Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  Probably shorter than his mother realized. Gerry had to give her credit. Eleanor Andersen didn’t settle for ordinary Alzheimer’s, oh no, she had to go Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

  He supposed he should feel lucky, having only her to care for. Other people his age complained of being the sandwich generation, pressed on either side, scorched paninis crushed by such differing demands. But, although he had been looking after his mother in his own way since he was barely a teenager, he felt he would be more prepared to step up here if he had been a parent at some point. He was missing a basic skill set. He could not imagine caring for his mother’s physical needs, which meant a nurse, 24/7. Nurses. The house on Berwick Road would feel suffocatingly small with even one more person there.

  “You know the doctor who received a Nobel for some of the initial research into this, the proteins—he had a Maryland connection, I think. But then he was arrested for child sexual abuse. He died in Norway.”

  His mother looked at him strangely. He deserved that look. But what was there to say? Only—yes. He had to say yes. He could put it off for a while, but he would have to move to Baltimore and help care for her. And once she was in hospice, he would have to stay to the truly bitter end.

  He had no desire to do this and he hated himself for his reluctance. Baltimore was a kind of death for him now. It didn’t matter that he had conceived and written the book that had changed his life here. Whenever he returned, he felt as if he were touring the history of his failures. Baltimore had tried to make Gerry small.

  “Whatever you need, Mom.” He owed her.

  “Thank you, Gerry.”

  “Do you know why this place is called Al Pacino’s?” he asked. “All the years we’ve been coming here, I never thought to ask. And there used to be, what—three or four in the city and now there’s only the one.”

  “Now there’s only the one,” his mother echoed.

  Their food arrived. Gerry realized his pizza, which had red onions and mushrooms, was named the Golden Arm, in honor of Johnny Unitas’s Baltimore restaurant, which had closed more than twenty years ago.

  March 18

  BY THE TIME Victoria returns on Monday, it feels as if the world has righted itself. The buzzing noise has stopped, everything in the apartment is back in order, although the new freezer remains outside the laundry room. Victoria is an incurious person, but even she has to wonder at the sudden appearance of a small freezer.

  “I hear you did a little Ambien shopping?” Victoria says, after giving him a dutiful report on her visit to Princeton’s special collections, perhaps one of the most tedious accounts he has ever heard. She may be a reader, but she has no idea how to tell the simplest story, what details to include, which to jettison. So she tells everything in straight chronological order.

  “What?”

  “Aileen left me a note, explaining that you, um, got a little weird and ordered an entire cow on the Internet, that she had to scramble to get a freezer when it arrived.”

  “Oh, yes. I had a … bad night last week. I probably took a little more Ambien than I should.”

  A bad night. That’s true, at least.

  “But no more, uh, calls or incidents?”

  The question jolts him. He realizes he has stopped thinking about the mysteries that were torturing him—the calls, the apparition. Was Margot his lady in black? It would have been wildly out of character for her. Margot, for all her faults, is not passive-aggressive. She always fought with a direct and terrifying viciousness. Margot is the type of person who figures out what will hurt a person the most and then uses that information to her advantage. She plunges the knife in face-to-face, straight to the heart.

  Plunges.

  Was, he reminds himself. Used. She had mocked him for being a “mama’s boy,” dismissed him as bourgeoise, unworthy of his own money. You don’t know how to live, Gerry, she had said more than once. They were an ant-and-grasshopper couple. A time for work and a time for play had been the moral of that Aesop fable. And while some modern educators had tried to gentle the story, with the ant taking pity on the grasshopper, in the original the ant had turned his back and allowed the grasshopper to die.

  “No,” he says. “Life has been, if anything, too real.” Victoria gives him an odd look and he amends: “I mean tedious and boring. What’s more real than a life of tedium and boredom?”

  “You’re not going to be immobilized much longer,” she says. “That’s something to look forward to.”

