"I'm so sorry," I said, and got to my feet, thinking about what Lisa had told me. "I should be gettig home." I wiped my hands on my pants. "The last time I was over--" Oops. "I mean, not the last time, obviously, but earlier this month, Kitty and I were upstairs and I think I might have dropped my earring in the bathroom. Do you think it would be all right if I ran up there to take a look?"
He shrugged, then nodded. I thanked him and walked sedately back to the foyer. My breath was coming quick and fast as I dashed upstairs, tiptoed past the powder room, and eased open the door to the master bedroom. Lemon yellow walls, a white lacy comforter, two dozen ornamental pillows at the head of the bed, the kind that would have to be removed every night and repositioned each morning. I crept across the room to the dressing table, thinking that Kitty had had way better taste than I did, and she was much tidier too. There was a heavy mirror in an ornate wrought-iron frame, a profusion of cut-crystal perfume bottles on a mirrored tray underneath it, a curvy little seat with a plush upholstered cushion. Her comb and hairbrush were lined up side by side, along with a pot of loose powder and a brush, a wicker box of tissues, a pink crystal barrette that looked like it belonged to one of her daughters. No laptop. Maybe the police had confiscated it.
Her dresser was covered with more gold-framed photographs. I saw Kitty and Philip, beaming at each other in their wedding finery; Kitty in a hospital johnny with a plastic bracelet around her wrist, an exultant smile on her face, and two tiny blanket-wrapped babies in her arms; Kitty with her daughters again at the Red Wheel Barrow's annual bake sale, each one of them proudly holding a pie.
I shoved my hair out of my eyes and eased open the top dresser drawer. I wasn't sure what I was hoping to see--a ribbon-tied stack of love letters with a New York City zip code and a signature that wasn't Philip's? A book labeled "My Diary" with an entry from October naming the killer, and perhaps offering a detailed physical description and a Polaroid? I worked my way through the drawer, unearthing a packet of birth-control pills and a bottle of aspirin, lip gloss, hand cream, laminated fold-out maps of New York and Washington, and finally, a photograph in a frame that matched the ones on the wall. I turned it over in my hands and saw Kitty and a pretty, dark-haired woman, both of them in their early twenties, with their arms around each other's shoulders, smiling at the camera as the wind blew through their hair. It took me two tries before I was able to slide the photograph out of its frame and read what was written on the back: "K and D, summer '92, Montauk."
I put the picture back in its frame and went back to the drawer, digging until I found a piece of the same creamy stationery on which she'd written Evan's phone number, with the words Stuart 1968. What was that? A place? A name and year? I refolded the paper and put it back.
Finally, near the back of the drawer, I pulled out a postcard with a shot of the Statue of Liberty, addressed to a P.O. box in Eastham, Massachusetts. "Dear Bonnie," it read. "New York City is everything I could ever want and more. We are together now. Happier than I can even believe. All my love always." No signature, no stamp. Whoever had written the card had never sent it.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
I whirled around and saw Philip standing in the doorway, holding on to the jamb as if he'd topple over without its support, with a wolfish look in his glazed eyes.
"Your earring," he said. "Did you find it?"
I shook my head, suddenly aware of the king-sized bed that seemed, somehow, to be growing by the minute, stretching wider and wider until it took up every centimeter of space in the room.
Philip attempted a lecherous smile. It sat unsteadily on his face, like garnish on an oily salad plate. "I like your shoes," he said. The instant the words were out of his mouth, his leer slid away and was replaced by grief and bewilderment. He looked old, and tired, and very, very sad.
"I'll show myself out," I said, putting the postcard back in the drawer and taking a hesitant step toward the door. "I just want you to know how sorry--"
Philip moved with a speed I never would have suspected from a man punch-drunk with sorrow. In three swift steps he crossed the room, fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around my waist, and pressed his face hard against my belly. "Tell me something," he said, his words coming fast, right on top of each other. "Was she happy?" I could feel the warmth and wetness of tears against my legs. "You were her friend. You knew her. Was she happy?"
This poor guy, I thought, forgetting for the moment that, if my theory were true, Philip Cavanaugh had been consoling himself in advance with the babysitter, and his wife might have been traveling to New York for some extracurricular activities of her own. He sounded so desperate. I was reminded of my father wandering through our apartment with his oboe in his hand, the way he did every time my mother went away.
