The Dismantling

by Brian Deleeuw

“Not to me. But I’m biased.”

  He went into the bedroom and pulled on a sweater and his winter jacket. He’d decided he couldn’t wait any longer: he needed to speak to Cheryl Pellegrini. Calling seemed insufficient, a cop-out. He wanted to look her in the face and apologize for lying to her; he wanted to tell her what he’d really seen when he’d faced Lenny across her dinner table. He felt he owed her that much.

  Simon didn’t tell Maria where he was going. He knew she would think visiting Cheryl was a terrible idea, far too rash, and he didn’t want to risk being talked out of it. Instead, he said he was going to the office to pick up some files DaSilva had left for him.

  She just nodded and turned back to the laptop. “You know where to find me.”

  • • •

  He ate breakfast in a diner near Penn Station, watching commuters pour out of the subway entrance on the corner. He thought about Maria’s story and tried to imagine the rage and confusion she must have felt after what Thomas had done to her. He felt sick about what had happened, but he didn’t know how to express himself to her in a way that she wouldn’t find cheap or irrelevant. The rape had set her on a course that led her here, to Health Solutions, but he still couldn’t understand exactly how it had happened; there was a five-year link missing between then and now. He thought of the collection of photographs on her laptop. How did they fit into this? He knew better than to press her though; the best he could do was listen if she chose to tell him anything more.

  He finished his coffee, walked to Madison Square Garden, and headed underground. He boarded an LIRR train, and about twenty-five minutes out of the station, as the train pulled away from Jamaica, he realized he was an idiot: Would Cheryl really be sleeping in the bedroom in which her husband had committed suicide only a few days before? She’d have to be staying somewhere else, with the friend Crewes had mentioned, or maybe with her mother, on the North Fork. He tried to remember whether Crewes had said anything about where this friend’s house was, but all he could recall was that it was supposedly nearby, a few blocks away from the Pellegrinis’. He could call Howard and ask, but he knew Crewes wouldn’t tell him; he’d think Simon’s visit was a terrible idea as well.

  Simon had the Pellegrinis’ home number, and he tried it now. It rang five times, then came a click and Cheryl’s voice saying: “Hi. You’ve reached the Pellegrini household. If you’d like to leave a message for Cheryl, Lenny . . . ,” and here a muffled mumbling, then a boy’s voice announcing “Greg!” followed by a little girl saying, “Daniela,” drawing it out into four distinct syllables—Dan-i-ell-a—and then Cheryl once more, saying, “please leave us your name and number after the beep.”

  Simon hung up. He pictured Cheryl on the phone, Gregory and Daniela clustered around her, the children pulling at their mother’s elbow, anxious for their turn at the receiver. He imagined Cheryl’s determination—cobbling together just enough fragile, self-deluding optimism—to record something suitably cheerful for this new beginning to their life as a family, and it broke his heart.

  He got off the train and into a taxi waiting at the stand. He gave the driver an address a few numbers removed from the Pellegrinis. The cab crossed over Sunrise Highway, then continued past the high school football field, the grass chewed up, midfield a patch of bare dirt. This was probably where Lenny had played his high school ball, probably where somebody first told him he might make a living out of displacing other large men from their assigned spot of turf. A few minutes later, the cab pulled up outside a white Cape Cod.

  “Here?” the driver said.

  “Here is good.”

  Simon got out and stood on the sidewalk, trying to get his bearings. He walked first one way, saw the numbers moving in the wrong direction, then turned around. He again passed the Cape Cod, then a dilapidated house with a sagging porch and rusted wind chime, then a green-painted clapboard home with a For Sale sign driven into its front yard. The plots were close together, only a scraggly line of bushes or a few bare-limbed trees separating one from the next. He quickly found the Pellegrinis’ place, with its peeling yellowish paint, its tire-track-rutted lawn. He stood looking up at it, hands in his coat pockets. The block, not surprisingly for eleven thirty on a Monday morning, was deserted. Nobody on the sidewalks; no cars passing on the street. The house’s windows were dark, and its driveway empty. He looked around. Nobody seemed to be watching, so he walked across the spongy lawn to the porch, climbed the stairs, and paused in front of the door. He listened, heard nothing but the sound of distant traffic. He opened the screen door and tried the knob. It was locked, of course. He stepped back onto the sidewalk and looked up at the second-floor room that Lenny had retreated to during Simon’s last visit, the room he had to assume was the master bedroom. The shades were drawn, just as they were behind all the windows of the ground floor.

