by Warren Adler
"It wasn't there," he said. "It was in its usual place under the sink."
"You see?"
She felt strangely satisfied, knowing that she had achieved a level of intimacy with Edward that she had never shared with anyone, not even with Orson. On that subject she had always been reticent, even with Margo.
"But if she knew she was pregnant..." His voice trailed away.
Could she invoke the old cliché about the intuition of women? She decided against it. He might misunderstand. Where was her intuition when it came to Orson?
"Because..." She hesitated, not wanting to appear pedagogic about her gender. The problem was to frame the explanation in a way he would understand: Lily didn't want the essence of you to touch her anymore. Instead she said: "It was her way of being faithful." Waiting, she listened for his reaction.
"Sounds almost mystical," he drawled. "But I think I do catch your drift."
He seemed tentative.
"Call it a sisterly deduction," she said lightly. "It's the only explanation that makes sense." She paused. "And Edward, I believe it's important for you to know that it wasn't your child."
"Well, then, that's one mystery that we can dispense with," he said. "Now we can get on to the others." He seemed to be fighting away irritation.
"It was important to know, Edward."
"Yes, I suppose it was," he agreed. "The lying bitch."
"Don't you see? It wasn't your child that was killed. You can rest easy on that score." She had wanted to dispel his uncertainty. Wasn't that the point of the exercise?
"Thanks, Viv," he said gently. "You're right. I wouldn't have wanted to live with that."
Lifting his burden hadn't done much for her own. It galled her to know that Orson had fathered a child with a strange woman while she had yearned for another one, a companion for Ben.
"We'll meet later, won't we?" she asked. For a moment it had worried her that he might have forgotten or been turned off by this new bit of deduction.
"Of course," he said. "We have work to do."
For a long time she sat by the phone, trying to spark her resolve. She got up and walked through the house. Despite all the material renunciations, Orson's presence continued to make itself felt. She sniffed the air, catching the old scents of him. Listening, she heard the floor creak with the rhythm of his movement. His whisper, like a cold alien wind, tickled her ear, mocking and accusatory. "You bastard," she cried aloud, turning, arms thrashing as she ran through the rooms. In the kitchen, she shattered glasses, threw dishes to the floor, defying his sense of neatness and order. Opening a cabinet, she gripped a stack of plates, a wedding gift from his sister, and slid them over the rim. Panting, she leaned against the wall and stared at the broken shards.
"You fouled my home," she sobbed as she fought down hysteria. In the bathroom she splashed her face with tap water, diluting the burning salt tears. When her vision cleared, she watched her reflection in the full-length wall mirror. In the cruel, white light, her skin looked harsh, reddened by her rage. Is it really you?
She traced the line of cheek and chin, assessing what had once seemed attractive. Her long black lashes fluttered over hazel eyes, greenish now, newly washed. Like her father's eyes, always gentle, calmly observant, yet transparent in anguish.
Opening her robe, she saw her breasts, still high and firm. A "well-made woman" was the way Orson had put it. She stood in profile, her bare skin alabaster in this light, her silhouette curved and womanly, the patch at the bottom of her belly, jet black and curly. Compared to others, she had always perceived herself as reasonably attractive, yet something short of beautiful.
Sexy? For her there was only one reliable barometer, Orson's interest. One could not exactly call it lust. Sensuality between them had never been profound, and on the rare occasions when she was orgasmic, it seemed pallid compared with the descriptions of others she had heard or read. Yet she had never refused him. His demands were never urgent. But then, she had no real standard to judge his desire or enthusiasm. Sex between them had never been an issue, never a priority, never a point of contention. Was it something lacking in her, some secret well of desire that she failed to plumb? What had that other woman possessed?
Almost without her realizing, her fingers were trailing lightly over her nipples, which had hardened. Her other hand caressed her thighs, moved through the warm moist thatch of hair, touching skillfully, finding the outer edge of pleasure. She felt the beginning of a rhythmic pulsation vibrating inside of her, a strange, mysterious sensation. A vague image surfaced in her mind: male flesh, musky, urgent. Edward!
