by L. C. Warman
Lia knocked on the door, stamping her feet to try to draw some heat into her body. She waited a few seconds and knocked again. “Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered.
The door swung open, and Lia felt a stab of relief.
“I have to talk to you,” she said, and felt more relief when the door did not slam shut in her face.
Paulette McKenzie was dressed in a long terrycloth robe, of an unfortunate salmon pink color. She had a faint sheen of moisturizer over her bare face, and her hair was pulled back into a tight bun. Her face had remained expressionless when she took in Lia: indeed, Lia had the feeling that she had prepared for this visit for a long time, and was, if anything, relieved that it had finally come.
“Are your sons staying the night?” Lia asked as they rounded the corner into Paulette’s sitting room. Paulette pointed imperiously to an armchair and took a seat on the opposite couch, crossing her arms.
“The boys are back at their respective homes,” Paulette said. “Harry has no desire to see you again.”
“Right. Okay. I just didn’t want to talk about anything…sensitive…in front of them.”
Paulette blinked at her, face stony.
Lia felt her heart pick up a few beats. She was suddenly eighteen again, in the upstairs closet, hand reaching for a fallen bag labeled “photos” and hoping she would find a particularly embarrassing one to tease Harry with. Instead she had drawn out a set of letters that she wished she had never seen. It would have made everything so much simpler—it would have led to an alternate life, one where perhaps Lia and Harry might have stayed in touch more, where Lia might have come back to St. Clair sooner, or who knew, maybe convinced Harry to come out to Los Angeles. Or it wouldn’t have affected their relationship at all, but Lia would have gone forth into the world with more lightness, with more faith in humanity.
But she couldn’t take it back.
“Ten thousand,” Paulette said.
“What?”
“Ten thousand. It’s the most that I’m willing to give you. You’d have to sign a contract, of course—I had my lawyer send something over. It would be wired to you within three days.”
The thought of ten thousand dollars in her bank account made Lia’s chest flutter. “I don’t want—”
“It’s the most I can do,” Paulette said stiffly. She held Lia’s gaze for a beat, then tore her eyes away. “What you asked for is too much. It’s unconscionable. I can’t do that to my sons.”
“I’m not here to bargain with you.”
“Well then just tell me what it would take,” Paulette snapped. “But it had better be less than fifty.”
“Mrs. McKenzie, I don’t want any money from you.”
Fear flooded Paulette’s face.
“I’m not blackmailing you,” Lia said. “I don’t want any money from you. And I’m never going to tell anybody about what I found.”
“Hmph!” Paulette said, plainly showing that she would have trusted Lia more if she had asked for twenty-five thousand and signed the contract that was no doubt lingering somewhere near.
Lia rubbed her throat. Even now she could picture the letters. Cream-colored notes, written in two hands: Paulette’s, and another man’s. Love letters. It was apparent even before Lia skimmed the contents, even before she saw the “Dearest Aaron” and “My Sweet Paulette” lines scrawled across the top. They bore no dates; Lia had no idea whether the affair was ongoing, or something wrapped up years before. To this day, she still had no idea who ‘Aaron’ was. Only that it had decidedly been an affair—she had seen enough references to Paulette’s husband and sons to see that.
“Really,” Lia said, trying to soften her voice as much as possible. “Mrs. McKenzie, I never even told Harry about what I saw. And if I wanted to blackmail you, what proof would I have? You still have the letters.”
“I’ve no doubt you took pictures,” Paulette said. “Screenshots, or whatever you call them.”
Lia let this pass. “I don’t have any evidence. And I don’t want any. It was none of my business.”
“Exactly!”
“So you have to figure out who really is blackmailing you,” Lia finished. “And what they’re blackmailing you about. Because your secret is safe with me.”
Lia waited, expecting Paulette’s expression to slowly transform to one of understanding, even embarrassment. But with each passing second, Paulette’s brow creased more and more, her lips puckered, and her eyebrows drew together, until it looked as though nothing could have ever enraged Paulette more in her life.
