Cold Shoulder

by Lynda La Plante

  Lorraine was asleep, still in her dress. He didn’t wake her, not even to tell her that Donny had offered him a partnership. He pulled the quilt out from beneath her and laid it gently over her. He checked on his daughters—they were both sound asleep. He went around the apartment and threw every liquor bottle he could find down the garbage chute. Not until he slid into bed next to her did he see that Lorraine was cradling the picture of Lubrinski in her arms. When he tried to take it from her she moaned and turned over. Maybe there had been more to their partnership than he had realized. Maybe they had grown apart … so many maybes.

  He closed his eyes and remembered that night as clearly as Lorraine had, that dinner at Bianco’s. How excited he had been booking the table, arranging for the flowers and wine to be ready. He turned toward her curved back, gently stroking it. She had never looked more beautiful; she had worn her blond hair down to her waist in those days, and when she was on duty she would braid it into a neat roll at the nape of her neck. He had always loved when she came home from work, the way one of the first things she would do was unbraid her lovely silky hair. Often he would brush it out for her, it was always a signal that now they were on their own special time. It was also often a signal for them to make love. He wanted to cradle her in his arms now, wanted to make love to her right this moment, but she remained turned away from him, Lubrinski’s picture still clasped in her hands. He wondered if Lubrinski had made love to Lorraine, and by the time he did eventually drift into a restless sleep, he was sure that he had. It was easier to blame someone else for the failure of their marriage than accept the possibility that he had changed.

  The next morning, Lorraine was up early, cooking breakfast for the girls. Mike could hear her laughing and talking. By the time he went into the kitchen, they were ready for school.

  “I’ll drive them,” she said. “You haven’t had breakfast yet!”

  He snatched up his car keys. “I’ll drive them, okay?”

  “When will you be home?”

  “I’m in court today, so I’ll be late.” He walked out without kissing her goodbye, slamming the front door.

  She was making the bed when he called. He’d made her a doctor’s appointment.

  “You did what?”

  “Listen to me, sweetheart, he’s somebody you can talk to, friend of Donny’s—”

  Lorraine interrupted, “I don’t need a goddamned shrink, especially not some asshole friend of Donny’s. There’s nothing wrong with me that a few days’ rest—”

  Mike was adamant, not wanting to sound angry but unable not to. “Yes, you do, Lorraine, listen, don’t hang up—”

  Her voice was icy, calm and controlled. “No, Mike, I don’t need anybody, I am not sick, okay? That’s final. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Lorraine made no contact with the station. She checked the newspapers for articles on the case, scanning the pages as fast as she could turn them, afraid to read about herself but at the same time wanting to know the outcome. When she did find a brief article about the shooting, it made no mention of her part in the death of the young boy, and that just made her feel worse. She was afraid, too, to be seen on the street, and for the next few weeks she led a double life. When Mike left in the morning she did some housework and ordered in groceries. When Rita brought the girls home, she played with them, read to them, and cooked dinner for Mike. He knew she was drinking but she denied it and he never saw her with a glass of alcohol in her hand. He had no idea that she spent her days sitting in front of the television with a bottle of vodka, keeping herself at a sustained level. Mike hid from himself that she was drinking consistently, partly because it meant less tension between them. He asked Rita to tell him if she ever saw Lorraine drinking, especially in front of the girls.

  It was only a few weeks later that Rita called him. It was a Saturday, Mike had only gone into the office to do a few extra hours on a case but had become so immersed he had forgotten the time. Lorraine and he had promised the girls they’d go out for a picnic in the afternoon. “You’d better come home, Mr. Page. I don’t know where she is—she left the girls by themselves—anything could have happened. I only dropped by as I was passing, she never called me or nothin’.”

  Mike drove like a madman back to the apartment. The children, he discovered, had been alone for most of the day. After Mike had calmed them, he asked Rita to stay with them and went out in a blind fury to find his wife. After searching in vain for three hours, he called home. Rita was in tears: Lorraine was back, she was drunk, unable to stand upright. A cigarette dangling in her hand, she apologized when he got back to the house, telling him that she had had an important meeting. She seemed barely to hear him when he talked to her, and if he touched her she screamed senselessly at him. Then, as if terrified of something or someone, she begged him to hold her tightly.

