Needful Things (Page 79)

She unfolded the note. It was short, the words written in the rolling Palmer Method hand of a schoolgirl.

Darling Les, Felicia took this when we were at the Tiger the other night. She said she ought to use it to blackmail us! But she was only teasing. She gave it to me, and I am giving it to you as a souvenier of our BIG NIGHT. It was TERRIBLY NAUGHTY Of yoU to pUt your hand under my skirt like that "ight out in public," but ‘ me SO r it got HOT. Besides, you are SO STRONG. The more I looked at it the more "hot" it started to make me. If you look close, you can see my underwear! It’s a good thing Felicia wasn’t around later, when I wasn’t wearing any!!! I will see you soon. In the meantime, keep this picture "in remembrance of me." I will be thinking of you and your BIG THING. I better stop now before I get any hotter or I’ll have to do something naughty. And please stop worrying about YOU KNOW WHO. She is two busy going steady with Jesus to worry about us.

Your Judy Sally sat behind the wheel of Lester’s Mustang for almost half an hour, reading this note again and again, her mind and her emotions in a stew of anger, jealousy, and hurt. There was also an undertone of sexual excitement in her thoughts and feelings-but this was something she would never have admitted to anyone, least of all herself.

The stupid slut doesn’t even know how to spell "too," she thought.

Her eyes kept finding new phrases to fix upon. Most of them were the ones which had been capitalized.

Our BIG NIGHT.

TERRIBLY NAUGHTY.

SO HOT.

SO STRONG.

Your BIG THING.

But the phrase she kept returning to, the one which fed her rage most successfully, was that blasphemous perversion of the Communion ritual:… keep this picture "in remembrance of me."

Obscene images rose in Sally’s mind, unbidden. Lester’s mouth closing on one of Judy Libby’s ni**les while she crooned: "Take, drink ye all of this, in remembrance of me." Lester on his knees between Judy Libby’s spread legs while she told him to take, eat this in remembrance of me.

She crumpled the peach-colored sheet of paper into a ball and threw it onto the floor of the car. She sat bolt upright behind the wheel, breathing hard, her hair fuzzed out in sweaty tangles (she had been running her free hand distractedly through it as she studied the note). Then she bent, picked it up, smoothed it out, and stuffed both it and the photograph back into the envelope. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to try three times to get it in, and when she finally did, she tore the envelope halfway down the side.

"Chippie!" she cried again, and burst into tears. The tears were hot; they burned like acid. "Bitch! And you! You! Lying bastard!"

She jammed the key into the ignition. The Mustang awoke with a roar that sounded as angry as she felt. She dropped the gearshift into drive and tore out of the faculty parking lot in a cloud of blue smoke and a wailing shriek of burned rubber.

Billy Merchant, who was practicing nosies on his skateboard across the playground, looked up in surprise.

4

She was in her bedroom fifteen minutes later, digging through her underwear, looking for the splinter and not finding it. Her anger at Judy and her lying bastard of a boyfriend had been eclipsed by an overmastering terror-what if it was gone? What if it had been stolen after all?

Sally had brought the torn envelope in with her, and became aware that it was still clutched in her left hand. It was impeding her search. She threw it aside and tore her sensible cotton underwear out of her drawer in big double handfuls, throwing it everywhere. just as she felt she must scream with a combination of panic, rage, and frustration, she saw the splinter. She had pulled the drawer open so hard that it had slid all the way into the left rear corner of the drawer.

She snatched it up, and at once felt peace and serenity flood through her. She grabbed the envelope with her other hand and then held both hands in front of her, good and evil, sacred and profane, alpha and omega. Then she put the torn envelope in the drawer and tossed her underwear on top of it in helter-skelter piles.

She sat down, crossed her legs, and bowed her head over the splinter. She shut her eyes, expecting to feel the floor begin to sway gently beneath her, expecting the peace which came to her when she heard the voices of the animals, the poor dumb animals, saved in a time of wickedness by the grace of God.

Instead, she heard the voice of the man who had sold her the splinter. You really ought to take care of this, you know, Mr. Gaunt said from deep within the relic. You really ought to take care of this… this nasty business.

"Yes," Sally Ratcliffe said. "Yes, I know."

