That night, Mrs. March locked all the doors and windows, including the small window high in the bathroom, even though it was impossible anybody could ever climb through it due to its size and its position, smack in the middle of the façade, out of reach from any pipes or ledges.
On impulse, she threw open Jonathan’s bedroom door to find him sitting on the floor, facing the wall. Rushing toward him, his name a fizzled garble in her throat, she clasped his shoulders and turned him. It was just Jonathan, however: doleful Jonathan looking up at her with raised chin. “I’m on time-out,” he explained. She checked on him again before dinner, then again while he slept.
No calamity befell either of them that night, or even the morning after. Regardless, Mrs. March went about her day in absolute tension, shoulders hunched, stiff-necked, bracing for impact.
She sat on the living room couch trying to skim through a magazine, looking at the photo of a model wearing outlandish makeup—pink eyelashes and drawn-on freckles—reading the caption, Katarina wears a pink diamond tiara by Tiffany’s, over and over again, as she glanced repeatedly out the windows to the buildings opposite, which were much too far away to see into.
She turned the pages of the magazine listlessly, flipping past the featured models posing openmouthed, big-eyed, and contorted into impossible positions. When she came across a woman dressed as a Christmas present, it dawned on her, in a small burst of panic, how terribly behind she was on her Christmas shopping. The apartment was barely decorated—except for the Christmas tree—as Mrs. March had been mindful of not overdoing it until after George’s party. They were due to host Christmas Eve dinner this year; her sister and her husband and George’s widowed mother had confirmed attendance (Paula, who was always somewhere exotic for the holiday, cavorting with her beautiful foreign friends, couldn’t make it). How could she have let this slip?
Wringing her hands, she resolved to visit the department store immediately. She would drop Jonathan off to see Santa and meanwhile buy everything she needed. Over the years, she really put all her energy into making Christmas a memorable, magical event for everyone—arranging big centerpieces with apples and fir cones, and buying the most considerate presents. Gilded bookplates for George, after he had once mentioned to her in an offhand way that his parents had denied him this simple luxury as a boy. Or an elegant fountain pen, his preferred brand, engraved with the date of his first published novel. Prize examples of her thoughtfulness, which she would have no time for this year, not with her exhaustion and light-headedness.
The sudden certainty that if she didn’t leave for the store immediately something terrible would happen pervaded the air like a stale, putrid smell. So she barged into Jonathan’s room, his eyes narrowing with reproach as she interrupted him doing—well, something—and hurried them both out of the apartment.
Outside, Salvation Army bells rang from every corner. Crowds formed to admire lithe, faceless mannequins posed in the Fifth Avenue holiday displays, swathed in fur and velvet, against snowy backdrops or amidst Christmas dioramas. Behind one particular window, a faltering lightbulb flickered a bluish-white light, like an oncoming storm, while a mannequin stood brave and dignified in her organza dress and wide-brimmed hat.
Mrs. March and Jonathan exited their cab in haste, narrowly avoiding a little girl in an extravagant white mink coat, her hair in two topknots. She was walking a Labrador puppy that chewed at its leash in jerky movements, or rather it was walking her, as her mother followed a few steps behind, immersed in her leather planner. A squat, stained man wearing a ratty coat and fingerless gloves begged for money on the opposite corner.
“Mommy, can we give him money?” asked Jonathan, surprising Mrs. March out of her panic-fueled determination.
“Oh, Jonathan,” she replied. Sometimes that sufficed.
Jonathan stared at the homeless man with intensity, craning his neck to look as they passed. “Can we?”
“No, I don’t—I don’t have any change.”
The last homeless person to approach her on the street had been a woman wearing socks and sandals, her face creased as if it had been folded one too many times. There was a dry white crust around her nose, and her pockmarked cheeks were so rosy they looked plastered in thick theatre makeup. She had called out to Mrs. March, who told her, in truth, that she had no spare change. She could have ignored the woman, but she liked to think of herself as a very empathetic person; she had listed it as one of her best qualities on her university application.