  The next morning, shamefaced, she promised him he would never see her like that again. Never again would she touch a drop.

  Mike coped as best he could. He instructed Rita never to leave Lorraine alone with the girls, to stay until he got home. But the situation grew worse. Time and again he confronted her with empty bottles he found hidden around the apartment. She would swear she hadn’t had a drink and even accused Rita of planting the bottles.

  Mike was at the breaking point. He tried to understand Lorraine’s frame of mind by putting himself in her position—she had shot an innocent boy and had lost the job she had always been so proud of—but all he felt was shame and guilt, of which she showed none. When he tried to talk to her about it, she seemed more intent on blaming her failure on his success.

  No matter what he said she twisted it against him. If he had any guilt about those years when she had kept him and the children, it was soon dispersed by her venomous onslaughts. She exhausted him; night after night, he would dread coming home, afraid he’d find her ready for a fight. At other times, she would kneel at his feet and beg his forgiveness, pleading for him to carry her to bed. And yet throughout these agonizing weeks she seemed incapable of tears.

  In the end, Mike himself went to Donny’s doctor friend. He needed to talk it over with someone. The doctor warned him that unless Lorraine sought help Mike would be dragged down with her. He encouraged him to leave her and thus force her into seeking medical help. But Mike’s own guilt and his awareness of how much Lorraine had done for him held him back. When his daughters became scared of their mother, though, Mike made one last attempt.

  Lorraine finally agreed and, quiet and sober, she accompanied him to the doctor. She spent two hours in his office, talking first with Mike present and then alone. After the appointment she had appeared almost triumphant, admonishing Mike for wasting money. There was, as she had said to him over and over again, nothing wrong with her.

  Mike returned the following day and was told that Lorraine had insisted that she was perfectly all right and able to cope with no longer working. She had refused to have a blood test.

  But the drinking continued and the rift between them grew deeper. Lorraine adamantly refused to admit anything was wrong: she had her drinking under control. She was becoming sly; she would dress well and appear sober, but rarely managed to leave the apartment. Mike continued to find empty bottles hidden away.

  Six months after Lorraine had left the force, he filed for divorce. He refused to make her move out of the apartment, and signed it over to her with the contents. She protested when he insisted on custody of the girls but otherwise seemed not to care that he was leaving. He gave her five thousand dollars and promised three thousand a month in alimony. She was strangely elated when he brought the papers for her signature, which made him suspect that she didn’t believe he would go through with it. But she signed with a flourish and smiled.

  “You do understand what you’ve signed, don’t you, Lorraine?” Mike asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  He gripped her tightly. “I’m leaving and taking the girls, but call me if you need me, and I’ll do whatever I can to h
elp. You need help, Lorraine, all I want is for you to acknowledge it.” He felt terrible. She helped him pack, kneeling to lock the suitcase. She was wearing a pale blue denim shirt and her feet were bare. Her hair shone as she bent over the cases. Mike wanted to hold her, to make love to her. This was madness.

  The Pattersons came to help with the suitcases. The girls, clasping Tina’s hands, thought they were going on vacation. It had taken only the afternoon to get everything packed and out, such a short time after all the years they had been together.

  “Tina’s going to take the girls in their car. Do you want to say goodbye to them?” Mike asked.

  “No. I don’t want to upset them.” She heard her daughters asking if they were going to see their granny and why was Mommy staying behind? She heard Tina reassuring them that Mommy would be coming to see them. She heard Donny call out that everything was in the car. She heard Mike say he would be out in a few minutes. She heard Rita saying goodbye to Julia and Sally, her voice breaking as if she were crying. Rita had known them since they were babies.

  Mike walked into the kitchen. Lorraine turned toward him and raised a glass. “Just milk.”

