A Good Marriage

by Kimberly McCreight

  Because there was no they. There never had been. And there never would be.

  Grand Jury Testimony

  STEVE ABRUZZI,

  called as a witness the 8th of July and was examined and testified as follows:

  EXAMINATION

  BY MS. WALLACE:

  Q: Mr. Abruzzi, thank you for being here.

  A: Of course, anything I can do to help. Everything here is confidential, right?

  Q: Yes, the grand jury proceedings are confidential.

  A: Okay, okay. Good.

  Q: Mr. Abruzzi, were you at the party at 724 First Street on July 2nd of this year?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Did you spend time at the party with Jessica Kim?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Are you married, Mr. Abruzzi?

  A: Yes.

  Q: To Ms. Kim?

  A: No.

  Q: Did your wife know that you and Ms. Kim were together that night?

  A: Yes.

  Q: What did you and Ms. Kim do together?

  A: You mean, like, specifically?

  Q: Did you engage in sexual activities together?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Sexual intercourse?

  A: Yes.

  Q: You’ll need to speak up. We can’t hear you, Mr. Abruzzi.

  A: Yes.

  Q: Do you have children, Mr. Abruzzi?

  A: What does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to make me feel like a bad person?

  Q: Can you answer the question, please?

  A: Yes. They weren’t at the party, obviously. And they don’t know anything about it. Trust me. People are discreet. Except for this, here, now. No one ever talks about it afterward.

  Q: Do these children go to Brooklyn Country Day?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Is that how you know Maude Lagueux?

  A: We know Sarah and Kerry. My wife met Sarah at the PTA. Kerry and I are friends, too. Sebe, Kerry, and I go out sometimes to concerts. I’m big into indie bands. But Kerry wasn’t there that night. He texted me, looking for Sebe.

  Q: What time was it that you went upstairs to have sexual intercourse with Jessica Kim?

  A: Do you have to keep saying it like that?

  Q: Like what?

  A: Never mind. I think it was like 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. Sometime in there.

  Q: Did you see anyone on your way upstairs? Somebody on the stairs?

  A: Oh, um, yeah, there was a woman behind us. But I didn’t know her.

  Q: I’m going to show you a photograph, Mr. Abruzzi.

  (Counsel approaches witness with a photograph, previously marked as People’s Exhibit 6.)

  Q: Is this the woman you saw on the steps?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Let the record reflect that Mr. Abruzzi has identified Mrs. Grayson as the woman he saw going up the stairs on the night in question.

  A: If this is all secret, why is there a transcript?

  Q: For the record, Mr. Abruzzi. That’s all. One last question. You said someone was looking for Sebe Lagueux. Did you happen to notice where Mr. Lagueux was while you were upstairs?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Where was that?

  A: In a room with Mrs. Grayson.

  Lizzie

  JULY 11, SATURDAY

  I didn’t hear Sam come in, but there he was in the bedroom doorway. He looked around at his scattered clothes, his bright eyes dimmed by sadness. But he also did not seem especially surprised. I’d torn our apartment apart, looking for more evidence. I’d opened every cabinet and every drawer, felt for something suspicious between Sam’s T-shirts, and thrown his socks all over the floor. I was shaking the whole time, a wordless howl roaring inside my head.

  I lifted the earring off the bed next to me, my eyes so raw from crying they felt about to bleed. “This belongs to Amanda Grayson.” I shook the dangling earring. “She was wearing it the night she died.”

  Sam crossed his arms over his chest, then leaned back against the wall opposite me. I braced myself for his threadbare excuses, his well-worn defense. I wondered whether I could listen to any of it without launching at him. I could already feel my fingernails digging into his pretty face.

  He looked down.

  Say something, Sam. Fucking say something.

  “You knew her.” It was a statement, not a question. I couldn’t bear to ask any more questions.

  Sam looked up, eyes wide. “No. I didn’t know her.” He sounded panicky as his eyes darted back down. “I mean, not that I know of.”