She turned away from the mirror in embarrassment. Quickly, she stepped into the shower, washed her hair, and blew it dry, satisfied that it shined and cascaded with healthy attractiveness. Then she made herself up with more care than she had taken in years.
Dressing, she felt somewhat restored but offended by her earlier outburst and feelings of inadequacy. Fault yourself for ignorance, naivete, and gullibility, but not for some intangible female inadequacy, she rebuked herself. Never mind. They would get to the bottom of it somehow. She and Edward. By then she had totally dismissed her earlier fantasy.
She drove to the bank and withdrew the $9,700 she had saved from household monies over the last few years. She had never considered it a private nest egg, certainly not mad money. Orson had known about it, of course, and she had used it occasionally to buy gifts for him for birthdays and anniversaries, and for little surprises. It would not do at all to have asked for money to buy his own gifts or to use a charge account that, in the end, he would pay for with his own check.
"Cash?" the teller asked with an air of perplexed intimidation. Up to then she had not been certain. In her mind was the idea to transfer the money to a checking account in another bank. This was Orson's bank. She wanted no part of it.
"Yes," she replied. "Nothing larger than a fifty."
The cashier shrugged and counted out the money.
"That's a lot of cash to be carrying around."
She stuffed the bills into her pocketbook, ignoring the remark. Orson might have said it with the same inflection of condescension, and she enjoyed the sense of disobedience.
Before going home she stopped at the supermarket to buy steaks and red wine. She coped with moments of disorientation as she passed the cereal stacks and freezer compartments and resisted loading her cart with products which she had bought routinely for Orson and Ben. She wondered what Edward's favorites might be.
Although the routine of shopping was a familiar one for her, the experience today seemed uncommon; the familiar store seemed foreign. Even her usual clerk at the checkout counter looked at her as if she were a stranger, viewing her meager selection with disbelief.
"That all?"
"Afraid so."
Home again, she found the mess of broken dishes and began to remove the debris. Before she could finish, the phone rang. Edward? It was Margo Teeters.
"I took a chance, Viv. I thought you might be with your folks."
"No," she said calmly. "But they have Ben. There are some loose ends about the estate."
"Are you all right, Viv?" It must have seemed redundant, for she quickly added: "Well, then, let's do lunch. I can cheer you up."
"Not today, Margo," Vivien replied.
"What about cocktails and dinner? How about that?"
"I'm sorry, Margo."
"Just want to give you a lift, dear." Her good humor seemed contrived.
"Not up to it, Margo, really. Some other time."
"Well, let's set it up. I'm sitting here with my calendar. How's Tuesday?"
"I can't make plans."
She had not wanted to excite curiosity, but it was too late.
"What is it, Viv? You can't just brood. What are you doing with your time?"
"Just ... waiting."
"Waiting? I don't understand."
Waiting? Now why did I say that? Vivien wondered.
"I'm fine, Margo. I just
need time away.... "Away from what?
"I know I'm being pushy, Viv. I'm just worried, is all. You've had an awful shock. Awful."
"Maybe next week, then?"
"Maybe?"
Vivien hung up, searching her mind. Then she knew. She was waiting—waiting for Edward.
26
The two black men who had come to haul away the contents of Edward's apartment had looked at him through moist red-veined eyes, first with skepticism, then with greed.
"Everything but that," he told them, pointing to two large suitcases and a hanging bag in the corner. As far as he could ascertain, nothing he had packed could be classified as shared. Inside were a few favorite books: The Collected Stories of Ernest Hemingway and some of Simenon's Maigrets. Lily had detested Hemingway and had thought Maigret boring. He had mounted a spirited defense, he remembered.
As they carried the items out of the apartment, the younger of the men, perhaps prompted by a fit of conscience, approached him. The other man was struggling down the hallway with one of the heavy upholstered chairs on his back.
"That stuff's not junk," he said. "You could sell it."
"It's junk to me."
"He's gonna sell it anyway. And you're payin' for haulin' on top of it."
