Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “How did he feel about the development across the street?” Paul asked them both.

  Sam just sucked on his margarita straw, so Debbie said, “He hated it as much as any of us, I guess.”

  “Did he ever talk about the café fire?”

  “Not that I recall,” Debbie said.

  “He might have had a grudge going there, don’t you think, Sam?” Paul said.

  “I got nothing to say,” Sam told him.

  “You have a lot to say, I think,” Nina said. “About all this. What’s scaring you so much?”

  “Fuck you,” Sam said in response. His face had turned white and he was shaking. Paul set down his glass hard, scraping the glass table.

  “Sam!” Debbie said. She put her hand on his arm.

  “Come to my house, my neighborhood, accuse us all of whatever evilness. We’re just trying to get along down here in the woods. Ruthie was as crazy as a rabid coon. She didn’t see squat get out of a car on this street.”

  “Mr. Puglia, have you made a withdrawal in the last two months out of any account in the amount of sixty-two hundred fifty dollars?” Paul said. His voice had hardened.

  Sam said, “No, I fucking haven’t, and neither has my wife. My wife and I love each other. We pay our taxes and our kids’ tuition. We support our president and we love our God. And we’re not criminals. Now, get offa my property.”

  Paul stood up, chest sticking out, hands balled into fists. Nina got up too, hastily, to step in front of him. “Thanks for the margaritas,” she said to Debbie.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We’ll be going.”

  Paul and Sam stood eyeball-to-eyeball.

  “Right, Paul? We have to go now.”

  Paul moved back a step. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Releasing his eyes from their deadlock, Sam turned his back on them and sucked on his drink. Nina led Paul to the gate.

  “Good-bye,” she said to Debbie.

  “Have a nice day,” Debbie said.

  Nina and Paul walked across the street to the riprap and looked down at the trickle of river, aware of eyes on them. “Debbie’s on the phone,” Paul said. “Sam’s at the back fence, jabbering at Darryl.”

  “You behaved well,” Nina said.

  “His turf,” Paul said. “I wasn’t going to start anything.”

  “Let’s see what shard of human heart comes flying out of the explosion.”

  “Well said. I need food to balance the tequila.”

  “There’s an Italian place in the Village not three blocks from here.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They returned to the Mustang and left Siesta Court. At dinner Paul said, “Are we any closer to finding out who the children are? The children Nate talked about.”

  “It has to be one or more of the Siesta Court kids.”

  “We don’t know that. Could be some other scam, some other kids.”

  “That’s my feeling.”

  “You and your feelings.”

  Nina thought of Britta’s little towheaded boys, Darryl’s handsome boy Mikey. Callie and April, the apples of Jolene’s eye.

  “But if it’s the neighbor kids, why?” she said. “Why?”

  23

  M EGAN CAME IN LATE FROM HER martial-arts lesson about seven-thirty. Ted had already done his stretches and was lounging in the hot tub outside. Starving, she hunted around for whatever he had made for dinner, but all she could find was a dry chicken breast.

  He hadn’t left her any dinner. He was sulking.

  In six years, they had built a home, biked from L.A. to San Francisco, run a marathon together, traveled to Acapulco and Hawaii, invested their money and gotten rich, gone through his father’s death and her brother’s divorce, and generally supported each other to the megamax. Ted was more than a husband, he was her boon companion, that was how she liked to think of him. They were a modern family of two, tight, permanent.

  And now this. This choking incident. And Ted’s lack of interest in sex.

  They were extremely competent people with resources. These were just maintenance problems, like the sim card in the cell phone dying, or the sink stopping up.

  Munching on the chicken, she went downstairs and onto their private deck. In the long last rays of the sun, Ted floated with his eyes closed, his arms hooked onto the tub wall out of the water to keep himself cooler. Next to him on the deck, the laptop showed the Yahoo finance screen.

  “Hey,” she said. “I see George is over there grubbing in his garden. I saw Jolene going up the driveway at Debbie’s. She’s usually in for the night by now. Has something else happened?”

  “There’s a phone message for you from Debbie. She said she just called to chat.”

  “Oh. That’s Siesta Court code for hot neighborhood gossip. I’ll listen later.”

  “Maybe you better get to it,” he said. “You never know.”

  “Okay. I wonder if it’s about the prowler.”

  “Did you see the faxes?” Ted said.

  “Yeah.”

  “B of A is doing lousy, but it’s still paying out four percent dividends. Brenda thinks we should put fifty thousand in. Buy while it’s down.”

  “I already took care of it. Brenda called me at two.”

  “The contractor broke a water main up the hill. It’s fixed now.”

  “That’s life,” Megan said.

  Ted opened his eyes. “Strip down and hop in.”

  “I’m going to ride the reclining bike for twenty minutes first.”

  “I won’t last that long in here.”

  “Meet you at the massage table, then.” Megan went back inside into the bedroom and locked the door. She had changed her mind. She didn’t feel like riding the bike after all. She felt like reading the paper while lying on the bed.

  Ted knocked twenty minutes later. She let him in. “What’s wrong with you?” he said, naked and holding his damp towel. “Why’d you lock the door? There’s some kind of crap going on with you.”

