The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  When he asked me to marry him, all the girls—and not a few of the older women—were jealous. But sweet too. They threw me an engagement party. I remember, at the get-together in the conference room, one of the older secretaries made a joke about Cass working his way through the steno pool. But that was just envy. We didn’t even have a steno pool then. And besides, what did it matter? He chose me. It was around that time, too, that my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and it felt like it was important to have a family of my own.

  Cass was promoted to bureau chief in his fifth year at the Times. He beat out Simon Wallace for the job, which, everyone knew, is why Simon’s always resented Cass. Simon even claimed that Cass got that job by falsely telling the editor-in-chief that Simon had been stealing Cass’s work. But Cass denied that he had snitched on Simon even though it was true; Simon had been stealing from him for years, just like he used to “borrow” my clothes in college and imitate the way I talked and dressed. Men like Simon, Cass told me that night he came home with the news of the promotion and an expensive bottle of Champagne show their true colors in the end. I could tell Cass was angry as he opened the Champagne, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing me and insisting that we start a family right there on the kitchen counter of our tiny Murray Hill Junior Four. I need an heir for the dynasty you and I are going to rule.

  We were going to be a power couple. Like Connie Chung and Maurice Povich. Like Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn.

  Only, then Whit began having developmental delays and baby Emily was super fussy and then Cass came into his trust so I didn’t have to go back to work after my maternity leave ended. Then there was that kerfuffle at the Times. Cass told me that he was forced out because his politics didn’t match the owner’s, but Simon had told me there’d been a rumored complaint about Cass from one of the female employees, but Cass denied it and I was too busy being a young mother to Whit and Emily to think about that. I still believed I’d go back to work eventually, but I wouldn’t be able to go back to the Times after what happened, and then Cass bought the Globe—becoming the youngest newspaper owner in New York at the time—and it would have been awkward working there . . . and suddenly it’s nearly twenty years later and Cass is dead.

  I don’t realize I’m crying until the train enters the tunnel for Grand Central Station and I see my face—skin white, cheeks sunken, eyes black pits—reflected in the darkened window. I look like the ghoulish ghost of that girl who rode this train twenty-five years ago, dreaming of a life that’s gone up in smoke.

  But maybe it’s not too late. I’m only forty-eight. Lots of women start over once their kids are out of the house. All I need is a little job writing columns for a fashion magazine and maybe a book deal for myself. If that little chit Joan Lurie, who stumbles drunkenly around town ruining lives, can do it, why shouldn’t I?

  I fix my makeup in the ladies’ room and take a taxi to the restaurant, which is so trendy it doesn’t even have a sign, just a thick oak door with some kind of hieroglyphs carved into it. I’m five minutes late but still the first to arrive. As the hostess leads me across the crowded dining room to a brushed steel table that looks like a hospital gurney, I feel all the eyes in the room on me. That’s Caspar Osgood’s widow, they’re surely whispering, do you think she knew?

  I order a gin and tonic (which could look like seltzer if it turned out that Sally didn’t imbibe at lunch) and stare at my phone as if I had so many messages to attend to. Sally rushes in ten minutes later, spewing apologies, air kissing, and ending a phone call all at once.

  “Crazy day at the office, darling. I may kill my new assistant.” Then she blushes, but whether she’s embarrassed to have brought up death or assistants is hard to tell. She furrows her brow and gives me a concerned look. “But how are you, darling? How are you holding up?”

  What am I supposed to say to that? My husband of twenty-five years was accused of being a sexual predator and then killed himself, leaving me broke and publicly humiliated.

  “I’m focusing on holding things together for Whit and Emily,” I say. I can’t look like a pitiful wreck. I need this job. “And trying to put this whole thing behind me. I need to move on. I need—”

  The waitress chooses this moment to introduce herself and list the specials. There are so many reductions of this and essences of that it sounds less like a menu and more like a purge. I order something with froth in it—who doesn’t love froth?—and tap my glass for another. Sally orders club soda with bitters and “the salad.” Who knew there was anything as simple as salad on this menu?

