Rob laughed, more of a snorting sound, then said, “Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Thanks for the number.”
Hen didn’t think that Rob would call up Joanna to warn her, but just in case, she instantly dialed the number she’d written down in her sketchbook. After two rings, Joanna’s voice, deeper than she remembered, said a tentative “Hello?”
“Joanna, it’s Hen Mazur . . . Lloyd’s wife.”
There was about a two-second pause, long enough for Hen to think that Joanna had quietly ended the call, but then came Joanna’s voice, saying, “Hi, Hen.”
“Joanna, I don’t know if Lloyd’s talked to you, but I’m guessing he has. I know everything. He told me everything.” Even as she said the words, she knew they were untrue. No one knows everything.
“Hen, I just want to say that I am so, so sorry. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I don’t deserve it, I know, but please understand—”
“Joanna, it’s okay. I’m not calling to yell at you. I’m just calling . . . I don’t know why I’m calling. I guess I want to hear your side of the story and not just Lloyd’s.”
“Okay,” Joanna said, and took a long, audible breath. “When did . . . What did Lloyd tell you?”
“You haven’t talked with him yet?”
“Um . . . briefly. He’d told me that for a while he’d been planning on finally letting you know about . . . what had happened.”
“He didn’t let me know, actually. I figured it out, and then he confessed to it.”
“Oh.”
Hen could tell Joanna hadn’t been told about these recent developments and that she was trying to catch up, trying to figure out what she should and should not say.
“He hasn’t talked with you, has he?” Hen asked.
“I think I should go.”
“Joanna, he told me you two were over, that you broke up over the last weekend you were together.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
Hen heard what sounded like an exasperated sigh. “Can I ask you something, Hen?”
“Okay.”
“Have the two of you been talking about getting a divorce?”
“What do you mean? Like recently, now that I know about you and Lloyd?”
“No, I mean before. Like for the past six months.”
“We just bought a fucking house together. No, we haven’t been talking about divorce. Is that what he’s been telling you?”
“Maybe he’s implied—”
“Implied that we were going to get divorced?”
“Is that not happening?” Joanna actually laughed. “He told me you were both unhappy, that things weren’t going well, that you bought the house to try and save the marriage.”
“None of that is remotely true. I mean, maybe it was true in his own mind, but we never had a conversation about any of that. He’s never told me he’s unhappy. It was a total shock for me that he was having an affair.”
Silence again. Then Joanna said, “I’m sorry. I never would have—”
“You can stop saying you’re sorry. Did you think . . . Are you planning on being with Lloyd?”
“I hadn’t planned anything, exactly, but I did think that you and him were breaking up. And I did think that it might work out between us. Jesus, have I been a total idiot?”
“Well, if you’ve been an idiot, then so have I.”
“It’s still my fault. I was the one—”
“Let’s just say it’s all Lloyd’s fault and leave it at that, okay? I’m kicking him out of my house, by the way. I just decided. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that he might be looking for a place to stay.”
“He’s not staying here.”
“I don’t really care where he stays, Joanna, so you don’t have to say that for my sake.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was another pause, and Hen realized that there was nothing left to say. She said, “I’ve got to go now. Thanks for talking with me.”
“Stop being nice. I think I’d feel better if you yelled at me or something.”
“Well, thanks for talking with me, and fuck you for everything else.”
“Thanks, that’s better. Sorry again.”
Hen hung up, put her phone down on the arm of the ragged upholstered chair she was sitting on, and felt a surge of energy, half anger and half . . . something else—maybe excitement, although that wasn’t the exact word. It was more like anticipation. Everything was changing so rapidly. Lloyd was not who she thought he was. Not even close. The cheating was one thing—people were flawed and made mistakes—but the outright deceit, not just toward her but also toward Joanna, who suddenly seemed more like a fellow victim instead of the enemy, was something else altogether. She stood up, shook her hands out, and wondered what to do next. Her body was buzzing, like there were tiny wires sparking just under the surface of her skin. In a way, it reminded her of times when she was manic, but that wasn’t the case now. Any mania she was experiencing was strictly related to what was going on in her life.
She decided that what she really wanted to do was to just go home and send Lloyd packing, but she knew he was going to resist, claiming she was in danger. Maybe she should go somewhere else—a nearby hotel or maybe a friend’s house (Darlene, their old neighbor in Cambridge, would definitely welcome her)—and not tell Lloyd where she was going to be. She was excited by the thought, decided that she should do it, then realized that she would need to go home and pack first. She had to pack clothes, but more important, she needed her meds. The problem with going home, of course, was having to deal with Lloyd. She decided to call him first, tell him she was coming home to get some things but didn’t want to have a conversation. His phone went to voice mail; she didn’t leave a message. They had a landline in the house—it was part of the bundle that got them cable and Wi-Fi—and she tried that number, just on the off chance that Lloyd wasn’t near his cell phone. But there was no answer on the landline, either.
Maybe he’s gone for a walk, she thought, and wondered if she had time to drive home, get her things, and leave before he came back. While she was thinking this, the lights in her studio suddenly went out, and the room was plunged in darkness.
