Sunburn: A Novel

by Laura Lippman

  The only Dundalk tradition Polly misses is the Christmas Garden at the Wise Avenue fire department, where they re-created Baltimore in miniature with a train set, right down to the domino sugars sign. Maybe one day she’ll make her own Christmas garden.

  A year ago, she was running around, trying to give Gregg his version of a perfect Christmas. Jani, not even three at the time, would have been happy with anything Polly did. Not Gregg. The Hansens had definite ideas about Christmas. Savannah Hansen brought over her ornaments, showed Polly the angel for the treetop, the stockings she had made, garish, tacky things of red felt with glitter glue names. “Here’s the one I made for Gregg and now Jani.”

  There was no stocking for her daughter-in-law.

  The Costellos had traditions, too. Not the seven fishes, although her dad’s family was pretty Italian. Her dad, unlike Gregg, didn’t think a husband’s family had to swamp the wife’s when it came to rituals. Then again, to be fair to Gregg—Wow, where did that thought come from?—he knew her as Pauline Smith, a woman with no family, no history. It probably never occurred to him that she had a distinctive past with its own traditions, such as turkey and sauerkraut, or a Christmas garden in the basement. Even in the getting-to-know-you phase, the phase where men pretend great interest in women, he never asked her a single question.

  Adam didn’t, either. But that’s different, of course.

  Adam. Polly is, with the help of Mr. C’s wife, knitting him a sweater. She tries to tell herself that it will be more meaningful than any store-bought gift. And if a better knitter was working on it, this would be true. The fact is, even the wool, a sky blue that matches his eyes, strains her pocketbook. She’s beginning to think she will never have any money, that it was all a dream. Everything, her entire life, is a dream. There was never a girl in a yellow two-piece. She didn’t marry Burton Ditmars. There is no Joy, no Jani. There are no fires, no schemes, no Cath. She is not in Belleville. She never met Adam.

  But her imagination snags; she cannot imagine life without Adam. For better or worse, this is her life. Lately, it’s all for the better.

  She wonders what Adam will give her for Christmas. She tries to catalog the gifts she received from Ditmars and Gregg, making it a memory game.

  She remembers:

  A nightgown. The first Christmas with Ditmars. There was still hope.

  A vacuum. The third Christmas with Ditmars.

  A sweater. Not cashmere, but something almost as soft. Christmas number two?

  Earrings. Amber, dangly. He liked dangly earrings. That was Christmas number two, the sweater was number three, the vacuum cleaner number four.

  A Sony Walkman. Gregg, their first year. He wanted one, so he assumed she wanted one.

  A pear tree. “Partridge not included,” Gregg joked upon presenting her with it on Christmas Eve. Bizarre, but she had liked him better for it. It hinted at some version of her that he had in his head, something funny and quirky. The kind of gift that a woman in a romantic comedy might get from a would-be suitor.

  He probably saw it at some Christmas tree lot near a liquor store, while he was buying El Gordo lottery tickets.

  She cannot, try as she might, needles clicking faster and faster as if to keep pace with her whirring memory, remember what Ditmars gave her their last Christmas together. She has heard somewhere that when it comes to a list of seven or more, whether it’s the dwarfs or the nine Supreme Court justices, the memory always comes up one short. But then, she also has heard that it was possible to memorize seven-digit phone numbers in a way that we can never remember the new ten-digit ones. The ten-digit numbers aren’t truly new, but they became common while she was in prison, and she thinks of the world that way, as if the years between her two selves, her two marriages, aren’t real. Those years are like scar tissue, the purplish, rubbery damage done by burns, thick and marbled.

  Polly has a burn like that, high on her thigh, so high that a modest, skirted swimsuit can conceal it. By the time a man sees it, he doesn’t know how to ask about it. How does one get a burn there, beneath the curve of the right ass cheek? How does something hot touch that almost hidden place? How long would it have to be held there to do that kind of damage?