  When the waitress leaves, Sally reaches over the table and touches my hand. “I just can’t imagine how hard this must be on you. Did you . . . well, did you have any idea about Cass before the Manahatta article?”

  I stare at her, appalled she’s gotten right to the point—or at least, her point. Although I should know from experience you have to be direct in this business. If I want a job from her I have to show that I’m tough enough to take it.

  “Look,” I say, taking a sip of my G&T and leaning forward. She leans in, too, and I feel a little thrill of power. The room seems suddenly silent, as if everyone around us has paused their conversations and is waiting to hear what I have to say. “It’s not like I didn’t know that Cass had his flirtations. He was a handsome man—a powerful man. Women desired him. But the idea that he forced himself on women . . . well, it’s absurd.” I allow myself a little laugh—a frothy laugh. “Why would he, when he had so many women throwing themselves at him?”

  I lean back and take another sip of my drink, satisfied. Sally leans back, too, but with a little frown on her face. “You don’t believe the women?” she asks.

  “Why does everyone ask that as if it’s a federal crime? Some women lie. Especially when they’ve been slighted. I know for a fact that one of the women had a consensual affair with Cass and then was upset when Cass wouldn’t leave me. She fed this story to that reporter—Joan Lurie—and she saw an opportunity for herself in it. Look at what it’s done for her. She got a two-million-dollar book deal.”

  “I’ve heard that too. That must be . . . galling.”

  “To have that . . . woman profit on the destruction of my family? Yes, you could say that.”

  “I wouldn’t wonder,” Sally says, stirring her drink, “that you’d want to get your own story out there.”

  “I have thought of that,” I say, relieved that she’s brought it up. “In fact . . . I’ve been thinking I’d like to write a column. A kind of ‘advice for the new millennium.’ You know, explaining to young women how we handled sex harassment back in the day and how they can protect themselves but still have fun and not lose the romance of flirtation.”

  Sally’s lips do something funny. Like she’s trying not to smile. “You want to write an advice column?”

  She makes it sound so unlikely that I immediately pivot. “Well, maybe not advice per se. Maybe something more lifestyle-ish. We could pitch it as fortysomething women starting over.”

  “Starting over?”

  I wish she would stop repeating everything I say in that incredulous tone. It’s like having something you ate bubble back up your throat. But I persevere, scrambling to take control of the conversation. “Yes. Like I plan to . . . I’d like to show that a woman can survive tragedy. That she . . . that I still have something to contribute to society. I think that’s an important message, don’t you?” I’m beginning to ramble and Sally is still sitting there like a lump with a little perturbed look on her face.

  “Melissa, darling,” she says at last. “Are you talking about getting a job?”

  She says it like I’ve just suggested getting my head shaved, only that she might approve of. “Why not? I mean, I thought that’s why . . . isn’t that why Sylvia set this up? I went to journalism school, after all. I worked on the Times, didn’t she tell you that? If you don’t think I can handle my own column right away I don’t mind starting out with something smaller. Here . . .” I
take out my résumé and place it on the table in front of her. She stares down at it as if I’ve just put a bag of dog poop on her plate.

  And then she does the worst thing she could do. She laughs. A deep, throaty, head-back laugh that makes every head at the restaurant turn toward her. I’m not even imagining it. “Oh my, I haven’t seen a real printed résumé in . . . eons. And on card stock. What a good, diligent girl you are, Melissa. Are you thinking you want to work as an assistant? Why, those girls are nearly your daughter’s age. We have shoes older than them.”

  “Actually,” I say, “I don’t. I just sold my last pair of Prada loafers on eBay.” She starts to laugh again as if I’m making a joke and then a horrified look spreads across her face.

  “Melissa, you’re not . . . in financial difficulties, are you?” she asks, as if inquiring if I have cancer.

  I can feel tears pricking my eyes and something welling up in me, a desire to unburden myself of the horror of the last weeks—Cass’s body floating in the pool and finding out about the life insurance, the pension, and the debt. But then I think of something. “Sally, if you didn’t think this was about me getting a job, what did you think it was about? Why did you agree to meet with me? Didn’t Sylvia say I was looking for a job?”

