If She Were Dead

by J. P. Smith

  Amelie felt like the tennis player who, expecting a shot to her expert backhand, gets one solidly in the face. “Really. That must be devastating. Was it…something you came across…?”

  “Just something I discovered.”

  “I see,” Amelie said.

  Janet clicked on her turn signal, clackclack clackclack, and made a left turn. Amelie had had never been in this area. In a small uncertain voice she asked again where they were going.

  “You’ll see.”

  Only when she reached the end did Amelie recognize it as Ben’s street, Bainbridge Road.

  “Do you have any idea where you are?” Janet said almost gleefully.

  “No,” Amelie lied. “Not really.”

  She turned into a driveway and put the car in Park. “Welcome home, Amelie,” and Janet laughed and laughed.

  51

  “Ben’s not here, though I think I know where he is. He’ll tell me he was at work, but that’s always been his excuse. He just needs to run to the office for fifteen minutes—that’s another good one. Andrew’s at a friend’s house. But my son, at least, well I always know where he is,” and she laughed once again, just as loudly.

  It was the closest Amelie had ever been to Ben’s house, and her legs began to grow weak. “It’s a lovely home,” she said once they were inside.

  “He designed it, of course. Maybe fifteen years ago, I guess? We bought the land and he hired the best people he could find to fulfill his vision.” Janet looked up at the structure. “One day he won’t be living here,” she said as she unlocked the door.

  Once you stepped inside, it was as if you’d walked into the atrium of a museum. The ceiling seemed to go on forever, and the windows were oversize, letting in the late-morning light veiled by a thin gray haze. Seeing it for the first time from within was like something sexual for Amelie. This was the dark unknown, a piece of Ben’s life she’d never been privy to, like a palace in the Forbidden City. You could imagine what you wished about it, and know that at least one of your darker thoughts was the truth.

  There was no oversized furniture here: simple designs, a sofa, some chairs, a coffee table, the odd occasional table or pedestal. Rugs here and there with modernist designs. A wide gas fireplace was situated on the right wall, above which a mantel held several framed photos of the family. There were a few shots of Ben when he must have been in his twenties: in one of them he was shirtless and in white shorts on a sailboat, his hair thicker and darker, his smile as enigmatic as it had been that first time he leaned over her car and told her just what he wanted to do. That was the man she’d fallen for.

  “What do you think?” Janet said.

  Amelie took another look around. This was theater of a high order. “I think it’s amazing. This house, I mean.”

  Janet lifted the photo from the mantel. “We’d been married for maybe eight months when this was taken. We were staying on the Cape with some friends. Believe it or not, Ben is quite a skilled sailor.”

  She set it back in its place. “He’s good at many things. Lacking in many others. Anyway, that’s when I conceived Rachel, those few days on the Cape. Probably the same night that was taken. I’ll show you some more, if you like.”

  She took a photo album from a shelf and patted the cushion next to hers on the sofa.

  The wedding photo: two gorgeous people, Amelie had to admit to herself. Janet was a knockout back then, and Ben was, well, Ben. Just younger. And for a moment she imagined herself in that photo, young and beautiful and married to him.

  Janet flipped ahead: a miserable little girl on Santa’s lap, all frown and tears and terrified eyes. “Rachel was so scared of him, even though he was promising her presents. Maybe because we told her never to take anything from a stranger. And then she peed her pants and he was one very pissed-off Santa, I can tell you that.”

  Amelie laughed along with her. Of course she had never obeyed that rule, even though her mother was adamant about it, warning of a world full of creeps and con men. Anyone who offered Amelie anything when she was a teenager and, afterward in college—a joint, a pill, a bottle of Heineken, twenty minutes of physical pleasure—became her best friend at least for as long as the buzz lasted.

  “Nina didn’t fall for it, either,” she told Janet. But of course she and Richard were insistent that no matter what Nina’s friends or movies or TV shows said, there was no such thing as an overweight, heavily bearded man who flew through the air powered by wingless reindeer, bearing enough presents to deliver to every child on earth. Yet every Christmas morning Nina would wake up to a pile of prettily wrapped gifts brought to her by the only people who knew her tastes and desires, Santa Dad and Magic Mom.

  The next shot showed a little boy in shorts and a T-shirt swinging a baseball bat. One of his eyes is almost closed, while the other is focused on the ball that his bat has just engaged.

  “That’s your son, isn’t it?” Amelie asked, and Janet laughed.

  “That’s Ben when he was, I don’t know, nine or ten?”

  Amelie studied it for a moment before Janet turned the page to a photo of the family, taken some years earlier, just outside a tent. Ben is in cargo shorts and a U2 T-shirt, squatting over what looks like the beginnings of a campfire, his blue eyes catching the afternoon light.

  Amelie had never been camping, and Ben had never suggested that she join him in his tent one future day. Another part of his life that had been denied her.

  Janet rose and put the album back on the shelf. “Can I get you some coffee, or tea, or maybe something stronger?” And she laughed again and added, “Though maybe it is a little early.”

  “I’m fine,” Amelie said.

  “Have a seat.”

