by Marian Thurm
~ 35 ~
What Roger chose not to share with Dr. Avalon was that he’d gone back a second time to the Rebbe Schneerson’s grave with another one of those carefully considered notes, this time a very brief one:
Dear Rebbe,
Please save me and my beloved family from the hopelessness in which I find myself engulfed.
You will have my gratitude—
Roger
He realized too late that he’d forgotten to include “son of Beverly” after his signature, as required, and still had his fingers crossed that the Rebbe wouldn’t take off too many points for it.
“Let’s hear about your week,” Dr. Avalon was saying during Roger’s last appointment. Avalon was seventy now, and no doubt contemplating retirement, Roger thought. He was chewing gum, very discreetly, but Roger took note of it nevertheless, and thought how unprofessional it was.
“In high school, my French teacher once caught me chewing gum,” Roger heard himself say. “And she made me stick it on the tip of my nose and keep it there until the end of class.”
Much to Roger’s surprise, Dr. Avalon went on chewing.
“I was seventeen years old, and I felt like a fucking idiot with that gum stuck on my nose,” Roger continued. “It was Bazooka. Bright pink.”
Dr. Avalon nodded. “Something so intensely humiliating is hard to forget.”
“I couldn’t get up there and deliver a eulogy for my sister,” Roger said. He folded his hands into fists. “How’s that for humiliating?”
Dr. Avalon bent over in his armchair facing Roger, and using his fingers like tweezers, picked up a piece of lint from the oriental carpet at their feet.
He was talking about his sister’s funeral but Dr. Avalon just had to get that lint off the rug.
Roger contemplated firing him at that moment, that gum-chewing, lint-picking shrink who said little, mostly nodding his head for a living for three hundred bucks an hour which, frankly, he could ill-afford these days.
Now he was telling Roger that he and his wife were going on a ten-day trip to Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. “So I won’t be available for a while, even by phone.”
“Me either,” Roger said. “But can you renew my prescription for Xanax before you go?”
Playing with the lint he’d captured, rubbing it thoughtfully between two fingers, Dr. Avalon said, “You did once tell me that your goal was to eventually feel a lessening of anxiety without the meds. Does that feel like a realistic goal right now, Roger?”
He considered telling Avalon that he’d been doing some thinking and that, barring a miraculous intervention by the late Rebbe Schneerson, he and the doc would not be seeing each other again, that it was time for them to go their separate ways. He was getting sentimental in his old age, and thought, just for a moment, as his anger evaporated, of cradling Avalon’s hand and thanking him for the many, many expensive hours he had listened, in the soothing, mostly nonjudgmental way of his, to Roger brooding about that ache of uneasiness that could not be quieted. No matter what.
He was that kid with the bubble gum stuck to his nose, all these years later.
~ 36 ~
She was emptying the dishwasher and he was poised at the entrance to the kitchen and brooding about public school—all those crappy third-rate teachers with degrees from crappy third-rate colleges, and parents forced to pay extra for the art teacher and art supplies, and, unbelievably, there was no music teacher at all . . . And of course the classrooms weren’t air-conditioned and were probably steamy in the early fall and late spring . . . Compare that, Roger instructed her, to Olivia and Will’s old school, where the tenth-grade chamber music group would be performing in China in the spring, and seniors who were enrolled in Hungarian and Czech classes would be traveling on a two-week cultural tour of Budapest and Prague. Hungarian and Czech! Roger said admiringly; then his face darkened.
It kills me, he said, to think of all those lost opportunities for Olivia and Will.
To study Hungarian and Czech?
What was he talking about?
Olivia was in kindergarten and Will was only in preschool, Stacy pointed out. What lost opportunities?
He declined to answer her with anything more than a wistful shake of his head, and she went on stacking the glass salad bowls and dinner plates—one of which had a chipped rim and needed to be trashed—in orderly piles, clearing out the dishwasher until it was completely empty and Roger had turned and started to walk away.
“Come back!” she called after him, but he waved a hand over his head and continued on his way to somewhere else.
