*
Pam hung up the phone and went out to look at the water. Why did she still care whether or not Jack noticed her life? She was both angry at herself for the pleasure Marie’s comments about him brought her, and that she continued looking for information that would validate her marriage. It was so over. Even if he had lived, it would have been over. She allowed herself to imagine what the scenario would have been had Jack lived. Sandra would have gone to him with the announcement of their pregnancy. What would Jack have done? Would he have asked her to abort the baby? Pam didn’t think so. He would have mustered up the courage to take the train home to Babylon that same day. She pictured him pulling into the garage, like he always did. Only this time he didn’t kiss her on the mouth. He asked her to sit down there in the kitchen. He would come right out and say he wanted a divorce. He was cagy; he wouldn’t tell her the truth; that he got someone pregnant. She knew Jack would never admit to making a mistake. He would lie to her. He’d say that he wanted to try living alone, that he didn’t love her, that he was dying. He’d make up some catastrophic lie. But it wasn’t a lie. He would go to their bedroom and pack his clothes right away, never to spend another night in bed with her again. She’d felt the difference in him before he had died, didn’t she? He wasn’t initiating lovemaking, he didn’t even say goodbye to her that last morning he left for the city. He was so over his life at the beach.
But back to her daydream. Jack knew Pam wouldn’t make a scene. She wouldn’t even try to reason with him, to ask him to stay. She would be shocked, for sure, but she would let him go. She might not answer the phone for a few days, finally calling her sister Marie and confessing to her that the marriage was over. Would Marie have come clean then, too? Confess that she was in love with Jack and had been sleeping with him for years? Or would she call Jack and rail against him, threaten him with exposure if he left her, too? It was easier in the long run for the children to have lost their father to death rather than divorce. Knowing Jack, knowing about his fickle behavior now, would he have stayed in touch with the children if he had left her? Finally succeeding in making herself physically ill, Pam cleared her head. She went back into the house and said out loud, “Enough! No more fantasy.” Jack was gone. It was impossible to second guess what he would have done if he had lived. She had to allow herself to face the truth about him, and stop trying to cover for him. What would that do to her children? She needed professional help to guide her now. She didn’t have the skills or the strength to know what was best. Her instincts told her that the truth was vital. The possibility that she would get sicker was real and she owed her children the opportunity to communicate to her if she found she was at the end of her life. That thought, that she would die before her children were established in their lives scared the hell out of her. It was the only thing about AIDS that frightened her. She didn’t care about anything else anymore. Once her children knew the truth, the whole town could know about her.
Pam walked into the kitchen and went to the small counter where she kept her checkbook and mail. Looking for a pen and paper, she was going to document what had happened to her at Organic Bonanza that day. In the past, she wouldn’t have bothered, preferring to spend her time and energy doing something else. She didn’t need a useless hobby. But now with time on her hands, she felt empowered by her decision. She was going to talk to her lawyer Monday about filing a suit against the hospital nurse who told her sister about Pam having AIDS.
Chapter 30
Sandra Benson left her office in a daze. After her messy lunch, she tried to do something useful, to accomplish something at work. But it was impossible. The train of thought started in the triangle that she needed to break it off with Tom monopolized her thought life. Once she recognized that she was with him for just two reasons; he was good looking and he gave her the time of day, she realized that those reasons were not enough. She didn’t know him well enough, which was the big problem. They’d had an instant physical response to each other, intense chemistry and sexual attraction. He was kind, he was interesting, but he was sort of provincial, if that could be said about a Brooklyn cop. His ideas came from a place that no longer existed. How could he be so accepting of her condition on one hand and so rigid in his thinking on the other? Tom was conservative in the extreme. She had a fear that being with him might backfire down the road, that he would suddenly come to his senses and realize that she was a mess after all. She was sort of stumbling along in the direction of the subway station when a car pulled up alongside of her. She looked over, distracted by her thoughts, and saw it was Tom. He rolled the window down.
