The Lighthouse

It was during one of those flashes, three days after the murdered girl’s body had been found, that she caught herself studying the Hilliard General Store with intense concentration. Half an hour earlier she’d left the lighthouse for the first time since that tragic morning, driven out by a lack of food and even instant coffee. The intervening days had had an unreal quality. A state police detective named Sinclair had questioned her and Jan on two separate occasions about what they’d seen and done the night of the murder; he seemed to find something suspicious about Jan’s account of his return from Portland, about the headache that had forced him to pull off the road and spend the night in the car. As a result Jan had retreated further and further into a moody silence. At first she had tried to draw him out of it, but when that hadn’t succeeded she had felt the same sort of brooding silence descend on herself, and found it difficult to cope with more than the basic details of living.

She hadn’t been able to work in such a state. When she tried, her sketches came out looking like mechanical drawings, lifeless and stiff. An attempt to break the impasse by doing sketches of the interior and exterior of the lighthouse and of the cape itself, with the idea of sending them to her family, had also failed; those, too, had the quality of being mere exercises in technique, and eventually she’d thrown them out. Finally she’d given up and read instead, but her concentration was poor: she found herself rereading the same pages over and over again.

This morning she’d taken herself in hand, added to the grocery list she’d made three days ago, and driven into town. But now she felt a strange lethargy that prevented her from getting out of the station wagon. She sat behind the wheel, hands gripping its familiar surface, staring at the store. Scoured gray wood siding. Dirty plate glass window with the name inscribed in cracked black letters. Sagging shingle roof with rusted gutters. It all stood out in such minute detail.

A gull was perched on one of the utility lines that ran in under the eaves. She watched until it spread its wings and lifted off into the bleak sky. Then she shook her head, reached for her purse, and pushed herself out onto the graveled roadside.

The sense of clarity was still with her when she entered the store. Boxes of detergent, cans of vegetables, bottles of pop all stood out in red, blue, and yellow relief against the drab brown of the shelves. The cracks and worn spots on the black-and-white linoleum floor were sharply visible. Each potato in the big bushel basket near the door seemed to have a uniquely individuated shape. It was only when she moved her eyes to the staring faces of two elderly women at the counter, and then to the impassive countenance of Lillian Hilliard, that she noticed the silence.

It hung heavy, tangible, like that following a sudden explosion. The three women’s immobility complemented it; they stood frozen, their shabby monochromatic clothing and faded hair reminding Alix of an old photograph. For a moment she froze too, her hand still on the door. Then she let go and it closed with a bang that shattered the stillness and prodded the women into jerky motion. Lillian Hilliard pushed a button on the cash register and counted change into the outstretched palm of the heaviest of the elderly women. The thinner one gathered up two grocery bags, glancing furtively at Alix as she did so. When her companion had placed a handful of dollar bills inside her purse, she picked up the third sack. Then, with another sly glance, their seamed mouths slightly agape, they bustled from the store.

Alix watched with a curious detachment, one that also permitted her to see herself as she stood there: a slender young woman in a pea jacket, knit cap pulled down over her hair, body held straight and steady, face as blank and calm as that of the storekeeper. She nodded at Mrs. Hilliard, felt a grim pleasure when the older woman’s gaze shifted toward the window.

She took a basket and started down one of the aisles. The entire time she was filling it she was aware of an undercurrent of activity in front. Lillian Hilliard moving on her stool, casting quick glances Alix’s way. The bell over the door jangling, customers coming in, greeting the storekeeper. Mrs. Hilliard answering in low tones and the voices of the customers lowering to match it. None of those who came in stayed more than a minute, as if they couldn’t bring themselves to do their shopping in the presence of the outsider.

At last her basket was full. She took it to the counter, set it down, and watched Lillian Hilliard reach for it with motions that were brusque, uncourteous. Alix thought she detected a glint of malice in the woman’s previously bland eyes, felt a strong stirring of dislike. And out of some perverse desire to annoy the storekeeper, she said, “How are you today, Mrs. Hilliard?”