Finding Mrs. Ford

by Deborah Goodrich Royce

  Susan longs for his laughter tonight.

  Unable to hold the mental playback any longer, her focus returns to the window, the room and the chairs. Jack’s chair—heavy with the absent weight of its occupant. Her chair—weighed down by the brick of her heart. Losses like a layer cake stack one on top of the other. But the loss of her beloved husband is the only one she has ever been able to own.

  She looks toward the park again, but all she can see is her own reflection staring back at her from the glass. When did she get so much older? Bit by bit, she answers herself, as the time unfolded from that horrible day so long ago to this one, when the horror—she fears—is beginning anew.

  18

  A doorbell rings. Susan blinks her eyes to see that she is still in her chair by the window. She must have dozed off. She checks her watch. It is 2:30 in the morning. Were it not for the wave of fear that is sweeping over her, Susan would find herself highly annoyed. The sound of a doorbell is just about the last thing she expects to hear at this hour and it sets her heart aflutter. She wishes her dogs were here. She jumps from her perch overlooking the park and jams her foot straight into an unruly end table as she moves through the lightless apartment.

  “Shit!” she mutters under her breath. The stubbed toe slows her down enough to question the wisdom of answering the door in the dark. Cautiously, she flips on a few lights as she continues. This brings her face to face with her orange purse and its unholy contents. Hesitating only a moment, she decides it is better to have the gun with her than sitting exposed on the table. She hoists the purse over her shoulder.

  Like a good New Yorker, Susan looks through the peephole before opening the door. At what she hopes is the close of an endless day of surprises, it could be anybody standing out there.

  She sees it is Jack, Jr. and a flood of relief sweeps over her.

  “What are you doing here?” She opens the door and motions him in. “Are you just now leaving that dinner?”

  “It went on for a bit and then Eleanor and I got to talking.”

  “Ah, yes. She seemed like a talker.”

  “What did you say to her? She was rather fascinated with our family tree.”

  Susan returns to the chairs by the window, still clutching the purse, unsure what to do with it now. She motions for Jack Jr. to sit in her chair. Opposite him, she settles on the arm of Jack’s chair, her Jack. Gently, she places her bag on the floor. “Is that really why you’re here?”

  “I can’t sleep. I wanted to ask you a few questions about what you told me over drinks—about your Mr. Fakhouri.”

  “He’s hardly my Mr. Fakhouri.”

  “But he was on his way to see you—all the way from Baghdad. And you did lie to the FBI about knowing him. I just don’t get it.” Jack gets up and goes over to the bar. He pours himself a brandy and takes a sip. “You really have no idea why Fakhouri would look you up after all these years?”

  “Not really, no. I mean, I’m imagining he’s in some kind of trouble. Maybe he Googled me and knows I have some means. I don’t really know.”

  “Maybe. But your last name is Ford now. And you’re pretty reclusive. You don’t do social media. It’s not like he’d find you splashed all over the Internet.”

  “I’m just following the example of your dad. What’s that line about WASP etiquette? Only let your name appear in the papers twice—when you marry and when you die? But, all kidding aside, I’m sure I’m not so hard to find, if anyone looks hard enough.”

  “You think he’s a resourceful guy?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not very. And it was such a long time ago.”

  “Let’s go back: You say you left Michigan and came to New York and you lost touch with Fakhouri? What about that girl you mentioned—what was her name?”

  “Annie.”

  “You have no idea what happened in the intervening years to either of them? You don’t know where Annie is now?”

  “Did I say that?” Susan looks up at Jack, her face suddenly flushed. “I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to say it exactly like that. I do know where Annie is. I mean, I do know what happened to her.

  “Annie is dead. She died at the end of that summer.”

  19

  Friday, August 8, 2014

  Susan opens her eyes in her pretty yellow bedroom in New York. For a moment, all is well. She gazes at the flowers and butterflies climbing up the Pierre Frey fabric on her walls and windows. It is an aesthetic she has cultivated over the years—the same textile covering every surface of the room to create a cocoon—a buffer of civilization.