  “Why do you not seem surprised that you had her earring, then?” My heart was beating so hard, it was making my head ache.

  “I am surprised that’s her earring,” he stammered back. “But I—Once you told me that a woman from the neighborhood was dead, I went and read about it. I have a memory of being on a bench along Prospect Park West that night. Just like a flash. I think it might have been in front of that little playground that’s near Montgomery Place. Isn’t that where her house was?”

  “What the hell are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m saying: I don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand.” My voice was high now, even more panicked than Sam’s. It felt like the room was running out of air. “If you didn’t know her, how could you have possibly ended up at her house? How could you have gotten her earring?”

  He didn’t answer. He just stood there, frozen, eyes locked on the pile of clothes on the floor. Then, suddenly, he started to pace, back and forth, like some kind of frightened animal. Stop, Sam, I pleaded in my head. Please stop. But I was too afraid to say a word.

  “I don’t think I knew her,” he said finally, continuing to stalk back and forth. “But I do think maybe I’d seen her before, at Blue Bottle.”

  “Blue Bottle? What’s that?”

  “It’s a café.”

  “Not around here, it’s not.” The bile was creeping back up my throat.

  “It’s in Center Slope,” he said. “Also not that far from where she lives. I saw a picture of her—I think maybe I did see her a couple times at Blue Bottle, reading there, while I was working.”

  “Since when do you work at some café in Center Slope?” I snapped. “You hate Center Slope!”

  “I needed a change of scenery,” he said, defensive. “I didn’t tell you because I felt guilty spending extra money on fancy coffee. Anyway, I don’t know for sure that it was her, but she was, um, striking. Similar to the woman who was killed.”

  “Striking? Are you fucking kidding me!” I shouted. “So what? You’re saying you guys hooked up that night or something?”

  “I can’t see how,” Sam said. “I’m just trying to tell you absolutely everything I know. I’m trying to come clean.”

  “Great,” I whispered. “That’s so fucking great.”

  Suddenly Sam stopped pacing and headed over to the clothes pile and started digging through like he was searching for something in particular. No, was all I could think. I don’t want to know anything more.

  When he stood, he was holding out one of his white basketball sneakers. He pointed to a long brown streak across the side, about an inch wide and three inches long.

  “Also, I found this earlier today.”

  “What is that?”

  Sam set the shoe down on our bureau, where we both stared at it. “It could be blood, right?”

  “Sam, what the hell are you—” My voice cracked so hard I winced.

  “I don’t know, Lizzie.”

  “You hit your head that same night. That’s got to be your blood,” I said, even though all that blood was already nagging at me.

  Sam shook his head. “I’d left my basketball sneakers out in the hall. Probably so I could sneak in quietly. I saw them out there when we got home from Methodist. I wore my Vans to the hospital.”

  I stood. And the room began to spin.

  “Well, then somebody must have seen you that night. At the time she was killed, I mean.” I moved away, backed up against the windows to
steady myself. “What about the bartender after basketball—”

  “I already asked,” Sam said. His face was all angles in the shadows, beautiful, but menacing now. “He doesn’t remember me.”

  “Or bar receipts,” I pressed, frantic for anything to hold on to, for something to save us. “They put Amanda’s time of death between ten p.m. and eleven p.m. Basketball isn’t over until ten p.m., right? Even staying past eleven, that would hardly give you enough time for one or two drinks. Obviously, to be that drunk, you had way more than that.”

  Sam shook his head again. “We didn’t end up playing basketball that night. There weren’t enough guys, beginning of summer and all that. We were at Freddy’s by seven. Somebody suggested doing shots. Wasn’t me, I swear. But I had a bunch in a row. I do remember that.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sam!” I screamed so loud this time it hurt my throat. “How many more fucking things are you leaving out!”

  Sam wouldn’t even look at me now. We both knew what this meant. At that pace, he’d have been plenty drunk by the critical window.

  “There’s nothing else, Lizzie. That’s—it’s everything.”