“Hey beautiful! Hop in!” She stood on the sidewalk paralyzed, looking at him vacantly. “What’s wrong? Come on, I’ll take you home.” He was concerned suddenly. What the hell was wrong with Sandra? She looked up and down the street to see if it was clear, and stepped off the curb. Tom reached over to open the door for her. “Are you okay?” He asked. Sandra slid across the seat, looking ahead.
“I’m okay. I need to get home,” she told him. “Lucky you dropped by,” she said. “I ate a hot dog for lunch and it didn’t agree with me.”
“What happened to your jacket?” Sandra looked down at her silk shell; she had forgotten about her hot dog mishap.
“I got grease on it. The cleaners picked it up. You’re observant!” She smiled at him, making the first eye contact.
“Are you okay?” Tom repeated. “You seem a little discombobulated.” He pulled away from the curb.
“Actually, I don’t feel well; like I said, street cart syndrome probably.” Sandra couldn’t wait to get home and lock her door. She needed to think about what her next step would be.
Chapter 31
Pam decided that she was calling the children and telling them that evening. Telling them that she had AIDS. She debated lying about the origin of it, but quickly changed her mind. They deserved to know the truth now so they could deal with it in whatever way they could. She would make sure that she had therapist’s names available to them. Although the weather was beautiful, seventy degrees with blue skies, the waves crashing on the beach mirrored what was going on in her head. Pam could feel the salt spray on her face as she stood on the veranda. There must be a storm out to sea. She stood there with her arms wrapped across her body, formulating the narrative that she would speak to her son and daughter. Jack’s name would only be mentioned if the children brought him up, but she had to be prepared for whatever it was they asked. Wouldn’t it be easier to just come out and say, “Your dad gave me AIDs.”? She felt that was too negative, too accusatory. So Jack gave her AIDS, big deal. She didn’t know what the source was and that was the truth. He could have gotten stuck by a needle somewhere. She was not going to go into details regarding his sexual misconduct unless expressly asked, and then she was going to try to get them to look beyond that, for her sake.
Going back into the house to get a shawl and a cup of coffee, Pam was suddenly tired. She knew it was due to the stress this was putting on her, but it had to be faced. She imagined the hateful deli clerk calling Lisa on the phone that morning and telling her the news. There was really no way in hell she could take a chance with that happening. Having to call a lawyer about the breech of confidence at the hospital was adding to her worry, so she decided to postpone that until after the calls to the children were made. That thought had barely left her mind when the phone rang; it was Lisa. “Shit,” Pam said, but answered it. Breathing a sigh of relief, her daughter was up early and just wanted to chat with her mother. Pam wasn’t ready to divulge her news yet; waiting until later in the day would be okay. Lisa had classes to go to and Pam didn’t want her to miss any so early in the semester. Pam took the phone back out to the veranda and sat down, putting her feet up in preparation for a long talk. Lisa liked her classes this semester; as a sophomore, she couldn’t yet see the light at the end of the tunnel, but was enjoying the process. After about ten minutes of catching up, just as Pam was ready to say goodbye, Lisa dr
opped a bomb.
“Mom, I heard something today that is bothering me and I need you to put my mind at ease.” Pam’s heart started beating wildly in her chest. She quickly tried to gather herself together before opening her mouth. She wanted to voice to sound normal, unsuspecting. But she wasn’t able to pull it off, the tremor obvious.
“What’s going on?” Pam asked, knowing what was wrong, dreading to hear it from Lisa. She closed her eyes, silently praying.
“Do you remember Paulette Vargas?” Lisa asked. “She was in my Brownie Troop and then they moved to Smithtown in third grade.” Pam wracked her brain trying to remember how Paulette Vargas was related to either Jean or Marion.
“I think I remember her. She had brown braids, didn’t she?” Pam was stalling, trying to drag out this preliminary discussion as long as she could. She felt faint; the previous heat which spread through her body had gone, replaced with icy cold.
