the officer was only there for coffee and pie, and if he wondered why her hands shook when she served him, he didn't say anything about it.

This evening, though, the police officers looked like they meant business. Eve watched as they approached an older woman sitting at the counter. She listened in as they arrested her for buying beer for minors, slapping handcuffs on her and hustling her out the door. The woman reminded her a little of Marian, and watching the cops lead her away made her feel fiercely protective of the woman who was doing so much for her by risking her own neck. She would never, ever, do anything to put Marian in harm's way.

One hot morning in August, Eve was upstairs getting a hat for Cory, so that she and Marian could take the baby and the twin boys to the park. When she walked back into the kitchen, Cory was in the high chair, Marian cleaning the little girl's hands with a washcloth. Cory saw Eve and pulled her hand from Marian's to reach toward her.

"Mama!" she said.

Eve caught her breath. For weeks now, Cory had been babbling to herself, saying "mamamamama" among other things, but this was the first time she seemed to equate the two syllables with her.

Marian laughed. "You look like you've seen a ghost," she said to Eve.

She had. Genevieve. Genevieve.

"That's right, Cory," she said, moving forward to lift the little girl out of the high chair. "You're so smart."

"Mama, Mama, Mama," Cory repeated as Eve tugged the hat over her red curls.

"Okay, let's go," Eve said, and she held Cory's hands as they walked outside. It wouldn't be long before she was walking on her own. Eve pulled the stroller from the shed at the side of the house and Cory tried to climb into it herself.

"She's going to be into everything soon," Marian said, taking a hand of each of the boys.

"I know," Eve said. "And I noticed there's an outlet in the bathroom that isn't covered with a safety plug."

"Where?" Marian frowned.

"You know. There's only one outlet."

"Above the sink?"

"Uh-huh."

Marian laughed. "She's a smart little girl, but I think it's going to be a couple of years before she can climb up on the bathroom counter."

"I guess." Eve laughed at herself. She was growing into an overprotective mother. She saw danger everywhere.

Alison and Vicki, two of the young mothers who frequented the park, were already pus.h.i.+ng their toddlers on the swings when Eve and Marian arrived with the children. Alison's husband was a medical student, and Vicki was working on a teaching degree. Alison had a new baby and she wore the sling Eve had made her as a baby gift.

"The sling is fantastic!" she said as Eve slipped Cory into one of the bucket swings.

"I'm glad you like it." Eve leaned over to peer at Alison's infant. "How's he doing?" She could talk diapers and formula with the best of them now. Alison reported on the baby's sleeping and eating habits, and Marian joined in the discussion from a nearby bench.

"Did you hear they finally executed that girl?" Vicki asked, during a lull in the conversation.

"Oh, I know," Alison said. "I saw it in the paper this morning. Good riddance."

Eve's muscles went tight. What girl? What girl? she wanted to ask but didn't dare. she wanted to ask but didn't dare.

"What girl?" Marian did it for her.

"The sister of those guys who kidnapped that governor's wife last year."

Eve kept her eyes on Cory's hair, curling out from beneath the hat, startling red in the summer sun. She pictured Tim counting out the three hundred-dollar bills, licking the envelope sealed. She thought of him getting the news that his sister was dead.

"Why would you say good riddance?" Marian asked, an edge to her voice.

"Marian, you're such a liberal diehard." Vicki laughed, and Eve felt like smacking her. These women knew nothing of how Marian had lost her husband.

"She was a murderer," Alison said.

"A junkie," Vicki added.

"A junkie?" Eve repeated.

"Uh-huh," Vicki said. "She broke into this lady's house and killed her and her daughter, then stole her jewelry to pay for drugs."

"That's completely wrong," Eve said.

The three women looked at her. Marian's face was the only one that held a warning.

"I mean," Eve said, "that's not what I'd heard. I heard she killed a photographer after he raped her."

Alison frowned. "I don't know where you got that," she said. "Maybe you're thinking of someone else."

"The woman she killed was a photographer," Vicki acknowledged.

"That's true," Alison said.

"Could you have misunderstood what you read?" Eve couldn't stop herself. "Could the photographer have been at-"

"No," Alison interrupted her. "I read it less than an hour ago."