~ 37 ~
Lately it seemed that Roger just couldn’t keep his eyes off those family pictures of his. He examined them obsessively, but only after Stacy had crashed for the night and he’d struggled in vain, and for too long, to get to sleep.
Here in a leather album stuffed with photographs— arranged so painstakingly by Stacy over a succession of ice-cold winter evenings—was a grinning Will standing in his crib dressed only in a diaper, a colorful beaded necklace drooping nearly to his knees, a visible stream of saliva trailing from his chin all the way down his bare chest to the waistband of his Huggies. Overhead a mobile of dolphins balancing balls on the tips of their snouts—a gift from Clare and Marshall—hung gaily. And here was one of Olivia and Will sharing a kitchen chair, both of them in pajamas, Will’s face turned toward Olivia’s and held against her cheek, Olivia resting her chin on her brother’s shoulder, a large red box of Sun-Maid raisins in the middle of the table like a centerpiece. Here on one of the last pages was a photograph of Roger seated on the piano bench in their Park Avenue living room with his kids crowded into his lap, their faces reflecting identical, supremely goofy smiles while Roger himself stared, deadpan, at the camera. He could not remember the day the photo had been taken last year, only that Stacy had told him the picture would be funnier if he didn’t smile. So as his children mugged joyfully for the camera, he’d worked hard to keep that impassive expression on his face.
Mesmerized by these images at three and four in the morning while his family slept so soundly, it was as if what he’d been looking at were scenes from someone else’s lucky, lucky life, a life that hadn’t, even for a moment, ever been his.
S
The timing is right: both kids are asleep in their beds, and Stacy is in the shower, which she has decided to take now instead of tomorrow morning, when things will just be too hectic, she predicted, what with last-minute packing and a quick visit to the pool so Will, and Olivia—if she’s feeling up to it—can get in one last swim before leaving for the airport.
Roger takes the elevator down to the deserted lobby and walks to the rented Toyota that sits in his parents’ covered space in this parking lot, a mere sixty-second walk from the front door. The lot, at ten p.m., is empty of people, all of whom, he would bet, had dinner at one early bird special or another at five o’clock, then came home and got directly under the covers of their neatly made beds.
He opens the driver’s side of the Toyota, gets behind the wheel, and pops the glove compartment; sliding over, he hunkers down in the passenger seat and takes out the Glock. He loads the magazine and shoves it into the handle of the gun. Then eases himself carefully out of the car, the gun concealed in a small, environmentally friendly paper shopping bag that he’d left under the seat.
The night is muggy; the air smells of rotten eggs. Above him, the moon is partially hidden by a thin veil of clouds.
There is no one in the elevator as he rides upstairs, no one to ask him whatcha got in that small shopping bag you’re carrying so close to your heart? He’s back at the apartment moments later, closing the door quietly behind him and making his way down the hallway to the master bedroom.
Standing just outside the bathroom now, he can hear Stacy singing a Beach Boys song in the shower.
“I wish that every kiss was NEV-er end-ing,” she croons in a sweet soprano that’s only slightly off-key.
~ 38 ~
The day before the flight out of Kennedy, Stacy met with Magnolia, the seventy-something neighbor whom she’d hired to feed and water her Persians. Though she thought of Keats and Shelley as overgrown kittens, they were, at fourteen and fifteen, elderly now. Most of their time was spent as it had been in their youth, chilling on Roger and Stacy’s bed, front paws clasped together devoutly, the delicate, reassuring rise and fall of their fluffy backs as they slept letting Stacy know that they were, despite their chronic indolence, doing just fine.
In addition to their chicken-and-rice-flavored cat food, Stacy told Magnolia, pointing to the list of instructions she’d printed out for her from the computer, Keats and Shelley were each to get a teaspoon of melted ice cream every day.
“They’re not too keen on strangers,” she warned Magnolia. “So when you come in and they’re hiding under a bed or behind the blinds in the living room, please don’t take it personally.”