"Once it's out of here, it doesn't exist for me," he said. The perplexed man scratched his head. Sometimes pragmatism had nothing to do with economics. As the apartment emptied, Edward began to feel better, as if pus had been drawn from a boil.
"Look at all them shoes," one of the men whistled, seeing Lily's neatly stacked cache of shoes in plastic boxes.
"She had more than two feet," Edward quipped.
The man laughed.
"I didn't have my own shoes till I was ten."
"Life's unfair," Edward said and hated himself for it.
When they had cleared away everything but the suitcases and he had paid the haulers, Edward made one last call—to have the telephone disconnected. Then he carted away his suitcases and hanging bag and loaded them into the trunk of his car. As he drove away, a fleeting memory intruded.
"I love it," Lily had cried. It was more expensive than he had wished, but it was Georgetown. It pleased him to see Lily so happy. Newlyweds then, she was the fulcrum on which all life balanced. "Between us, we can make it, Edward." As a place to live, it hadn't mattered that much to him, except that she loved it and wanted it.
Now he felt an odd pleasure in chucking it all away, especially all the decorating gewgaws on which she had lavished so much time and thought. "Don't you think the couch is beautiful?" He had nodded, only because it was her choice. Every stick, every hue and shade that surrounded them was her choice. That was the way he wanted it. He did it freely, eagerly, absorbing her tastes as his own. "Don't you just love the carpeting?" she had asked. "Great," he had answered. The criterion was her approval, her wishes. What he had done was surrender his will to her. Now the idea revolted him. As Vivien had pointed out, to love meant giving oneself away. He shuddered at the extent of his surrender. For what? he asked himself. To be betrayed.
What Vivien had deduced about Lily's pregnancy offered mixed comforts. He and Lily had discussed children as a practical matter. She had never seemed to view motherhood with the same reverence that he felt, perhaps because she had experienced "family," taken it for granted, whereas he had been an only child and was orphaned now.
It would have disgusted him to know that she had been carrying his child by default, the result of some stupid technical "mistake." A child, in order to be loved, must be wanted. Also, the idea of his own dead baby drowned at the bottom of the freezing river was horrifying. Which left, as before, only the bitter pill of betrayal to feed his anger. She had deliberately conceived a baby with Orson, consciously or unconsciously. It was an inescapable conclusion. Perhaps she considered the genetic mix more suitable—with Orson offering superior qualities. This odd twist of speculation gnawed at him, gathering credibility as it fleshed out in his mind. Would she have carried it to birth, giving it his, Edward's, name? A lifetime of his love and pride lavished on a lie? To crown the cruel irony, she might have even named it Orson, an idea which opened new floodgates of rage. How would he have known? And, as always, he was sure to yield to her decision, probably intrigued by the odd name.
When the anger became too acute to bear, his thoughts shifted to Vivien and to how her deduction might affect her own struggle to confront the truth of Orson's betrayal. Would the insult also carry with it the connotation of her inadequacy? She had admitted a desire to have another child, and yet Orson had refused, preferring to have it with another woman instead. She might take some comfort in the possibility of accident. Such things were said to happen, although, knowing Lily, he doubted that.
She might be thinking, too, of the lifetime of deception that Orson might have held in store for her; he might have harbored this dark secret, revealing it only on his death bed, like in soap operas or Gothic novels, and leaving her to suffer in a lonely misery that mocked a lifetime of love and devotion. Orson, as revealed, was certainly capable of acting out such an evil scenario.
Before getting to the office, he stopped to buy some large colored maps of the area. He had called earlier to tell them he would be late. It was just after noon when he arrived.
"He's on the warpath," Jan Peters told him. "He made us tear up the release. Harvey had to write another."
Despite his foreboding, he was still surprised not to find the rewrite on his desk and rang for Harvey Mills to come into his office.