“I don’t want money,” the woman said—“I just need medicine. Medicine’s all I want, see. You don’t have to give me money, but please buy me my medicine.”
She convinced Mrs. March to purchase said medication at a nearby drugstore. It was around the corner, she said. Mrs. March had been on her way home from the market and was somewhat burdened by the weight of her bags, but she agreed to go to the drugstore. She had no real excuse, especially now that she had continued their dialogue, forging some type of unspoken agreement she feared was now too advanced to break. The pharmacist looked up and narrowed her eyes at the homeless woman, who limped in behind Mrs. March in her chunky sandals, sniffing rudely.
“What do you want?” Mrs. March asked.
The woman told the pharmacist, who glared at Mrs. March before bringing out a little box and placing it on the counter. “Nineteen-fifty,” she said, and Mrs. March swallowed. Nineteen-fifty seemed like a lot of charity all of a sudden. And for a box of what, exactly? She looked down at the carton on the counter but failed to glean anything from it. She knew she had been manipulated, that she could stop this at any moment, could refuse to pay for whatever it was—but that would lead to a scene. She paid with her credit card through gritted teeth, then gripped the box, sitting in a paper bag, in her fist, and waited until they were out in the street to hand it over to the woman. She hesitated a little before parting with it—there was some redemption in the power shift, in the control she now had over the woman, who followed the paper bag not just with her eyes but with her whole body. Mrs. March was punishing the woman for embarrassing her in such an intimate way, and because she wanted the pharmacist, in case she was watching, to think she still had some control over the situation. She had paid for the medication because she wanted to, and she would hand it over if and when it suited her.
The next time she was ready. Weeks later, when approached by a homeless man with a paper cup in one hand (the other was a stump), she said: “I’m sorry, but my mother shot my father today, and I’m feeling rather strange about it.”
The homeless man squinted at her—“eh?”—and she shrugged, and he walked away, mumbling to himself, still looking at her sideways, as if afraid she might follow him.
As Mrs. March and Jonathan approached the department store entrance, she gave the homeless man across the street a furtive glance. He turned his head to meet her eyes and smiled, displaying two surviving blackened teeth. Mrs. March quickened her pace, tugging Jonathan along behind her.
MRS. MARCH held Jonathan’s hand tightly as they entered the realm of crying children, harried clerks, and women tossing all manner of items into little mesh baskets, while a shrill chorus sang buoyant carols through the loudspeakers. One woman cried in a corner, her mascara running thickly down her cheeks, but no—she wasn’t crying, only sweating profusely.
As a security guard ran past to intercept a teenager wreaking havoc on the perfume displays, Mrs. March felt someone take her spare hand, felt unfamiliar skin envelop her own, and with a surge of dread, looked down to discover a little girl had latched onto her. Breathing loudly through her mouth, the little girl looked up at her and, upon seeing that this wasn’t her mother, dropped Mrs. March’s hand as if stung (the nerve—as if it had been Mrs. March who had touched her). She stepped away from this adult stranger and burst into tears.
Mrs. March yanked at Jonathan and they made their way through the labyrinth of polished marble floors. They swerved around glass displays of jewelry and leather
gloves and cashmere scarves, around lipsticks laid out like multicolored pieces of candy, before they reached, spread out before them—under a sign reading Santa is IN—a mass of mothers and their children roped in a coiling queue. Beyond them, at a disheartening distance, Santa sat on his wooden throne, posing for a photo as a little boy howled on his lap.
Mrs. March stood on tiptoes as they joined the line. Scanning the mothers in front of them, she approached the one in fur and pearls.
“Would it be a terrible imposition,” she began, smiling as wide as humanly possible, “if I were to ask you to please keep an eye on my son for a minute—” The woman’s eyebrows rose in haughty indignation, and Mrs. March hurried to say, in a low voice she hoped conveyed intimacy, “It would only be a few minutes, at the most, as I sneak off to buy some presents … We can’t ruin his Christmas surprise, now, can we?” She attempted a wink, her makeup beginning to run down her face.