  “Yippee.” He has tried for a light tone, something funny and self-deprecating, but he sounds self-pitying to his own ears. He watches Victoria gather her things to head downstairs to the study where she works, desperate to give her some Bluebeardesque order about the freezer, but, of course, the order is Bluebeard’s undoing. Well, it’s the undoing of his wives, except the last one. Gerry will have to assume that Victoria, a vegetarian, has no interest in a freezer full of what she believes to be beef. Wasn’t it a deer in Aileen’s original story? Didn’t she tell at least one freezer company that she had hit a deer with her car? Or maybe that was whoever sold her the cordless saw. Does it matter if she told different stories to different vendors?

  Oh God—his life is completely dependent on the ingenuity and attention to detail of someone whose most beloved narratives are so-called reality television. But what other choice does he have?

  “It is nice,” Victoria says, “that you’re going to donate the food to a local soup kitchen. I mean, there’s no way you could eat it all. You seldom eat beef, except for Chinese carryout and that flank steak salad.”

  “Someone should benefit from my, um, temporary insanity.”

  “And to give them the freezer, too—but, then, I guess you won’t need it once the meat is gone.” A tiny pause. “I should show you this chart, about how various meats affect the environment. I don’t expect everyone to follow a vegetarian diet, but different proteins have different impacts on the planet. Some of us are playing for larger stakes than others.”

  He does not appreciate Victoria’s tone, or her dig at his age. He considers chiding her for her cheekiness, but he is suddenly anxious to go online via his phone and check his credit card bill. This is one area of his life where Gerry has embraced technology. He does not pay his bills online, but he likes being able to monitor his credit card accounts and his various balances.

  He had given Aileen his Amex, the “business” card, and the transactions from last week have already posted. A cordless reciprocating saw from Home Depot. Multiple items from a kitchen supply shop. The inn in Princeton—right, Victoria has her own card linked to the account. How did a vegetarian spend that much on room service? She must have ordered an entire bottle of wine. Here is the invoice for a side of beef from a farm in New Windsor, Maryland, delivered to—he doesn’t recognize the street. Is it Aileen’s home? He’s not sure he approves of this. Why would Gerry enter Aileen’s address in an Ambien haze, when he doesn’t even know it?

  Ah well. It’s her story. Let her sweat the details.

  Aileen arrives that evening with a large insulated bag from Whole Foods, which appears to be empty, given the way it dangles from her wrist. When she says goodbye in the morning, it is slung over her shoulder, bulging with whatever has been stored inside.

  Gerry takes his Ambien and asks no questions.

  1986

  “GERRY, THERE’S BEEN A COMPLAINT.”

  The head of the Writing Sems looked sheepish, yet jolly. Still, his words hit Gerry hard. He was not used to being in trouble. He never got in trouble. He led an exemplary life. Just this week, he bought a case of wine at Eddie’s, for a party he and Lucy were planning, and when he got home, he realized he had been charged for one bottle, not twelve. He had called the store and made sure they charged his credit card for what was owed. It wasn’t expensive wine, not even eight dollars a bottle, but it was the principle of the thing.

  “Gerry?”

  “I don’t know what to say. From a student?” He had flu
nked a student last semester, which was rare. But the student had failed to do her work and received multiple warnings, even an extension into this semester. After assuring him she would submit her outstanding assignments, she called and said the registrar had said it was fine to grant her another extension. He had refused and given her an F, a rarity at Hopkins these days.

  “Your colleague, Shannon Little.”

  “Oh.”

  “She says you, um, approached her and that you commenced a relationship.”

  God, there are so many things wrong with that sentence. She “approached” him. It was not a relationship, which was the true source of her complaint, Gerry was sure. Also, how disappointing that Harry would use the word commenced in this context. Embarrassment must have rendered him less articulate than usual.