"I didn't read it," Vicki said, "but Charlie read it to me while I was getting dressed and it said she robbed a woman-a photographer-in Chapel Hill."

"To get money for drugs," Alison piped in.

"Cory said 'mama' this morning." Marian made a lame attempt to hijack the conversation.

"Cory, is that right?" Alison leaned over to speak to Cory when the little girl swung toward them. "Did you say 'mama,' sweetie?"

Eve rarely read the paper anymore. The kidnapping had faded from the news, and her psychology books took precedence. Now, though, she wanted to race home and find the story.

"Oh!" Marian suddenly got to her feet. "I just remembered this is the morning I was supposed to wait for the plumber."

Eve stared at her, perplexed, before she realized that Marian was rescuing her.

"Oh, right," she said. "I'll go back with you."

"You just barely got here," Alison said.

"The plumber said he'd come between eight and noon," Marian said, "and you know how it is. If I don't go back now, it'll be the one time he comes at eight." She chuckled. "You don't need to come with me, Eve."

"I think I should." Eve lifted a protesting Cory out of the bucket and set her down in the stroller. "I don't want Cory to get burned."

Vicki laughed. "It's eight in the morning," she said. "And that hat's wide enough to protect an elephant."

Eve barely heard her as she and Marian collected the twins, and they bade goodbye to the women and started home.

"Did you read the paper this morning?" Eve asked Marian, as soon as they were out of earshot.

Marian shook her head.

"Let's go to the minimart." Eve turned the corner toward the little market. "I can't wait two more blocks to read it."

She bought the paper while Marian remained outside with the children. Back on the street, she found the article at the bottom of the front page.

"Andrea Gleason," Eve read, "the sister of Timothy and Martin Gleason, who are allegedly responsible for kidnapping North Carolina Governor Irving Russell's wife last year, was executed yesterday at the North Carolina Correctional Inst.i.tution for Women. Gleason was convicted in the 1975 murder of photographer Gloria Wilder of Chapel Hill and her thirteen-year-old daughter. She broke into the Wilder home, killed the mother and daughter, then stole fifty thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Wilder, who was found in her bedroom, had been shot four times; her daughter, shot once in the head, was found in the hallway."

Eve looked up. "Oh, my G.o.d," she said.

"Go on," Marian nodded toward the paper. "What else does it say?"

Eve began reading again. "On November 24 last year, Genevieve Russell, the governor's wife, was kidnapped after teaching a cla.s.s at UNC. The Gleason brothers negotiated unsuccessfully for their sister's release. They have not been found, nor has Mrs. Russell, who was pregnant at the time of her kidnapping. Governor Russell had no comment today on Andrea Gleason's execution, although sources close to the governor's mansion speculated that he was instrumental in getting Andrea Gleason's execution moved to an earlier date."

Eve looked up from the paper. "He lied to me about everything," she said.

Marian nodded. "It sure looks that way."

They started walking again, this time in silence, and for the first time, Eve felt real anger building inside her at Tim. She'd been an inexperienced sixteen-year-old, an easy mark. Bets had been in on it, no doubt, the reason for her easy acceptance of CeeCee when she waited on them at the restaurant. Maybe Tim had taken CeeCee there to show Bets how little a threat she was-a young girl still wearing Alice in Wonderland hair down to her b.u.t.t. She imagined Tim saying to Bets, We'll get her to babysit the governor's old lady so you don't have to get involved. We'll get her to babysit the governor's old lady so you don't have to get involved. He'd probably kissed her then. He'd probably kissed her then. She's dispensable, babe, She's dispensable, babe, he would have added. he would have added. You're not. You're not. Sonofa Sonofa b.i.t.c.h. b.i.t.c.h.

"I don't think I've ever been this furious," Eve said, her hands tight around the handle of the stroller.

She felt Marian's arm slip around her shoulders. "Good," Marian said. "It's about time."

The fury clawed at her for the rest of the day. She punched the pillows on her bed and stormed around the house as she vacuumed, cursing under her breath and stomping on the floor. By the time she went to bed, though, she felt different. She would no longer be held captive by every white van she saw. She could stop waiting. Stop hoping. A sort of peace came over her as she drifted off to sleep: Tim had finally set her free.

Chapter Twenty-Four.