  She opens her mouth to answer just as the waitress appears with our food. I keep my eyes on Sally, though, not willing to let her evade the question.

  “Well,” she says when the waitress is gone, “of course I’m always glad to see you, but since you ask . . . Sylvia and I had discussed you doing an interview for Image. She even offered to sit in because we both thought you’d feel more comfortable telling your story to someone you knew. I can promise it would be very tasteful, a cover photograph, and pictures of you in your home. It would be a chance to present your side of the story.”

  “You want to do a story on me?” I ask in disbelief. “With pictures of me in my home?” Now I am the one dumbly repeating everything I hear.

  Sally nods. “Yes, I think it would give our readers context to see the life you built with Cass—”

  “Do you want,” I cut in, “for me to pose in front of the pool where he drowned?”

  “Well—”

  “Or perhaps you’d like me to pose next to the packing boxes. Perhaps your readers would like a picture of me sitting on the street surrounded by my possessions.” My voice is rising as I struggle to contain my anger. “Perhaps that would satisfy their bloodlust?”

  “There’s no need to take it that way,” she says.

  I look down at my plate, which is covered with a blue-green froth that looks like something the Little Mermaid might have regurgitated. When Cass’s autopsy report came back, it said his stomach was full of scotch, Oxycontin, Ambien, and chlorinated pool water. I imagine it would have looked much like this. If I stay here a moment longer I may add the contents of my own stomach to the plate, which might be satisfying just to see Sally’s expression. But then I imagine the tweets. Sex Predator’s wife loses lunch. #Karmasabitch.

  So instead I pluck my napkin out of my lap and drop it over my plate. “Thanks for lunch, Sal,” I say, rising to my feet. Teal-green blooms seep through the bleached linen napkin. I picture Cass’s white shirt riffling in the aquamarine pool water. I picture the white sheers billowing in my empty house and Joan Lurie sashaying down her street, Chanel bag twitching at her hips, like she owned this town. “And thank you for the interesting proposal. But I’ll be telling my own story from now on.”

  Chapter Seven

  Joan

  THE OLD WOMAN is so thin—the bones of her wrists and ankles birdlike under skin speckled as a fawn’s—that I have no doubt I could pick her up, but I’m afraid that I’ll hurt her. I kneel beside her, scanning her delicate limbs for breaks. “Should I call 911?” I ask loudly, assuming she’ll be hard of hearing.

  “Calling 911,” Bot says.

  The old woman swivels her head to Bot’s perch on the coffee table and laughs. “Tell that thing I don’t need an ambulance, just to catch my breath.”

  “Don’t call 911,” I tell Bot, wondering if that’s really the right move.

  “You must have mistaken my door for yours,” I say. “Do you live across the hall?”

  She’s looking around my apartment dazedly. “I live here,” she says.

  “In the Refuge?” I ask, trying to comfort her the way my mother would always try to tease a thread of truth out of my grandmother’s confused rants and weave it back into the fabric of reality.

  “Yes, the Refuge,” she agrees, fixing her gray-green eyes on me. “Are you new?”

  “I just moved in a few weeks ago . . . Do you think you can get up . . . may I help you?” I hold out my hands to her and she looks up at me doubtfully, as if I’m asking her to jump out a tenth-story window.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Joan,” I tell her.

  She smiles. “Like Joan of Arc. My favorite of the saints. Hello, Joan, I’m Lillian. Lillian Day.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Lillian Day,” I say, trying not to smile at the formality while we’re sitting on the floor. It feels as if we’re performing a sacred ritual: a naming ceremony to restore her sense of dignity. When she lays her cold hands in mine, though, it feels like I’m the one who’s being given back something. The world is suddenly as sharp as Lillian Day’s gray-green eyes.

  I MAKE HER tea, apologizing that I only have Lipton’s.

