High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

beyond sixty in elegant clothes, rings on her fingers, sucking at a joint like a middle school kid. Funny!
    Or maybe, as they might say, weird.
    How long the young people stayed in her house Agnes wouldn’t know. They were playing music—they’d turned on Agnes’s radio, and tuned it to an AM-rock station. The volume so high, Agnes felt the air vibrate. She had to resist the impulse to press her hands over her ears. Her young friends were laughing, rowdy. Kelsey was holding her hand and calling her Auntie . It was a TV comedy—brightly lit, and no shadows. Except she’d become sleepy suddenly. Barely able to walk, to climb the stairs, Kelsey and another girl had helped her. Someone’s arm around her waist so hard it hurt.
    â€œHey Aunt Agnes, are you OK? Just lay down, you’ll feel better.”
    Kelsey was embarrassed for her widow-aunt. Or maybe—Kelsey was amused.
    She was crying now. Or, no—not crying so they could see.
    She’d learned another kind of crying that was inward, secret.
    Kelsey helped her lie on her bed, removed her shoes. Kelsey and the other girl were laughing together. A glimpse of Kelsey holding a filmy negligee against her front, cavorting before a mirror. The other girl, opening a closet door. Then, she was alone.
    She was awake and yet, strange things were happening in her head. Strange noises, voices, laughter, static. Her husband was knocking at the door which inadvertently she’d locked. She had not meant to lock him out. He was baffled and panicked by the loud music in his house. Yet, she was paralyzed and could not rise from her bed to open the door. Forgive me! Don’t go away, I love you.
    After a while it was quiet downstairs.
    In the morning she woke to discover the lights still on downstairs and the rooms ransacked.
    Ransacked was the word her husband would use. Ransacked was the appropriate word, for the thievery had been random and careless, as children might do.
    Missing were silver candlestick holders, silverware and crystal bowls, her husband’s laptop from his study. Drawers in her husband’s desk had been yanked open, someone had rummaged through his files and papers but carelessly, letting everything fall to the floor.
    A small clock, encased in crystal, rimmed in gold, which had been awarded to her husband for one of his history books, and had been kept on the windowsill in front of her husband’s desk, was missing.
    A rear door was ajar. The house was permeated with cold. In a state of shock Agnes walked through the rooms. She found herself in the same room, repeatedly. As in a troubled dream, she was being made to identify what had been taken from her.
    Yet, what the eye does not see, the brain can’t register.
    The effort of remembering was exhausting.
    Her head was pounding. Her eyes ached. Her throat was dry and acrid and the inside of her mouth tasted of ashes.
    They hadn’t ransacked the upstairs. They hadn’t found her purse, her wallet and credit cards. They’d respected the privacy of her bedroom...
    She had no reason to think that her niece had been involved.
    Maybe, Kelsey had tried to stop them. But Triste and Mallory had threatened her.
    Agnes would never know. She could never ask. She tried to tell herself It doesn’t mean anything —that she do esn’t love me. It means only that they were desperate for money.
    Yet she called her sister to ask for Kelsey. Coolly her sister said that Kelsey didn’t live with them any longer, Agnes must know this.
    Where did Kelsey live? So far as anyone knew, Kelsey lived with “friends.”
    Kelsey was no longer attending the community college. Agnes must know this.
    Bitterly her sister spoke. Though relenting then, realizing it was Agnes, the widowed older sister, to whom she was speaking, and asking why Agnes wanted to speak with Kelsey?
    â€œNo reason,” Agnes said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
    It was terrifying