by Holly LeCraw
But he could no longer move lightly and cleanly and he knew he would have to face it, he would have to swim in the muck. The clarity around him would darken, but the infernal storm of November would disappear too. There was that. Yes, he knew what he could and could not do, he knew again who he was. My God. He had been insane.
He called the phone number and said, “It’s off. Don’t do it.”
“It’s on for”—the voice gave the date.
“No. It’s off,” Anthony said. There was a pause and he realized why. “Keep the money,” he said. “Keep it all. I’ll get you the rest anyway. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re the boss. It’s off.” Anthony pictured the rough handsome face from the bar. He could almost see the man do a flourish with his hand, a mocking bow, my liege.
For some reason, only now he panicked. “Off,” he said, “it’s off. I do not want this to happen.”
“I said you got it, you’re the boss.”
Anthony heard the contempt dripping. He was ashamed of even noticing the schoolyard dynamics. “Off,” he said. “Off,” but the man had hung up.
The panic did not leave. He let himself call again the next day. He was going to say I mean it, I meant it, do you hear me? The phone rang endlessly, with no answering machine. He called again. The same. He played the conversation over in his mind: he had said No, he had said Don’t do it, right? Had he imagined it? He could no longer believe any of it was real. He could no longer sleep. He had nightmares in which he was ordering the deaths of thousands of people—his own parents, Marcella, Toni—and he would wake up shaking and creep to the phone and call again. There was never any answer. Or had he dreamed it? Had he dreamed the whole thing? It was all he could do not to ask Marcella: I had a dream, but was it real? And then she told him she was going away that very November weekend, and it was all he could do not to laugh aloud. He knew she was meeting Cecil. He would not even be in Atlanta. It would not have worked. The whole thing was comedy.
Fred Sprague called that Saturday. Anthony was alone in the house. Toni was at a soccer game and Marcella was in North Carolina with her girlfriends, or maybe she wasn’t; he was not past caring but he felt helpless. He heard stabbed. He heard they don’t know who and surprised a robbery. “Betsy?” he said. “Betsy?”
“Yes. Cecil was out of town on business.”
“Betsy? Jesus Christ.”
“Can you call a couple of people from the club for me?” Fred Sprague said. “Anthony?”
“Sorry. God. Fred, I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”
“You—”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do it.” Anthony heard the door slam. He heard himself speaking and could not believe he was expressing coherent thoughts. “Toni’s home,” he said. “Fred, thank you for calling. I have to go now.”
He could not sort out what had happened and what had not, what could possibly be his fault and what could not, what he could ever do or say again and what he could not.
“Dad?” Toni came in sucking on a water bottle. Her shin guards made her legs look thick and strong. Her hair was in a ponytail and one loose strand was plastered with sweat to her flushed cheek. She flicked it away with her fingernail. “Who was that?”
If he had had the capacity for any more amazement, he would have been amazed that Toni started to cry when he told her. It was generic shock, she had never had the experience of a familiar person, even a marginal one, being randomly erased from her life. He had to comfort her, and as he held her and patted her shoulder he had all at once the flashing feeling of being saved. He felt he was casting his gaze, in these few minutes, to every corner of his life and it was only when it alighted on Toni that he had any sense of what to do. A shade of his old imperiousness returned. He had found something unassailable: protecting his daughter. “It’s okay,” he said.
“It’s not okay, Dad!”
“It’s okay here. We’re okay here.”
“Are you going to call Mom?”
He heard himself say, “I’ll tell her when she gets back.”
“She knew them, right?”
“A little,” Anthony said.
Toni wiped her eyes. “I mean, we saw them,” she said. “We went to their house.”
“I know,” he said, filled with both dread and an immense satisfaction that was at once new and familiar. After a moment he recognized it. In spite of everything else, his daughter was safe.
That night, unable to sleep, he thought over and over again that his only job was to protect his child. He was so grateful for this organizing principle that he began to weep: it was an obligation that blotted out all others. It was so clear and clean that it was a thing of beauty.
“BUT I LOVED YOU MORE THAN EVER. I don’t know why,” he said to Marcella. His voice was not reproachful. “But—you see—I had my organizing principle—”
She saw him at his desk in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by files and papers, how he was most comfortable: yes, he would have an organizing principle. She was swimming in such shock by that point that she almost smiled.
“And you were extraneous to it,” he continued. “You see. Possibly fatal to it.”
At the word fatal Marcella’s flesh crawled. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Because I wanted to tell you,” Anthony said. “I knew I didn’t deserve you anymore—”
“You deserve me!”
He blinked and she could see that even now interruptions made him impatient. “I sent you away because I was afraid I would tell you,” he said. “If I had—you might have gone to the police, you should have, there would have been an investigation. Toni would have lost both of us. She would have lost everything. She almost lost everything, because of me.”
