Discovering the Body: A Novel

1 USUALLY CHARLIE AND I wake up together, but not this morning. When I open my eyes, I hear the shower and smell coffee. I find him standing at the kitchen sink, dark brown hair and beard, usually wild and bushy, still wet and close to his head. Two streaks mark the back of his shirt where he hurried drying himself. Parting the yellow curtains, he says, I couldn’t sleep. I dreamed the horses were back.

I join him to look where he’s looking, toward the fence line and the weedy pasture beyond and the empty house next door. When I murmur something about how he doesn’t often remember dreams, the curtain drops. Sometimes I do, he says, turning to meet my good-morning kiss. My arms encircle him, a hand caressing the broad muscles of his back. But I can’t ever seem to tell you before they vanish. I’m jealous of yours. All that color and plot. He smiles, then grows sober again. This was so real I woke up to the trumpeting sound horses make when they’re spooked. I still think I heard something out there.

Freud had a theory about horses in dreams.

Not these horses, he says.

We should call the realtor—

And certainly not today.

—see if they can’t mow the lawn over there. I insert two slices of bread into the toaster. The sign’s gone again, but as far as I know, the place is still for sale. I open the refrigerator. As I reach over things for the marmalade, a bottle of tomato juice falls forward and strikes the floor at my feet, the bright liquid exploding outward. For a split second a gaudy Rorschach of red lies suspended across the gray-and-white grid of ceramic tile, then resumes its flow, thick as pigment. It drips down the front of the white refrigerator, down the table legs.

Miraculously unbroken, the container has spun out and come to rest against the wall, and I think I should pick it up. But I don’t. I’m swallowing instead of breathing. Flecks of light dart across my vision as Charlie turns me gently away by the shoulders, toward the hallway. Come on, Linda, he says. Take a deep breath.

I cross the hall and the living room to pull open the front door, admitting a morning breeze full of dust and starch from the field across the road. This early a mist hangs above the corn, the mature plants streaked ivory in the muted light, the surface of the sky lightly scrubbed in, the color of smoke. I’m gasping for air. Dread mingles with relief and a vague third feeling I push away—the fear I’ve been fighting for months now, that there’s someone out there, watching for me to make an appearance. This is the closest I’ve come to letting my panic show in front of Charlie.

All done, he says from the doorway, a twisted, wrung-out rag in his hand. But the rapid thickening of his features, the look of repulsion with which he untwists the cloth, and the way he turns to fasten that same look of distaste upon me all give lie to his Everything’s good as new. There have been other moments lately when I’ve caught a flash of his anguish like this, as if there are two Charlies, one behind the scrim of the other. My mind slows, sees past him to the floor in front of the refrigerator. Let it go, he says. I let the finality of his tone end the matter and do the easy thing, go back to buttering the toast, cold by now. And the day goes back to starting like one that can’t end soon enough.

Charlie loves to speculate about weather, crops, and insects, but when it comes to people, he’s so matter-of-fact that talking about feelings can make him anxious and secretive. The sign on the side of his van says CHARLIE CARPENTER, BEEKEEPER—THE HONEY BARN, LINDEN GROVE, IOWA. My appreciation of what he does for a living has been fairly romantic, like the way I’m apt to gloss over the dollar value of pollination to American agriculture while remembering how he marks the backs of queens with dabs of bright paint, to keep track of them. Work stories he keeps to himself, as a rule, along with his worries. Like many Midwesterners he’s proud of his self-reliance, something we have in common. Then along comes something like a dream about horses, and the fact that he remembered it long enough to tell me.

Breakfast over, dishes in the sink, I catch him shifting his stare to the light pooled at the base of the refrigerator, where the tile’s still streaked with water from the cleanup. Just for a moment he studies the floor, then returns his gaze to my face. His mouth is soft. A quick kiss. About the horses, I say. What do you think?

I haven’t thought of her for a while. There’s no way out today. He runs his open palm over his forehead, combs his fingers through his damp hair. You okay?

I nod. But I’m not.

Two years ago I was staying here with Luci Cole and Charlie until the kitchen plumbing was installed in the loft of the warehouse I’d bought in town, the space that’s still my studio. Luci and I were old friends from art school. It was August 1, 1995. I’d been here three days, and I came home about five-fifteen that afternoon to help her start supper. It was Charlie’s habit to arrive about six. It was a hot day, as this one promises to be, and I rushed into this room thinking only about my thirst.