  What was he supposed to do now? It was unlikely that Cheryl would have decamped all the way to the North Fork, over an hour drive away. There were surely arrangements to be made for the funeral, or wake, or whatever they were going to have, and it would be disruptive for the children. There was a good chance that wherever she’d first thought to go was where she’d stayed, and so he set off on foot to find this friend’s house that Crewes had described. He hoped to be able to recognize it by the presence of her car outside, the maroon Honda. He lit a cigarette and came to a commercial street dotted with a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Subway, a few local businesses. He turned left, randomly, onto this street and then made a few more equally arbitrary turns. The houses ran out onto a weedy field, and he stopped and realized he was completely lost. He turned back into the residential neighborhood, and then, halfway down the block, he saw it, the maroon car. It was parked on the sloped driveway of a tidy two-story clapboard house painted pale blue with white trim, blocking in a Ford station wagon. The Honda was the same model, he was sure of that, and as he drew closer he saw the bumper stickers he remembered: a yellow Support Our Troops ribbon and one in which the word “coexist” was spelled out with an Islamic crescent, a peace sign, a Star of David, a yin-yang symbol, and a Christian cross. It was her car, no question.

  He watched the house and saw a light in one of the ground-floor rooms, another upstairs; the shadow of movement crossed a downstairs window. The presence of the Ford suggested that somebody else was home, but he’d have to live with that. The longer he stood on the sidewalk, watching the house, the more he felt his resolve slipping away, so he tossed his cigarette aside, walked up the cement path to the porch, and rang the doorbell. A few moments later, the door was opened the slightest bit, a single eye and sliver of cheek filling the crack.

  “Can I help you?” A woman’s voice, Long Island accent, not particularly friendly.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “Is Cheryl Pellegrini staying here?” He winced internally as the words left his mouth. Why did he use her last name? It made him sound like some kind of official or, worse, reporter.

  “No.” She started to close the door.

  “Wait. Please.” He put his hand inside the frame. “I need to speak with her. Please.”

  The door opened slightly wider. The woman eyed his hand; he removed it. She was about Cheryl’s age, in her late thirties or early forties, short and trim, a flat, wide nose dominating her oval face. “I said she wasn’t here.”

  “But that’s her car outside,” Simon said.

  The woman glanced over Simon’s shoulder, then brought her eyes back to his face, her expression curdling. “You’re going to have to leave. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you please just tell her I’m here? If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll leave. Okay?”

  He saw a flicker of motion in the hallway, the woman turning her head slightly. Then the little girl, Daniela, rounded a corner and, as though drawn by a magnet, latched onto the woman’s hip. “Dani,” she said, “go back inside, okay?”

  The girl looked at Simon standin
g on the doorstep. “Hey,” she said shyly, half-hiding behind the woman’s leg. “You were at my house.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I met you and Gregory.”

  The woman gave Simon a sharp look, then turned to Daniela. “Sweetie, go back upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute.” The little girl shrugged, then wandered away, humming some half-familiar melody under her breath. The woman turned back to Simon. “What’s your name?”

  “Simon Worth.”

  “All right. I’ll tell her. But I swear to God if you upset her, I will kick you off my property and call the police if you ever come back.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Just wait here,” she said, and closed the door in his face.

  He stepped back and tried to compose himself, to look sober and empathetic and penitent. He could smell cigarettes on his clothes, taste their ashy staleness in his mouth. Abruptly, before he was ready, Cheryl opened the door. Her face was thinner than he remembered, skin stretched tight over cheekbones like canvas over a frame.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re somebody I never thought I would see again.”

  “Cheryl.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Can we talk?”

  “We are talking.”

