Pretty Girls

“And made them eat so much soy that their testicles never dropped.”

Claire shuffled around some of her father’s notes. “Oh, no, she wouldn’t have boys. That’s giving in to the patriarchy.”

“Do you think she would’ve vaccinated?”

Claire barked a laugh, because even in 1991, Julia had doubted the veracity of the government-­backed pharmaceutical industrial complex. “What’s this?” She picked up a stapled stack of papers from the Oconee County Superior Court.

Lydia squinted at the documents. “I found it in a separate folder. It’s a deed for a property in Watkinsville.”

Paul had grown up in Watkinsville, which was just outside of Athens. Claire turned to the second page to find the name and address of the legal owner.

“Buckminster Fuller,” Lydia said, because of course she’d already seen it. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“He was Paul’s favorite architect.” She handed Lydia the pages because she couldn’t look at them anymore. “Paul grew up on a farm in Watkinsville. He told me that everything was sold when his parents died.”

Lydia stood up from the floor. She retrieved her reading glasses and Claire’s iPad from the kitchen island and sat back down beside her.

Claire felt the building wave of nausea that always accompanied uncovering another one of Paul’s lies.

Lydia slid on her glasses and started to type. Claire stared at the back of the white leather couch. She wanted to rip open the leather with her fingernails. She wanted to break the wood frame, find some matches, and burn down this entire fucking house.

Not that it would burn. Paul had installed the most comprehensive residential fire suppression system that the county building inspector had ever seen.

Lydia said, “The online records only go back ten years, but Buckminster Fuller’s property taxes are up-­to-­date.”

Claire thought about the painting in Paul’s office. His childhood home. She had spent hours getting the shadows and angles just right. He had cried when she’d given it to him for their anniversary.

She told Lydia, “Paul said the guy who bought the property tore down the house so he could farm the land.”

“Did you ever drive by to look at it?”

“No.” Claire had asked several times. In the end, she had respected his need for privacy. “Paul said it was too painful.”

Lydia went back to work on the iPad. This time, Claire made herself watch. Lydia pulled up Google Earth. She typed in the Watkinsville address. Acres of plowed fields showed on the screen. Lydia zoomed in closer. There was a small house on the property. Claire easily recognized Paul’s childhood home. The white wood siding ran up and down instead of across. The barn had been torn down, but there was a car in the driveway and a child’s swing set in the large patch of backyard that separated the house from the farmer’s field.

Lydia said, “There’s no street view. The road doesn’t even have a name, just a rural route number.” She asked, “Do you think he’s renting it out?”

Claire put her head in her hands. She didn’t know anything anymore.

“There’s a phone number.” Lydia got up again. She was reaching for her cell phone on the counter when Claire stopped her.

“Use the burner phone. It’s by the chair in my office.”

Lydia disappeared down the hallway. Claire stared out at the backyard. The windows were clouded with condensation. Mist was coming off the pool. She would need to have the heater turned down. They rarely used the pool in the winter anyway. Maybe she should have it covered. Or filled in with concrete. The marble coping was a bitch to keep clean. In the summer, the decking got so hot that you had to wear sandals or risk third-­degree burns. Paul had designed the pool to be beautiful, not usable.

If there was a better metaphor for their lives, Claire didn’t know what it was.

She picked up the iPad. The satellite image of the Buckminster Fuller homestead had been taken during the summer months. The field behind the house was lush with fruit vines. The small single-­story house still had the same white wood siding that Claire had so carefully tried to render in Paul’s anniversary painting. Board-­and-­batten siding, he had told Claire it was called—­large, vertical planks of wood with smaller strips to cover the seams. There were bright green asphalt shingles on the roof. The yard was neatly trimmed. The swing set at the rear of the lot looked sturdy and overbuilt, two things that Paul always strived for in residential construction.