“Hey,” she said aloud.
A hollow, distant “Sorry” came back, and the lights turned back on. Yuma something or other, who was a watercolor painter on the other side of the basement level, came and popped her head into Hen’s studio.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she said. “You didn’t hear me call out? I thought I was the only one down here.”
“No, sorry, I didn’t hear you. No big deal. Am I the last one here?”
“As soon as I leave, you will be.”
Hen almost asked Yuma to wait up, that she was leaving, too, but instead said, “I’ll make sure to turn the lights out when I leave.”
She listened to Yuma’s footsteps as she made her way down the hall. The CD in her player was changing over and a Morphine album began to play. She looked at the copper plate that she’d begun to prepare earlier, briefly considered trying to do just a little bit of work, but knew she should go home and pack. It was going to be another scene with Lloyd, but the quicker it began, the quicker it would end. She could come back tomorrow and get work done.
Hen grabbed her jean jacket from the back of the chair, put her sketchbook in her bag, and was about to turn out the lights in her studio when she heard footsteps coming back down the hall. Was Yuma back? No, the footsteps were louder and heavier. She kept her hand on the switch, listening to where they were going. She almost shouted out “hello,” but something stopped her. The footsteps were coming toward her studio.
Chapter 36
At Logan Airport, Mira stepped out through the automatic doors into the cool air and turned left toward the line for taxis. She wondered briefly how much it was going to cost to take a cab all the way to West Dartford, then pushed the thought away. That
was the least of her worries. When everything turned out to be fine, she and Matthew could laugh at the credit card bill, laugh at how Mira panicked during her trip to Wichita and returned early.
That will most likely never happen and you know it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Mira had woken early that morning in the hotel room. She’d left the curtains open and was greeted by the enormous Midwest sky, its clouds edged in pink. She’d had terrible dreams, the most vivid being one in which her house had burned down. In the dream Matthew and she had toured the remains. Everything was gone except for charred bodies, hidden everywhere in the smoldering house. Most were men—Jay Saravan, a frequent visitor in Mira’s dreams, was there, of course—but some were children, small blackened bodies that Mira knew were her own, the babies Matthew and she had never been able to have.
Lying in bed, staring at the window, a phrase kept going through Mira’s mind: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. She knew what she was telling herself: it was all true; her husband killed people. There was just too much smoke. Even last night, when they’d had such a seemingly normal conversation on the phone, he’d come out and said that he missed her. It wasn’t the words so much, but the way in which he had said them, his voice childish and sad. Something inside of him was unraveling. She knew it. It was no longer doubt she felt but dread.
She’d packed, checked out early, texted Linda at the local office that she thought she had food poisoning and could someone man the booth for her that day, then taxied to the airport to catch the next flight to Boston. The best one she could find didn’t get her in until midafternoon—she had to connect in Charlotte—but there was one seat left and she took it.
In the cab on her way to her house she fought the urge to call Matthew and tell him she was on her way home. The whole point of returning early was to catch him off guard and to confront him. To tell him she was beginning to have doubts and give him a chance to confess. Or give him a chance to convince her that she—like their neighbor—had become unreasonably paranoid. Convince her that there was no fire.
The cab got caught up in stalled traffic right before the Concord rotary, and the driver, a jowly, red-faced man, muttered under his breath about the traffic as though he were the one who needed to get home.
Mira cracked the window in the back, not because it was too warm but because the air in the cab felt thin, as though she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The cab jerked its way through the rotary, the driver still grumbling, and then they were on the relatively empty road toward West Dartford. She checked her watch; on any normal day Matthew would be home from school by now. What would he be doing? If she were there he’d be working on that day’s crossword on his iPad while she started dinner, or else he’d be in his office grading papers.
The cab pulled onto Sycamore, the low sun casting long shadows across the street. She directed the driver to her house, noticing right away that Matthew’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She felt a combination of increased fear but also relief. After putting the giant fare on her credit card, she rolled her luggage to the front door, trying to remember where she’d put the house key. She didn’t need it, though; the front door swung open, and she stepped across the threshold, calling out Matthew’s name even though his car was gone. He didn’t answer back.
The door being unlocked, along with the slightly off-putting smell in the house, raised Mira’s already elevated heartbeat. She shut the door behind her, shouted out another “Hello?,” then walked through the living room toward the kitchen, where the bad smell seemed to be coming from. The kitchen looked relatively normal except for a line of empty ginger ale cans across the granite countertop, as though those were the only sustenance that Matthew allowed himself when she was gone. She looked into the stainless steel sink. It was dry and empty, so she pulled open the cabinet that held the garbage can and was immediately hit with the strong smell of rotten food. On the top of the garbage was a rib eye steak still wrapped in its container, beaded with drops of reddish water. Had Matthew taken it out of the freezer, forgotten to eat it, then thrown it away? If so, it was so unlike him. He was a man who hated wasting food.