“Oh, I never allow myself to be insulted by animals,” Magnolia said. “Only people.” She began to tell Stacy about her grandson, whom she’d raised from infancy entirely on her own, only to have him join a cult somewhere in Oregon, the kind that allowed her no contact with him whatsoever. “Not even a measly phone call once a year,” she lamented. “I’d be better off if he were in prison . . .”
“Oh God, how cruel!” said Stacy. She still hadn’t finished packing the kids’ suitcases, and had barely started on her own, for that matter, but how could she let Magnolia leave without offering her something? “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Stacy asked her. “I’m not a coffee drinker myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to make it.”
“Sorry, can’t. Gotta go upstairs to the thirteenth floor and get that Norfolk terrier who’s waiting for me to take him out for a walk. His owners were in Hawaii, and he just got back from a week in the VIP suite at the Luxury Pet Resort down in the Village.”
Rolling her eyes, Stacy said, “What do they get in the VIP suite? Manis and pedis for dogs?”
“Not sure, but I know they have story hour every night.”
“Crazy!” Stacy said, and laughed. Then she said, “Okay, look, after I go to the ATM later, I’ll have your money and will leave it for you in an envelope on the kitchen counter.”
“No need,” Magnolia said. “Pay me when you get home, no worries. And I can e-mail you every other day just to let you know how the cats are doing,” she offered.
Stacy thought of Magnolia’s grandson, imagining him in a cabin deep in the woods of Oregon, without electricity or running water, never, not for a moment, thinking of the grandmother who longed to see him. Impulsively, she hugged Magnolia, whose black sweatshirt was coated with dog hair and who seemed to stiffen slightly in her brief embrace.
“All right, all right, see you when you get back,” Magnolia said, and tapped Stacy on the shoulder awkwardly.
Stacy returned to the big suitcase that lay open on the bedroom floor; it was hers and Roger’s and since he was at his office, trying desperately, she knew, to get investors together for another development project, she decided she would do most of his packing for him. She started with his pajamas and boxers and T-shirts, and packed in neat, careful layers, with tissue paper placed meticulously in between, as if she were a sales clerk in a luxury department store, doing her job and doing it well.
She worked for nearly half an hour, then stopped to check in with the two mothers who were supervising her kids’ respective playdates today, promising them both that of course she would reciprocate when spring break was over. After the phone calls, she allowed herself to take a quick look at the e-mail on her laptop; mostly pleas from the ACLU, Doctors Without Borders, and websites asking for money for breast cancer research and for the prevention of cruelty to animals—organizations that, in better days, had been the recipients of her generosity . . . And now she was startled to see Rocco Bassani’s e-mail address; she hesitated for a moment before clicking open his mail, as if it might have been spam, or the work of a hacker who had every intention of stealing from her—her money, her social security number, her identity, her life. She opened it anyway, and was relieved to see the playful letter from Rocco, which included, inserted directly into the e-mail, a photo of his two-year-old, Dylan, who had red hair and looked nothing like him. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly a decade, she calculated, not since the night they’d had farewell sex and smoked weed together. She wanted to write back immediately to tell him that just seeing his e-mail address there on the screen had reminded her of how much she missed being young. The e-mail itself opened with the salutation “Wass up?” and mentioned Rocco’s divorce and his hope that they could catch up in person sometime in the not-too-distant future. He signed it “xox” and she had to smile when she saw it, recalling very clearly now the two of them in Rocco’s bed sharing that joint, and the path of dark-blond hair that led from his stomach down to his groin.
It was the joint that brought to mind Olivia’s friend Jazzmin and her pothead father and how Stacy had meant to follow up after the call she’d made to the Administration for Children’s Services. She’d made the call but had never heard back from the social worker who’d answered the phone and promised that someone from ACS would look into it.
One more thing to take care of when she returned from Florida.
She didn’t want to think of herself as someone who was merely well-intentioned. Because she had always hoped she was better than that.