This morning Charlie and I will proceed to the usual things we do on a Friday in August, and not dwell too much on the circumstances of Luci’s death. She had her problems, like all of us, and neither of us knew her as well as we thought we did—a fact that sometimes lies between Charlie and me. I envied Luci when she was alive, and in a strange way, after everything I learned about her when she died, I still do. Not a day passes without my thinking about her.

For a while after Peter Garvey was convicted and sent to prison for killing Luci, I thought I might succeed in putting the awful experience behind me. But for months now, since late winter, I have frequently felt someone watching to see if I’m finally beginning to show signs of nervousness, or fear. Often, at such times, I’ll turn to look over my shoulder, and there he’ll be: a certain guy, tall, dark-eyed, with long hair pulled back into a rubber band at the nape of his neck. He always wears jeans and sandals. Though he appears easygoing when he moves, I become most aware of him when he stands motionless—aloof, but with the taut musculature of intense awareness. A week or two will pass without him, and then he’ll show up in the neighborhood of my studio two or three times in one day—crossing the street, checking out at Hy-Vee, waiting in line at the Shazam machine. His sudden appearance on the scene a few months ago is what made me start thinking about Luci’s murder all over again. Charlie thinks it’s the other way around, that I’m still fearful because of what happened and so I imagine I’m being watched. He tells me to forget about my suspicions. Even in a small town like this, he’ll point out, there are quite a few people I don’t know but whom I see every day, just in passing. They’re not all following me. This man isn’t either.

But then I’ll see him again—like now, this afternoon, waiting at the intersection of Main Street and Third. He stands perfectly still. His shoulders are broad for a man so slender, his shirt bright white in the sun. I wait for the quick flash of his sunglasses as he turns and sees me, and then without pause he faces away again as the light changes to green. He doesn’t cross the street. Instead he turns and walks toward me, and past—like he doesn’t see me, that’s what gives him away. As tall as I am, and the way I like to be noticed, I’m hard to miss. I know that. I’ve cultivated it, arms to my sides, head high.

I suppose I exhibit the inverse vanity of a woman who knows she’s not beautiful. Another woman might assume it was her appearance that attracted this man’s attention, perhaps staring him down to challenge his rude behavior, or at least asking around to find out who he is. Judy Allard, who runs the bookshop down the street, probably knows. I’ve seen him go in there. But I haven’t asked her. I’ve told no one except Charlie about this dilemma of mine. What I haven’t managed to tell him is that if I’m right, and this man is observing me, I’m pretty sure I know why.

I get my hair cut at Le’s Salon, a tiny basement establishment under the Grubstake Café, just around the block from my studio, where I do my printmaking and graphic-design work. I thought I might have my hair cut short today, but descending the cement stairs to Le’s, I suffer doubts even about that. Charlie prefers it long. Stopping at the top of the steep, cellarlike steps, I watch the stranger’s quickening stride as he continues down the street. He moves as if he’s sure of his destination, but then he slows, finally pausing to consider something in the bookstore window. He hasn’t looked back since we passed on the sidewalk just now. It’s always like this: He slows down when he sees me, averting his gaze—or hiding behind those mirrored sunglasses—then speeds up once his back is to me. Then stops down the line and waits.

I tense, fingering the ends of my hair.

Doug Le greets me with his usual: Ah, Garbo, let’s try something new today. Sylvie, his only employee, looks up from painting her nails and smiles. In a few moments I’m lathered and rinsed and in front of the mirror again, where Doug appraises my wet hair. I’m staring into the glass, when in the reflection of the room I see the longhaired guy cross behind me from the direction of the doorway, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, headed for the shelves of products, out of the mirror’s range.

Doug bows my head so my long hair hides my face. Great hair, he murmurs. He not only collects my prints—we trade art for haircuts—but also likes to praise what he calls my unconventional beauty. He doesn’t see broad shoulders, shovel-like hips, arms that could move a piano. My pale lashes and square jaw are abstract, malleable elements of design to him. Now his comb moves slowly down through the curtain of hair. With my face hidden and my eyes closed, I concentrate on his flattery while back there in the corner of the room, that guy is watching me. As Doug lifts my chin, directing me to watch in the mirror as he lifts and loops my wet hair, he proposes a short, asymmetrical cut, but I barely listen. I flinch at the sudden sound of rushing water as plump, kohl-eyed Sylvie begins to wash the stranger’s hair.

The sink is only a few feet away, in the corner of the room. Lying back for the shampoo, his long body stretches toward me close enough to touch—knees bent at right angles, neck cradled by the lip of the sink. He seems vulnerable. I’ve always seen him at a distance, his glance sliding over and past me with an expertness I’ve learned to practice on him, too. Now, horizontal, he can’t see me. Turning to Doug, who lowers his face near mine, I whisper, "Who is that guy?"