At least Claire knew that Paul hadn’t lied about the accident that killed his parents. He didn’t like to talk about it, but Claire had heard all of the details from her mother. Despite the thirty thousand students attending the University of Georgia, Athens was still a small town, and the main library, like every library in America, was the center of the community. What Helen hadn’t read in the newspaper she’d gleaned from local gossip.

The Scotts were driving home from a church function when a tractor-­trailer hit a patch of ice and jackknifed across the Atlanta Highway. Paul’s father had been decapitated. His mother had lived for several seconds. At least that’s what bystanders reported. They had heard the woman screaming as the car was engulfed in flames.

Paul was terrified of fire. It was the only thing Claire knew of that ever scared him. His burial instructions had specifically stated that he shouldn’t be cremated.

“What is it?” Lydia asked. She had the burner phone in her hand.

“I was just thinking about Paul’s burial instructions.” They hadn’t been laminated, but they were similar to all the other instructions Paul had made for Claire’s benefit. She had found the list inside a folder in her desk that was labeled: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

He wanted to be buried in his family plot. He wanted a headstone that was similar in size and composition to the ones for his parents. He didn’t want makeup or hair gel or to be embalmed or to have his body placed on view like a mannequin because he deplored the artifice surrounding death. He wanted Claire to pick out a nice suit for him, and good shoes, though what did it matter if he wore shoes, good or otherwise, and how would she know if they had put them on him anyway?

Paul’s last request on the list was the one that was most heartbreaking: He wanted to be buried with his wedding ring and Auburn class ring. Claire had been inconsolable, because she had wanted so badly to honor his wishes, but both rings had been taken by the Snake Man.

“Claire?” Lydia was holding out the phone. She had already dialed in the number listed for Buckminster Fuller.

Claire shook her head. “You do it.”

Lydia turned on the speakerphone. The ringing sound filled the room, bouncing off the stark walls. Claire held her breath. She didn’t know what she was expecting until the phone was answered.

&n

bsp; There was a clicking sound like an old answering machine whirring to life. The recording was scratchy, but the voice was unmistakably Paul’s.

He said, “You have reached the Fuller residence. If you’re looking for Buck . . .”

Claire put her hand to her throat. She knew what was coming next because their own voice mail message followed the same script.

A chirpy woman’s voice said, “ . . . or Lexie!”

Paul finished, “Please leave a message at the—­”

A long beep blared from the burner phone’s speaker.

Lydia ended the call.

“Lexie.” Claire nearly spat out the word. She sounded younger than Claire. And happier. And stupider, which should’ve been a consolation, but Claire was too consumed with jealousy to care.

Claire stood up. She started pacing.

“Claire—­”

“Give me a minute.”

“You can’t really be—­”

“Shut up.” Claire turned on her heel and walked back across the length of the room. She couldn’t believe this. And then she chastised herself for not believing it because, really, at this terrible point in her life, what difference did it make?

Lydia pulled the iPad into her lap. She started typing again.

Claire kept pacing from one side of the room to the other. She was well aware that her anger was misdirected, but she had proven on more than one occasion that her anger was fairly uncontrollable.

Lydia said, “I’m not finding a Lexie Fuller, Alex Fuller, Alexander Fuller . . . Nothing in the county records.” She kept typing. “I’ll try in Madison, Oglethorpe—­”

“No.” Claire pressed her hand against the wall, wishing she could push down the house. “What if we find her? Then what?”

“We tell her that her husband’s dead.”

“Why do you keep wanting to dump my problems onto other ­people?”

“That’s not fair.”

Claire knew she was right, but she didn’t care. “So, I knock on this Lexie’s door and introduce myself, and if she doesn’t tell me to fuck off, which is what I would do in her shoes, I tell her, Oh, by the way, in addition to Paul being a polygamist, he’s a thief and probably a rapist and absolutely a stalker and he got off on watching women being tortured and murdered?” She pushed away from the wall and started pacing again. “Trust me. She doesn’t want to know.”