  “Always been good enough for me,” she says, taking the mug with only a tiny tremor in her hand. She’s straightened her plaid skirt, white blouse, and beaded cardigan while I was in the kitchen and looks none the worse for her fall. Her wispy white hair is smoothed back into a bun. She’s sitting upright on the edge of the big wingback chair by the window, her back as straight as a ruler, incongruous red sneakers dangling an inch above the floor. The white wicker bag she’d worn on her arm is sitting next to her, equally upright, like an obedient pet dog.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she says. “Lots of space and sunshine.”

  I look around at the new furniture and rugs and throw pillows I’ve bought to make the place look more cheerful, but then my eyes snag on the stack of boxes. “I still have a lot of unpacking to do,” I say apologetically. “Somehow this still doesn’t feel like home.”

  “It can be difficult to settle into a new place,” Lillian says.

  “Yes,” I agree. “How long have you been here?”

  “Hm,” she says, her eyes flicking upward and to the left, “let’s see . . . I came here in the fall of 1941—”

  “Nineteen forty-one! That’s Seventy-seven years ago!”

  “Is it?” she asks, smiling politely. “I’ve never had much of a head for numbers. Sister Dolores said I’d better do a typing course and go for work in the steno pool rather than bookkeeping.”

  “Are you sure it was 1941?” I ask gently. “I didn’t think it became an apartment building until the late ’40s.”

  “An apartment building?” she asks, looking confused. “Oh no, it wasn’t an apartment building. It was the Refuge . . . you know . . . for”—she leans closer to me as if we might be overheard—“fallen women. Girls who got into trouble.”

  “Is that what it was before?” I ask, thinking that Marla had left out that little detail. “But you weren’t . . . I mean, you couldn’t have been . . .” Now I’m the one who’s embarrassed. I’ve spent the last three years listening to women recount the most intimate and disgusting details of sexual assault, but I can’t bring myself to say “prostitute” to this nice old lady.

  “A lady of ill repute?” Lillian suggests with a birdlike tilt of her head and a slyness to her voice. “No. But I did fall into a bit of trouble and wound up remanded to the Magdalens.”

  “The Magdalens? Like the ones who ran the Magdalen laundries in Ireland?”

  “Aye,” she says, the mention of Ireland adding a Celtic lilt to her thick Brooklyn accent. “
The same. They brought their laundries and their ideas here. Purify your sins through washing other people’s dirty laundry and add a pretty penny to your coffers while you’re at it. They kept us up high where no one could see us . . .” She points to the window and the view of the river and Palisades beyond. “And the only escape was the drop to the rocks below. We girls ruined our eyes mending and worked our hands raw scrubbing the city’s dirty linen.” She holds out her fragile dappled hands and pushes back the sleeve of her cardigan to reveal a tangle of white scar tissue.

  I suck in my breath. “That’s horrible! I had no idea there were Magdalen laundries in this country.”

  “Well, as you say, it was closed down eventually.” She draws the sleeve of her cardigan back down and plucks a handkerchief from the cuff to dab her eyes. She hadn’t shed a tear at falling, but now her eyes are full from revealing this old wound. “I suppose things are better now . . . why, look at you!” Her voice brightens. “A pretty young girl with a big apartment to herself! What kind of job do you do?”

  “I’m a journalist,” I say.

  “A reporter!” she cries, her voice now genuinely happy. “Why, that was what I wanted to be, but the nuns said that was no job for a good Catholic girl. I temped in the steno pool of a newspaper for a bit and I thought I might get a regular job there . . .” Her voice falters and her hand drifts up to touch a gold locket embossed with a floral design rubbed smooth. I wonder if it holds a picture of a sweetheart, perhaps one she lost in the war. She’s about the age of my grandmother, who lost her husband—my grandfather—in the war. “It wasn’t easy being a girl on her own back then. You may not know it to look at me now, but I was quite pretty when I was young.”

  She lengthens her neck and bats her eyelashes in such a coquettish fashion that I start to laugh, but then I see it—or rather, I suddenly see her, beneath the age spots and wrinkles, I see the high cheekbones, the broad brow, the full curve to her lips and, most of all, the snap in those gray-green eyes.