Russell Weber, from upstairs. Now at least he has a name. Over the blast of water, I can hear the man’s voice—indistinct, but I hear the word dreadlocks. I remember his long hair as lank and moth brown. Maybe I heard him wrong.

Uncross your legs, Linda, Doug says. As I square my shoulders so he can cut the first layer of hair straight across my shoulder blades, Weber and Sylvie laugh. Not many guys come into Doug Le’s salon, but judging by the easy conversation about his plans for the evening, Weber must be a regular here. Sylvie’s kneading the towel around his head, and just as he sits up, I turn to face him, my heart beating hard. But when she lifts the towel from his hair, it’s ropy, bleached bright as brass, and no more than four inches long.

For a moment I’m stunned, confused by the switch. This isn’t the man who’s been following me, the man I saw in the mirror. This man, Russell Weber, is the cook at the Grubstake upstairs. He’s looking straight at me, missing a beat before he says, I know you. Tabbouleh and cottage cheese, right?

Nodding, I try to return his smile even as my hands contract into fists under the long plastic cape. It takes me a moment to recover from my mistake, to realize that Weber must have come into the room when my head was down. I look at Sylvie. There was someone else who came in, after I did. In the mirror I search past myself into the space behind me. White shirt, jeans, long hair. I thought he was someone I knew.

No, says Sylvie, her inflection rising with uncertainty. She’s touching up Weber’s dark roots, separating clumps of hair with surgical-gloved fingers. I don’t think so. Stopping her hands, she pauses to reconsider. I don’t remember anybody. She shakes her head, satisfied.

Doug reaches for a bright-blue bottle, announcing some five-syllable ingredient beginning with hydro, and rubs it into my wet hair. Someone did come in and look at the products rack. I was watching him.

Really? says Sylvie.

He didn’t buy anything, says Doug, pulling long scissors out of his holster.

I do sort of remember, says Sylvie.

Did you know him? I ask.

Huh-uh, says Sylvie.

Never saw him before, says Doug.

Not even Russell Weber knows who he was.

Later, climbing the narrow steps to the street, I look right and left, but he’s nowhere to be seen. The shortest way to my studio is through the alley around to the right and across the parking lot, the way I came. Instead I walk to the far end of the block, around the Firstar Bank at the corner, and enter the parking lot from Hayward. It’s hot. I’m beginning to sweat.

As I cross the parking lot, I tilt my head back, shake my hair. I’m glad I left it long. I like to feel it move. See that? I wonder. But if he’s here, he’s out of sight. Approaching the rear end of the alley I avoided before, my heart thumps. I’ve been so scared lately of letting fear affect my judgment. Right now I can’t help heeding instincts this strong. Moving around the corner of the brick building, I see him, facing away from me. He’s leaning sideways, his left shoulder against the brick wall. I want this over with.

It’s cooler in the alley. From about ten feet behind him, I watch. My stature—I’m six-two—gives me a kind of routine confidence I often take for granted. But it’s posture, not size, that conveys power, so I draw myself up, unclasping my hands and relaxing my arms at my sides, instantly more in command. Staring at the backside of that guy so innocently leaning against the wall, waiting for me to appear at the other end of the alley, I feel a flutter in my throat, and the urge to laugh. I cough instead.

He twists his body toward the sound, and I move closer. He’s as tall as I am. He’s put his sunglasses in his chest pocket. His eyes are very dark brown. Even sunburned he pinkens slightly.

Waiting for someone? I ask him. All he has in his hand is a cigarette. He bites his lower lip but doesn’t speak. There’s a law against this, you know.

He looks perplexed, drops the cigarette in the dust, steps on it. He continues to stare at his right foot. Look— he begins finally, and after weeks of refusing to make eye contact, his gaze is so direct and unflinching my body feels the shock of it. He smiles a little, as if now that we have finally crossed some mysterious line, he’s relieved.

You have to stop this, I say calmly. He looks uncomfortable as I stare silently at his deep-set eyes, broad cheekbones, squared-off chin. You’ve been following me for months.

Why would I do that?

"Who are you?"

He steps forward, so close I can smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes. Bender, he says. John. I stare at his hand, extended toward me as if I might actually want to shake it. The wristbones are prominent. His nails are short and clean. Finally he lowers his hand. Look, he says gently. Linda—

The sound of my name makes my throat close, and I swallow with difficulty. You draw attention to yourself by watching me the way you do. You’re not very good at it.