  No one wants to hear the real answers to questions like that. No one. She has to assume as much, because Gregg never asked. Adam never asks. The scar might as well be a tattoo: If you can see this, you are too close.

  She’s going too fast, and she’s dropped a stitch. Mrs. C showed her the fix for that, but it doesn’t come naturally to Polly. She wants to think that Adam won’t notice, but she’s kidding herself. He notices everything.

  He’s certainly going to notice when she’s suddenly rich, but she already has a story picked out for when that day comes. Which will be soon, she’s pretty sure. It better be soon.

  41

  Adam can’t figure out how to make his move to Belleville plausible. There’s work enough, up in Wilmington, for someone who knows how to investigate insurance fraud, but how does he convince Polly that he fell into that line of work. She’ll see through him, she’ll figure out that he came into her life as a PI, murder riding his coattails. Will there ever be a right time, a right way, to come clean?

  He distracts himself by deciding to drop a bundle on her Christmas gift, going into the once sacrosanct account, the money his mother left him. He can almost hear his mother whispering to him when he transfers $5,000 from his inheritance account to his regular checking. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to impress someone who truly loves you.

  Of course, he doesn’t have to spend the whole amount. Money can always be transferred back.

  But he does spend it all, and then some. He goes to Washington, D.C., one of those old-line jewelers who buzzes you in, assuming you don’t look like trouble, and Adam, with his blue eyes, always makes the cut. Adam knows Polly likes old stuff, vintage, but he’s helpless when the guy starts throwing terms at him. Art deco, art nouveau. He shrugs, wishing it wasn’t the owner himself waiting on him. He’d feel better confessing his ignorance to a woman, someone young and romantic who would be charmed by a man’s good intentions toward his girlfriend.

  His eye is drawn to a diamond solitaire in an old-fashioned setting, really simple. It’s a whopper by his standards, almost two carats and, of course, the guy has to blah-blah-blah about purity and cut and resale value, how unusual good canary diamonds are. Adam has done enough divorce work to know that the resale value of gems is almost always overstated.

  But he likes that this ring is simple. No pavé diamonds surrounding the stone, a slender platinum band. He’s not sure if it’s to her taste, but it looks like her, clear and bold and beautiful, with a flicker of light at the center.

  It’s also $6,000. He dickers with the guy, gets him down to $5,200, barters his time. He probably could make Polly just as happy with a cheaper version of this ring, something from one of the mall stores. God knows, if she finds out what he spent, she’ll probably be angry at him. Five thousand dollars in their current circumstances could carry them to next summer, to a time when the High-Ho is thronged once more. She’s talking about the bed-and-breakfast business again, which strikes him as crazy. Escoffier reincarnated could open a restaurant in Belleville and it wouldn’t do enough business to go year-round.

  He’s glad, watching the guy pack up the ring, that he came to this kind of shop. You can fool a woman with a ring, if it’s pretty and shiny enough. But you can’t fake the box, the presentation. This velvet box is a deep, deep blue, and when he looks at the inside, he wishes they made beds for people as soft and billowy as the white satin on which this ring sits.

  He’ll wrap the velvet box inside something bigger, surrounding it with tissue, maybe even weighted things, to maintain the illusion. Maybe he’ll get a box for a hand mixer or a Dustbuster. He imagines her taking it from under whatever kind of tree they put up. Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning. The best gifts are the ones you open on Christmas Eve, whether you’
re a kid allowed to open just one present before Santa arrives or, well, an almost forty-year-old guy who’s going to go down on one knee, say words he never thought he’d say again to anyone.

  Or maybe, he thinks that evening, nursing a beer, waiting for her to finish up at the High-Ho, the blue velvet box like a tiny happy bomb in the pocket of his leather jacket, he’ll propose to her here. That’s it. He’ll reenact the night they met, then slide the box to her, cool as cool. What did she say that night? It was funny, he remembers that. He’d been trying to mock his own pretensions, called himself an asshole and she had one-upped him. Then later, she had made a joke about being a Pink Lady apple.