  Here it comes.

  Janet joined her on the sofa. “You know, I think at some time or another we all suspect our spouses to be at least considering cheating on us. Maybe it comes when we’re feeling less sure of ourselves. I mean, I’ll be forty-two in two months, and I’m definitely not the same person I was when Ben and I first met. I may be good at what I do, and successful at it, and hope that possibly my work will help many people in the world. Yet I look at myself and see only failure. My body isn’t what it used to be—I mean, whose is at our age?” And she laughed again. “And even though it sounds vain, when you start looking at yourself as somehow…less than what you were—do you understand what I’m saying?—physically, I mean, you feel somehow less inside.”

  Amelie nodded. It made perfect sense to her.

  Janet went on, “Look at you. I would say most women my age—or your age, for that matter—would envy you. You have a beautiful face, great hair, and a figure to, well, die for,” and she laughed. “I look at those photos of me from all those years ago, and barely recognize that woman now.”

  Little did Janet know how much Amelie had to spend to maintain those amazing looks. First thing in the morning she looked like a bag lady who’d spent the night cruising the dockyards and living out of dumpsters behind the supermarkets.

  Yet what Janet was saying was raw and true. She was getting to the heart of things without once flinching. Age. Infidelity. The loneliness of the jilted wife. Amelie just wished this little get-together would be over. And soon.

  “And I’m tired,” Janet said. “From work, from looking after Andrew, from all the things I do outside of the office.”

  “Are you still active in the school?” she asked, and Janet laughed.

  “They’re always roping me in for something, and I’m always happy and willing to do what I can. And I sit on the board of two charities, one regional, the other national. It’s exhausting, as I’m sure you know. People heap their expectations on your back, and you feel obligated to carry them to the finish line.” She looked away and her smile faded. “I suppose that’s half the problem with Ben. He’s… Well, he’s a guy, he’s still vigorous and sexual, but he’s
under a lot of pressure himself. Work is always an issue for him. Getting commissions, you know. But things have been very different over the past year or two. Like I said, he’s just not completely…here. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “I think so,” Amelie said. She was beginning to feel genuinely sorry for Janet. She was a woman insightful enough to understand her position from all angles, while Amelie’s focus was always a little too narrow, always in the service of the story, the plot, the climax.

  “There’s always a short list in the back of our minds, don’t you think?” Janet said. “Women he might be involved with. Family friends, parents of our kids’ friends, you know, that kind of thing. And then we find out it’s not the person we thought it would be. It’s always the dark horse. The one we least expected to betray us.” She sat back and looked up at the ceiling. “It takes us a little while until we realize, of course, that it had to be her.”

  She turned abruptly to Amelie. After a moment she said, “How did you find out?”

  Amelie looked at her.

  “I mean that your husband was cheating on you.”

  “I didn’t,” Amelie said. “I just assumed everything was fine. Until everything wasn’t. I was completely blind to it, I never suspected a thing. One day he told me. Afterward I realized it was there all along.”

  “Like a plot twist in a book or a movie,” Janet said.

  Precisely, Amelie thought. She realized that Janet was more or less the ideal reader. Just not so ideal that she’d been blind to Ben’s infidelity. Until now.

  “And was it who you expected it would be?”

  Amelie shook her head. “I’d only seen her once before, at Richard’s office. She was young and pretty and utterly forgettable, and she fell in love with my husband, just as he fell in love with her.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “Angry,” said Amelie. “At first, anyway. Then resentful. Then hurt, of course. It was really, really painful. Then I was…okay with it.” Because by then she’d met Ben. “Since you know who it is, what are you planning to do about it? Divorce?”

  “Like I said, that’s not happening. But look at me. Do I look like the vengeful type?”

  Amelie shook her head.

  “And if you were writing this story wouldn’t I be the last person anyone would think would take matters into her own hands?”

  Amelie nodded her head, though she knew, just as Janet obviously did, that even the meekest-looking person could turn on you in a moment and shred your pretty face until you bled to death. But Janet was different. She had a successful career, a son to raise, all her charity work. Too much was on the line for her to do anything out of the ordinary.

  Janet excused herself and went into the kitchen. Amelie could hear her rummaging in a drawer full of weaponry, knives and garlic presses and potato mashers and god knows what else she kept in there. She returned a few minutes later with a funky wedge of cheese on a piece of slate; a curved knife like the Gurkhas used, only smaller; and an array of imported crackers found only in the finest of the town’s several extortionate gourmet shops. Eight ninety-nine, Amelie guessed, having eyed them herself a few months earlier. Janet went back into the kitchen and brought out two glasses of chardonnay. With a sly smile, she said, “It’s not that early, really, now is it?”

  They clicked glasses and sipped. Janet sat back on the sofa and smiled. She looked pleased with herself.

  “That’s nice,” Amelie said. “Thanks.” She was beginning to find herself liking this woman who was so unlike her.

  “And now…?” Janet asked, setting down her glass. “Things are okay with you? There’s harmony, I hope?”

  “I’m fine. Richard’s going to be a father again. And he seems really happy.”