“Safe with you?” Paulette cried. “You’ve been blackmailing me the moment you arrived back in town!”
Really? thought Lia. Do we really have to go over this again?
“It wasn’t me,” Lia said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not leaving without signing the contract!” cried Paulette shrilly. She leapt up and yanked open a desk drawer, confirming to Lia that she had kept the stupid thing handy. She drew out a packet of papers and brandished a pen at Lia. “Sign!”
“No.” Lia held up her hands, then tried to parry Paulette’s attempts to thrust the papers and pen into her hands. “Mrs. McKenzie! I’m not signing anything! I don’t need to!”
Paulette all but tossed the papers at Lia. Then she burst into tears.
Lia stood frozen in place, horrified, not sure if she should just cut her losses and go or if she should try to make some horrible attempt to comfort the woman.
“It’s not at all fair!” cried Paulette. “It’s not fair! He had his infidelities too, you know. And it was just the one—just the one!” She began sobbing into her hands. Lia still remained paralyzed, not wanting to hear any more, not wanting to witness any more, but no longer sure how to extricate herself. How had she become Paulette’s confessor?
“I m-m-met him—at the—car wash!” Paulette sobbed, and Lia’s eyes widened. “He was—a lawyer—i-in from—out of t-t-t-town!” She blew her nose heartily on a handkerchief. “He was married too. Two t-t-teenage—daughters.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I told him a good lunch spot, and—and that was it. We didn’t even exchange numbers. I-I-I didn’t see him again until—the next day.”
Paulette cried into her handkerchief for a few more seconds, during which Lia almost, but not quite, got up the nerve to rise and offer to get her a glass of water. Paulette, seeming to sense Lia’s imminent flight, hurried on with her story.
“We ran into each other at lunch,” she said rapidly, words all meshed together. “It was very innocent. We talked so much about our families. I knew I shouldn’t—that is, my husband had always been quite controlling about friendships with the opposite sex. But I didn’t see anything wrong with it, not as it was. And it didn’t even become intimate until weeks later!”
Lia sprang forward. “I’m going to get you a glass of water,” she said quickly.
Paulette seized her wrist. “It was only a few months!” she said, eyes wide and desperate. “It was years ago! We sent each other silly notes…we thought we were in love…I still had no idea what love was, then.”
“Mrs. McKenzie, I don’t care about any of it. Really. I’m not going to tell anyone. I don’t want to know.”
“But you understand?” she said, squeezing Lia’s wrist tighter. “You understand, don’t you? I made a mistake. We all make mistakes sometimes. You made a mistake when you left Harry—this was just the same thing. An error in judgment.”
Lia did not think marital infidelity should be compared to a high school breakup, but she let it slide. “I’m sure it was,” she said, gently as she could. “It’s not important. Really.”
“And it ended,” Paulette said, finally releasing her grip on Lia’s arm, but still looking at her with that crazed fervor. “I ended it. Well, I suggested that if we kept on going, we’d have to tell our spouses, knowing full well that he would agree that was quite nonsensical.” Paulette choked on the word. “I was just so…so desperately unhappy then. Nothing like no
w. You see I’m happy now, Lia. I’m so happy. I’ve been with Arthur for four months now, and nothing in the world could ever make me more blessed. I love him like no one else, and you see, he loved his brother, and I can’t possibly have him thinking that I—that I betrayed—” She hiccuped. “He would never forgive me. He’s so old-fashioned, Arthur. He wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand that I’d never do such a thing to him.”
Lia felt ready to launch herself out the window. “Mrs. McKenzie,” she tried again. “I promise you, nothing about your past will ever come out of my mouth. The person who is blackmailing you…did they even reference the—the tryst?” She had been searching for a word to replace ‘affair’ and cringed at her awkward choice.
“What else is there?”
“Well, plenty of things. Or they were bluffing.”
