“That’s right. Listen, I was just wondering if you’d talked to her at all. The day of the incident, I mean.”
Candace shrugged. “Not that much. When we got there, she’d already done a job on her husband’s car.”
As Candace went back through what Claire had done, I saw it all again. Claire with that paint, standing at the door, screaming at Candace and her partner before she hurled the can at them.
“She was yelling for us to back off,” Candace told me. “To stay away from her. Then she threw a paint can at us. That’s when we took her down.”
“When she was in the squad car, did she say anything?”
“Yeah,” Candace answered. “She said ‘I’m sorry’ a couple times.”
“She was apologizing to you?”
Candace shook her head. “No, it didn’t seem like it was to us.” She shrugged. “I don’t know who it was.”
“Is that all she said?”
“Not another word, as far as I can recall.”
I got to my feet and headed for the door. When I reached it, I turned to her. “Thanks.”
Candace smiled. “All in the line of duty.”
On the way back to my office, I went back over my conversation with Candace. From those thin pickings, I had only two words that might lead to something.
I’m sorry.
But to whom was Claire apologizing?
And for what?
Claire
MY LAST SESSION ends at around five. Before going home, I look in on my father.
“He’s sleeping,” the nurse tells me. “He was having some problems. Dr. Aliabadi ordered a sedative.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Anxiety.”
“Is the doctor around?”
She is.
I meet with her in the office behind the nurses’ station. She’s around fifty, with close-cropped gray hair. She explains that my father became increasingly stressed during the day. This has caused a serious uptick in his blood pressure. “We’re trying to stabilize it,” Dr. Aliabadi explains.
“Do you know what caused the heart attack?”
“He has some constrictions in his arteries. It’s not uncommon in older people, of course, but in your father’s case, that’s not the real problem.”
“What is the real problem?”
“There’s a lot of damage to his heart. If he has another cardiac incident, he almost certainly won’t survive.”
She waits for me to respond to this. When I don’t, she says, “Do you have any questions?”
“No.” I thank her and return to my father’s room.
He is lying on his back, his hands on his chest. Like a man in a coffin. He was always good at playing any part his life required. I wonder if some reflexive part of him is acting even now.
I wait in the room a little longer, even though Dr. Aliabadi has made it clear that my father is down for the night. The little blip of his heartbeat moves raggedly across the screen of the monitor beside his bed. It beeps with the faded rhythm of his pulse. His life at last reduced to this mechanical movement. All that passion, frustration, and rage is now just the soft, ever-slowing syncopation of a departing life.
There is a terror in knowing how quickly a human future can be snatched away.
As Melody’s was.
As Emma’s yet may be.
I am thinking of Emma again, trying to decide what I should do next, when the door of my father’s room suddenly opens.
A woman who looks to be in her early sixties takes two steps into the room, then freezes.
It is her large green eyes I recognize. They still seem young and passionate. The rest of her has gone the way of time, though she’s clearly at war with the inevitable. Hair dyed black. There is an abundance of red lipstick. Her long eyelashes bat with surprise as she stares at me.
“Claire?”
She is obviously unsure if it’s really me. I was very young when she last saw me. Only eight years old. My mature face is quite different from the one of my childhood. I might easily be a friend of my father’s. Or even one of his caregivers.
“Rose,” I say. “Hello.”
She has not expected to run into me.
“Your father called me,” she explains quickly. “Out of the blue. It was almost forty years ago that I worked for him.”
She looks uncomfortable.
After all these years, she still must hide this old romance.
She glances toward my father, then back to me.
“He said he had a heart attack. Is he all right now?”
“There’s a lot of damage, but he survived.”
She is hesitant to go to him. Perhaps she thinks it would betray some glimmer of their affair.
“My husband died two years ago,” she informs me.
She wants me to understand that whatever this is—my father’s call, her response—it is not adultery.
I wonder if she knows about the boat. Did she plot it with him? Or was it something my father came to on his own?
“What did he say when he called you?”
“Just that he wanted to see me. To talk, I guess.”
I try to imagine this conversation. Will they relive some torrid embrace?
A smile flickers onto her lips.
“Your dad was a great boss. A good father, too, as I’m sure you know.”
What’s the point of saying otherwise?
“How have you been?” I ask Rose.
“Fine.”
She smiles briefly, then her expression changes into one I’ve never seen on her before. It’s pity.
“I heard about your daughter. I’m very sorry. Such a tragedy.”
I want to leave now.
“Well, make yourself comfortable,” I tell Rose. “He may wake up soon. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.”
I dash out of the room.
•
At home, I fall into a gloom of remembrance, Rose’s pity ringing in my ears: Such a tragedy.
It is a relief when Ray arrives to look at the paintings. He gives me a bottle in a velvet gift bag. “Champagne.’’
I pour two glasses and hand one of them to Ray.