I started to speak to you one day on the street, he says slowly, right after I moved to this neighborhood from the other side of town. He clears his throat. I suppose I’ve avoided you since then for your own sake, since I knew you would associate me with a terrible experience. He looks over his shoulder at the cars moving across the opening of the alley behind him, like he’s deciding something. Of course, I never could have forgotten you, after spending all those hours watching your face. You were at the center of things. I was an observer. He turns back to stare at me for long moments before he says, I’m a reporter. I covered the trial.

I don’t remember you.

"I wrote the original stories for The Linden Times." He pauses, probably hoping for a reaction. Peter Garvey still says he wasn’t working on Luci Cole’s car that afternoon.

He’s had his appeals. No one else ever believed him. Are you telling me you do?

I went to see him recently. He still insists you lied.

Do you think I did?

No.

I can’t look at Bender another moment, can’t listen to his offhand tone—I went to see him recently—as if the killer were a casual, mutual friend. I know my mistake even as I turn away from him. The asphalt surface of the parking lot is so hot it gives under my sandals as I hurry through the blazing sunlight to the back door of my studio. I make a mental note: The next time any detail even remotely connected to Luci’s death triggers this kind of take-flight reaction, I’ve got to stand and ask questions, not rush off like I’m the guilty one.

Inside my studio the phone is ringing, and I practically run the length of the long room to answer.

You sound out of breath.

"Ohhh … The relief I feel at hearing Charlie’s voice escapes like a sigh as I sink into the desk chair. I just came in."

Can you pick me up about five-thirty? The van’s in the shop until tomorrow.

What happened?

Charlie explains that a broken spring began banging against the underside of the wheel well on his way into town this morning. "Whomp," he says, every time I went round a corner, or a curve. I want to interrupt and tell him, I just talked to that man who ‘s been watching me, but my lips stick to my teeth and my heart still pounds. So I just listen, taking comfort from the timbre of Charlie’s deep voice. While he complains about how much the bill will be for the new springs, I pick up a pencil and idly sketch the shape of John Bender’s head, the frank gaze of those dark eyes, the strong jawline. I’m biting my lower lip with concentration.

Finally Charlie is silent, and I look up, focusing on the sign hanging inside my plate-glass window—lime-green neon script, LINDA GARBO DESIGNS, in an oval of pink and lavender. Charlie? My voice trembles.

It’s getting worse, isn’t it, your anxiety. The way he says it, it’s not a question. What exactly happened this morning? You were in a bad state there for a few minutes, standing at the front door. I didn’t like the way you were having trouble breathing. You didn’t think you saw somebody out there, did you?

Of course not. All summer Charlie has been pressuring me to seek help. He’s been stopping by my studio a couple of times a week to take me out for coffee at the Grubstake Café, or to walk around the neighborhood with me, but the man who has turned out to be John Bender never materialized for Charlie to see. I’m beginning to confront my fears, I say quietly.

I’m worried about you.

I know you are. But I’m not losing my mental health, Charlie. You know better than that. A bitter note has sounded in my voice, and I go on quickly, using a gentler tone. You think about her, too. I know you do. Do you realize this morning’s the first time you’ve told me one of your dreams?

Dreams, Charlie says flatly, as if the word came out of nowhere and doesn’t belong in this conversation.

I remember that trumpeting sound, too, from the day Luci died. I’m sure I do. The sound of horses, spooked. I’m working hard to remember everything that happened that day.

I didn’t give that dream another thought, after I mentioned it to you, he says. I’ve had other things on my mind. I wish I could see his face as silence falls here in my studio, and at his end, too, where I can imagine the cloying sweetness of slow, silent honey dripping into cylindrical ripening tanks. Finally he says, "It was a nightmare, Linda, a bad memory trying to come back. I’m not about to give it much of my conscious attention, and you shouldn’t either. You only hurt yourself, going back to that time, over and over. Do you know how often, how literally, you look over your shoulder? There’s a name for that."

Paranoia is when you look over your shoulder and there’s never anybody there, Charlie. I’m staring at my sketch of John Bender’s face.

Pick me up at five-thirty. I hear a door closing at Charlie’s end, and voices. He says he has a customer.

But I can’t let him go yet. That man was in the alley across the parking lot again today. He was watching for me. I finally did what you’ve been urging me to do, Charlie. I talked to him. Turns out he moved into the neighborhood about the time I started noticing him. He says he’s a reporter for the local paper.

Well then, it will be easy enough to check him out. We’ll talk about it at supper. And maybe you can manage to explain to me why it took you four or five months to walk up to this guy and ask him who he is. Can I assume you got his name?