  Then—slam!—memory returns. She flips to her side to control a wave of nausea that overtakes her. It is from Pierre Frey into the fucking fray that she is falling.

  Last night, she’d managed to hustle Jack out before the conversation had become too tricky. He was too drunk, and she was far too exhausted to have safely navigated its pitfalls. The subjects of Annie, Sammy, and the FBI had been put to bed for the moment.

  But morning has come. She got what she came for and she needs to get back to Watch Hill. She will feel safer in the cloister of that insular community.

  Susan picks up the house phone. “Good morning, George. Would you bring my car around? I’ll be down in fifteen minutes. Thank you.”

  She swallows some coffee, splashes water on her face, runs a brush through her hair, and gets dressed. Not bothering to choose something new, she throws on the same white jeans and striped shirt she wore yesterday. A little rank from the heat wave, but she doesn’t care. She grabs her bag, feels inside for the gun and the envelope, and heads out the door.

  Emerging from the elevator, she makes her way across the lobby.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ford,” says Kathy, who looks up from the guest she is helping. “Will you be leaving us already?”

  “Yes, short visit, I’m afraid. I want to get on the road to Watch Hill before traffic starts. And that seems to get earlier and earlier these days.”

  “Safe travels! Hope we see you again soon.”

  “Yes. Soon.”

  The man at the desk has lifted the pen from the form he was signing and turned to regard Susan. She is nearing the front door but slackens her stride to look back at him. He is a distinguished-looking man—heavyset, older—probably handsome in youth. There is something familiar about him, but nothing she can fully identify.

  He appears to be thinking the same thing, because his eyes are narrowing on her. The two of them pause, heads cocked to the side like dogs who’ve heard a distant whistle.

  “Do we know each other?” he asks. “Mrs. Ford, right?” He motions back in the direction of Kathy, who has just said Susan’s name, and takes a step or two in Susan’s direction.

  “I…” she falters, instinctively stepping backward.

  She sees him register her alarm and she can tell that he enjoys the sensation of making a woman uncomfortable. He laughs and disingenuously offers, “I don’t mean to make you nervous.”

  It is those words, but it is also his voice. There is something about his voice.

  Susan is on the verge of placing him when Kathy has one more thing to say. “Would you like us to help you with dinner reservations during your stay in New York, Congressman Buscemi?”

  The synapses of Susan’s brain collide in a train wreck of recognition. As Johnny Buscemi turns around to answer Kathy, Susan spins and bolts toward the revolving doors.

  “George!” she cries out, pushing her way through to the outside.

  She knew he was a Michigan congressman. Of course, she knew! She’d tracked him over the years, followed his rise from local to national office. She didn’t live under a rock, for God’s sake! But here? What the hell was he doing here in New York? In her building?

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ford.” George walks over to open the car door for her.

  Susan throws herself inside. And then—she shouldn’t, she knows it, but she cannot
help herself, when does she ever do what she is supposed to do?—she turns around to take one last peek.

  Her eyes meet those of Johnny Buscemi, who has followed her silently to the front of the building.

  Fatter, yes. Older, yes. Face puffy and lined. But she sees it now. And he sees it too. They identify their former selves inside these older casings.

  She looks at him and he looks at her and, cool and collected in his baritone voice, he says, “Well, well, look at you. I must say, I’m very surprised to see you.”

  Susan cannot speak to save her life.

  “Ford’s your new name? You live in Watch Hill now?” He ticks off the information he has only just received. Just to let her know he’s received it.

  She sits frozen like a rabbit in the cross hairs of a gun.

  “You know, I never thought I’d see you again. Never,” he repeats icily. “If I’m not mistaken,” here he takes a weighty pause, “you still have something that belongs to me.”

  “Congressman?” Another man appears from the building and approaches Johnny Buscemi. “Your room is ready now. I’ve had them carry up your bags.”