  It’s so hard now to remember being dispassionate about her. Maybe he never was.

  “Ready to go?” she says at closing time.

  “Sure thing,” he says.

  Mr. C comes out of his office, a letter in his hand. “I almost forgot, Polly, but this came for you today. Registered, certified, whichever one you have to sign for.”

  Polly slides it into her pocketbook but not before Adam, expert in reading upside down, notes the address—Kentucky Avenue, Baltimore, MD. Her ex, he thinks.

  Her not-yet-ex, he remembers. It’s easy to forget about him. She never speaks of him, or their little girl. It’s as if neither one has ever existed. Polly gave the first kid to the state and she’s giving this kid to her dad, with nary a backward glance.

  Unnatural, Irving Lowenstein had said. Irving Lowenstein, who had wanted her dead.

  Still, that doesn’t make him wrong.

  Maybe it’s too early for anyone to be giving anyone a ring. He’ll wait until Christmas Eve, after all.

  42

  Polly waits until she gets to the Royal Farms to open the letter. With Adam gone most of the time, she no longer has to spend her mornings at the Royal Farms, not on weekdays, but she retains much affection for the place she considered her summer office. A place where she reads and thinks, even writes from time to time.

  A letter from Gregg. Finally, he is ready to move forward. They could be divorced by next June, not even six months from now.

  Dear Ms. Smith, it begins.

  Oh, interesting, he’s using what he thinks of as her maiden name, the legal one she bestowed on herself after prison. He has already taken his first “asset,” his name. Excellent.

  The letter is crafted by a lawyer, which probably cost Gregg $500 right there. Dumb, Gregg was always dumb about money. That’s because he’s always had just enough to waste a little. No cutting coupons for him, no living on a budget, finding ways to shake out a few dollars until you have enough to pay for a life insurance policy. When Gregg hit a rough patch, he called his mother for a loan.

  Even with its lawyerisms, the letter is clear in its demands. Gregg wants both cars, all his savings, and any equity there might be in the house. All their furniture, all their wedding presents. Fine, fine, fine. Oh, she’ll pretend to want more, but all she really desires is her freedom.

  She gets change, feeds it into the outside pay phone until she has enough for three minutes. When Gregg answers, she tries to sound unsure of herself.

  “Hi, it’s Pauline. I got your letter, but I’m at a pay phone. Would you call me back?”

  “I’m at work,” he says, as if she didn’t know what number she dialed.

  “So am I,” she lies. It’s a strange, small lie and one easily spotted if he remembers where she works, which he clearly does as he used that address to send this letter. But her pride demands it. Pride. That’s what gets her in trouble every time. Pride and fear. She can’t imagine how rich she’d have to be to afford those two things.

  He hangs up on her with a grunt. She decides it sounds like agreement, so she stays where she is, resting her forehead against the rectangular shield around the phone. Mild as this December has been, it’s too cold and raw for her. She’s prone to chills, always was, even when she was carrying more weight. She likes summer, the abundance of light. What will next summer bring? Where will she be?

  Who will be with her?

  Minutes tick by. She doesn’t wear a watch anymore, so she counts the seconds as she was taught as a child. 1-Mississippi, 2-Mississippi.

  She’s counted off almost six hundred Mississippis when the phone finally rings.

  “I had to take a whiz,” he says. Good, he’s offering explanations. That means he still feels some sense of obligation.

  “So, how do you want to do this?” Clever, she thinks, to put it on him to let him feel he’s calling the shots.

  “Didn’t my lawyer’s letter make things pretty clear?”

  “We don’t need lawyers,” she says.

  “Don’t tell me what I need.”

  She’s trying to indicate that it’s going to be easy, that he’s going to get his way, but he’s too insecure to register the information. Don’t be stupid, Gregg. She might as well ask water not to be wet.

  “I want to sell the house. We won’t make any money back, but I can move to a place closer to my mother, a rental for now.”