  “Inside, maybe?”

  “How about out here.” She stepped out and closed the door behind her, sitting down at the top of the porch stairs. He sat next to her, unsure of how exactly to begin. The temperature was tumbling toward freezing; no sun, a chilly wind. Cheryl wore only a long-sleeved thermal shirt and jeans, but she didn’t seem bothered by the cold. She sat perfectly still, looking out at the street, hands resting on her thighs. “Well?” she said.

  “I wanted to say I’m very sorry about Lenny. Howard called to tell me.”

  She nodded, still looking straight ahead. “Did he tell you where I was?”

  He hesitated. “Not really.”

  She glanced at him.

  “All he said was that you were staying at a friend’s. I found you myself. He doesn’t know I’m here.” She nodded again, and he tried once more. “I wanted to tell you how sad I was to hear what happened. I know how difficult—”

  “I’m not going to say anything, all right?” Her voice was bitter. “Your outfit or company or whatever is not something I’m going to talk about. What would be the point? It wasn’t your fault. Not the hospital’s either. You didn’t need to come out here for that.”

  “That’s not why I came.”

  “No? What, then? You want an invitation to the funeral? It’s Sunday. Bring a flask. It’s what Lenny would’ve wanted.”

  “Cheryl, I saw it too.”

  “Saw what?”

  “What you asked me, at the train station. It wasn’t just you. I saw it. He wasn’t . . . He was just showing us what he knew we wanted to see.” He spoke quickly now, trying to get it all out. “But it wasn’t what he was really feeling. You were right, and I saw it, and I said I didn’t because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to get involved. So I lied.”

  “You know what?” She leaned forward, hunching into herself. “I don’t need you to tell me I was right. I knew that when Dani came running down the stairs, asking why Daddy was sleeping in a puddle of throw up.”

  Simon swallowed. This was not unfolding as he’d imagined it. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. Sorry for making you think—”

  “So this is for you, then?”

  “What?”

  She turned to face him, her eyes chips of blue ice. “How is this supposed to make me feel better about anything? You didn’t owe me the truth back then, you weren’t getting paid to be honest. You were free to turn away just like you did. But you heard Lenny killed himself and now you feel guilty. You think maybe if you’d said something, things might have been different. I might have—what?—demanded that Lenny see a psychiatrist again. Might have been more vigilant. I might not have left him in the house alone for a weekend. Is that it?”

  “No, I—”

  “You want to apologize, so you can say at least you’re being honest now. Well, to be honest with you, I don’t think things would’ve been any different if you’d said something. I doubt it would’ve been worth anything. Maybe, but probably not. What I am sure of is that you coming here and telling me this shit now is worth less than nothing.” She stood up. “You should leave.”

  “Cheryl, I’m sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”

  “Everybody’s sorry. Howard drove up here from Jersey when Lenny’s body wasn’t even cold to tell me how fucking sorry he was. Sorry that he didn’t see it either—Lenny faking his happiness. I could tell Howard was more pissed off than sorry though. Because he’d tricked himself, he really believed in it. I wanted to believe in it too. I just never quite did. Now go.”

  Simon stood up. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. Especially since I already knew that you’d lied to me. I wasn’t angry then—mostly I was just disappointed—because I understood why you did it. But I also understand why you’re doing this now, and I am angry. Good-bye, Simon. Please don’t come here again.”

  She turned her back on him then and went inside the house.

  • • •

  SIMON pressed his forehead to the train window. Bare trees blurred into a brown strip above which the sky hung heavily, thick, bulbous gray clouds laced with black veins. It was only the first week of November, but the prediction was for snow, the earliest in the season Simon could ever remember. He’d felt the temperature drop as he waited on the platform, the bottom falling out of the air. It had been stupid to come, stupid to think Cheryl would want to hear his apology. He’d realized she was right, of course: he’d come to talk to her, not for her sake, but for his own. Even though his apology had been genuine, it was also pointless, a shortcut to an absolution she’d justifiably refused to grant. If he took her at her word, he could at least steal some consolation from the fact that speaking the truth in the first place would have changed nothing. He couldn’t imagine how horrible it must have been to live in the same house, to sleep in the same bed, with a husband you knew was pretending all the time, a man who wore a happy mask and voiced happy words when you knew he meant none of it, no matter how much you wanted him to. To suspect that something terrible might be coming, and not be able to do anything about it.

