She had cats. I didn’t need to see them to know; I crossed the threshhold and my eyes began watering.
Coroner’s cases can involve some pretty wretched living conditions. Usually I pop an antihistamine before work. On my own time, I hadn’t thought to.
I trailed Diane Olsen through the blurry living room and into a galley kitchen, where terra-cotta tile instead of carpeting granted a measure of relief. On the banquette table was a knobby, magenta tumbler and a tablet open to a game of Scrabble. On the floor, bowls of water and kibble. Personalized: URSULA and CALLIOPE.
The countertop radio murmured NPR. She switched it off and took a bottle of pomegranate juice from the fridge, offering me a seat but nothing more.
With her glass refilled, she leaned against the counter. “You didn’t bring your daughter along with you this time.”
I smiled. “No.”
She forced a seasick smile in return.
Relying on me to initiate.
I said, “Tell me about Chrissy.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Were you friends?”
“In a manner of speaking.” She rubbed her lips. “We weren’t on equal footing. She was older. Nineteen or twenty. To me she was this glamorous figure.”
“I’m told she was pretty.”
“She was a freak. I mean that positively. She had what every girl wanted. Long straight blond hair, gorgeous white teeth, perfect tan. Straight out of Seventeen magazine. She didn’t even look real. But not stuck-up, like you’d expect. Even to me, with zits, this hair…I was amazed she took an interest in me.”
“Why did she, do you think?”
Diane Olsen snorted. “Pure pity.” She took a deep swallow of juice. “She was bored. I was the closest available source of entertainment.”
“She didn’t like her job.”
“No. She…I mean, she loved Peggy. She’d been with her from the very beginning. But it was hard for her, being trapped in the house all day with a baby.”
“Trapped.”
“Bev wouldn’t let them leave.”
“At all?”
“They were allowed to go a few blocks. But there’s not much to do around here. It’s not a walking neighborhood.”
“Did Bev give a reason why?”
“Not that I heard. I suppose she was afraid something might happen.” She looked straight at me. “And it did.”
“Maybe the fire made her nervous.”
“No, I told you, they moved after the fire. She already had these rules in place before that.”
“Was the family ever threatened?”
“I told you that, too. I never heard of anything. Everything I knew, I got secondhand.”
“From Chrissy.”
Diane nodded.
Peter had attributed his mother’s hovering nature to the emotional scar tissue of losing a child. But maybe the roots ran deeper.
Five years between her marriage to Gene and Peggy’s birth.
Miscarriages? A previous death?
More than one tragedy to prime and feed a young mother’s nerves?
Diane Olsen drained her glass and began rolling it between her palms. “What it came down to was Chrissy was starved for company. I don’t care how bright a child is, there’s only so much conversation you can have.”
“What about Bev? Chrissy didn’t talk to her?”
“The way Chrissy described it, Bev hardly came out of her bedroom.”
Mother’s little helpers.
All the ladies did them.
I said, “Sounds like depression.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist. But I don’t know what else you’d call it. She shut herself in. She had Chrissy working unreasonably long hours. Weekends, too.”
“Did Chrissy live in?”
“No. She took the bus in the morning and left late at night.”
“Do you remember where she lived?”
“I don’t know that she ever told me. I want to say somewhere by campus, but I couldn’t tell you where I’m getting that from. I certainly never went there. We didn’t see each other outside of…It was situational.”
Given the origins of Gene and Beverly’s marriage, no mystery why she wouldn’t want an attractive young woman sleeping in the next room.
And yet Bev needed help. Constantly.
So many conflicting anxieties.
Take this baby from me, please.
But not too far.
I asked if anything had ever taken place between Chrissy and Gene.
Diane Olsen sighed. “Right. It’s just, the assumptions men make. Pretty girl, of course there’d have to be hanky-panky. But there wasn’t. Chrissy wasn’t like that.”
“You knew her well enough to say that.”
“Like I said, wasn’t a peer relationship. Frankly, I kind of worshipped her. They’d drop by after I’d gotten home from school. Or on Saturday morning or Sunday. I wasn’t a social butterfly, so to have this magnificent creature wanting to hang out with me—I was thrilled. Anyone would be.”
“What about Peggy? You mentioned she was bright.”
“Yes. At least I think so. ‘Alert’ might be more accurate.”
“What else can you tell me about her? What kind of child was she?”