~ 39 ~
Stacy’s just out of the shower, standing in the bathroom doorway barefoot, wrapped in a peach-colored velour bathrobe that she swiped from his mother’s closet. Her toenails are painted a color Roger would call mauve.
At first she thinks it’s a joke when he points the Glock in her direction, but then he explains to her that though up until just a few days ago he’d planned to kill only himself tonight, he’s come to realize, after a great deal of agonizing deliberation, that it’s best to take her and the kids along with him. To rescue all of them from the mortification of his failures.
“We’re bankrupt,” he says. “And I mean totally, irretrievably, down the crapper. I didn’t want to tell you, but now I have to. We have nothing. Nada. There’s no hope for us, babe.”
“Put. The. Gun. Down,” Stacy says. She’s panting, trying to catch her breath.
His love for her is infinite and he only wishes there were another way out. He tells her this, and just for an instant, hearing the word love, she looks relieved.
“Oh God, I love you, too,” she says. Her breathing is still labored, as if she’s just finished a four-minute mile. “And that’s why you have to put. The. Gun. Down.”
He doesn’t appreciate it when she talks to him like this. He’s not a child, and there’s nothing wrong with his hearing.
“You love me,” he says, “but do you love me with a full heart? Do you love me 100 percent?”
Stacy slaps her right hand over her heart. “One hundred percent,” she tells him. Her voice sounds warbly and thin. “With a full heart, absolutely,” she says, voice stronger now.
Walking closer toward her, he continues to point the gun in her direction; he backs her toward the side of the bed, where she trips over her own feet and falls, pathetically, to her knees.
“Stay right there,” Roger tells her. “Don’t move.”
~ 40 ~
He’s looking at her with those turquoise eyes of his, suddenly startlingly beautiful to Stacy again. But she can see that he’s in an altered state, that his mind is ablaze, and that these are the baby blues of someone who, except for those eyes, is unrecognizable to her. A man she no longer knows. And perhaps—it occurs sickeningly to her now—never knew well enough, deeply enough, not really. This man she’s loved for years: how many? Her heart is beating so fiercely she can’t think, can’t even remember how long they’ve been married.
Then it comes to her. Nine, nine next month, she says to this man who is going to kill her, and h
er children, too, unless she can persuade him otherwise.
He stares at her. “Nine years,” he says, nodding his head.
The gun is still pointed at her.
“Waitwaitwait,” she says, “just try and explain again why you think you have to do this.”
“I’ve already told you,” the man holding the gun says, and looks at her with a combination of exasperation and pity.
He says that he will never be able to give her and the children the sort of comfortable life they had before.
That he cannot live with these failures of his to provide them with what they deserve.
There is simply no way out. “No way out,” he repeats, staring at her apologetically now. “I don’t want us to starve,” he says, “don’t you see?”
Starve? What is he talking about?
It can’t be true, can it, that this distorted thinking might actually prove to be the ruin of them all, Stacy asks herself. Or maybe she’s said it aloud; she doesn’t know. Doesn’t know anything except that she must pit herself against this stranger, this psychopath, whom she cannot allow to harm her children. Their children.
She has never seen a gun before except in the movies or on television, and is sick with ice-cold terror at the sight of it. Sick with disbelief.
She is shivering, but has sweat through her mother-in-law’s bathrobe and can feel the perspiration collecting in the hollows under her arms, in the creases behind her bent knees, and beneath her toes. She wants to ask the man who is pointing a gun at her where he got it and when, but doesn’t it seem best not to focus attention on it?
“Will you just listen to me, please,” she says. She can feel her mouth twitching. “I don’t care at all about those things— that life—that you think the children and I deserve. I don’t care at all about what we had before, all those trappings of living well—it’s nothing, it means nothing to me! Less than nothing! I just want the four of us to be together,” she says, and hates both the quivery sound of her voice and the modest nature of her desperate request. “And don’t worry, I’m going to find a job as soon as we’re back in the city. I promise,” she squeaks. Wishing she sounded a lot more confident.