He notices the paintings spread about the room. “These are the ones you mentioned?”
“Yes.”
He turns his attention to the largest of them. It’s a house, but with distortions. Some windows big, others small. Doors in odd places and leaning at unreal angles. It’s quite different from the one the girl painted on the wall near McDuffy’s, though there is the same misshapenness and disorder.
“It’s a broken home,” he says.
He goes on to the next painting.
“What do you think?” he asks.
It’s a forest. A very tangled one, shrouded with vines that sprout enormous leaves. Jungle lushness, a suffocating quality in its density. A landscape strangling itself.
When I tell Ray all this, he stares at me very closely.
“That’s a very dark interpretation, Claire.”
“Yes, well, a teacher of mine once said that when we look at a painting, we repaint it with the colors and shapes that are inside us.” I take a sip from my glass. “What do you see?”
“Confusion. Lostness.”
Ray proceeds to the next painting, a swirl of colors above what appears to be a storm-tossed sea, though it might also be a field of wheat.
“There’s a lot of movement,” he says. “Things rising and falling. It almost breathes.”
He considers it a while longer, then goes to the next two, another house, equally surreal, and a seascape in which the water seems to be reaching hungrily for the beach.
“I’m looking for a theme. Something that can tie them all together for an exhibit.”
His gaze drifts from one painting to the next. “Do you see anything that connects them?”
“Not really.”
Ray continues to concentrate on the paintings.
“Let’s just call the
exhibit ‘Her World.’ Then people can make whatever connections they like.”
“Don’t they do that anyway?”
He looks at me and smiles.
“At least it’s a way of not forgetting her.”
There is kindness in his voice and in his eyes.
“Or the way she saw the world,” he adds.
I realize just how much I am drawn to this man.
At the same time I must keep my distance, and make Ray keep his.
2.
I am still in the midst of this feeling when I meet Ava for lunch the next day.
She has chosen a new place for us to have lunch, the A.O.C. on Third Street. It specializes in tapas.
“Little bites are great. You can eat the whole menu.”
She watches as I survey the choices.
“You look . . . different.”
“Do I?”
She studies me a moment. “Could it be something to do with Ray Patrick?”
“He came over last night. We had a nice talk.”
The waiter appears. We order a selection of tapas and as always I have my sparkling wine.
“A nice talk? Forgive me, but it looks like more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“That glow, Claire. When I see it, I get the idea that someone’s met Mr. Right. Or at least thinks she might have. Which is it with you?”
If I tell her about Ray’s coming to see the paintings, she will lecture me about my unfortunate tendency to bring up “dark things.” She will remind me that this is a new relationship that should not be burdened with such depressing issues. She will tell me to keep things light, upbeat, casual.
“Ray and I just talked,” I tell her. “Like friends.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s true.”
“Are you telling me that you just want to be friends with Ray?”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway, Ava. I have to get my life in order before I can have a relationship.”
Ava’s mood darkens.
“Meaning?” she asks.
“Meaning I can’t get involved with anyone until I’ve cleared away the rubble.”
“And the rubble is Simon, of course. He’s a big pile, I know. The trick is to ignore him.”
“Or kill him.”
Something in the tone of my voice, or the look in my eyes, stuns Ava. She quickly adds a warning.
“That’s how it starts, Claire. You begin with something you couldn’t possibly do. And then the more you think about it, the more it seems not only possible but a pretty damn good idea. It’s a dangerous train of thought.”
Dangerous, yes.
Because I find myself imagining a world without Simon. One in which he can do no further harm. I don’t consider guns, knives, or some blunt instrument. Rather, I dream of him disappearing into the depths, like a body thrown overboard.
Sinking.
How much better life would be if men like Simon littered the bottom of the sea.
3.
I arrive at Margot’s apartment at just after two in the afternoon. She’s a new client, and from the sound of her voice, I expect to see a woman in her forties.
But a man opens the door. He’s powerfully built. A wrestler’s body. Muscular thighs and bulging biceps.
“I’m Claire.”
The look he gives me is as familiar as it is uncomfortable. A gaze that unzips and unbuttons and leaves your clothes on the floor. His eyes crawl across my chest.
“The French teacher.”
He steps back to let me in.
“Margot will be out in a minute.”
I walk into the house.
“I was just on my way out.”
But he doesn’t leave. He directs me into the living room and trails behind me. The heat of his eyes is on my hair, my shoulders, my waist, then down and down.
“I’m a fireman,” he tells me with a slight smile.
Obviously I should be impressed.
“Beverly Hills. Over on North Rexford. We get the movie-star calls. Mansions. But fire is fire. It doesn’t make exceptions.” He waits for me to respond. When I don’t, he adds, “Where do you live?”
“Near the Grove.”
“Station Sixty-One,” he says in a bragging tone. “On Third Street. I know some of those guys.”