“What kind…? Cute. Sweet. I wasn’t really focused on her.”
“How about physically?”
“The first time you were here, you showed me a photo of her.”
“Her face isn’t visible, and it’s the only image we’ve found.”
Diane Olsen sighed again, rubbed her eyes. “Well. She was blond, I remember that. Not that that means much. My daughter was blond as a baby, it turned dark when she was three. They’re always changing. You must be familiar with that.”
I smiled. “Definitely. Those afternoons and weekends, how did the three of you spend your time?”
“Talking. Listening to music. We’d lie out on a blanket, while Peggy crawled around the yard. Of course I always ended up getting burned to a crisp.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Whatever girls talk about. It was mostly a one-sided conversation. I did a lot of blabbering. I told Chrissy about boys I liked, and she’d give me advice. Which I couldn’t use, because it assumed you looked like her. Sometimes they’d come over to our house. The Franchettes didn’t keep a lot of toys around, and we had a closet full of stuff my parents had never bothered getting rid of. A hobbyhorse, with my name painted on it. It’s not normal, is it? Not having toys for a child. Who does that?”
Good question. I said, “Different parenting styles, I guess.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it. We took short walks. The same four square blocks, over and over, because that’s all Bev would allow. It was like a hamster wheel. Chrissy must’ve felt like she was going bonkers.”
“Nineteen years old,” I said. “Did she go to school part-time?”
“Not when I knew her. Before she started with the Franchettes, I think she’d done a semester or two and decided it wasn’t for her. She talked about having big dreams.”
“Of?”
“She was going to be a folk singer, or an actress. She probably could’ve. She looked a little like—never mind, it’s before your time.”
“Try me.”
“Peggy Lipton? From The Mod Squad?”
“Sorry.”
“See, I told you. Google her, you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, one day it was showbiz, the next it was get married and have ten children of her own. How much can you know about yourself at nineteen?”
“Did she ever mention a boyfriend? Talk about her own family?”
She shook her head.
“Was she from the Bay Area?”
“No idea. She had a certain mystique, which added to her cool. People loved to talk about rejecting the mainstream—‘tune in, turn on, drop out.’ She actually followed through.”
“Speaking of which, any drug use?”
“What she did in her spare time, I don’t know. But not around me. She was always responsible with Peggy. Look, I wish I had exciting stories to tell you, but I don’t. It was…innocent.”
She nibbled at the rim of her juice glass.
My nose was running something fierce. I looked around for a box of tissues. The nearest substitute was a roll of paper towels, on the ledge over the sink. But it had taken her long enough to gin up the courage to talk, and I didn’t want to disrupt her reverie.
“I don’t think she realized what she was getting into,” she said. “Taking that job.”
“How so?”
“Just what I told you. Bev’s depression. Being cooped up.”
“Any other issues?”
She stiffened. I thought she might bite the glass in half.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” she said. “Talk to Chrissy.”
“I’d love to. I can’t find her. Did she get married and change her name?”
“I don’t know. How would I know that?”
“Was Chrissy short for something? Christine, Christina?”
“I called her Chrissy. Please,” she said, desperately, “it was fifty years ago.”
From the living room crept a pair of longhaired cats, one gray and the other tiger-striped. Ursula and Calliope. They wound figure-eights through Diane Olsen’s ankles. She set the glass down and bent to pet them, her spine knuckling through her T-shirt. They purred, luxuriating under her touch, rolling on the cracked tile and blackened grout.
She straightened up. The cats padded to their bowls.
She took a breath and met my eye. “Chrissy was concerned.”
“About.”
“The general atmosphere. Gene and Bev fought like dogs. My bedroom’s on that side of the house, the walls are paper-thin. I could hear them shouting at each other. Hear Gene throwing things.”
“Was there physical violence?”
“I only know what Chrissy told me. She thought it was an unhealthy environment for a child. It’s common knowledge now what that does to a developing brain. You carry it into adulthood.”
“Why didn’t she quit?”
“She felt she couldn’t abandon Peggy. She was big on positive energy, karma, cosmic vibrations, all that junk. She didn’t approve of what Gene did for work. If you’d asked me I would’ve said I didn’t like it, either. But I’d met so many of these scientists over the years, and to me they came across as harmless. For Chrissy—she wasn’t alone in this—it all tied together: the war, women’s rights, the kind of father he was.”
Everything in Berkeley’s political.
