Characters in Gerald's Game

Do you really mean to tell me you’re still afraid of Adrienne Gilette? he asked when she had finished rehashing the oft-told tale of how Mrs. Gilette had slapped her hand when she had reached for the last cookie on the plate.

Yes, they loved her. But— “Yes,” the blonde girl said. “They loved me. They still do. But they idolized my brother Barry.” Sitting beside Ruth, the heel of one not-quite-steady hand resting against her forehead, Jessie remembered whispering, “Besides, it would have killed her.” Ruth turned to her, began, “What—?”

Bill Dunn, their caretaker, had let the men from Skip’s Floors ’n More in and they had done a hell of a job.

Mrs. Henderson, who will be her Freshman Advisor at college, is standing by the punch-bowl; Bobby Hagen, who will take her to the Senior Prom—and fuck her afterward in the back seat of his father’s Oldsmobile 88—is standing on the patio next to the blonde girl from the Neuworth Parsonage, …

The single exception had been Brandon Milheron. To him she had told the truth, partly because she needed his help but mostly because Brandon had been the only one who had displayed the slightest understanding of what she had gone through . . . was still going through.

I might call Nora Callighan and ask her if she wants to help. I think I might call Carol Symonds, too . . . Carol Rittenhouse these days, of course. If there’s anyone in our old bunch who still knows where Ruth Neary is, it’ll be Carol.

Ever. That’s a big responsibility for a little girl, Punkin. You might be tempted. For instance, if you were studying with Caroline Cline or Tammy Hough after school, and one of them told you a secret of hers, you might want to tell—” “Them? Never-Never-Never!”

The former Prince, with whom the eight-year-old Catherine Sutlin had once romped joyfully (at least until she’d gotten a Cabbage Patch doll named Marnie for her birthday and temporarily lost some of her interest), was part Lab and part collie . . . a mixed breed, but a long way …

That was when Mr. Charles Sutlin, a lawyer from Braintree, Massachusetts, had turned it out in the woods to die rather than take it back home and pay a combined state and town dog-tax of seventy dollars.

Cindy Lessard called it spunk. She said it was white and that it squirts out of a guy’s thing like toothpaste. That’s the stuff that makes babies, not French kissing.

Have you thought about how this situation is going to look to whoever finds you? How do you suppose it’s going to look to Constable Teagarden, as far as that goes? How long do you think it will take him to decide to call the State Police? Thirty seconds?

That was a tricky one. Jessie held her breath. Can’t, my love—I’m expecting a call from David Adams on the Brookings Pharmaceuticals portfolio. Very important stuff . . . also very risky stuff. At this stage, handling Brookings is like handling blasting caps.

Curiouser and curiouser. The point is, it’s time you discovered that Dick Sleefort isn’t a demon from the deeps and it’s time Jessie discovered Adrienne Gilette is just a lonely old woman who once slapped her hand at a lawn-party as a little joke.

… I guess you’re getting better even faster than Dr. Magliore expected. All the same—” “All the same it’s getting better, and that’s good . . . right?” “Of course it’s good.” The housekeeper looked at Jessie as if she were mad. “Well, now I’m trying to get the rest of …

He was her father, after all, not some cute boy like Duane Corson from down at the marina. What are you doing? she giggled. I thought we were having hamburgers for lunch, not glass sandwiches! Eclipse-viewers, not sandwiches, Punkin, he said.

That must have been back in . . . I don’t know, but I was still working for Dunninger, so it must have been before 1959. And you’re still spooked all these years later? How absolutely Freudian, my dear!

He wouldn’t have liked Fred Laglan or Jamie Brooks driving in to ask on the spur of the moment if he wanted to play nine holes of golf and seeing him boffing Mrs. Burlingame, who just happened to be attached to the bedposts with a pair of Kreig handcuffs.

Besides, there were weirder kinks; Frieda Soames from across the street had once confessed to Jessie (after two drinks before lunch and half a bottle of wine during) that her ex-husband had enjoyed being powdered and diapered.

Gerald Burlingame, with whom Jessie had once eaten Creamsicles in bed, fell over backward with his knees up and his head down, like a clumsy kid trying to impress his friends during Free Swim at the YMCA pool.

It reminded her of the enthusiastic kisses her brother Will used to place on Gramma Joan’s cheek when they went to visit. The growling continued for a few seconds, but it was now oddly muffled, as if someone had slipped a pillowcase over the stray’s head.

… it has been, in the words of Jessie’s great-aunt Katherine, “finer than fiddle-music.” Even her Dad thinks so, although he wasn’t very keen on coming back to Falmouth for Will’s birthday when the idea was first suggested. Jessie has heard him say I guess it was a pretty good idea, …

He wouldn’t have liked Fred Laglan or Jamie Brooks driving in to ask on the spur of the moment if he wanted to play nine holes of golf and seeing him boffing Mrs. Burlingame, who just happened to be attached to the bedposts with a pair of Kreig handcuffs.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like seeing that look in his eyes, the one that says I’m part of his agenda now—me, Jessie Angela Mahout Burlingame, as opposed to an inanimate lump his bosses probably think of as That Unfortunate Burlingame Business.

I suppose I would have, eventually, but before I could muster enough courage to do more than pull up the master-lock, Jimmy Eggart pulled in and parked beside me. Jimmy’s a retired CPA from Boston who’s lived at the lake year-round since his wife died back in 1987 or ’88.

“John Harrelson in Augusta did a very thorough, very careful autopsy on your husband,” Brandon said. “According to his report, Gerald died of what MEs call ‘a pure heart attack,’ meaning one uncomplicated by food poisoning, undue exertion, or gross physical trauma.”