She sat there all afternoon in her hot maiden’s bedroom, thinking and dreaming in the dark circle which the splinter spread around her, a darkness which was like the hood of a cobra.

5

"Lookit my king, all dressed in green… iko-iko one day… he’s not a man, he’s a lovin’ machine…"

While Sally Ratcliffe was meditating in her new darkness, Polly Chalmers was sitting in a bar of brilliant sunlight by a window she had opened to let in a little of the unseasonably warm October afternoon.

She was running her Singer Dress-0-Matic and singing "lko Iko" in her clear, pleasant alto voice.

Rosalie Drake came over and said, "I know someone who’s feeling better today. A lot better, by the sound."

Polly looked up and offered Rosalie a smile which was strangely complex. "I do and don’t," she said.

"What you mean is that you do and can’t help it."

Polly considered this for a few moments and then nodded her head.

It wasn’t exactly right, but it would do. The two women who had died together yesterday were together again today, at the Samuels Funeral Home. They would be buried out of different churches tomorrow morning, but by tomorrow afternoon Nettle and Wilma would be neighbors again… in Homeland Cemetery, this time.

Polly counted herself partially responsible for their deaths-after all, Nettle would never have come back to Castle Rock if not for her.

She had written the necessary letters, attended the necessary hearings, had even found Netitia Cobb a place to live. And why?

The hell of it was, Polly couldn’t really remember now, except it had seemed an act of Christian charity and the last responsibility of an old family friendship.

She would not duck this culpability, nor let anyone try to talk her out of it (Alan had wisely not even tried), but she was not sure she would have changed what she had done. The core of Nettle’s madness had been beyond Polly’s power to control or alter, apparently, but she had nevertheless spent three happy, productive years in Castle Rock.

Perhaps three such years were better than the long gray time she would have spent in the institution, before old age or simple boredom cashed her in. And if Polly had, by her actions, signed her name to

Wilma jerzyck’s death-warrant, hadn’t Wilma written the particulars of that document herself? After all, it had been Wilma, not Polly, who had stabbed Nettle Cobb’s cheery and inoffensive little dog to death with a corkscrew.

There was another part of her, a simpler part, which simply grieved for the passing of her friend, and puzzled over the fact that Nettle could have done such a thing when it really had seemed to Polly that she was getting better.

She had spent a good part of the morning making funeral arrangements and calling Nettle’s few relatives (all of them had indicated that they wouldn’t be at the funeral, which was only what Polly had expected), and this job, the clerical processes of death, had helped to focus her own grief… as the rituals of burying the dead are undoubtedly supposed to do.

There were some things, however, which would not yet leave her mind.

The lasagna, for instance-it was still sitting in the refrigerator with the foil over the top to keep it from drying out. She supposed she and Alan would eat it for dinner tonight-if he could come over, that was. She wouldn’t eat it by herself. She couldn’t stand that.

She kept remembering how quickly Nettle had seen she was in pain, how exactly she had gauged that pain, and how she had brought her the thermal gloves, insisting that this time they really might help. And, of course, the last thing Nettle had said to her: "I love you, Polly."

"Earth to Polly, Earth to Polly, come in, Polly, do you read?"

Rosalie chanted. She and Polly had remembered Nettle together that morning, trading these and other reminiscences, and had cried together in the back room, holding each other amid the bolts of cloth. Now Rosalie also seemed happy-perhaps just because she had heard Polly singing.

Or because she wasn’t entirely real to either of us, Polly mused.

There was a shadow over her-not one that was completely black, mind you; it was just thick enough to make her hard to see. That’s what makes our grief so fragile.

"I hear you," Polly said. "I do feel better, I can’t help it, and I’m very grateful for it. Does that about cover the waterfront?"

"Just about," Rosalie agreed. "I don’t know what surprised me more when I came back in-hearing you singing, or hearing you running a sewing machine again. Hold up your hands."

Polly did. They would never be mistaken for the hands of a beauty queen, with their crooked fingers and the Heberden’s nodes, which grotesquely enlarged the knuckles, but Rosalie could see that the swelling had gone down dramatically since last Friday, when the constant pain had caused Polly to leave early.

"Wow!" Rosalie said. "Do they hurt at all?"

"Sure-but they’re still better than they’ve been in a month.