  “So you talk.”

  “Now and again, mostly about Nina.”

  “Once this is over I will never again utter a single word to my husband. Because he won’t be here. He’ll be with her. Just as he expects it to be.” She tucked her feet under her. “Unless, of course, it doesn’t happen that way.”

  “So you’re going to wait until he leaves you?” The words came out just when she was about to censor herself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go there. I know this must be very painful for you.”

  Janet lifted her chin a little. “Oh, I’m not giving him up so easily. If he wants to make amends he will have to earn every moment of it.”

  “So…you’ll forgive him…?”

  “We’re not there yet, Amelie.”

  Now she was beginning to think Janet was either as crafty as a character in one of her novels—crafty primarily because Amelie had created her—or that she had lost her mind entirely. And then there was the other option, that Janet had this whole thing planned out and had completely outwritten the author.

  “Is she someone I know?” Amelie ventured.

  “In this town? Oh, probably.”

  Amelie felt as though she’d walked into this woman’s trap, closed the door behind her, locked it, and tossed the key into a floor drain. While her weapon, impatiently resting in her bag, would remain useless to her.

  She said, “How I can help make this better for you?”

  A moment too late she realized that it was just short of a confession.

  Janet tilted her head questioningly. “What do you mean, Amelie?”

  “I just want to…help you. You’re going through such…difficult times, obviously. And…I don’t know… I guess I just want you to be happy.”

  Janet shook her head sadly and slowly. “Sometimes I just wish someone would put me out of my misery.”

  Yes, I see, Amelie wanted to say. It was uncanny how two people who barely knew one another could follow the same train of thought.

  “And…what are you going to do next?” she asked.

  Janet suddenly seemed vulnerable, lost, adrift in a story she’d never anticipated. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “This woman you suspect your husband is seeing. What are you going to…” And her words drifted into nothing.

  Janet looked at her in a way Amelie hadn’t seen before. This was the flinty, tough-assed CEO look, the look of someone who would fire you and call security to have you escorted out to the parking lot and then ruin your life forever with malicious gossip that would spread like a disease throughout the industry.

  Janet said, “I’m going to deal with it in the only way I know how.” She cut herself a thin slice of cheese and chewed slowly until it was down her throat. “And then,” she said, “everything will be back to the way it should be.”

  52

  She’d been warned: that was the only way Amelie could interpret it. From now on Janet would be woven into her life, and if fate would allow her to be with Ben, they would have to go far away, maybe to Mexico, to the mescal paradise of Cuernavaca in the shadow of the volcano, or to a forgotten hilltop village in Italy where old women hung their laundry out, where their husbands played bocce and drank grappa, and late at night their grandsons fought vendettas in the streets when they weren’t whizzing around in their Vespas, ripping jewelry off wealthy American tourists.

  After an uneventful and largely silent ride, Janet dropped her off at her house. It was the quiet in the car more than what had been said at the house that bothered her most. As though Janet were clearing a space for Amelie.

  “I’m glad we had a chance to chat,” Janet said finally. “Let’s get together soon again, okay?” And she gave Amelie’s hand a squeeze that lasted a little too long.

  Amelie’s mouth was too dry to do anything but whisper Okay. Once inside her house, the silence seemed overwhelming, a soundlessness heavy with memory and apprehension and loss. She had spent two years with a man who, in the end, she realized had never really loved her, never cared for her, would never fight to keep her, and who probably b
arely even thought about her, a person who was married to a woman who knew something that would destroy him. And probably Amelie as well. Janet owned Ben, now and forever.

  Which meant that Janet also owned Amelie.

  She went into the bathroom and switched on the lights by the mirror. She splashed some water on her face and patted it dry. There was nothing she could do with this woman staring back at her; no amount of makeup could possibly make things better. Her mother was seventy-three when she died, which gave Amelie another thirty-three years. Would she be as alone as her mother had been for most of her life? And yet her mother had ultimately discovered happiness in her solitary life.

  Adele Ferrar adored her students, and would sometimes come home with a smile on her face and stories to tell. Amelie had nothing but the sly imaginings of a novelist, the tiny puppets that walked through her mind and did and said things, until a whole new cast of characters took up residence there. And shutting her computer, she’d return to where she’d been for two years now—alone in the late afternoon, at day’s end, as night fell. When sleep would overtake her.

  Morning would bring a day full of possibilities and promises, and it would start again, the endless round of her routine.

  She turned away from the face in the mirror, switched off the light, changed her clothes, and walked out of the house.

  She took her usual route, a road bordering a large horse farm. In a pasture a stallion had mounted a mare, humping and gripping and snorting and neighing. Amelie thought of Ben, and then tried to forget about him because, really, these were just two horses having what one might call a rollicking good time. What she used to think of as a rollicking good time.

  It was over, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  Or maybe it wasn’t… If Janet suspected someone other than Amelie of being the Other Woman, then she still had a chance. She had definitely stopped short of confronting Amelie, though once inside her and Ben’s house it would have been the right time for it. Which meant, what, that she was certain it was someone other than Amelie? But that was impossible. There was no one else.