  He took a deep breath. “Shannon made it quite clear that she wanted to have sex with me. It was not something that interested me, not really. But she was adamant. Determined. One night we were alone, going over applicants for next year’s Writing Sems. We had sex. Once. I was disappointed in myself, but it’s not a mistake I wish to repeat. And, no, I haven’t told my wife. Lucy has always been very clear that if I am unfaithful, our marriage is over.”

  Lucy’s attitudes about sexual fidelity were more nuanced than this, but his boss didn’t need to know that. She would, in fact, divorce him if she learned about Shannon.

  “Shannon’s version of the story is somewhat different.”

  “I’m sure it is. I’m trying to be a gentleman here, Harry, but, I’m sorry, she’s a woman scorned. Well, not scorned—I like to think I’ve been cordial—but she didn’t get what she wanted. I’m not excusing my own behavior. I have regretted what I did every day since then. I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop. I guess this is it. Humiliating as it is, I’m almost relieved that she decided to make it a professional issue, rather than call Lucy and make it a personal vendetta. Although I suppose she thought filing a complaint against me here might have a ripple effect.”

  “‘Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, / Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.’” Coleman used his reciting voice, plummy and pompous. “Do you know the source?”

  “One of the Restoration writers, I think?”

  “Congreve, The Mourning Bride. His only tragedy. I was briefly enamored with Restoration comedy, as an undergrad. In 1969, it felt radical to care about Restoration writers. I was quite the pedant.”

  Harry Coleman was still enamored of pedantic corrections of famous quotes, but that wasn’t something Gerry was inclined to point out.

  “What happens now?” Gerry asked.

  “It was a consensual, um, encounter, by your account, and you haven’t pursued it in any way. No calls? No trying to get her alone here in Gilman Hall, no repeat, uh, performances?”

  “No. Is that what she’s saying?”

  “More or less. More or less.”

  Gerry felt a cold fury quite unlike anything he had ever known. Yes, he had done something wrong. But it wasn’t his fault. She had initiated it, after weeks, months, of insinuation and pressure. She put her hand on his leg, just above the knee, and began working it up. He had said no. He had said it was wrong. That was the problem. It was wrong and that excited him. Lucy had only one rule, a rule that most men would have been happy to live by. I know you will be tempted, Gerry, and that’s okay. I have only one rule. But who was Lucy to make rules for him? He was the one who had published a novel. It was successful. He had won a prize. No one got to tell him what to do. Especially not Lucy, who refused to own her envy. If Lucy were honest, he would be honest. But she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t—

  And that was all he had been thinking about as he plunged into Shannon Little. The next day, he called her and said it was a terrible mistake and it must not be repeated. He said she was a lovely woman, but he was married. She didn’t take no for an answer, Shannon Little. She had cajoled, she had threatened, she had cried, she had even claimed she would kill herself. He had gone to her apartment that night, taken pity on her, held her and—okay, so there had been a second time. Maybe a third. But he had never wanted those subsequent episodes. Now she was trying to destroy him.

  “She’s a liar, Harry. I made a horrible mistake. But this is outright slander. And you know what? I won’t have it. I will not stand for these false accusations. How can I continue to work alongside such a woman? I recognize that this situation is my fault and therefore my responsibility. I will look at other programs—I know people at Columbia, Stanford—”

  Coleman was rattled now. “Gerry, please don’t overreact. We’ll work something out. You can see why I had to have this discussion. I have no reason to doubt your version of things—it’s not as if you denied everything. It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with two colleagues having sex. Please don’t do anything rash.”

  “I won’t.”

  Was it rash to go home that very night and tell Lucy that he was going to leave the Writing Sems and use the Hartwell Prize to allow himself the gift of being a full-time writer, for at least a year or two?

  Was it cruel to say that he wanted this adventure alone, that he no longer wished to be married to her? He had broken her only rule, a generous rule, a rule that most men would kill for in a marriage. If he told her the truth, she would kick him out anyway. So why not just go, without hurting her feelings? Wasn’t that the kindest thing to do? Make the break in a way that would hurt her the least—and deprive Shannon Little of whatever power she thought she had over him. By leaving now, he was offering everyone a clean slate.