  He leaned on the table. “I don’t want to go, Lorraine.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me.” She tried to smile, to shrug it off as if it were nothing, but her eyes betrayed her. She couldn’t quite make the nonchalant sarcasm work.

  “I love you.”

  She tossed her hair away from her eyes. “I love you, too, Mike.”

  There seemed nothing left to say. He crossed to her, reached out, and held her in his arms. She rested her head against his shoulder, the way she always had. He could smell lemons, a clean, sweet smell of freshly washed hair, and he tilted up her face and kissed her. She had the most beautiful clear blue eyes he had ever seen. She seemed to look straight through him, yet her lips had a soft sweet smile.

  “Promise me you’ll get help?”

  “I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me, Mike.”

  Donny Patterson sat in the car. He watched Mike walk slowly down the path, looking as if he was crying.

  “You okay, partner?”

  Mike got into the car and blew his nose. “I feel like such a prick. She doesn’t seem to understand what just happened.”

  Donny put his arm around his friend. “Look, buddy, I been through this three times. It’s not easy, but, Jesus, now that it’s over you’re gonna feel such relief. She’s got problems. You tried every way to help her, Mike.”

  “Maybe we’ll get back together,” Mike said.

  Donny gripped Mike’s knee. “Christ almighty When are you gonna face facts? She’s a drunk and she was dragging you down with her. If she won’t get help, you’re gonna have to forget her, act like she’s dead. Believe me, it’s the best way. Say to yourself she’s dead, be a hell of a lot easier.”

  Mike nodded. His heart felt like lead. He closed his eyes. “I loved her,” he said softly.

  Lorraine sat on the sofa, flicking the TV from channel to channel. There was no need now to hide the half-bottle of vodka that lay beside her. She could do what she liked, she was on her own. She didn’t deserve anyone’s love or respect, she knew that. She was deeply ashamed that she didn’t have the guts to slit her wrists. Or was it because she didn’t deserve to die so easily? She was her own judge and her own jury She had to be punished.

  Lorraine finished the vodka and went in search of more. She looked around the bedroom, seeing the open wardrobe doors, the empty hangers where Mike’s clothes had hung, and backed out of the room. She discovered another bottle hidden in the kitchen and had drunk most of that before she wandered into the children’s room. She was humming tunelessly. She got into Sally’s tiny bed, holding the bottle to her chest. She could smell her daughter on the pillow; it was as if the little girl was kissing her face, she felt so close. She reached over to the other bed for Julia’s pillow and held it to her cheek. She snuggled down clasping the pillows. “My babies,” she whispered, “my babies.” She looked drunkenly at the wallpaper, with its pink and blue ribbons threaded around children’s nursery rhymes. Little piggies, little rabbits, and funny flying elephants. Two little beds for her two little angels.

  She could feel a lovely warm blanket begin slowly to cover her body, a soft pink baby blanket, like the one tucked around her when she was a little girl, like the one she had wrapped around the dead child’s body. She felt her chest tighten with panic, her body tense. She could hear him now. Lubrinski.

  “Hey, how ya doin’, Page?”

  “I’m doin’ okay, Lubrinski,” she said aloud, startled to hear her own voice. “I’m doin’ fine, partner.” She frowned. Who was screaming? Some woman was screaming, the terrifying sound going on and on and on, driving her nuts. She rolled out of bed and ran from the room. She tripped and fell to her knees until she was crawling on all fours into her bedroom. The screaming continued. She heaved herself up and caught sight of a figure reflected in the dressing table mirror. She clapped her hands over her mouth, biting her fingers to stop the screams. It was her. She was the woman screaming. The terrible sweating panic swamped her.

  It was Lubrinski’s smiling face looking up at her from the dressing table that finally calmed her. She snatched up the photograph. “Help me, Lubrinski, for chrissakes help me.”

  “Sure, honey, take a shot of this, then what say you and me go and rip up the town? You wanna hit the bars?”

  “Yeah, why not, you son of a bitch?” Lorraine gave a tough, bitter laugh, and felt herself straightening out as the panic subsided and she was back in control.