  “Think, Sam!” I shouted, terrified and fucking furious.

  “All I’ve done is think!” he shouted right back. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. All I want to do is tell you there’s no way I could have been with her that night, much less hurt her. That I could never hurt anybody. And like that?” Sam’s voice caught now. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. When he finally spoke again, it was with this determined sadness. “But I can’t lie anymore, Lizzie. I’ve blacked out so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve driven a car wasted, told my boss—a guy I liked—to fuck off. And I don’t remember any of it. Everybody has that dark part of themselves they keep safely locked away. When you’re drunk like that, your grip slips and out the dark part comes. Is that dark part of me someone who could kill? I sure as hell fucking hope not. But how can I say for sure, when he and I have never met?”

  Anyone is capable of anything. I knew that, didn’t I? How many times had I pictured my own father plunging a knife into another man’s gut, then coming home to eat spaghetti? My skin was on fire. I wanted Sam’s denials back. I wanted our slow unraveling, not this free fall.

  The fingerprints in Amanda’s blood. What if they were Sam’s?

  I thought of the stairs in her home, of all that blood. Of the force it would have taken to bash Amanda’s head in with that golf club. I pressed my body harder against the windows, felt the cool glass behind my fingers. Wondered how hard I’d have to push to send myself sailing through.

  My phone rang. I lunged for the nightstand, praying that whoever was calling might have something to say that would make it impossible that this man I loved, the man I’d forgiven so often, was a murderer. The call was from a random New York cell phone. It could have been anybody. But anybody was better than this conversation.

  “Hello?” I gasped.

  “It’s Sarah Novak.” She sounded tipsy. Drunk, actually. But the boozy book club was yesterday. Why was everyone always so fucking drunk? “It’s late, isn’t it? Sorry, I wasn’t even—I lost track. My husband said you came by yesterday? I got curious.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, momentarily confused. I didn’t remember telling him my name. But then Sarah had probably told him to be on the lookout for me.

  “And why, pray tell, did you come by?”

  “I spoke with the accountant for the foundation,” I began, slipping numbly into professional mode.

  There was a long silence. “Uh-huh.” And that was all. Even drunk, Sarah was too sharp to start accidentally confessing.

  “I think maybe I misunderstood when we spoke the other day,” I went on, carving her the out of a “misunderstanding.” “I didn’t realize that you ended up meeting with Teddy Buckley, the accountant for the foundation, yourself.”

  “Ugh, yes, I did meet with him in the end.” She was drawing out her words like a disgusted child. “And yeah, I didn’t tell you because I was worried he might—I was sure he wouldn’t have very nice things to say about me.” The more she spoke, the drunker she sounded. “Anyway, being bankrupt only makes your client look more guilty.”

  “He mentioned that you were very upset that you might lose your job if the foundation had no money.”

  She took another breath. “That’s true. And if that’s all he said about me, then he’s a very nice person, because I totally lost it on him. Look, my husband was laid off recently. I was worried you’d start asking questions about why I was so upset about losing my pathetic salary. Eventually, it might have come out that my husband is unemployed. I couldn’t bear the thought. It’s absurd, I know, but that’s how ashamed I am, and I’m not even the one who lost their job. Fucking marriage.” She was whispering now, which made her seem even more wasted. “We both thought my husband would be right back to work. Or at least I did. But he hasn’t exactly been pounding the pavement.” That’s because he watches Wimbledon, I wanted to say. And eats pizza. She sighed dramatically. “So now I’m the breadwinner. Or the crumbwinner. It’s not exactly what I signed up for, if you know what I mean.”

  I did know exactly what she meant.

  “Did you tell Amanda?”

  “Are you kidding?” she exclaimed. “I haven’t told anyone. What part of I’m-mortified-my-husband-got-laid-off didn’t you understand? I know it’s appalling that I lied to my friends. I love my friends. But sometimes it’s easier to stay married if you pretend. Willful blindness, isn’t that what you lawyers call it?”