The woman seemed suspicious, raising the collar of her fur coat, to which Mrs. March also raised hers, defensively. “When exactly will you be coming back?” the woman asked, annoyed. Mrs. March took it as a promising sign that she hadn’t been refused point-blank, and assured the woman she wouldn’t be long as she slunk off to the elevators.
Upstairs, not even the most expensive counters were bereft of mayhem, and Mrs. March was dragged into the general state of panic and furor, feeling dozens of hands brushing past her and prodding her, the upbeat Christmas music on the speakers bleeding into the babble, the blaring lights disorienting her as she halfheartedly grabbed a sterling silver tie bar for George and a train set for Jonathan.
At the last minute, she also picked up materials to decorate the apartment: bundled cinnamon sticks, dried orange slices, pinecones sprayed gold, and wreaths of fresh pine adorned with tartan ribbons. She might still be able to prepare a beautiful Christmas.
After she paid and waited for the presents to be gift-wrapped at the checkout counter, she looked at her wristwatch to discover that she had left Jonathan downstairs for forty minutes. She ran toward the elevators, but one look at the impatient crowds jostling to get into the one available car prompted her to take the stairs. As she stepped back to change course, the swollen bags hanging heavily from her wrists, she bumped into someone. When she turned, flustered, to apologize, she came face-to-face—maddeningly—with the woman from the window. The woman seemed to be as frightened as she was—an identical look of wild-eyed terror in her eyes—when Mrs. March realized that she was standing in front of a full-length mirror. She took a deep breath, waiting for her reflection to blink or start, almost afraid to turn her back on it, before spinning on her heels and heading toward the stairs.
She arrived downstairs just in time: Jonathan was sliding off Santa’s lap. He greeted her in his limp, unenthusiastic way after she’d managed her way through the crowd. Santa smiled up at her through his artificial beard as she thanked him.
“Thank you!” he said. “For coming to see me. We had a swell old time, didn’t we?” He beamed at Jonathan—who had already lost interest, his thoughts far away—then grinned at Mrs. March, saying, “That’s quite a boy you have there, Johanna.”
Mrs. March locked eyes with him. “What did you say?”
“I said that’s quite a boy you have there.”
Mrs. March stared fixedly at Santa, who returned her gaze. “Ho, ho, ho,” he said, still smiling.
Forgetting the photo, she grabbed Jonathan, squeezing his arm so firmly that he cried out—her mother used to do this, digging her sharp nails, like harpy talons, into her upper arm—and they trudged through the teeming hordes of mothers, their lipsticks gleaming and earrings flashing, the chemical smell of their hairspray catching at the back of Mrs. March’s throat. She managed a nod at the mother in pearls who had watched after Jonathan, who returned the nod, stoic, as her own little boy, shrieking and wailing, snot running down his face, refused to sit on Santa’s lap.
Mrs. March lugged Jonathan and herself out of the department store, her feet dragging under the weight of all the bags. Outside, she sucked in the cold winter air, which seemed to slap at her in return, and collapsed into the next available cab.
The doorman offered to carry her bags up to the apartment but she refused him, fearing he’d find her Christmas shopping stingy, or the opposite—too extravagant, proof that they were spoiled and materialistic—though now she worried that he had interpreted her refusal as pride, or even distrust, which would harden him further toward her.
As she burst into the apartment, her forearms striped red from all the bag handles, she found herself face-to-face with George.
“Oh,” she said, stopping dead in the entryway. “You’re back.”
Jonathan, who had walked in behind her, granted his father a feeble hug before running off to his room. George smiled after him. He looked disheveled, she thought, his shirt untucked, his hair tousled. He had cut his trip short. “Oh, it was a waste of time,” he said, wiping his glasses with the cuff of his shirt. “We got there late and couldn’t find a single animal. We didn’t even catch one lousy pheasant.”
“Oh.”
“The season isn’t turning out so great.”
“Maybe it’ll turn around next year,” said Mrs. March, still holding the bags.