  He was so tired of women thinking they could control him. Be regular and orderly in your life, so you can be violent and original in your work, Flaubert had recommended.

  Fuck Flaubert. There was no reason Gerry couldn’t do both.

  March 21

  MARGOT WAS DEAD, to begin with.

  That riff on A Christmas Carol’s opening line plays in Gerry’s head. He keeps expecting Margot to haunt him, although in Chanel instead of chains. He waits for all his ghosts—past, present, future.

  Yet since Margot’s death—since the accident—everything has stopped. No more phone calls, no more “visits.” The obvious answer is the obvious answer. Margot had been taunting him, Margot thought she had something on him. But what?

  Life goes on. For everyone but Margot. Aileen no longer arrives with her insulated sack; the freezer has been donated to a local homeless shelter, along with a side of beef from New Windsor, Maryland. Clever Aileen—the shipping address was for the shelter, not her home. It’s a fine little story, as clever and compact as the ones he used to read in those Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies. Kill your husband with a leg of lamb, serve the leg of lamb to the detectives. And maybe this is a dream from which he will finally wake.

  As if on cue, the phone rings, the short staccato tone signaling a call from the front desk. So, no, he’s awake.

  “Mr. Andersen?” Phylloh from downstairs, still phrosty. Were you Margot’s collaborator? He knows that someone had to be helping Margot. Why not Phylloh? It would explain how Margot got back into the apartment that night.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a man here to see you.”

  “A gentleman?”

  “A police officer.”

  The first o is long, the tone skeptical. Phylloh probably has many reasons, life experiences, not to think that Officer Friendly is friendly, whereas Gerry is a white man who has spent six decades driving, walking, running, existing without fear of police officers. Oh, sure, he has known the frisson of nervousness when glimpsing a patrol car in his rearview mirror, but the fear is of a ticket, not death.

  Now his heart feels as if it’s throwing itself against his rib cage, a bird stuck in a soffit, trying to escape. (This happened in his mother’s house when he was away at college. She listened for days to the terrible scratching and did nothing until Gerry came home from Princeton and found an infestation of flies in t
he linen closet, as the bird had finally starved to death.)

  Terror has feathers, too, Emily Dickinson. A woman has died in his apartment. He may be responsible. (He is definitely responsible.) The body is gone. Another person has made that possible, which gives that person significant power over him. Gerry is in bed, taking far more Ambien than he should. He could use his condition, his pain, his fog, to send the officer away.

  Yet when an inspector calls, the suspects always open the door to him. The only way the guilty can pretend to innocence is by acting as if they have nothing to hide.

  “Send him up, by all means.”

  The detective who arrives a few minutes later, admitted by a clearly curious Victoria, does not fit any archetype that Gerry knows, but then every detective archetype Gerry knows is from television or literature. He is not a slow-talking good ol’ boy with a shrewd intelligence under his coarse, buffoonish manners. He is not a Black Dapper Dan with an ornate vocabulary. He does not wear a rumpled raincoat. He is a man of indeterminate race named John Jones, who looks as if he were made in a factory. His one distinctive feature is his glacial blue eyes, but those only make him seem more android-like.

  “I’m with the NYPD. A woman—Margot Chasseur—has gone missing. We believe you may be one of the last people to see her.”

  Dates are fuzzy for Gerry, but that’s to his advantage. There was nothing momentous about his final meeting with Margot. Okay, his penultimate meeting, and she attacked him, forcing him to push her hard enough that it might have left bruises, not that there’s any skin left to inspect. Still, he honestly can’t remember the date.

  “I’ve seen her twice since my accident. Both were unexpected visits.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “I couldn’t say. Maybe a week or two ago?” Because it’s not an important date to me because I didn’t kill her, I really don’t think I killed her, does it count if you’re on Ambien, if you can’t remember anything?