  It was easier to pretend. Sarah was right about that, too. “I didn’t mean about your husband’s job. I meant did you tell Amanda what the accountant told you, about the foundation not having any money?”

  “Oh, that,” Sarah said dismissively. “I was going to tell her, but not at Maude’s party. It was a party, and I didn’t want to stress her out. Besides, Zach was there. It would have been really awkward. Maude thought I should tell Amanda anyway. But Maude wasn’t exactly thinking clearly because of everything with Sophia.”

  “You told Maude about the foundation’s financial problems?”

  “Of course! The second I saw her at the party. I mean, the foundation bust, and all of Zach’s millionaire bullshit a lie? It was too great. I know that’s petty, but I never claimed to be perfect,” she said, her words slurring even more. “Anyway, Maude cared more about the email investigation.”

  “Email investigation?” I asked, though Sarah had mentioned it before.

  “Yup. Some of the Country Day families’ computers have been hacked into.” Sarah sighed. “And all their dirty laundry is now out in the open. I told Maude it was an inside job, a parent, they think—one of the investigators slipped and told me. Maude and I spend half our time saying: ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but …’ Maude did the same thing when she told me about the golf club. Right away she was like, ‘Oh, wait, don’t tell anyone about that.’”

  “The golf club?” I asked, remembering how Sarah had thrown that in my face during our first conversation, proof of exactly what a monster Zach was. “I thought the police told you about that.”

  “The police? Please. They pumped me for information about who was at the party, but they wouldn’t tell me shit,” Sarah said. “Maude told me about the golf club. She said they found it at the bottom of the stairs in Amanda’s house. Right next to her body. Zach might as well have signed his name to the scene of the crime.”

  “When did Maude tell you about the golf club?”

  “The morning after Amanda died,” she said. “The police must have told her.”

  But Maude hadn’t spoken to anyone until today, when Wendy Wallace showed up at her house. Certainly she shouldn’t have known about the golf club only hours after Amanda was killed with it. It was hard to think with that whooshing sound back in my ears. I looked over at Sam, staring at me from his spot on the wall.

  I gripped the phone tighter. Maud
e and not Sam. A flicker of hope.

  Amanda

  THE PARTY

  A crowd of people holding large red plastic cups filled with pink punch were pressed up against each other in the entryway to Maude and Sebe’s brownstone. It reminded Amanda of the college party she’d attended at the University of Albany with a girl who’d worked one summer at the motel. It was packed and noisy like this, but everyone here looked so strangely young and so old at the same time.

  Amanda had to shout “Excuse me” more than once for anyone to hear her over the blasting Nirvana. She was relieved to finally wriggle her way through the bodies and escape into the more spacious living room, filled with exquisite art and colorful keepsakes from Maude and Sebe’s extensive travels and lots and lots of family photos—more refined than Sarah’s but no less genuine. Covering a nearby table were small bags of trail mix and scavenger-hunt maps and a big pile of leis and other party favors.

  Amanda looked around for Zach, but he’d already slipped out of sight into the throng of couples—tall and short, fat and thin, fashionable, unfashionable, beautiful, ordinary. One nearby twosome exchanged some sharp barbs, but then in an instant seemed to smile and forgive. Soon they were laughing, faces close, a hand on a waist, fingers linked, hips touching. Messy and imperfect, yes, but connected.

  Zach was wrong. Human connections were a good thing. They were the only thing that mattered.

  Amanda deserved that, didn’t she? A real connection. Love. Zach had rescued her, yes. But she’d made for him a life the past eleven years; she’d given him a son. Her debt had been repaid.

  There was really only one solution now—Amanda needed to leave Zach. She’d known that for some time, if she was being honest. She couldn’t even tell him about her dad. How could she protect herself? How could she protect her son? Not only wouldn’t their marriage keep her afloat, she was pretty sure it was the thing that would eventually drag her under.

  “Excuse me,” somebody behind Amanda said.