  Danny the Cop!

  Corralling what is left of her reflexes, Susan stomps on the gas and barely avoids hitting the taxi in front of her. She swerves a lane to the right, horns and brakes screeching their protest around her.

  Drive, she thinks. Just drive, drive, drive!

  But where on this Earth can she go?

  20

  Saturday, August 4, 1979

  Suburban Detroit

  Maybe it was his cruel public scolding that caused Annie to fall for Frankie. Perhaps it was the charm he so easily wore on the day she had first met him. More likely, it was the deadly combination of these two sides of the man that made Annie fall in love with Frankie. Or fall into something that felt like love to her but looked to Susan like thinly masked obsession.

  Annie fell hard for Frankie; Frankie fell into bed with Annie.

  Around eleven on a record-breaking night, Jimmy, the bartender, asked Diane to get a jar of olives from the storeroom. Martinis were flying, and he’d just run out.

  “Where the hell’s Sherry?” he barked. “She’s supposed to be in charge and I’m not supposed to run outta olives!”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Diane said as she loaded up her tray with the drinks that Jimmy was handing her.

  Susan, who was just turning away with her own full tray, offered to go in Diane’s place once she’d delivered her orders.

  “Are you sure?” asked Diane. “I can go if you’re too busy.”

  “Honestly? I like errands that get me out of here for a few minutes.”

  “I owe you, then,” Diane said as she hoisted her tray.

  “I owe you!” Susan countered. “Thanks for switching sections the other night.”

  “Oh yeah. How’d that work out?”

  “We’ll see. He’s cute, though.”

  “Ladies.” Jimmy returned to their end of the bar. “I hate to break up your little tea party, but will one of you go get the damned olives?”

  “Sorry! Going!” said Susan, as she and Diane peeled off in different directions.

  On her way to the back, Susan passed Annie serving a rowdy bunch of Italians. She looked up at Susan, winked, and blew her a kiss. Since Annie had started dating Frankie, she got to wait on his friends. These were the big tippers—sometimes fifty or a hundred bucks a round. It was also the safest place to be for someone who’d been branded the girlfriend of one of the bosses. All hands were off Annie—literally—which was more than most of the cocktail waitresses at Frankie’s could hope for.

  Annie had proven a mercurial friend. A strain of coldness, first intimated after Frankie’s rebuke, had grown. Sometimes, she was the girl Susan had met two months before—funny and playful, connected, and real—like now with the little wink. Often, she was sullen and remote. Their day at the beach was one of the last times that Susan had felt a real intimacy in their friendship. They certainly never went to Sanders anymore. And, French lessons—needless to say—had never begun.

  Susan reminded herself continually that she had little more than a month left to her last summer vacation, and no one was hiring seasonal help at this late juncture. She needed the money and she just had to steel herself to get through it.

  She arrived at the double swinging doors to the kitchen. The protocol was to enter through the door on the right and come back out through the door on the right again, from the inside, to avoid collisions. Once inside, Susan swung around farther to the right, and was surprised to find the back hall in darkness. She fumbled to find the light switch before she could continue.

  Inside the storeroom, she moved quickly to the shelf stacked with industrial sized jars—olives, onions, pickles, cherries—food not requiring refrigeration. She didn’t need to turn on the light in here since there was a large window in the door that let in enough illumination to complete her task. The olives were just to the left of the doorway. She would grab the jar and be out in a flash.

  Nearing the shelves, Susan bumped her toe into something where nothing should have been. She hadn’t hurt herself but was again caught off balance. She leaned down to find a cardboard case of ketchup bottles on the floor. Sloppy, that someone would have left it there. Just the sort of disorder that bothered her. She lifted it to the shelf in front of her.

  As she was reaching up to take hold of the olives, she heard voices deeper in the storeroom, which froze her in her place. She now regretted not having turned on the light. The act of flipping that switch would have announced her presence to whoever was lurking in the shadows. Instead, she felt like a spy, sneaking around in the dark. She stood with her arms raised, touching the olive jar, unsure of what to do.