  “I felt like reading the paper.”

  “What about my massage?”

  “I thought about it. I don’t see why I should give you massages when you start choking me in the middle of them.”

  “Oh. So that’s what this is all about.”

  “Yes. That’s what this is about.”

  Ted sat down on the edge of the bed. He was so buff that Megan could see each individual ab muscle. He had a dick fit for a porn site. Too bad he never exercised that with her anymore.

  “I’m sorry about what I did. But do you remember what you said, Megan? You called me a pervert, accused me of a few major crimes, and topped it off by saying I can’t get it on anymore.”

  “Which part didn’t you like?” She threw The Wall Street Journal on the floor.

  “Since when did you think you could get away with talking to me like you did?”

  “I never said you’re a pervert,” Megan said. “I don’t believe in perversion. People have a right to express their sexuality however they please as long as it doesn’t harm another person. But they have to be open about it with their partners. Trust their partners to understand and accept. Something in our relationship is turning you off, babe. I’m developing some frustrations as a result of your inattention.”

  Ted’s mouth twisted, and he said, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. About everything. As usual.”

  “Then just tell me how I turn you off, and we’ll fix it.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Is it this other business? Danny dying? The fires?”

  “Forget all that. You’ve got a sensational body and you’re a great companion. I love you. I just don’t-”

  “Was it the same with Amy?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s me. Or-”

  Ted said, “I am not gay, Megan.”

  “You could get a physical workup. Maybe you have an infection or something.”

  “I had a physical three months ago, rem
ember? I’m as healthy as a twenty-year-old Argentine soccer player.”

  “Then maybe a shrink could help. Why don’t you go to a shrink? You can’t choke me, babe, I don’t play battered woman.” Megan raised her long leg out straight and started rotating it at the ankle joint, admiring it. “You know I’m a brown belt. You’re lucky I didn’t rip your head off.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I was shocked at myself. You could have hauled off and slugged me and I would have taken it.” He paused. “Maybe I was even trying to provoke you into doing that.” He looked surprised at what he had said.

  “Do you feel guilty about something?” Megan had studied psych in college and felt comfortable with the role of amateur shrink. She was determined to diagnose Ted and get on with the cure. Whatever it was, they could cope. They did love each other.

  “You think I’m gay?” Ted asked, his face anxious.

  “I don’t know. Are you attracted to men or not?”

  “No!”

  “Well, are you attracted to women?” Megan said logically.

  “Of course I am!”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Ted lay down on the bed in a fetal position, his back to Megan. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’ve been stressed out lately. Maybe that’s it.”

  “Let me help.”

  “Megan, could you just leave me alone right now?”

  “You must know what you want, deep down. I am totally accepting, babe. I love you. Every hard inch of you.” She felt an uprush of desire. She ran her hands along his back. “Make love to me,” she murmured. She lay back and waited, stretching luxuriously, letting the electricity move up and down her body.

  Ted didn’t move. He had nodded off, or he was pretending.

  After a few minutes Megan got up and got going on the reclining bike, mega pissed off and sexually frustrated. She had to pedal forty-five minutes at top speed before she could even think about sleep.

  When Jolene got back to the house from Debbie’s, she ran to the back door and peeked out. Yes, George still knelt in the lettuce beds, rooting out weeds, even though the light had dimmed and the moon poked over the trees. As she watched, he sat up on his haunches and rubbed his sore back.

  She locked the back door quietly. He’d have to pound and yell and she’d say it was an accident when she finally came and let him in. That way she’d have plenty of warning.

  From the girls’ room she could hear the TV and chatter. The dishwasher was still running and the clean clothes lay piled on the couch in the den.

  Later for them. She had half an hour, maybe.

  She went to George’s old metal desk in the corner. He guarded this desk like a Doberman. On top he had his typewriter and stationery, his ivory-handled letter opener, and their wedding picture. A couple of envelopes were tucked into the blotter. These she took out and examined.

  Water bill and cable bill. No.

  In all these years, Jolene had never gone snooping in George’s desk. George made the money and took care of the money as head of the household, and though she had been tempted many a time to see if he didn’t have something stashed away for them, she felt that he’d tell her when he thought it right.

  The truth was, George was a cheapskate. Scrimp didn’t begin to describe it, the coupons, the penny-pinching, the flea markets and the secondhand shops. He loved to go out at 5:00 A.M. on Saturdays and come back at 10:00 with the back seat full of broken lamps and tools and dollies for the girls. Then he’d spend the rest of the weekend gluing and hammering out back. And play his guitar all night.

  He did love his food too, thank goodness, because Jolene loved her cooking. She liked sewing the girls’ clothes, she enjoyed fixing her friends’ hair and taking the girls to Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey on Sundays, but most of all she loved cooking. Not the drudge stuff, the daily dinners, but real cooking, foreign recipes and New Age organic dishes included. She could always bring over her latest dish to the block parties if calling it by a familiar name didn’t fool George and the girls into trying it. Jolene was a natural-born chef, daring and talented, and she knew it.