Paulette gave her a skeptical look. Lia could tell that she still hoped, perversely, that the blackmailer was Lia: it would mean one less person to worry about. It would mean that Paulette had no other secret enemies to deal with.
And Lia could think of a number of people with money problems, including herself, people who would love to take a few extra grand from Paulette McKenzie. But, Lia thought, watching the hawk-eyed woman, with her flushed cheeks and her desperate eyes and her haughty demeanor, the person who blackmailed Paulette McKenzie surely was not doing so just out of financial desperation.
They were doing it out of hate.
Paulette McKenzie was not the kind of woman who inspired warm fuzzies. She was not a harmless little old lady with good intentions and kind words. She was a mean, selfish, sad person who needed to belittle others to feel bigger herself. And now she was frantic, because she fancied herself in love. Because romance had made her believe that her prickly life and relationships were nothing more than the awful precursor to a happily ever after, the “before” in a life defined by some soulmate discovery. Lia didn’t believe in it, but she did believe that Paulette, obsessed with her new relationship, had focused on it to the exclusion of all else.
Had focused on it to the point that she saw no other threat around her.
Lia couldn’t possibly bring herself now to give her theory of the crime. How could she tell this woman that her own son was likely blackmailing her? What mother would believe a child more capable of a heinous betrayal, versus another child’s spurned ex? No. Coming here was foolish. The most Lia could do was assure Paulette that she would keep her mouth shut and try to give the woman some (ill-deserved) peace.
“This is it, then,” Paulette said carefully. “You’ll never bring up…the affair?”
At that moment, a great many things happened. Arthur made a strangled sound; Lia and Paulette’s heads whipped up. Neither had heard him enter. Paulette leapt off of the couch and gave a choked scream of her own, and the door to the house opened.
“Hello!” came Harry’s voice. “James and I are here, Mum. We brought you some chocolates—oh.”
He stopped short when he saw Lia. Lia’s gaze zipped back to Paulette, who was making silent “O”s with her mouth as her eyes widened with horror. Arthur, for his part, looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
“Affair!” Arthur sputtered. “I—”
“Arthur!” Paulette burst, leaping up from her seat to run to him, arms extended. Arthur just about jumped out of his shoes in shock, face incredulous, eyes scanning Paulette’s with ferocity. “Arthur, it was before anything with us—anything at all!”
“Y-yes,” Arthur said. His face was still pale, and Lia wondered if the old man had any aspirin nearby to chew, just in case. “It was—it was indeed.”
Paulette began to sob and threw her arms around Arthur, who patted her once or twice with that same bewildered expression. He looked up at Lia but didn’t seem to see her; when he turned to see Harry still standing on the threshold of the room, he winced and turned back.
“Mom?” James said, appearing next to Harry. “Are you…okay?”
“We should give them some privacy,” Lia said, and took the opportunity to dart out of the room. Harry grabbed her by the shoulder as she passed and indicated that she should follow the two boys into the foyer.
“What’s going on?” he whispered as Paulette’s sobs echoed from the living room.
“I don’t—I really don’t—” She glanced left at James, who seemed surprisingly unconcerned for someone who was blackmailing his mother and whose secret might have just come out. Lia felt dizzy. What if, after all, she had guessed wrong again?
“It really was a foolish mistake,” Arthur said, his voice, though low, carrying through the first floor. “So foolish.”
“Oh, Arthur!” Paulette cried.
“If I had known—if I had known how foolish it was at the time, of course I wouldn’t have…but that’s all in the past. It was just a fling, really. Entirely consensual.”
“Who said it wasn’t?” Paulette said shrilly.
“No one, dear. No one. But you know how these girls are, when they’re so very young…. They take disinterest as a form of attack, really, and who knows what they’ll start saying later?”
The house went eerily quiet. Harry’s eyes widened, and James’s mouth gaped open. Lia, for her part, felt as though she had flown right past reality and into some sort of weird alternate universe.
“…girls?” Paulette finally said, with vicious inflection.