  Susan remained that way for the longest time, listening intently, willing the pounding of her heart to settle. She could hear shuffling and maybe muffled voices, but both were indistinct. Someone was definitely in there. Of that, she was now certain.

  As slowly as she possibly could, she lowered her arms and turned toward the interior. In the excruciating minutes that had passed since she’d entered, her eyes had adjusted to the dark. She stared, squinting into the half-light, trying to see who might be in there with her.

  All at once, as if a mirage, there materialized the image of Frankie and Sherry, facing each other up close. Oddly, Sherry seemed taller than her normal height. Susan’s grey cells raced to compute what subject they could be discussing—in the storeroom, in the dark—when, suddenly she grasped the situation. Sherry was propped up on a shelf, pinned there by Frankie’s heaving, bare buttocks. The light from the door reflected off of Sherry’s hoisted leg, as well as Frankie’s ass, as if a spotlight were shining on them.

  Comprehension came to Susan so fast that she gasped, which spiked her level of panic. She stood as still as she could—praying that they hadn’t heard her, despairing of a way out—when Frankie turned to face her. The ray of light from the door lit up his eyes as he looked in Susan’s direction. Surely, he couldn’t see her eyes, facing away from the light source as she was?

  But she feared that was not true. Frankie stared at Susan as he continued to pump into Sherry, knocking her back against the paper towels and toilet paper on the standing racks. Sherry gave out little moans and grunts, but Frankie was utterly silent. Susan was paralyzed in this diorama. Cold sweat trickled down her spine, increasing her sense of dread. And then, Frankie came, there was no mistaking it. He never took his eyes off Susan, but he was clearly at the moment of climax.

  Somehow, this broke the spell and released Susan, enabling her to flee. She ran through the kitchen, the wrong side of the swinging doors, and back into the pulsing disco. As she had turned away, Susan saw Sherry see her, too, and her anxiety redoubled. She did not want to be Sherry’s adversary, was not trying to antagonize this formidable creature, but it seemed she couldn’t help it. Susan burst out the left side of the kitchen door and smack into Annie.
>
  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Annie caught Susan by the shoulders to stop her trajectory.

  “Nothing,” Susan stammered. “Nothing. I just need to get back to that table in the corner.”

  “Sheesh! Well, I need to get those stupid olives. Diane said you went to get them, but you never came back. And Jimmy’s really pissed. What is the matter with you?”

  Susan opened her mouth to speak. At that moment, Frankie strode out of the correct side of the swinging doors, laughing. He grabbed Annie and laid a big, wet kiss on her mouth.

  He turned his eyes to Susan and said to them both, “Get to work, cuties. Make some money for me. I’m feeling lucky tonight.”

  Giving Susan a wink, he walked into the crowd, exuding his bounteous charm.

  21

  Wednesday, August 8, 1979

  At high noon, Susan plopped herself in the living room on her mother’s old Queen Anne chair, intent on advancing her summer reading. She used to fit into this chair alongside her father when he’d read to her as a little girl. She picked at the frayed cording and leaned her head into one of its wings. Her eyes drifted up to the picture window as she allowed her imagination to lead her.

  She’d spent her life in this house, on this block, in this suburb—but she wouldn’t raise her children here. She pictured herself in a Norman manor, a governess watching over her brood. Sheep on the lawn, her husband visible on horseback. In a life like that, she would read endlessly—book after book after book.

  Of course, with Sammy, that scenario would hardly transpire. Maybe they’d live in a tent, as Bedouins in the desert, their children playing with camels. Though camels were supposed to be mean. Maybe they could have horses, instead.

  What was she doing? She needed to reel herself back. They’d barely had one conversation!

  Susan leaned forward and narrowed her eyes, surprised to see Annie’s rattletrap Corvette pull up to the front of the house. It hit the curb once, corrected itself, and shuddered to a fitful stop.