“She was blond, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway, her aunt lives on West End, near Ninetieth. She knows Bubby. She told me her aunt swears she saw Bubby and Grandma in Zabar’s and they had been drinking, and it was first thing in the morning.” Pam did her best to stifle the gasp that involuntarily escaped her mouth. “Her aunt said that Bubby was a known lush for years. Could this be true, Mom?” Lisa asked, clearly concerned. Pam had lowered her head in relief. Now was the time to start being truthful.
“Lisa, I can honestly say that I never saw Bubby intoxicated, and Daddy never told me she drank excessively, but I have heard that she drank when Uncle Bill and Daddy were boys,” Pam admitted. “I wonder what Paulette’s aunt hoped to accomplish by passing that tale along to her niece? It seems sort of cruel, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it does. I told her that Bubby just lost my dad and her husband. But what about Grandma? It concerns me that the two of them are wandering around the city, drunk.”
“Okay, Lisa, I’ll look into it later. I don’t want you to worry about it though. Bubby has lived in the city all of her life. She knows her way around. As far as my mother goes, that’s another story. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but the thought of those two women calling attention to themselves in that way is totally out of character. When we hang up, I’ll call the house and talk to Ben. He should be driving them everywhere for the money I am paying him.” Mother and daughter chatted for another fifteen minutes and finally when Lisa was laughing, Pam felt it was okay to end the conversation.
“I’ll call you later, after I’ve had a chance to find out what is going on in high society New York.” Pam said good bye to Lisa, promising to let her know if she could discover anything. She got up from her chair and walked back into the house to hang up the phone. Her relief that she wasn’t caught without her AIDS speech ready was enormous. Immediately, she went into the den to get some paper from Jack’s desk. She thought she was past any further discoveries, but she was wrong.
She sat down in his chair and opened the top middle drawer, expecting to find some blank paper. However, it held only pens and stamps. She opened each drawer without luck, thinking, didn’t I do this once already? Or did I stop at the first drawer I came to, the drawer that held the cryptic notes from Marie? Months before, shortly after Jack’s death, Pam found a folder full of scrapes of paper Marie had written on, some threatening him with exposure and others apologizing for some unknown misdeed. Pam promptly burned the notes. She couldn’t remember if she had gone through the entire desk. When she came to a locked door on the bottom left, she was certain she hadn’t tried to open it before. She went through the desk again, looking for a key. Nothing. She got up and went out to the mudroom to the key rack where she hung the keys to all the cars, and to Jack’s Lexus. She searched on the key ring; his keys to the Columbus Avenue mansion, the key to his Madison Avenue apartment, the house key, his locker at the club (she’d better empty that), and finally, a lone key that looked like it would work in a desk drawer. She took the bunch of keys back to the den and bending over, slipped the key into the lock. It didn’t go in. “Humph,” she said out loud.
She went into their bedroom and stood in the center of it, slowly turning around. She eyed his nightstand. It was one thing she hadn’t gone through, neither his clothes, nor the garage. She sat on the edge of the bed and slowly opened the drawer. There was nothing private in her own nightstand drawer. Other women talked about their drawer like it held the key to their sexuality. She had whatever current book she was reading in bed, some ear plugs, a small bottle of hand lotion and some nail clippers. Jack’s held similar items, along with this favorite dental floss. She took everything out, having decided that she might as well be done with it and throw it all away. Keeping his intimate things would not bring him back, or change history. She went back into the kitchen and got a large trash bag. As she bent over to close the drawer where the bags were stored, she saw the light from the den. Slowly standing up, she opened the cutlery drawer and took out a steak knife. Why would that desk drawer be locked? She walked back to the den holding the knife point sticking out. When she got to the desk, she sat down in Jack’s chair. Should I? Should I risk my well-being for the day? “What the hell is in there?” She asked out loud. She stuck the tip of the knife in the lock and jimmied it around, bending it back and forth, trying with all her strength to turn it. Nothing.