  His train pulled into Penn Station at quarter to three, and he headed straight for the Health Solutions office. He wanted to page DaSilva, to find out what was happening at Cabrera; if it was bad news, he didn’t want to have to talk about it in front of Maria. As he let himself into the lobby and rode the elevator up, he thought of her waiting alone in the Roosevelt Island apartment. How much longer was she going to tolerate hanging around? Wasn’t it likely that as soon as she healed, she’d simply cut her losses and disappear, leave New York, take the cash and wash her hands of DaSilva and Health Solutions and the whole gnarled mess, him included? Yet if things really went sour—if Lenny’s transplant came under more intense scrutiny, if the story didn’t simply disappear as they all hoped it would—would DaSilva just let her leave like that? Wouldn’t he come after her, wherever she went, to find her before somebody else did? Still, even if this was true, what could Simon do about it?

  He unlocked the office door and stepped inside, and then he stopped, for a moment not quite understanding what he saw. The office had been stripped. The computer was gone; the shelves were empty, all the files missing. He squatted down behind the desk: the safe was gone as well. The room had been emptied of everything except its furniture and the ashtray overflowing, on the windowsill, with crushed butts. Even the phone had been removed.

  Simon paged Peter to his cell phone and sat behind the desk, smoking, fighting off a wave of panic, his mind animating and then quickly discarding scenario after scenario. He waited and
then paged DaSilva again, adding “9-1-1” to the end of his number. Still nothing. He felt another sick lurch of anxiety roll and pitch his body. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He considered calling DaSilva’s cell phone directly, but then he quickly decided against it. Maybe it was better if he didn’t know Simon had visited the office. DaSilva had stripped the place without telling him; perhaps this had simply been an oversight, but what if it was intentional? Why would DaSilva freeze him out now? He stubbed out his last butt and locked the office behind him. He needed to get back to Maria; she deserved to know what he’d found, and anyway, he’d left her alone long enough.

  Down on the street, he hurried past the subway entrance—he didn’t want to miss a call while underground—and continued on to the tram station. Finally snow started to come down, the flakes weightless and fine as powdered sugar. He climbed the concrete stairs and stood waiting on the dock, watching the revolutions of the giant blue-painted gear that winched the tram. Either somebody had already started to piece the whole chain together—from Lenny to Crewes to Maria to Health Solutions—or DaSilva had cleared the office out of an abundance of caution, a kind of paranoiac spasm. But why hadn’t he contacted Simon? The tram car slipped into its berth and disgorged its few passengers. Simon secured a spot against one of the Plexiglas windows facing north before the car pulled out of the station, gliding along its cable, over the ledge and into the air. It was barely four o’clock and the sun was already starting to set, its eerie, volcanic glow lighting scalloped black clouds from below. Snowflakes were pushed and pulled by the wind, a strong gust drawing a curtain of white across the car before just as swiftly tugging it away.

  • • •

  On the Roosevelt Island side, Simon exited the tram with about a dozen other passengers. The group dispersed, most heading north with Simon, past the diminutive Episcopalian church and on toward the apartment complexes that crowded the upper half of the island. The snow fell steadily now, January muscling into the beginning of November. Businesses were closing early for the night, the street emptying out according to the island’s own suburban-minded clock. Once Simon passed the last of the commercial blocks, the foot traffic thinned even further. He continued alone past the tennis courts and baseball diamond, reaching the point where Main Street bent west toward the river, and he saw parked there, at the mouth of the walking path that led to his apartment building, a mud-spattered gray RAV4, its engine running and lights off. The car was familiar to Simon, but he hadn’t yet placed it by the time the driver’s door opened and a woman bundled in a heavy winter parka stepped out to meet him, raising her hand, her glossy black hair blowing across her face.