laughed. âI bet she never returned library books either.â
âJoshua realized his home-correspondence school was a bust.â
âSo she had dreams of a life with Joshua?â
Karen looked into my face. âMy aunt could be a foolish woman, Rick. I tell youâshe was too fond of Joshuaâwith that big house on the green, hisâhis patrician background, his kindness to her. She thought he cared for her, and I guess he did in his own way. She even thought they, you know, might marry and travel. He flattered herâteased.â A sigh. âShe was foolish.â
âThat explains her depression when he died.â
She shook her head back and forth. âWell, that started earlier when they had that fight. He told her not to come to the house. To stay away.â
âThat must have hurt her.â
She bit her lip. âNo woman wants a man to reject her.â
âNo man wants a woman to reject him.â
âItâs not the same thing, Rick.â
âHow so?â
âIt just isnât. Men donât get it.â
âButâ¦â
She turned away. âI donât want this conversation.â
The house yielded no surprises. I found nothing out of bounds in the closets. No hidden menâs clothing to suggest secret lovers, no rattling skeletons, no Victoriaâs Secret catalogs, no taboo sex toys. Hers was a modest, decent life lived simply. No rose for Emily, this woman. There were no exotic foodstuffs in the kitchen cabinets, no international coffee flavors, no low-fat cuisine in the freezer, no food processor. Maxwell House coffee. Dial soap. In a hall cupboard were five bottles of whiskey, rye and scotch, two unopened. The third was nearly empty. She used an old-fashioned coffee percolator, sparkling clean. Technology was ignored here: no answering machine, no cordless phone. She had an old VCR, broken, with a cassette of The Sound of Music resting on top of it. She had an old RCA TV in her living room, not a sleek flat-screen. Here was a doggedly conventional woman. There was nothing to break the pattern that caught your eye when you opened the front doorâa sort of lower-middle-class life lived redundantly in all the rooms.
But deeply religious. Ivy curled from the belly of the Infant of Prague statue on the TV. Gilded crosses adorned the walls. Glossy Russian icons of Jesusâ head, oversized and startling, hung on the bedroom wall. She was, I knew, a church-going Catholic. Iâd found canceled checks for payments to the church, regular contributions to Catholic Charities, payments for memorial Masses for her dead husband. A Mass card from his funeral. Pamphlets for pilgrimages to shrines at Lourdes. A book on Our Lady of Fatima. Nothing offbeat here where conservative religion thrived.
Except for a stack of pamphlets bound together with elastic bands. Manifestos from the Brown Bonnets, a vociferous, local charismatic Catholic womenâs group opposed to abortion, pornography, same-sex marriage, progressive Catholicism, and all-around good fun. A group that marched in Washington at pro-life rallies. Theyâd picketed Bill Maher when he performed at the Bushnell. These pamphlets bore Martaâs address label, with some numbers above it. I recorded the information.
âNothing to suggest violence hiding in a corner of her life,â I told Karen.
She looked disheartened.
âBut thereâs nothing to suggest suicide, either,â I added.
No pills. No prescription drugs, no letters chronicling depression. No suggestion of a woman on the edge. It was the undemonstrative house of an old woman decidedly content, someone whose life was defined by periodic trips to gambling palaces with busloads of other women. Yes, a little fanatical when it came to religion, but she was, wellânormal.
Karen was in a hurry to leave, snapping lights off before I could gather my jacket. In the driveway she confessed, âThe place