“But you did not do this thing,” Marcella said. Her voice trailed off, and she did not hear what, if anything, Anthony said in response. She sat frozen on the sofa. She was shocked that the room around her had not transformed itself into something new and strange as Anthony had told his story. It was remarkable to Marcella that she could sit here now in this place that was like a time capsule to her, then and now, what was then, what was now—Betsy McClatchey was dead, had been dead, still was, possibly by Marcella’s own hand—as good as by her own hand. Marcella herself must have made a fatal mistake, long ago, there must have been some sign she had missed, some hint of how dark things could be under their comfortable surfaces—
Across from her Anthony shifted, just barely, in his chair. She looked at him and it was as though the room had been picked up and shaken and set down again and everything settled back in its place but with the deathly cold sheen gone. She could hear again. “You called it off,” she said clearly. He raised his eyes to her, a little surprise in them—she wondered what he had expected her to say—and shrugged, looking more helpless than she had ever seen him. “You did. You told them no. So it was an awful coincidence,” she said, and stood up. She had to move. “A coincidence.”
“Do you believe that?”
“A coincidence!”
“Do you believe that?” His eyes were hopeless. Nearly.
She stalked to the bookshelves, to the far corner of the room, back, and then rounded on him. “You thought you could take better care of her than I could!” she said shrilly. She would not answer him, she would not! He looked blank. “Of Toni!” she barked. “Our Toni!”
“No—I wanted to protect her—from me—”
“You have always wanted her for yourself.” But this distracting outrage would not stay. Toni and Cecil and Jed were now jumbled in her mind. She had failed them all, she had taken care of no one. All at once she sat down on the nearest chair. “You did not do it,” she whispered. “You told them no. It was a horrible fantasy you had and then you told them no.” Her throat was dry. She could barely force out a sound. “Those monsters.”
Anthony opened his hands as if he had been clutching sand and was now letting it fall to the floor. “I’m sorry, Chella. I’m sorry I told
you. It was selfish of me. I would like to pay my penance,” he said. “But that would also be selfish. Do you see?”
He bowed his head. She saw how gray his hair was. She forced the words out. “You can’t ask me what is selfish,” she said. “Because I want to be punished too.”
VII
Marcella called Jed when she left Mashantum on Sunday, and all he said was, “I’m leaving too.” She had been home for only fifteen minutes when he opened her door without knocking.
He kissed her as if he wanted to suck all the life out of her and held her as though he wanted to crush her bones to dust. She let him. She let him pull her to the floor. He was flaying her open, digging deep for something that he needed. She let him. He came, agonized, and held her a little more softly and stroked her hair, and then he looked at her and stood and pulled her up with him and led her down the hall to her bed, where he then went over her slowly, thoroughly, in a way that frightened her more, because he was so intent, seemed so determined to expose every cranny of her, he was looking for something and what if he found it? He thrust himself into her, slowly, and carried her up and up, and she fought it but then she was at the top of the peak where he had taken her before and now she was falling, spread-eagled in nothingness; and when she was herself again, clutching him, she felt she was clutching a stone, and the land was barren and craggy and full of hazards.
She could tell him. She could say, Darling, I know something. She could give him herself and Anthony, heads on a plate. In the end, though, it would only be more leaden weight for him, it would not solve anything, there would be an investigation as Anthony had said and Toni’s life would be shattered and it would still be nothing more than a horrible coincidence. Wouldn’t it? It would only make him hate her; she would give him that gladly, though, would welcome the punishment.
She would give him anything, except Toni.
Beside her, Jed rose up on one elbow. He looked down at her and said slowly, “What if you had our baby?”
“What?” For the first time, she shrank from him. “Jed.”
“Why not?” he said dangerously.
The hope leaping in her had been so brief she almost hadn’t felt it. His face was now a stranger’s face. “I don’t know if it’s possible,” she said, wondering how she spoke these words so lightly, how she spoke at all. “I’m an old lady.”
“You know that? You’re sure?”
“Well. No. I don’t know it for sure.”
“I’m not Anthony. I could get the job done, you know.” He was not smiling.
“Stop.” She remembered him holding Jamie’s hand in the market. How she had longed for that. Then. She had never dreamed he could be cruel to her.
“What would you have done,” he said, “if my father had gotten you pregnant?”
“My God!” She pushed herself away from him.
“What would you have done?” he insisted.
“I don’t know!”
“Did he?”
“No!” And in spite of herself she remembered a long-ago dream, of a child who did not know that his parents had long, complicated histories that preceded him, a chimera of a child who was a new beginning. “My God, Jed, dio mio, why are you saying these things?”
His face was hard. She saw that he was pushing himself, going where he did not want to go, where he did not want to even think. She could tell him, now. But instead she eased herself away from him, out of the bed. She stood naked for a moment and then hated herself, her nakedness, her weakness, and went to the chair in the corner, wrapped herself in her robe, curled herself up. From far away, protecting both of them, she said, “Why are you doing this?”
He was no longer looking at her, was instead staring at the ceiling, and when she spoke he turned on his side, away from her. His body was beautiful. The smooth tanned skin was so dark where it met the white sheet. She longed to stroke him. She thought, So now it begins. Not touching.
Jed said, his back still to her, “How much did you love him?”
She swallowed. “A great deal.”
“But he left you.”
“Yes. He did.”