"You were her friend," Philip said again. In that moment, I found myself wishing desperately that it had been true. I rested my hands on his shoulders, cleared my throat, and looked down at his bowed blond head as his hands loosened their desperate grip on my hips and migrated over to my ass.
"Stay with me," he wept. "Stay with me, please. I don't want to be alone."
Okay, Kate, I thought. I patted the top of his head gently, as if he were a large dog I suspected might bite. Don't panic. Be calm. Ask yourself the question that's gotten you out of tougher times than these: WWJD? What would Janie do, if she found a bereaved and possibly drugged widower sobbing and--oh, dear--tugging at her pants?
"Philip," I said, twisting my torso incrementally, first left, then right, then left again, until he'd loosened his grip. "I have to go now," I said, and patted his head again. "I have to go back to my children."
"I'm sorry," he muttered. He dropped his hands, letting them hang limply by his knees.
"Oh, that's okay," I said. I grabbed my purse and my coat. "If there's anything I can do..." I scribbled my phone number on a scrap of paper, hoping against hope that he wouldn't misinterpret the gesture, and made it down the stairs as fast as I could.
Back in the car, I turned on the heater, gripped the steering wheel hard until my hands stopped shaking, and did a few neck rolls. Once my heart had stopped pounding, I pulled out Sophie's notebook and wrote down what I remembered from the picture and the postcard. Then I flipped to a blank page and wrote, "Asking questions. Looking around." What had Kitty wanted to know? What was she doing in the city three days a week? And who had she been before she'd met Philip, had her babies, and turned into the most formidably perfect mother in Upchurch?
Thirteen
I parked the minivan in the garage and stuck my head into the living room. The kids were playing cheater's Candy Land, and Janie was slumped on the couch. Her pink silk blouse was untucked and missing two buttons, and her low-riding jeans had a rip on the cuff.
"Thanks for watching them," I said, then took a closer look. "Are you all right?"
"Little bastards zipped me in their tent," Janie said, pushing herself upright and running her hands through her tangled hair.
I glared at my children. "Did you guys do that?"
Sophie giggled. Sam and Jack stared at the game board.
"Say you're sorry."
"Sorry," they chorused, as Janie waved their apology away and staggered toward the stairs. "May...need...transfusion. Never...having...kids." So much for my plan of loading everyone in the van and driving to the pay phone to call Evan again. I sent all three of the kids to the Uncooperative Corner and got to work on dinner--fish sticks and frozen sweet-potato fries on a baking sheet in the oven, frozen peas and carrots bubbling away on the stove. Sam and Jack watched me from their perch, arguing over which one of them would get the red plate, and I spent five minutes going through my cabinets until I'd located a second red plate, at which point they both decided they wanted white plates instead. Sophie turned up her nose at her meal until I dug a jar of wasabi sauce and pickled ginger out of the refrigerator, gave her a set of chopsticks, and told her it was deep-fried sushi.
At eigh
t thirty, when Janie and all three kids were sleeping, I fixed myself a plate of fish sticks and sweet-potato fries and poured Chardonnay into a plastic cup. I set my dinner on the coffee table, pulled the Hello Kitty notebook out of my purse, and curled up to read. "We are together now." What did that mean? Who was the brunette in the picture, and could I plausibly arrange a trip to Montauk to find out?
When I opened my eyes again, it was ten o'clock. There was a pair of wheeled suitcases leaning next to the front door, and my husband--tall and thin and intense, with a shadow along his cheeks and his tie pulled askew--was nuzzling my neck. "Do you know there's a strange woman passed out in the guest room?"
"Your lucky day," I said, yawning.
"Don't get up," he whispered, kissing my neck again. I ran my hands over his thick black hair, touched his face lightly, then traced his belt buckle with one fingertip. Janie and the kids were sleeping, or at least quiet, the washing machines and dishwasher were running, which would mask any telltale grunts or sighs, we were both awake, and I wasn't having my period, so yes, there was a chance we could have sex for the first time in...I thought back. And back. And back some more. Yikes. What if I'd forgotten how?
"I felt terrible I couldn't be here for you," he said. Not so terrible that he didn't have an erection pulsing behind the fly of his pinstriped pants. I yawned again, then eased his zipper down. "It must have been awful."