With sudden dismay she remembered Karen Aucoin telling her not to ever let a boy put his tongue in her mouth, because it could start a baby in her throat.

The words in the balloon coming out of Mr. Natural’s mouth say, “Vice is nice, but incest is best.” Behind Olivia, Kendall Wilson, who will hire Jessie for her first teaching job, is cutting a piece of chocolate birthday cake for Mrs. Paige, her childhood piano teacher.

Would Jessie perhaps care to meet with Laurel Stevenson? the receptionist asked, but Jessie remembered Laurel—a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who wore high heels with sling backs and looked as if she would enjoy sex to the fullest only when she was on top.

Lonnie Dakin was one of them. He was eating a muffin and wearing a pink tee-shirt that said THERE’S NO TOWN DRUNK HERE, WE JUST ALL TAKE TURNS. Funny What you remember when you think you’re getting ready to die, isn’t it? “Who did this to you, Jessie?” Jimmy asked.

It was this: he didn’t know she was serious because for him, Jessie Mahout Burlingame, wife of Gerald, sister of Maddy and Will, daughter of Tom and Sally, mother of no one, was really not here at all.

That you?” “None other, ma’am.” “Come on in.” Megan Landis, the housekeeper Jessie had hired in December (that was when her first fat insurance check had arrived via registered mail), came in with a glass of milk on a tray. A small pill, gray and pink, sat beside the glass.

There would be times (mostly during her eleventh and twelfth years, when she called that voice Miss Petrie, after her second-grade teacher) when she would actually raise her hands to her ears to try and blot out that quacking, reasonable voice—useless, of course, since it originated on the side of …

Then they do. Mrs. Wertz, her first-grade teacher, starts to laugh. Old Mr. Cobb, their gardener until he retired in 1964, laughs with her. Maddy joins in, and Ruth, and Olivia of the scarred breasts.

Someone—possibly Mrs. Dahl, the cleaning lady, possibly Gerald himself—had moved it over to her side of the bed, maybe in the course of dusting the shelf, or maybe to …

Mrs. Henderson, who will be her Freshman Advisor at college, is standing by the punch-bowl; Bobby Hagen, who will take her to the Senior Prom—and fuck her afterward in the back seat of his father’s Oldsmobile 88—is standing on the patio next to the blonde girl from …

Behind Olivia, Kendall Wilson, who will hire Jessie for her first teaching job, is cutting a piece of chocolate birthday cake for Mrs. Paige, her childhood piano teacher.

If there’s any comfort to be had, it’s this: things can’t possibly get any worse. Then they do. Mrs. Wertz, her first-grade teacher, starts to laugh. Old Mr. Cobb, their gardener until he retired in 1964, laughs with her. Maddy joins in, and Ruth, and Olivia of the scarred breasts.

She had stated her problem as stress, and Nora Callighan, her therapist, had taught her a simple relaxation technique. Most people associate counting to ten with Donald Duck trying to keep his temper, Nora had said, but what a ten-count really does is give you a chance to re-set all …

Barry, Jessie thinks. She’s Olivia and her brother’s Barry. The blonde girl is listening to Bobby Hagen but looking at Jessie, her face calm but somehow haggard. She is wearing a sweatshirt which shows R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural hurrying down a city street.

He was drunk. Back in those days he was always drunk, but he’s cleaned up his act. Polly Bergeron told me he goes to A. A., and— Bully for him, her father said dryly. Do we send him a get-well card or a merit-badge, Sally? Don’t be flip.

The former Prince, with whom the eight-year-old Catherine Sutlin had once romped joyfully (at least until she’d gotten a Cabbage Patch doll named Marnie for her birthday and temporarily lost some of her interest), was part Lab and part collie . . . a mixed breed, but a long way …

All her assumptions began to change then, and they had gone right on changing as the story of Raymond Andrew Joubert began its steady march from filler between the Community Calendar and the County Police Beat to banner headlines on the front page.

This was her father, after all—Daddy—not Duane Corson from down at the marina, or Richie Ashlocke, the boy she and her friends moaned and giggled over at school. The minutes passed slowly.

It belonged to her college roommate, Ruth Neary. Now that Jessie knew, she found she wasn’t a bit surprised. Ruth had always been extremely generous with pieces of her mind, and her advice had often scandalized her nineteen-year-old wet-behind-the-ears roommate from Falmouth Foreside . . . which had …

She was still four months away from her eleventh birthday, but that didn’t make her a fool. What Sally Mahout suspected was true: Jessie had launched a conscious, carefully thought-out campaign which would allow her to spend the day of the eclipse with her father.

When I still wouldn’t, you grabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else—probably in Susie Timmel’s little fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we used to call Susie’s Lez Hotel.

Ever. That’s a big responsibility for a little girl, Punkin. You might be tempted. For instance, if you were studying with Caroline Cline or Tammy Hough after school, and one of them told you a secret of hers, you might want to tell—” “Them? Never-Never-Never!”

Oh no, not you, not Tom Mahout’s good little girl Jessie. You couldn’t just lie there and let him shoot his squirt, could you? Cosmo Girl Jessie Burlingame says “No man chains me down.” You had to kick him in the guts and the nuts, didn’t you?

… Whatever reasons and motives may be swirling around beneath, Will Mahout’s request is finally approved by the Mahout family’s head honcho.

She and Gerald had been invited to a posh celebration party in the Hotel Sonesta’s rooftop restaurant. Senator William Cohen was the guest of honor, and the President-elect, Lonesome George himself, was expected to make a closed-circuit “television call” shortly before midnight.