She stood, now more determined to get the lock open just for the sake of it and not because she was even thinking of the contents. Putting the knife down, she left the den again and went out to the garage. Jack’s tool chest was to the right of the workbench out there. She went to open the top drawer, hoping to find a tool that would aid her in the picking of the desk lock and discovered that the tool chest was locked, too.
Now frustrated, she ran back to the mudroom and retrieved the unknown key. It slid easily into the lock of the red metal chest. The drawer popped open without her touching it. The tools were lined up perfectly, the bottoms of the handles precisely aligned, the sizes graduated from largest to smallest. So like Jack to insist on his tools being perfectly lined up like a surgeon’s instruments. She was reaching for an awl when she saw it. The crisp, white edge of paper peeking out from under the red rubber drawer liner.
Pam pushed the tools aside and lifted the drawer liner. She saw what she thought was a leg, and then realized she was looking at the back of Jack’s thigh with his small, brown birthmark visible, and as she pulled the photo out further, the inside of a woman’s leg and her crotch. Heart beating wildly, yet again, how often could you raise your heart rate like this and survive? she thought, and intense heat flooding her body, she shoved the tools to the back of the drawer and exposed the photo. It was a stack of them. Pam wrenched them out of the tool chest, and then opened each succeeding drawer and discovered more of the same thing. She methodically removed all the pictures from the chest and stacked them together, turning to go back into the house as she picked the stack up. A large sludge hammer caught her eye on the way out of the garage; she grabbed that as well, surprised but not hampered by its weight. She didn’t notice she was stomping her feet with each step back into the house. She threw the photos into the kitchen pantry and locked the door, stomping back to the den. Without thinking, without a wasted second, she brought the sludge hammer up over her head and down on the desk with a crack. The report was so loud; beach goers walking in front of her house looked up, wondering if it was gunfire.
Over and over again, tiny Pam Smith brought the heavy sludge hammer up over her head and smashed it down on what had once been the beautiful handcrafted desk of her late husband, Jack. Once the top was destroyed, she was able to reach into the offending locked drawer and pulled out its contents. Seeing it could be more photos, she took the entire drawer into the kitchen, unlocked the pantry, put the drawer inside with the porn, and locked the door again, putting the key down the front of her bra. Going back out to the garage with the sludge hammer dragging alongside her, she put it back up on the hooks in the pegboard and walked to the other side of the garage
where the recycling was kept. She found a large, cardboard box, flattened, and a roll of packing tape. She struggled with it to get it in the house, not because of its weight, but because it was so awkward with its size. Back in the den, she taped the box back together and started picking up the shattered wood that had once been the desk her husband sat at to do whatever it was he did when he was home. At that moment, she couldn’t honestly say she knew what he did. Now it looked like he might have been cataloging his photography collection.
The pieces of wood that were too large to manage in the box where broken over Pam’s knee. She knew she might suffer the consequences of this madness later, but for now it was serving its purpose. Her mind was crystal clear. Any doubts, muddled thoughts or sadness had been banished. After the destruction was completed, she boxed up the rest of the impersonal contents of the desk and hauled it and the desk remains out to the curb. What was left of the top was cumbersome and she struggled getting it through the doorway and down the path to the street. A neighbor racking leaves who had heard the ruckus yelled to Pam, “need a hand?’ and she yelled back at him “No Ed! But thanks, anyway!” She brushed her hands off, admiring her pile of junk, turned her back on it and returned to the house.
She dragged out the vacuum and ran it over the entire den. Her hand on her hip, she looked at his desk chair. She’d take it to Bernice. Whenever there had been a family get together, Bernice ended up in that damn chair. Pam wanted to annihilate it along with the desk, but decided the bigger thing would be to haul it into the city. It would bring Bernice happiness. Once again, she went through the steps of struggling to get something that weighed almost as much as she did out of the house, into the garage and into the back of her SUV. Back in the den, she looked around with satisfaction. The bookcases were a little too sterile for her liking, Jack’s books so neat and organized; they looked like a law office. She would tackle that another time.
Dream Lover: Pam of Babylon Book #3 Page 18