Francy cracked a couple of cold Algonquins and sat down in my guest chair with a huge sigh. I was whacking away at a piece of kindling with my hatchet and making a big racket. I stopped and looked up.
“Is this noise going to upset Beth?” I said. Francy just shook her head. The baby, still wrapped in her snuggly and leaning against her mother’s chest, was watching me with wide open eyes. I was amazed at how quiet she’d been throughout all the fuss.
“Does that kid have a larynx? Does she ever use it?”
“Oh, she uses it all right,” Francy said. “She just never cries when you’re around. Maybe you send out soothing psychic waves or something.”
“More likely she recognizes that if she started, I’d join in,” I said. Babies scare the crap out of me, and Francy knew it. She was always trying to convince me that there was nothing to be frightened of. That they were safe, really. But I still refused to hold Beth. I knew what would happen. I’d panic and drop her. Her skull would split open like a ripe melon and then I would have to kill myself. It was a kind of anti-maternal vertigo, and there was no getting around it.
“She will start yelling if I don’t feed her, though,” Francy said, opening her shirt and waving a breast, like an icecream cone, in her daughter’s face. “It was hard to breastfeed at Carla’s,” she said. “As soon as I started, Carla would get real uncomfortable. She’d go red and sort of fidget, like she was itching to go get the holy water and sprinkle it all over me.”
“Maybe she was afraid of how it would affect Eddie,” I said.
“Oh, Eddie’s seen it before. He’s over at our place all the time. It doesn’t bother him any.”
“I’ll bet Carla doesn’t know that.”
“She’s such a damned priss,” Francy said.
“Well, she’s religious. Plenty of religious folks are hypermodest, but that doesn’t necessarily make her a priss, Francy.”
Francy looked up at me, her face oddly blank.
“There’s things you don’t know,” she said. “Take it from me. Priss is being kind.” The blank look scared me, so I changed the subject. Beth was grunting wetly, making the kind of sounds I make when I’m knocking back an Algonquin on a hot day.
“What does that feel like?” I said. I’d always wondered, but the only other person I’d known well enough to ask was a girl I went to high school with who had a baby in grade eleven. We were too young to talk about that kind of stuff, then. Not too young to have sex, though. When I asked her, in a rash moment, why she hadn’t used a condom, she told me that she hadn’t known the guy well enough to feel comfortable asking him.
“Breastfeeding feels like heaven,” Francy said. “It’s sort of sexual, but not. Like she’s pulling my soul out, if you know what I mean.” I didn’t. Motherhood. The great mystery. Count me out.
I finished getting the fire going and joined Francy at the table.
“You ready to talk about last night yet?” I said.
“Not really, but I will if you want me to.”
“Why are you so scared of the police?”
She laughed. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” she said. “You’re the one who insists on hiding in the bathroom to smoke a joint. You’re scared of them, too.”
“Yeah, but possession isn’t the issue here, Francy.”
“Look, I didn’t shoot John, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s why I can’t understand why you’re afraid to talk to them.”
“John wasn’t dead when Eddie and I left. I’m sure the kid didn’t hit him that hard, just enough to knock him out. We left him snoring on the kitchen floor. The only reason we got out of there is that I knew when he woke up he’d be loaded for bear. I didn’t want either of us to be there.”
“So who do you think shot him?”
Francy looked exasperated, and there were tiny white marks around her mouth. Maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her so much, I thought. But still, her icy calm was getting to me.
“I don’t know. There were plenty of people mad at him. There always were. John collected enemies like he collected trashed-out cars. He owed poker money all over the place.”
“So maybe you could give the cops a list.”
“No way. The point is, Polly, that I’m at the top of the list and you know it.”
“Aren’t you eager to find out who did it?”
“Oh, I’m eager, all right. I’ll go right up to him and shake his hand, whoever he is. But I don’t want to sit in a jail cell while the cops find him, Polly.”
This was a new Francy, one I’d never seen before. In the time we’d known each other, she had always defended him, always underplayed the harm he did her. I stared at her for a long moment, and she looked back defiantly.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “The penny dropped, eh?”
“When?”
“When he started coming home smelling of perfume, just after Beth was born. When he went out for poker games that I found out later never happened. You know. I could handle the odd smack in the face, but there was no way I could handle not being the most important thing in his life.”
“Geez, Francy. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted it to be not true, I guess. Telling you about it would have made it true, you know?”
“So, who do you think he was seeing?” I said.
“God only knows. A stripper at Kelso’s, maybe. Could’ve been anybody. He wasn’t picky. He married me, didn’t he?”
Francy had never talked like that before. The “poor little me” thing set off alarm bells in my head. It had to be an act. For the cops, maybe, and she was trying it out on me.
“So, back to last night,” I said.
“What about it?”
“After Eddie gave you the book back, what did you guys talk about?”
“What?”
“I mean, Eddie said you had tea and talked. What about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The usual. His parents. School. Why?”
“How many beers did you give him, Francy? Was he drunk when John came in?”
Francy stood up, her eyes hot and angry. Beth’s mouth slipped off her nipple with a little popping sound, like a cork coming out of a bottle.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh, come on. There were beer bottles all over the place. No teapot in sight. If John was staggering drunk when he came in, and Eddie conked him out with a wrench, he wouldn’t have had time to down the twelve or so I saw smashed in your kitchen, would he? I know you didn’t shoot John, so why not tell the truth?”
Francy actually snarled at me. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, Polly? Nancy fucking Drew? So we had a couple of beers. So what? The poor little guy never gets any fun at home. None at all. It’s Jesus, Jesus, Jesus from morning to night. What’s the harm in a couple of beers?”
“None,” I said. “None at all. That’s what I’m saying. John is dead, honey. The police don’t care about a sixteen-year-old drinking beer. They’ll see that there’s no teapot, though. No tea. They’ll smell a lie