On the bed, fury was roaring through Jed’s brain, a child with flailing fists. Mine, mine, she is mine! Marcella had just said it. His father had left her. He left us. The fury howled. It was as though he had been walking and walking down a long corridor, all summer, knowing what was coming, and now he had come out into a roaring arena and was in the ring, his blood racing at almost unbearable speed, and he was trembling, ready. Waiting, again, still, for his father. “Mine,” he whispered, so low that even Marcella wouldn’t hear him.
But his father wasn’t there.
“Marcella,” he said to the wall. His voice broke. His hands had been curled into fists. They fell open. “Marcella. Please.” There was nothing for several long moments, and then he heard her soft footfalls. He felt the tilt of her weight on the bed. Her arm slid under his and her knees fit against his bent legs, and she held him.
Her bare skin was warm against his back, but for the first time he could remember, he felt no desire. The arena was gone, the ring, he was at the edge of a plain of nothing. His empty hands went to Marcella’s, tightened over them.
He loved her. It was true. But the love had been embroidered with hopes and memories and anger and now it was just plain love and it was simple and he was exhausted. It seemed a paltry kernel of a thing to offer her. He had thought of her only as sinning or forgetting but really he had been looking in her for what he had lost, and he had to realize now, once again, finally, that he would not get it back. He burrowed his back into her. He did not want to let go, or to think about what he had to do next.
Behind him, holding him, Marcella felt the pulse of his blood against her cheek. She could tell him. It would be a door closed. She thought of Toni, and tried to hold on to her resolve. Not yet, not yet. “You have to forgive him,” she said.
And Jed, thinking she meant Cecil, said, “I know.”
I
It bothered Cecil deeply that he had to lie to the police. He was not a person who had ever distrusted the police; on the contrary, he believed that their existence was a sign of a society holding itself together, and he had never felt resentful of their rules or occasional intrusions into his life—a speeding ticket, an inefficient cop directing traffic. They separated the good from the bad, saw the world in clear black and white whereas the rest of life was overrun with gray. It was part of their job to be slate-faced and neutral but when Betsy died he was sure he sensed their grief, especially at the beginning, God, when there was yellow crime-scene tape stretched across his own driveway, when they were in his house with the comfortable things that must have reminded them of their human kinship—the embroidered pillows on the sofa, the cheery family photos on the piano. The basket of clean laundry on the kitchen table, unfolded.
Yes, he trusted the police and their determination. They wanted to find the killer almost as much as he did. More, maybe, because that was what they were trained to do—obsess over this essential lack of order. For them, there was not yet an end to the story, whereas for him his wife was dead and there was nothing further to add. He knew it would be manly to want revenge, but he had no energy for that and was glad to let the police want it for him.
Early on, though, he sensed their suspicion. It wasn’t that big a surprise, was it? He was sympathetic to them, he really was, and tried to convey this as well as he could. He wished quite sincerely that he could give them his alibi so they could go pursue other leads, although he didn’t know what they might be, and if they even had any they were not telling him. He was a businessman, he wanted to say, he was known for his effectiveness and lack of sentimentality, when necessary. He hated to see them wasting their time.
The very first night they had asked him if he wasn’t, by any chance, having an affair. “Are you, Mr. McClatchey?”
“No!” Layered over his numbness he felt a reflexive nausea and disbelief. He did not even feel t
hen that he was lying, because he had never been able to believe it himself. “No! Of course not!”
Before long he realized that it must be a routine question in cases like this. That really it had nothing to do with him at all. Later on they asked again, more than once. Sorry to bring it up, they would say. But, you know, it happens.
There was one particular detective, a sandy-haired fellow with a weak chin and a military haircut, who liked to use profanity as a way to relax things. Or to provoke him. “There’s nobody out there who’s pissed at you? No asshole, you know, who wants to pay you back for something?” he had said, at their first meeting. It didn’t bother Cecil; it was probably an effective technique. Obediently, he had sat and thought about the man’s question. He thought of Anthony Atkinson, of the ferocity of which he was capable, which Marcella had described more than once. But Cecil knew it wasn’t physical, that the man had his codes. He thought of Anthony shaking hands on the tennis court once when Cecil had beaten him, the utter correctness of his posture. “No,” he had said. He shook his head. “No.”
He had looked the man in the eye and regretted very much that he couldn’t tell him the truth. But early on, the guilt he had felt all along about Marcella had coalesced into the ironclad conviction that he must keep her name to himself. He had never told Betsy, and to tell someone else now seemed the ultimate betrayal. Patiently, he told his lies once more, instead—that, on the night of Betsy’s death, when he had been in North Carolina, he had not been able to sleep, had driven around aimlessly for part of the night, and that when he had come back to the hotel he had lain on the bed without folding down the sheets. A maid had already revealed that his bed had not been slept in; he knew that. But still the repeated questions and the detective’s skepticism bounced off of him like arrows off a breastplate, because he began to remember this shadow self like a long-lost twin. He saw himself driving through the night, struggling to stay awake in his cloud of anxiety, of insomnia that quite likely spoke of deeper existential troubles—but what did the police care for that? The sorrow of this phantom and his phantom journey began to seem completely real. If he had suddenly found a confidant, someone he could trust absolutely, even then he would have had difficulty teasing the truth back out of this manufactured memory.