"It was scary," I said, as he slid his hands under my tight sweater. "And they haven't arrested anyone yet, I went to see Philip Cavanaugh, and..."
"Oh. Oh, baby." He'd unhooked my bra and had one hand squeezing each of my breasts. First the left one, then the right one, then both at the same time, like he was comparison shopping. I sucked in my breath.
"She was a ghostwriter," I said as he yanked off my pants.
"Touch me," he panted, taking my right hand and pressing it against the front of his pants, in case I was confused about where he wanted to be touched.
"For Laura Lynn Baird, you know, that scary-looking, blond--" He pressed his lips against mine, whether out of passion or a desire to shut me up, I wasn't sure. I kissed him back as he straightened up and put his hand on my neck. The pressure was light but undeniable. I sighed, bent down, and fell to.
"Oh, God," he gasped. "Oh, God, Kate, that's so good."
I bobbed my head up and down with my hands on his hips. "You know," he gasped, "I heard something about Phil Cavanaugh once."
"Mmph?"
"Some woman. Him and some woman. Oh, God, don't stop."
I lifted my head and took a quick breath. "When?"
"Last summer," he said. His head was lolling back against the couch pillows. "The guy who told me--Denny Simon, from the bank, remember?--he said they were hot and heavy last summer. Oh, God, like that. Just like that."
Last summer, I thought as Ben lifted me back onto the couch. Interesting.
"Anne something. Or Nan something. Or--Kate," Ben said, tugging my sweater over my head, popping off two of the buttons. "I need to be inside you." The buttons pinged on the floor, and I made a mental note to retrieve them before we went up to bed. Sophie and Jack knew enough to put strange objects into their mouths, but Sam wasn't a hundred percent yet, and I'd already made one trip to the emergency room this month when he'd stuffed a dried cranberry up his nose.
Ben slid his hand up my thigh. I closed my eyes.
"Oh. Oh." Not the sitter, then, but Anne or Nan somebody. And maybe the sitter too. I had to admire Phil's energy. Then I wondered if it had been payback. Maybe Kitty had been trysting in New York when she was supposed to be ghostwriting, and while the Kitty was away...
"Oh," I gasped as he eased my legs apart. "Oh, honey, wait. My diaphragm..."
"I'll pull out," he panted.
The last time I'd fallen for that one, we'd had Sam and Jack nine months later. "It'll just take a second." He groaned but sat back on the couch. I wrapped the afghan around my waist and raced up the stairs. The diaphragm was where I'd left it, in the medicine cabinet, and I felt encouraged: at least it wasn't visibly dusty. I found a half-full tube of spermicide, squirted a double layer around the edge, then filled the diaphragm itself with the clear goop. Better safe than sorry, I thought, one foot on the toilet seat. I eased the diaphragm in, picked up the afghan, and scurried back downstairs, where my husband sat. He'd taken off his shirt and tie and his pale body was completely naked except for black socks and a copy of The Economist in his lap. I flung the magazine aside, ran my hands through the sparse black hair on his chest, and settled myself on top of him, thinking that it was sort of like riding a bike: no matter how long it had been, you never forgot how.
"Oh," he sighed. "Oh."
"Don't talk," I said, rocking my hips and pressing my fingers against his lips.
"Why not?" he asked, taking my index finger between his teeth and biting down lightly.
I grabbed his shoulders and closed my eyes. "Because it's interfering with my ability to pretend you're that cute doctor on ER."
"Very funny," he said, rolling me onto my back. I sighed at how good I felt, how complete. It was, I realized, the first time since I'd found Kitty's body that I hadn't been completely occupied with thoughts of the murder. And of course, with that thought, I began to think about Kitty and Philip again. Ben's breathing speeded up. I clutched at his back. "Oh, God!" he said in a strangled whisper. He bit his lip to keep from crying out, and his hands dug into my hips as he shuddered.
"See," I said, wriggling out from underneath him a few seconds later, "good things happen when you come home from work when I'm still awake."
He rested his sweaty cheek against mine. "I know. And I'm sorry. It's been so long."
"I think Chevy Chase's talk show lasted longer than you did." I curled up in a corner of the couch, still flushed and breathing hard.
"You can do better," he said, pulling me against him. I felt him smile against my cheek as he wrapped his long, thin legs around my not so long, not so thin ones.