He is clearly about to continue along these lines when Margot enters the room. Her appearance irritates him, as if she is a heckler in the audience, spoiling his act.
He looks at her.
“I’ll be home late,” he tells her.
He turns to me.
“I’m Matt, by the way. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
He gives me a quick smile, then heads for the door.
Margot’s posture relaxes when he goes through it.
“We can work here,” she says. She means the small table across the room.
“Sure, fine.”
Margot was born in the Drôme, in the southeast of France. She was five years old when her parents were killed in a car accident. Her father was American, and she was taken in by his parents. Her grandparents did not speak French, so she has spoken English most of her life. She has retained a surprising amount of her childhood French, however. Her vocabulary is basic, but even the little French she knows touches her emotionally.
“It’s like going home. Being with my parents again.”
As we go through the lesson, it’s clear that Margot is very bright. For some of my students, an hour of French can be exhausting. But Margot thrives on it. She comes alive with each new word.
“I can’t wait for the next lesson,” she says as I am leaving.
“I can’t either.”
She is still at her door when I reach my car. “Au revoir,” she calls. “Merci beaucoup.”
“De rien. You’re welcome.”
•
Dominic is my final client of the day.
I always dread my time with him.
There is a disturbing element in everything he does. His eyes seem never to meet mine, and when he speaks, it is little more than a sulking mutter.
We begin with common verbs, but as always he veers the lesson toward the faintly criminal. Today he asks for the French verb for “to kidnap.”
“Why that word?” I ask him.
“It’s in the game. The one I play in my room.”
“A game about kidnapping?”
He nods.
“You try to get away with it,” he says. “The cops are after you. The FBI. You have to do the kidnapping, pick up the ransom, and get away with it.”
“Who do you kidnap?”
He grins.
“A girl.”
This game clearly provides him with a disturbing excitement. “After I get the ransom,” he says in a tone of perverse empowerment, “it’s up to me to decide what to do with her.”
“You don’t have to let the girl go?”
He shakes his head. “Not if I want to keep her.”
I look at him sternly, not at all sympathetic to this horrid game.
“Why would you keep her, Dominic?”
The question closes him down.
He returns his gaze to the textbook.
“It’s just a game,” he says sullenly, with a hint of resentment that he’s been drawn into an uncomfortable interrogation.
I continue the class without giving him the French infinitive for “kidnap,” which happens to be exactly the same, kidnapper.
We practice vocabulary and work through a few present-tense conjugations.
I keep my eye on the clock, because I don’t want to spend a single extra second with Dominic.
When the class ends, he remains at the desk while I gather up my stuff and head for the door.
On the way I pass his room. The door is open. I can see his computer screen. The game’s logo is glowing in the darkness inside the room. Two leering eyes, and the sinister title: Watchman.
I whirl around.
Domin
ic is still at the desk, staring at me with a gotcha glimmer in his eyes that confirms what he’s done as well as the sick pleasure he takes in it.
Suddenly I am on fire.
I storm down the corridor.
“I know what you did,” I say to him coldly.
Dominic laughs.
“It was just a joke.”
“A joke?” I demand vehemently. “You think it’s funny to play with someone? To threaten someone?”
My voice echoes through the house.
“Do you?”
He faces me mutely.
“Do you?”
“What’s going on?”
I turn to see Dominic’s mother staring at me in utter consternation.
“What’s going on here?” she repeats.
“Your son is a—”
She cuts me off.
“I think you’d better leave, Miss Fontaine.”
I want to tell her about the Watchman, the message, but she’ll dismiss it as a prank. I have no choice but to leave.
At the door, I look back.
Dominic is staring at me with the Watchman’s leering eyes.
•
My nerves are still jangling when I reach home.
I am filled with self-doubt.
Can I no longer trust myself at all?
First I was wrong about Mehdi’s flowers, and now I have been wrong about the email from the Watchman.
Simon had nothing to do with either of these things. Even when he does nothing, he baits me.
I glance about the room. My books. My music. None of it calms me.
I hear an alert. The tone tells me that I’ve just gotten a review on Yelp.
All my reviews have been positive. I check this one in the hope of finding a few kind words. I open the app and read:
Be warned. This woman is mentally unstable. She should not be allowed in your home. She is dangerous.
Dominic!
Or his mother!
Ting.
The same devastating review on Thumbtack.
Another ting.
Craigslist.
They are trying to destroy me.
I feel completely shattered.
I need to talk to someone.
Normally I would call Ava, but our last exchange was less pleasant than usual. I don’t feel like going to her.
Only one person comes to mind.
I am wary of making the call.
After all, we hardly know each other.
I think of the last time I saw him, my determination to keep my distance. That caution has dissolved in the wake of these hateful reviews.
An Inconvenient Woman Page 13