"The Congressman is on the House floor." He averted his eyes and cleared his throat. "He ordered me to send it down for him to approve." Lifting his gaze, as if he had suddenly gained courage, Harvey watched him through his glasses. Another warning, Edward thought, surprised at his own indifference. Dismissing him with a shrug, he shuffled through papers on his desk. The words shimmered incoherently. Swiveling in his chair, he looked out of the window. Mounds of blackened snow had crusted at the edges of the asphalt, offering a faint reminder of that fatal day. He felt disoriented, misplaced. The phone rang. He answered it, only after it became unbearably persistent. It was Anna, Lily's sister. He caught a tiny edge of contrition in her voice. Still, he regretted picking up the phone.
"Are you all right, Eddie?"
"Yes," he answered curtly.
"I want to apologize for Vinnie. He was upset. You know how he felt about Lily."
"It doesn't matter," he muttered, hoping it would hurry her.
"I had this idea, Eddie"—he could hear her draw in a long breath—"seeing that Lily and I were close to the same size." She cleared her throat. "I pooch a little in the belly." The attempt at ingratiation failed miserably. He withheld the expected polite chuckle. "Anyway, I'd like to have Lily's clothes." She waited. Again he said nothing. "Well, it would be a memory thing, too. She had such beautiful taste, and her wardrobe was fabulous, since she was in fashion and all. If you're not too mad at us ... I was never your enemy, Eddie."
"No, you weren't." He felt compelled to say it.
"So you'll let me have them?"
Revenge, he thought maliciously. It came in mysterious ways. He wondered suddenly if Lily had confided in her. Sisters in league. They were always jawing together, he remembered.
"I'm sorry, Anna," he said.
"Sorry?" In the pause he heard her breathing grow more labored. "Listen, Eddie, this is Anna. Not Vinnie. She would have wanted me to have them. You know she would. It's the least you can do, seeing that you're going to get all that insurance." So they had already calculated that.
"I gave them away," he said calmly.
"So fast? You did that? You didn't even think that maybe I wanted them?" He would not have given them to her in any event.
"To what charity? Maybe I can explain..."
"To none. To the trash."
He wasn't sure whether her response was a cough or a gasp. He pictured the clothes on poor strangers, resisting a laugh from his gut.
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"The shoes, too?"
"The shoes, too."
"You're a son of a bitch," Anna said. "Vinnie was right."
He was poised to tell it. Again, he held back, knowing that the telling would diminish himself further in his own eyes.
"You've got no heart, Eddie."
"Is that what she told you?"
Had she also confided the other?
"I'll never know why she loved you," Anna said. She slammed down the phone.
"Did she?" he asked into the buzz.
The Congressman did not return to the office until late in the afternoon. Edward, brooding and unproductive, had not noticed time passing. He sensed in himself a growing isolation from the present. Yet he was fully alert to the past, mesmerized by the images that floated by in his mind, like film running through a Moviola: Lily and he running along a beach, the waves lapping and foaming around bare ankles. Acapulco honeymooning. Lying in a hammock on the Pie De La Questa, watching the awesome Pacific Ocean, getting high on cocolocos. (Had he babbled something then about forever yours, swearing it in his heart? Had she sworn it, too? Or was he imagining?) Lily and he strolling aimlessly in Georgetown. Brunch at Clyde's with Bloody Marys, then a walk along the old footpath beside the muck of the dead canal, holding hands. Lily beside him at night, her breathing steady and soft, enveloped in his arms, protected, secure. They had grown used to that style of sleeping, she on her side, her body angled, her buttocks against his belly, his arm stretched out in the space between her shoulder and neck, his hand cupped around a bare breast. Then, suddenly, it had ceased. Not abruptly. Subtly. Then they hardly touched at all. Lily fussed over his clothes and diet as if he were some big male doll. Once she had nursed him through pneumonia, sponging him down, administering medication, worrying over his body temperature.
Sometimes she had asked, lifting her head from a book or fashion magazine she had been studying, propped on pillows, big glasses slid halfway down her nose: Do you love me? And he had replied: Of course. Are you sure? Sure, I'm sure. How do you know? I know. Was it the intimacy of siblings or lovers? It crossed his mind that maybe she had one of those split personalities, two different people living in one. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the old memories. In their place he saw Vivien, his alter ego now. And more. But he let that thought pass. Never, he told himself. Never, never.