  One time she really wanted to take an Asian cooking class at the Sunset Center in Carmel. Two hundred fifty dollars it cost. This was when Cathy still lived at home and before the girls were born, and they were just as short of money then. George couldn’t stand that kind of cooking. Bamboo shoots in his soup, not gonna happen, he would say.

  She showed George the ad and asked him for the money. The idea put him in physical pain, she could see that. She didn’t say another word, just washed the dishes and went to bed and got up the next morning and cooked breakfast.

  After breakfast, he handed her the check drawn on Wells Fargo Bank. She’d always remember the wagon-and-the-oxen picture on that check, like a wagonful of treasure being brought to her. “Waste of money,” he said, smiling, as she hugged him.

  She learned a lot in that class, but most of all, she never doubted again that George loved her and would always love her, and this sure knowledge had given them a good life together.

  So now she didn’t feel too happy about what she was about to do. The two file drawers on the right-hand side of the desk had always been kept locked, and in there George kept the checkbook and bank statements.

  She could just ask, but asking wasn’t seeing. George wasn’t feeling good, his mind wasn’t as clear as it used to be, and she was going to have to find out for herself if he’d done anything foolish. And if he had, because he was so mad about not being able to build out back, she wanted to be able to take care of it quietly and soon.

  She tried the letter opener, but that didn’t work. She tried a bobby pin and tweezers and a safety pin. No luck.

  She went into the bathroom and unzipped George’s shaving kit, his secret hideout place, and wrapped in a baggie she found two silver keys. In a jiffy, she had those desk drawers wide open.

  He kept folders for each utility and for the mortgage company, the doctors, taxes, the car insurance, and so on. A big thick folder had the title “Wells Fargo.”

  Jolene tiptoed back to the window and peeked out the curtains. George had finished with the weeding and was bagging up his pile. In a hurry now, she went back to the folder and opened it up.

  They had two accounts, both in her name too. Why, she’d never known her name was on the accounts along with George’s. One was a savings and one was a checking.

  George would never do anything fancy with extra money, like put it in the stock market or something, so she knew any money they had would be in the savings account. She pulled out the latest statement and took a look.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she muttered. They had forty-two thousand dollars!

  She looked back a few months. No withdrawal of around six thousand. The most was twelve hundred fifty drawn a couple of months before. Thank goodness! She looked back further and further in time, at the same money sitting in the same dusty account gathering its paltry interest. George’s nest egg had probably been sitting there for twenty years while they got along on the nursery money and lately the Social Security.

  Her eyes went back to the most recent statement. With forty-two thousand dollars they could be doing so much to make their lives easier, for Cathy, for the girls… George could get a medical consultation at Stanford. They had a secret fortune!

  She heard the back door rattle. Then she heard George saying “Now, what’s this?” to himself, and the door rattling again. Meantime she was pulling out a blank withdrawal slip from the savings book, closing the file up, closing the file drawer, and locking it up just like before.

  Rattle rattle. “Goddammit!” George roared. “Jo-lene!”

  “I’m comin’!” she called. She whisked across the kitchen and opened up, the withdrawal slip crammed into her pants pocket.

  “Somebody locked the goddamn door!”

  “Those little rascals,” Jolene said, “played a trick on you. Well, c
ome on in.”

  At 3:00 A.M. Elizabeth woke up. She went out onto the deck to see the stars, wrapped in a blanket. Looking out into the quiet black, she lay down on the chaise lounge. The Milky Way was an old creviced lane of light. She followed the handle of the Big Dipper to Arcturus and on to the Corona Borealis and Vega. A satellite moved across the sky, a solid point of light, consistent, fast. Soon the night sky would fill with such man-made lights, glittering space stations would wheel around, rockets would leave trails of brilliant debris…

  Darryl had called and left one of his urgent, inane messages around noon. It disturbed her deeply. She had a hard enough time keeping herself together without this insistent male interest intruding on her life.

  He better leave me alone, she thought. And felt such a pang of loneliness that she had to clench her teeth and wrap herself tight in the blanket to make up for the arms that weren’t there. Darryl, damn him, had reawakened some needs that she had tried hard to forget.

  When she could think again, she told herself many things: about how connections are not worth it. About how all is impermanent and transitory, most especially human relationships. It all led to nothing but acute suffering. Loneliness was nothing compared to loss. She had made her decision to remain alone, and it was so unfair for this foolish married man to bring his warmth and wanting to her home, to interfere with her and knock her off-balance.

  But then, perversely, she thought, if only I had someone just for a few minutes, I could open my arms and he would fill them and I could press my cheek against his warm living cheek…

  She went back inside and flipped up the computer screen, brought up her journal, and wrote:

  Please don’t say anything

  I know loneliness too

  Just cup your hand

  Behind my head

  Open my mouth gently

  With your lips

  And with your tongue

  Search, search for me

  Then, finally, she could sleep.

  That first moment, opening her eyes and seeing the red line across the trees that meant the night had finally left her, Elizabeth was content. Morning, hope, the dawn, old and effective symbols, drew her from bed into the weary round once again.