Arthur paused. “Girl, of course. Singular.” He paused again, his brain painfully slow to come around. “You were talking about—about Clarissa, dear?”
“Clarissa?” Harry hissed. Lia could have smacked herself. It all fell into place.
Clarissa had not been having an affair with James. She had had an affair—or rather, a relationship, a fling, a tryst, a romance—with Arthur McKenzie. That was the secret she was carrying around. That was what had made her so upset the night of the party. That was what Alyssa had seemed so unconcerned over, because truly it affected her only tangentially, and she was probably more worried about Clarissa making waves within her boyfriend’s family by bringing her past up.
But really…Arthur McKenzie?
Lia shuddered.
Paulette, meanwhile, had been doing some quick calculations in her mind. Lia was impressed when she answered, with impeccable coolness, “Yes. Yes indeed. Clarissa. How were you so foolish, Arthur?”
“She came onto me,” Arthur said, with a martyred sigh. “Came to my office hours throughout the entire semester—was my teaching assistant, you know. She was a bright young girl, but I never thought…not until she suggested it, of course.”
“And you dated her,” Paulette said flatly.
“We went on a few dinners, yes. Charming girl—that is, I mean, I enjoyed conversing with her about…English poets,” Arthur finished, with a cough.
“She was your girlfriend.”
“Well, no, that is, I mean officially she was for a few weeks, but it didn’t work out. It was just too much of an age gap. I wanted someone more mature.”
“You broke it off?”
“Well, yes. I mean, the semester ended, and she went home for the holidays. It was obvious there wasn’t any sort of special future between us.”
“And this was what, last year?”
A pause. Oh, Arthur, thought Lia.
“It was this year?” Paulette said, voice shrill and high again. “You dated her this year?”
“In the spring!” Arthur cried. “It was before you and I, Paulette. There was no overlap—I would never cheat on you. I’d never cheat on anyone.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” James said, and left the room. Harry barely glanced at him, turning back to listen to the drama unfolding just a room away. Lia tried to excuse herself, but he shook his head quickly, motioning for her to stay.
Paulette was quiet. But now it was Arthur’s turn to catch up, the two selfish souls preying on the others’ weakness. “Affair,” Arthur repeated faintly. “Affair—Paulette, if you weren’t talking
about that, what were you talking about?”
“I was talking about that.”
“You said it was before us. But you just told me you didn’t know that for sure. So you must have been talking about something else. Paulette? What affair?”
“We really should go,” Lia whispered, but Harry shook his head.
“There is no affair,” Paulette snapped. “Only the one of you sleeping with a college girl.”
“Graduate student.”
Lia groaned and moved away from Harry, this time ignoring his motions for her to stay. He followed her out the front door as the raised voices of Paulette and Arthur followed them.
“What’s my mom talking about?” he asked, as Lia unlocked her car.
“I have no idea. I just came to tell her that I’m leaving, and that I hope she knows I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“And?”
“She thinks I do. But I get it. If not me, then who?”
Harry frowned as Lia slid into her car. “Hey,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I never thought it was you.” Another pause. “And I’m sorry you left St. Clair. Really. If you stayed—I think you and Alyssa would have become friends. You have a lot in common.”
Like two X chromosomes, Lia thought. End of list. But she nodded and shut her car door, lowering the window when Harry tapped at it again. Her heart surged with something (excitement? relief? fear?) as she realized that this could very well be the last time she ever spoke to Harry McKenzie.
Harry’s mouth opened when she lowered the window, but no words came out. She could see him struggling to say something, knowing the weight of the moment as well. They had a past together, but no present, and no future. And there wasn’t any sadness in that—only possibility.
“It was good seeing you,” Lia said. “I’m glad you’re doing well.”
“Yeah. Ditto.”
The door to the house burst open, Arthur gesticulating wildly at Paulette, who was shaking her fist and her head at the same time. My cue, Lia thought, and with a final wave at Harry, pulled out of the McKenzie drive for the last time.