“Maybe,” said George.
“Did you hear,” she asked, her eyes fixed on his, “about the missing woman?”
She had expected him to react somehow—to wince, to stop smiling, or to smile like a maniac and confess the whole thing—but he barely blinked as he replied that, yes, of course, the flyers were all over the place. You couldn’t even buy gas without getting asked about it by the police.
“The police asked you about her?”
“Well, sure, they asked everybody.”
“What did you tell them?”
“What did I tell them? What do you mean? I told them I don’t know anything about it and that I was in the area on a hunting trip.”
He was looking at her in that peculiar unflinching manner, while standing in her way, and in that moment it occurred to her that perhaps he was doing this on purpose. As some kind of threat. Believe my story, his eyes said. Or else. She swallowed and set down her bags on the floor. They looked ridiculous—him facing her, hands in his pockets, and her standing idly by the door, still in her coat and hat, bags at her feet, when she should have just walked past him as they talked, taking the bags into the bedroom. That was what she wanted to do, except that now, the more she thought about it, the more incapable she felt of doing it naturally. It was like a muscle she had forgotten how to flex.
Finally, after what seemed like an artificially long pause, George said, “Well. I’m going to take a shower. I’m all grimy from the trip.”
She nodded at him, and his eyes lingered on her, a hint of a smile on his face, as he retreated to the bedroom.
Mrs. March stood in the entryway a while longer, exploring these new sensations, trying to bury them. A sharp whining sound within the walls startled her. Lately, whenever the shower handle was turned, it was followed by this rattling shriek along the pipes.
A figure to her left made her jump. “Oh,” she said. “Martha.”
Martha had emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
“Can I take the bags, Mrs. March?”
“Yes, please. Store them in the trunk in the living room for now? Thank you.”
Martha walked away with the bags as a hesitant Mrs. March followed behind her. She passed by George’s study. The door was open, the red chinoiserie wallpaper eating up all the light, and his small suitcase was resting on the chesterfield, unlocked.
She never liked for Martha to see her in George’s study. It was as if Martha knew she shouldn’t be in there and patrolled the apartment accordingly. So she waited until Martha was back in the kitchen, and—reassured by the clanging of pans and rattle of plates—stepped into the room.
She approached the suitcase, lifting the lid with
one timid finger. She didn’t know what she was looking for, exactly, some incriminating proof that her husband was a rapist and a murderer? Absurd. And that somehow he’d gone back to the site of the crime to destroy the evidence?—oh, please. She’d know what she was looking for when she found it, she concluded, and this gave her some resolve. She checked the lining of the suitcase, wondering if it could possibly have something sewed into it. The lining was flat, however, and the stitches sewn so tightly into the leather that they refused to yield no matter how hard she pulled. She brushed past a scarf, gloves, and socks, a few toiletries and a lens cleaning cloth. One of his shirts caught her eye. It was stained. She pulled it out by the sleeve to examine it under the light. She scratched at the maroon smear—a wine stain, she reasoned. Or blood from an animal. Although George denied having caught any. Not even one lousy pheasant.
She went over to his desk, rooted around, nothing suspect, nothing misplaced. It was all arranged into a tidy mess. She recognized the notebook she’d been poking around in last time and opened it, looking for the newspaper clipping on Sylvia Gibbler. It wasn’t there anymore. She flipped the pages, shook it a little to see if anything would fall out. She read a few words from the notebook—random annotations, it seemed like, ideas or phrases for future books. She opened the desk drawers, her hands feeling their way around pens, envelopes, loose paper clips, and small boxes of staples.
“Looking for something?”
She gave a startled little hoot and looked up from her crouched position over the desk at George, who stood in the doorframe, his arms crossed. His hair was wet from the shower and a single drop—water or sweat—sat lodged, unmoving, on his temple.
“Oh, I’m—” She looked down at the drawer and took out one of the little boxes of staples. “Jonathan needed to staple his homework and I found lots of these, but wherever is the stapler? I can’t seem to find it, for the life of me—”
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