Yes. Why are you so angry, Charlie? I thought you’d be pleased.

I’m not angry. I have to get back to work.

I repeat that I’ll pick him up at five-thirty. He suggests we go for pizza tonight, as we often do on Fridays, and I agree, all the while adding detail to the reporter’s face. I sharpen the jawline, deepen the brow a little, while Charlie is saying, It’s a bad day to be without the van. I’m restless. Call before you come by. I might leave a little early and walk home.

Linden Grove is a small community. It takes only forty minutes to walk from The Honey Barn on the north side to our house, which is about a mile west of town along the county road. From my studio it’s not that far. I used to walk it a lot, for the exercise, but I’ve gotten lazy. Driving out there that afternoon, two years ago today, I was sorry I wasn’t on foot so it would take longer to get there. On the seat next to me was a bag of groceries from Hy-Vee—yogurt, Shredded Wheat, three chicken breasts—and the receipt, of course, printed with the date of purchase and the time—5:05 P.M. It was sprinkling. I turned on my windshield wipers.

I was really thirsty as I finally reached the crest of the hill at the town limits and started down the road’s curving approach to the house. Descending the hill, I could see the house for a quarter of a mile, the valley before me rich with color. Staying with Luci and Charlie had turned out to be very uncomfortable for me, and despite my thirst I stopped my car on the shoulder of the gravel road to delay my arrival. Luci and I had argued that morning, which had made me determined to move into the loft over my studio as soon as possible. So during the afternoon I had gone to see Ben Webb, the plumber, in his shop. I persuaded him to substitute some used kitchen cabinets we found in his cluttered warehouse for the ones I’d wanted, which were back-ordered. That way he would be able to install the sink the next day so I could arrange the final building inspection and move in. Luci was expecting me to stay with her for another week, at least. I was uneasy, thinking of what I’d say to explain my change in plans.

From my vantage point on the road I had a tree-framed view of the farmhouse, its wood-shingled roof pitched like a book turned onto its pages, and the neighbor’s five horses immobile in the verdant shade of the hillside beyond. The very air was lit by that golden green that follows a storm, when the sun breaks through. The rain had turned the ditch along the road into a stream, a shiny wire of light.

I was in no hurry to get there. Peter Garvey, Luci and Charlie’s only close neighbor and the caretaker of the horses, was probably in the house with her. Sure enough, a few minutes later I saw him walk out the front door as I was rounding the bend at the top of the hill. A row of honeysuckle bushes blocked my view for about a hundred feet. As I continued on and could see the house again, he had slid himself under Luci’s old Chevy Nova. The front of the car was elevated, and Peter’d been working on it off and on for the three days I’d been staying there—giving the place a low-rent look for which I resented him.

When I arrived at the house, I said, Hi, Peter, to be polite, as I walked around the car to the front door. His head and shoulders were underneath the car. He wagged his foot in response. Inside, the living room was dark because the shades were pulled against the heat, but I could see into the kitchen, and my thirst drew me forward. The light slanting through the window straight ahead made me squint. There was an odor, sort of like potatoes rotting.

Luci lay sprawled, her T-shirt pulled up to show the pale skin above her belly, her peach-colored shorts silky-looking, her legs bowed open doll-like at a vulgar angle. There was a smear of blood under one staring eye, but the long wound across her throat gaped where an awful blood vessel protruded—hollow and already bone-colored, bloodless, like a curved piece of macaroni.

I tilted away from the body and felt my left shoulder touch the wall, felt my stomach lift and settle, leaving a terrible pressure in my throat. My mind reeled. A roar in my ears made my eyes open wide. I had to be alert, had to look at Luci, get the bag of groceries out of my hands, crouch and touch her. The flesh was warm, but her tongue was fallen back into her open mouth. Blood has a familiar smell. My throat constricted so suddenly that I gasped, and I heard that roar again. The table legs and the pine floor were spattered with blood, and the knife lay over an odd, circular smear, blade still shiny. I reached, but then I stopped myself and left the knife where it was.

Listening intently, straining to hear, I found myself on my feet, the phone in my hand, my fingers finding 911, my mind fastening on the best words to start with—I just found my friend, Luci Cole—in a voice barely loud enough for the dispatcher to hear. As I answered her questions, I moved across the living room toward the front door until I came to the end of the phone cord’s tether. Through the coarse canvas of the screen, Luci’s faded Chevy came into view. The voice on the phone told me to stay inside until help arrived.

I went all the way to the front door,