Except politics. That’s personal.
“Then they had the fire, and the whole situation felt much more urgent. Now we’re not just talking about psychological damage, it’s real danger. Chrissy would say—but she was fantasizing. I didn’t give it a second thought. I mean, it would’ve been ridiculous for me to…”
Outside, a truck rumbled by. Birdsong fell from the redwoods.
I said, “Fantasizing about?”
Diane Olsen turned away to stare at the cats, lazing in a dollop of sunlight.
“I used to get a ride home from school with a classmate,” she said. “They’d drop me at their house on Spruce, and I’d cut through on the footpaths the rest of the way. The Franchettes’ new house was over on Keith, and sometimes I made a detour and went past, just in case I might run into Chrissy. I never knocked, or went in, but I always hoped I’d catch them in the front yard, or…I missed her. Spending time with her.”
I nodded.
“That’s what I did, on the day of the kidnapping. I was crossing at the end of their block, and I saw an ambulance and police cars. Nobody would tell me anything. I ran home to tell my mom. She tried to call Bev, but a man answered, not Gene. He wouldn’t talk to her, either.”
We kept waiting on a phone call; a ransom note or a letter to the press.
“I was sobbing, I was so worried.”
“About Chrissy?”
“About all of them. They already had this terrible thing happen to them, and now…I made my mom call the hospitals. That’s how I learned Chrissy was at Alta Bates. The next day I cut class and went to see her. I brought her flowers. It broke my heart to see her like that. She had these stitches on her cheeks, I was so afraid for her that they’d scar. They had her on drugs for the pain. It was hard for her to talk. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to be cheerful. She always made me feel good, I wanted to do the same for her. ‘Don’t worry, they’re going to find her.’ I didn’t believe what I was saying. I just kept talking, and saying things like that. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll get her back.’ Chrissy, her beautiful face…I started to cry again. Now she’s the one consoling me. She squeezed my hand and said, ‘It’ll be all right.’ I thought we were both pretending, trying to radiate good karma or whatever. I didn’t want to bum her out. So I went along with it. ‘Sure, she’ll be fine.’ ‘She’s safe, Diane.’ ‘Yeah, I know she is.’ Then she began tugging on my hand, hard, to get my attention. She was smiling in this very odd way. I can’t describe…I saw, I thought I saw, this sort of…glee. Like she was letting me in on a joke.
“She said, ‘She’ll be happier now.’ ”
Diane Olsen fell silent.
I said, “You took that to mean…”
“I was confused. It was such a bizarre thing to think, let alone say. Happier than what? I thought maybe she meant Peggy had died and gone to a better place. Or the medication was making her ramble. But she kept squeezing my hand, and then she started giggling, like she expected me to join in.”
“And then?”
“She got tired and fell asleep. I sat there for a while and then I left.”
“What happened the next time you saw her?”
“There was no next time. I tried to check up on her. I wanted to know how she was doing. And I felt it eating at me, what she’d said. I walked down to the Franchettes’ house. Bev answered the door and stared at me. I said, ‘I’m Lillian Olsen’s daughter. Is Chrissy around?’ It was a stupid thing to say. Of course she wasn’t around. They didn’t need a nanny anymore. I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve asked how they were, or if I could help them. But before I could say anything else, Bev just slapped me.”
She reeled a bit, steadying herself against the counter. “Right across the face. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I was ashamed. Of my stupid question.”
“Did you tell anyone about what Chrissy said in the hospital?”
“Who would I tell?”
“Your parents. The police.”
“Tell them what? That she was doped up and said something strange? No one cared what I thought about anything. I didn’t want my dad calling me melodramatic. I didn’t want to get Chrissy in trouble. She was a good person. That’s all I ever saw, a good person.”
Her voice was agonized. The acolyte’s undying faith.
“The men who did it, they hurt her so badly.” She blinked back tears. “It didn’t make any sense for her to…And the police were already looking for Peggy, they didn’t need me getting in their way. I forgot about it. That’s what I did. You can’t sit there day after day, questioning reality.”
You ever notice, it’s decent folks who can’t stop blaming themselves, while the bad ones go around with a spring in their step?
She lunged for the window ledge and seized the paper towels. She wrapped a length around her hand, like a medic binding a gash, and ripped it free.
The cats sprang up and darted from the room.
“I don’t know,” she said. She blew her nose. “I don’t know anything.”