"Al Sharpton's presidential campaign?"
"Al Sharpton's campaign actually lasted quite a while," he informed me, easing me onto my back and stroking slowly between my legs. "His legitimate hopes of attaining the presidency may have been short-lived, but the campaign went on forever."
"Don't stop," I murmured as my eyes slipped shut. It felt so good, so good...
"Mommy?"
"Mommy's busy," my husband called over the back of the couch. Too late, I thought, wrapping the afghan around me and getting unsteadily to my feet. Nothing kills the mood quite like a four-year-old who can't sleep.
"Mommy, Sam says he needs a drink of water," Sophie said, stepping down the stairs. "But I told him, 'No water after bedtime because then you'll wet the bed.' But then Sam said..." She peered at the diamonds of bare flesh that peeped through the holes of the afghan. "Where are your underpants?"
"Hang on a minute, Soph," I said, tucking the afghan more tightly around my bare legs, then lifting her in my arms. "See you soon," I whispered to Ben. But by the time Sam had been given his water and escorted to and from the bathroom and Sophie had been lullabied back to sleep, my husband was passed out in his boxer shorts, snoring on top of the quilt.
My rotten luck. I brushed my teeth, folded my afghan, and looked longingly at the shower. It was late, and I'd be exhausted in the morning, but I was still too turned on to sleep.
With three kids and no time, I'd gotten masturbation down to a science. A fast science, I thought, five minutes later, as I leaned against the wet tiled walls, panting and shuddering, with the hand-held nozzle thrashing like a possessed snake where I'd dropped it on the shower floor. It was sad, I decided, as I turned off the water, but I'd probably had more fun with the shower than with Ben. In fact, I was pretty sure that since we'd moved to Upchurch, most of my orgasms had been of the DIY variety: an indictment of suburban living if ever there was one. Were there any married couples with children who still had fulfilling sex lives? Or were all of these p
erfect Upchurch mommies secretly like me, feeling like they were just playing a part, like they'd wandered into some stranger's bedroom farce, sleeping with their husbands occasionally, lusting after the hunky Little People's Music instructor obsessively, and still falling asleep thinking of their exes?
Fourteen
"Tell me there's no hope," I'd begged my best friend on a Monday morning as Janie and I sat at our battered metal desks at New York Night. Our work space was overflowing with the day's newspapers, the week's tabloids, and dozens of promotional tchochkes (coffee mugs, T-shirts, a stuffed pig that squealed a movie title when you squeezed its belly).
"Can't," she said crisply, hitting enter and send and shipping off some staff writer's latest opus--six hundred words on celebrities who had sex in public bathrooms. "There's always hope."
"Like what? Michelle could lose all her limbs in an industrial accident? Even if she was just a torso, she'd still be better looking than me. Even if she was just a head."
"Not true," Janie said. "Although she would be considerably more portable. And again, I remind you: A, you're beautiful, and B, physical beauty is both fleeting and not the point here. The point is Michelle's unattainability and, I suspect, Evan's deep-seated fear of commitment, which has manifested itself as an engagement to a woman who's never going to actually walk down the aisle with him."
I stared at her. "You think she's going to dump him?"
Janie opened her mouth, shut it, then shook her head sadly. "I give up," she said.
I sighed, then rested my head against my own keyboard and started banging it gently against the keys. Nobody seemed to notice. The music editor didn't miss a word in his conversation; Sandra the book critic didn't look up from the manuscript she was scowling at. Five minutes later, Polly cruised by and dropped a photograph on my computer keyboard. "You're up," she said.
I studied the photograph. It was slated to run on our back page, which, in the very height of wit, was called the "Back Page" and always featured a celebrity caught picking a wedgie or scratching indelicately in his or her hindquarters. This week's picture was of a cluster of a dozen drunk-looking people, one with his hand obligingly down the back of his pants, plus girls in jeans and stilettos dancing on the table. My job would be to figure out who everyone was and write a witty yet accurate caption. Okay, I thought, squinting at the faces. Rapper, rapper, model, model, celebrity, publicist, celebrity publicist...My heart stuttered in my chest. There was an elbow in the picture, an elbow and a little bit of arm. The side of a hip, a flash of cheek, and a headful of long red hair.
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