  Always was a mama’s boy. So far, so good. She no longer has any affection for the house on Kentucky Avenue. Imagine, thinking a built-in breakfront was somehow going to change your life.

  “I also want you to waive your share of my 401(k).”

  She has to protest at least one of his demands or he’ll be suspicious. “I don’t know, I stayed home, I took care of our child, it seems to me I should get something.”

  “Not a cent, Pauline. You’re getting nada, nothing, zilch.”

  “I guess that makes it easier in some ways.” She still needs to put up a little more fight. “But about my car—”

  “I’m selling the Toyota. You don’t need it. Besides you wrecked the other one and took the insurance, so we’re even on that.”

  Of course she’ll need a car, she thinks, especially if she stays in Belleville. And he’s the one who wrecked the other car. But, okay, soon enough, she can buy her own. The Toyota’s no good, anyway.

  “Gee, Gregg—”

  “My way or the highway,” he says. She yearns to say, I’m the one who decided, okay? I took the actual highway. I ran away from you with a suitcase and nothing more.

  Instead she makes her voice small and defeated.

  “All right. When do you think we can finalize all this? Seeing as we agree.”

  “By year’s end,” he says, and it’s all she can do not to jump up and down. “Better for taxes if we have all this straightened out. I know we can’t get divorced that fast, but we should have everything figured out by January 1. And I guess we’ve covered it, right? House, car, 401(k).”

  “What about child support?”

  “I’m not going to ask for any, for now.”

  It takes a moment for his words to sink in. She did not see that coming. She thought five months as a single parent would have Gregg begging for joint custody at best.

  “So you’re asking for—”

  “I’m not asking for anything, Pauline. I’m telling you, okay? You left your daughter. I’ve done just fine. You probably didn’t think I could, but it turns out, it’s not as hard as you always made it out to be. I don’t know, maybe you’re just not cut out to be a mother.”

  She needs him to spell it out, wants him to say exactly what he wants.

  “But if I decided I wanted visitation—”

  “If you want it. But it’s been five months, and you haven’t visited once.”

  But she has, in her own way. She has sneaked into Baltimore every chance she has using Adam’s truck or taking the Peter Pan Bus.

  “I don’t have a car. And now you’re selling the one I do have.”

  “See, that’s all you can think about, the car. You have a kid, Pauline. You left her.”

  This is indisputable. But there are, as Gregg’s lawyer would undoubtedly write, mitigating factors.

  “The postcards—did she get my postcards?” She has sent one every week since Gregg found her at the H
igh-Ho. True, they were only scrawled hearts and “I love yous,” but it’s not like a three-year-old can read.

  A pause. She knows that pause. It’s the pause that always followed certain questions, questions that Gregg found inconvenient. Where were you last night? Did you remember to get the things I needed from the store on your way home? First a pause, then a lie.

  “No,” he says. “I thought it would confuse her.”

  It has the ring of truth, which throws her off more than anything else in this conversation.

  “She’s only three,” he continues. “She can’t read. She didn’t want postcards. She wanted you. And you never came.”

  No argument there.

  She says, “I know I’m the one who said ‘no lawyers,’ but if you insist on full custody, then—”

  “Don’t, Pauline.” His voice is infuriatingly kind. “I’m not going to pay you for the privilege of keeping our kid. You’ve got your freedom, which is clearly what you wanted. I’m not going to give you money on top of it.”

  “You think that’s how I am?”

  “I know, okay? I know everything, Pauline.”

  It feels as if her heart rises up her throat, all the way to her teeth. If he’s found out about the settlement, then everything—everything—she’s done is for nothing. She’s been told he has no legal rights, but she doesn’t want to spend a penny fighting to keep what’s hers, and Gregg will fight for money. “Know what?”

  “It came out in the papers over here. You’re a killer, who’s already lost custody of one kid, then got a second chance. Well, you had it. Maybe the third time will be the charm for you. This, us—we’re over.”

  Close to being over, she thinks. So close. But then, every time she thinks she’s close to the end, something else happens, another bump in the road.