“Don’t get your feelings hurt,” Polly called after her, “if she doesn’t talk much. Didn’t say a word on the ride home.”
Casey disappeared up the stairs, and Bess poured herself a glass of wine. “I’m sure that was hard on her,” she said.
Polly let the dog in and went straight to her glass, taking a large gulp. “I’ll say.”
“Hard on you, too,” Bess said, taking her own, more judicious sip.
Polly shrugged. “Norah’s just so damn stubborn. Wouldn’t cave about that damn list even to her own daughter. She says it’s for the best—and maybe it is; who knows what she’s gotten herself mixed up in—but to sit there in front of her daughter and tell her she won’t do what needs to be done so she can come home. I mean, even if just to her face, just to comfort her somewhat. It just . . .” Polly shrugged and sank into one of the bar stools lined up along the island.
“I remember how stubborn she is.” Bess laughed, trying to lighten the mood, to distract her.
Polly looked at her quizzically, like she was just remembering that they’d once been good friends. “How long has it been since you . . .” She faltered in trying to find a good way to say that Norah and Bess’s friendship had come to an end.
Bess took another, larger sip of wine. Maybe she and Polly would just sit there and get good and drunk. “How long has it been since we parted ways?” Bess asked, filling in Polly’s blank.
Polly smiled. “Yeah.”
“Well, when did Iron Man Three come out?” Bess asked.
Polly wrinkled her brow. “Iron Man?”
“We went to see it. That was the last thing we ever did together.”
Polly gave her a bemused smile. “That’s kind of specific.”
“Well, we both felt pretty strongly about Robert Downey Jr.” Bess smiled like it was nothing, but in truth that night stood out against all the others she’d ever had with Norah. She remembered it with clarity: the movie, the conversation, the way things unfolded from there.
“Did something happen? That night? I mean, for it to be the last night . . . ,” Polly asked.
Bess shook her head. “Nothing specific,” she lied. She didn’t know Polly well enough to go into detail. And even if she knew Polly better, she wouldn’t go into what she and Norah had talked about that night. “We just sort of drifted apart after that. She started pulling away. I let her, figured she was busy. I figured she’d come back around. But she never did.” Bess shrugged. “She just never did.”
“She lets people go,” Polly said, sounding sad.
Bess nodded, thinking how easy it had seemed for Norah, how hard it had been for Bess. She stood up to fetch them both more wine. It was going down easy. She felt the head rush that came from drinking too much, too fast. She welcomed it.
Her movement disturbed the dog. He got up and followed her, sniffing around her feet hopefully. “No wine for you, buddy,” she said to him. “What’s his name again?” she asked Polly, grateful for the subject change. She didn’t want to reminisce about Norah anymore.
“Barney,” Polly said.
“Hey, Barney,” Bess said to the dog. “Where’d you get him?” He didn’t look like any certain breed, though he could’ve had some Labrador retriever in him.
“He’s a rescue. I used to volunteer for a rescue society. He was the last puppy left in a litter. He just cried and cried when they all left him behind. I caved and took him home.”
“Did he come with the name?”
“No, I named him that,” said Polly. She took another sip and smiled to herself. “He’s named after Barney Rubble. Remember The Flintstones?”
Bess took a sip, too, then smiled as well, like they were playing the copycat game the girls used to play. “Big Flintstones fan, are you?” she asked.
Polly shook her head, but her smile didn’t fade. “I brought him home and sat down on the couch holding him, just thinking, What have I done? I clicked on the TV just to distract myself. And The Flintstones were on. And there were Fred and Barney on the screen. And for some reason it was like I was noticing Barney for the first time. Like Fred always gets the attention. He’s the bigmouth, the blowhard. And Barney is just the sidekick, right?”
Bess realized that Polly expected an answer. “Right,” she said.
“And I thought about how”—Polly shook her head—“never mind.”
“No!” Bess protested. “You have to tell me!”
Polly rolled her eyes, looking for all the world like Violet. “OK, but it’s going to sound stupid.”
“I don’t care,” Bess said.
“So I thought, OK, yes, Barney is a caveman. But he’s a caveman with a heart. He’s not like Fred. He tries to do the right thing. He tries to talk sense to Fred. He thinks about Betty and Wilma. He knows he’s a caveman, but he doesn’t have to act like one. It was this kind of—I don’t know—revelation for me.” She fell silent, thinking about what Bess didn’t know.
“So there are some good cavemen out there in the world, is what you’re saying,” Bess piped up.
Polly lifted her glass as if in toast. “At least I thought so that day.”
Bess lifted hers as well. “To the Barneys of the world,” she said. “And to those of us who like to believe they do exist.”
“To the only Barney I know,” Polly said. At their feet, the dog heard Polly say his name and lifted his head, sniffing the air for something that wasn’t there, but certain that it was coming.
Casey
She didn’t knock before entering Violet’s room. She should’ve, but she didn’t. She didn’t know why except that something told her not to. The element of surprise worked to her advantage. She saw Violet on her bed, messing with a doll. She’d caught Violet, doing what, she did not know. But the shocked and guilty look on the younger girl’s face told Casey that Violet was up to something. Violet put the doll down.
“People are supposed to knock,” she said, scolding Casey.
Casey recognized the tactic: find the wrong someone else had done in order to take the spotlight off yourself. She herself had used it before. But what had Violet been up to with that doll? Casey studied the thing, now tossed aside, its cold china eyes staring blankly at the wall beside Violet’s bed. It wore an old-fashioned bridal dress, layers of stiff lace and fabric, a high collar. The doll was entirely white, save the two blue eyes and the round pink circles painted on its cheeks.
The same feeling that had told Casey to walk on in told her not to press Violet about the doll. She had just come from seeing her mom in jail, after all. Maybe the doll had been some sort of sentimental gift from her mom or a prized family heirloom. Casey looked from the doll to Violet and back again, thinking about the irony of a bride doll belonging to a prostitute. But of course, Norah Ramsey hadn’t been accused of prostitution; she’d been accused of running a prostitution ring. She’d arranged the services, put her administrative skills and business acumen to use. Nothing Casey had seen in the news asserted that she’d performed the services herself. Casey tried to imagine the same woman who had once cut up apples for their snack and slathered sunscreen on their shoulders going to bed with a stranger for money. She couldn’t. And what if she had? Casey had gone to bed with a stranger and hadn’t gotten a thing out of it except a scary encounter when she tried to leave afterward. She shuddered at the recall.