Next, she went to Matthew’s office, almost considered knocking, but turned the doorknob and swiftly entered. She flicked the switch on the wall, turning the ceiling light on. At first the room looked normal, but as she looked around she realized that all of Matthew’s little knickknacks had been moved. Where the vintage typewriter had been, on the side table, there was now his art deco greyhound sculpture. The typewriter had been moved to the desk. It wasn’t unusual for Matthew to move things around in his office, but she knew that he tended to do it when he was anxious about something. And then Mira looked at the corduroy sofa, noticing first that the red velvet pillow was indented as though someone had been sleeping on it and that there was a wool blanket bunched up on the floor. She hadn’t thought about Richard for years, but Mira thought about him now, wondered if he’d been the one who’d spent the night on the couch. She left the office and climbed the stairs to the second floor, wanting to check their bedroom to see if their bed had been slept in. It looked like it had even though it had been made, and the tight corners and the lined-up pillows told Mira that it was Matthew who’d made it.
Tired suddenly, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her phone, reading through the string of concerned text messages from her colleagues asking about the food poisoning. Mira was never sick, never missed a day of work. Ignoring the texts, she went to her contacts list so she could call Matthew. She’d tell him she’d returned early and wanted to talk. With her thumb hovering over the Call button, she found herself reciting Ayat al-Kursi, the only Muslim prayer she knew, taught to her by her grandmother who had come to live with them in California for the final years of her life. She hadn’t thought of the words in years—she barely even knew what they meant anymore—but she spoke them now, the simple act of recitation causing her body to somewhat relax. Opening her eyes again, she noticed that the closet door was swung all the way open. It wasn’t alarming that it was open, but it was unusual. Except for the morning when they were getting ready for work, the closet door was usually shut. She walked into it, running her hands along the hung clothes on either side. Everything seemed normal, but when she looked up at the shelving above Matthew’s side, she noticed a shoe box hanging over the edge. He’d been up there, clearly looking for something. Mira, standing on her tiptoes, wasn’t even able to touch the shelf, let alone anything on it. She immediately thought of the wooden chair in her craft room. She walked out of the bedroom to the landing and pushed through the door into the sloped-ceilinged room.
The chair was under the window, and Mira was halfway into the room before she noticed the body on the floor. She screamed out loud, more like a sharp bark of panic that she cut off instantly. It was definitely a body, lying diagonally, its feet just under her sewing table. There was no way to know who it was since the body had been entirely wrapped in duct tape, from the feet all the way to the head, so that it looked like a silver mummy.
Trembling, Mira took two quick steps to the body, lowered herself onto a knee, and pressed the palm of her hand against the chest of the body. It was a man—she could tell that much by his size and the flatness of his chest—and there was no movement in his body and no heartbeat. Close up, she could see that blood had seeped out between the folds of duct tape around the head. Call 911, she told herself, thinking of her phone back on the bed. But she had to know who was under the tape. She had to know if it was Matthew.
Her fingers found the sticky edge of the end of a piece of duct tape plastered across the center of the dead man’s face. And she began to pull the tape away.
Chapter 37
Richard Dolamore pulled into the liquor store parking lot. It was late afternoon, the air cold in his nostrils as he walked across the lot and through the automatic doors. He loved this liquor store, as big as a warehouse, full of suburban boomers filling carts with gallons of trend
y gin and cases of wine with names like “Mommy’s Best Friend.” Before it became a liquor store it had been a movie theater, years ago, a cheap independently run place with one screen that had been converted to two by putting up a shabbily constructed wall. Richard had come here as a teenager, mostly alone, but sometimes with dates, and he remembered that during quiet moments of whatever movie you were watching, you could hear what was happening on the other screen.
But the theater had been gutted, and now it was filled with row after row of colorful bottles. Richard wandered up and down the aisles looking at all the labels, designed to sell you a little something more than the alcohol inside. Dad had been a liquor rep, selling mostly down-market brands—vodkas with names like Romanov, and whiskey called Old Scotsman or Gold Rush—at bulk discount to chain restaurants and hotel bars. These types of brands still existed, always on the bottom shelf. You could stand in an aisle at the liquor store and run your eyes from the top to the bottom shelf, and you’d see bottles trying to attract a whole spectrum of customers—from the asshole who bought barrel-aged rum for a hundred dollars a bottle to the alcoholic on disability whose rum came in a gallon bottle made from plastic.
“They’re all the same,” Porter Dolamore used to say to him. “People are fools. Put rotgut in a pretty bottle, and everyone thinks they’re living like kings.”
Richard went to the Scotch aisle. A woman about his age studied the bottles, looking like she was trying to read a menu in a language she didn’t understand.
“That’s a good one,” Richard said, tilting his head toward the bottle of single malt she’d just picked up off the shelf.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. She wasn’t pretty. Her nose was too big and her eyes were too close together, but it was clear that she worked out and took care of herself. She had long brown hair with blond highlights, and she wore a pumpkin-colored sweater with a plunging neckline. Richard let his eyes scan the exposed tops of her breasts, nicely tanned. Dark brown nipples, he thought.
Before She Knew Him Page 24