  That was the first night Lorraine went out to drink alone. She phoned for a taxi and instructed the driver to go to Sunset and Curson, a known hangout for hookers just on the east border of West Hollywood. On that first night, Lorraine was still reasonably steady on her feet and sober enough to move farther afield than any local bar, not wanting any embarrassing encounters with any of her old Pasadena colleagues. She knew most of the West Hollywood bars and clubs, even the whores, because Lubrinski had taken her to them. When they came off duty together or had a tough assignment and needed to “come down,” they would hit these places, and for the same reason she chose them that first night. Tixie’s, Golden Slipper, Two Dimes, Glory Hole, Max’s—the list of small, dark bars and clubs was endless, and within a few weeks Lorraine had revisited most of them.

  She was never sure how she returned home, but thanks to her local Dial-a-Cab she always managed to wake up there in the morning. Some days she would drink in the apartment, all day, passing out before she could call her taxi. It got so she was never completely sober; she’d wake up to a drink and order a taxi to make trips to the local grocery store, liquor store, and the bank to cash checks, always using Dial-a-Cab. All the drivers got to know her, and got to know that the lady tipped well. Half the time they would have to open her purse and count out the fare money for her since she couldn’t, and they all nicknamed her “Keep the change.” She truthfully believed at this stage she would come through it all, there would be a way out. She was still looking good, still bathing and changing, even sending her clothes to the laundry, but she was up to two bottles of vodka a day, and that was before she went out to the clubs. Soon the trips to the grocery store were bypassed because she never felt like eating, and when she did she would simply open a can of soup or baked beans as the whole process of cooking herself a meal was too much aggravation. Drinking became her sole preoccupation, and she liked company, so the trips to the bars and clubs continued. Every night she hit Sunset Boulevard and moved from one stool to another the length of Fairfax Avenue to La Brea. She never knew who she ended up drinking with, she didn’t give a damn, and they didn’t seem to mind when she called them Lubrinski. A lot of Lubrinski look-alikes came and went, and there were many more drunken nights when she didn’t care if Lubrinski was with her or not. All she cared about was getting another drink to keep her away from the terrified woman who screamed. Drunk, the pain w
as eased; drunk, she didn’t miss her babies; drunk, she was happy and comforted; drunk, she had friends—drinking was all that mattered.

  Lorraine’s downward spiral began the night after Mike left her. It was a long road she traveled, searching for oblivion. And it was frighteningly easy. Lorraine became easy prey, people were real friendly in the bars, but they used her and stole from her. Dial-a-Cab stopped doing business with her because although she continued to pay and was still known as “Keep the change,” she could also become very aggressive and sometimes violent, accusing them of stealing. Other times she was sick in their taxis. So she used other, less scrupulous companies. And when even the possibility of meeting up with old colleagues didn’t mean anything to her anymore, she started to drink locally. She’d end up in sleazy back parlors of run-down joints run by Hispanics or African Americans in the Orange Grove section of Pasadena. Sometimes she would take a group of these so-called friends back to her apartment. When Lorraine had drunk herself into a stupor, they’d leave with anything they could carry out. Her neighbors complained but she paid no attention. When the money was gone, she sold the furniture, and then the apartment, and everyone in the immaculate Green and Green enclave sighed with relief. She was gone.

  Lorraine felt happy because she thought the screaming woman would leave her, would stay behind in the apartment. It was good to have a big stash of money, never to worry where the next bottle came from, but when the screaming woman followed her to the run-down room she rented, she moved on; she had to keep running from the woman whose terrible screams frightened her so much and dragged her down so far. She could take the fights, and the taunts of prostitutes and pimps. Hell, she’d arrested many of them. They pushed her around and spiked her drinks. But drunk, she didn’t care. Drunk, the screams were obliterated. Drunk, the men who pawed her meant nothing. Drunk, she could hide, feel some comfort in slobbering embraces, in strange rooms, in beds where the screaming woman left her alone. There she felt safe, secure in the knowledge that she was slowly killing this woman who would not leave her in peace. She was never sober long enough to understand that the woman she was so intent on running away from was herself.