Compromising Positions

by Susan Isaacs

  “Speak to you soon,” I said.

  Ultimately, I was responsible, I thought, as I backed my car out of her driveway. The pebbles made brisk crunching noises under the tires. I had chosen to have children—whom I truly loved—and had agreed to the migration from Manhattan to Long Island. But, in fairness to myself, no one had ever made the connection for me. No one had ever even hinted that if one has children, one has almost no time to pursue adult relationships. True, I had heard that motherhood is demanding, that one must spend nights in a rocking chair with one’s breast in an infant’s eager mouth. And I had heard that one must give up a tennis game to cuddle a sick child and be willing to confront diarrhea and neighborhood bullies. But no one had ever said explicitly that children would impinge on every aspect of one’s life. And no one had said that the need for real grown-up talk would lock one further into marriage; the only time for long, wide-ranging, probing conversations was late at night, with one’s husband, who would tell you again and again and again how, despite all his hopes, all his planning, he had somehow allowed the presidency of his college fraternity to slip through his hands.

  I pulled my car into the garage with a quarter hour to spare until Joey’s bus was due. I could do a crossword puzzle, put on a facial mask to tighten my pores. Or, to honor the memory of M. Bruce Fleckstein, sit down with a yard of dental floss and make the spaces between my teeth the cleanest in town. Ruminating on my options, I opened the door which led from the garage to a small alcove beyond the kitchen. Something was very wrong.

  Interestingly, before my intellect made the connection that something was amiss, my body sensed danger and reacted. It felt the cold air as I put one of my feet into the kitchen, it tensed all the muscles within its jurisdiction and ordered a general alert of the blood vessels in preparation for fight or flight. My body knew, independent of my mind, that when it walked into a warm kitchen from the icy outdoors that it should feel good. It didn’t because—and here my intellect reestablished its primacy—the kitchen was as bitterly cold as the unheated garage.

  The freezing air came as a persistent, cold blast, which meant that the forty-year-old oil burner hadn’t simply given up the ghost. Indeed, as I took three tentative steps forward, I knew the cold rush of air must be coming from an open door or window. But when I had left for Nancy’s, all doors and windows had been locked.

  I stood absolutely still, forcing myself to breathe through my nose so that if there was an intruder, he wouldn’t hear me panting with panic and have time to take out his switchblade. There was silence. No chirping birds, no heavy-breathing rapist. No sounds of scurrying footsteps upstairs as burglars ran from room to room searching for negotiable securities. I climbed out of my shoes and took another silent, stockinged step into the kitchen.

  Whoever it was had gone. The kitchen door that led to the back yard was flung open, its handle, either unscrewed or knocked out, lying on the floor right by the stove. I glared at it, annoyed, as if it were part of a very expensive toy one of the children had wrecked after five minutes of use. Then the fear returned, and then anger. Some miserable, rotten, slimy bastard had broken into my house, defiled my property. As I spun around to head for the phone, I saw it. The message. In red spray paint on my refrigerator door, four foot-high letters: M.Y.O.B. The period after the “Y” was larger than the others, and the paint had trickled down the door and dripped on the floor, like drops of blood.

  I grabbed the telephone decisively and then held it, debating, should I call 911, the police emergency number? Well, someone had broken into my house. But it wasn’t an emergency, was it? My life wasn’t in imminent peril. Maybe I should call the local precinct. But they wouldn’t think it was an emergency and the desk sergeant would put me on hold and the intruder would return. I had all the makings of a Talmudic scholar, I thought, as I dialed 911.

  “Police emergency.”

  “Someone broke into my house.”

  “Your address, please.”

  “They’ve gone.”

  “Lady, just give me your address.”

  I decided 911 was not interested in a dialogue, so I gave the man the address, slipped back into my shoes, and trotted outside to wait for Joey. His school bus came just as I walked out the door, and I grabbed his hand. “Mrs. Tuccio asked you to come for lunch.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “Come on, Joey.”

  “I hate her peanut butter. It’s the smooth kind.”

  I banged on Marilyn’s door and she opened it. “Parlez-vous français?” I asked her rapidly.

  “Un peu.”

  “II ya un criminal qui broke into chez moi. Compris?”

  “Oui. Is there anything...?”

  “Les gendarmes sont coming,” I continued. “Gee, Marilyn, Joey’s so glad you asked him for lunch.”

  “I love having Joey for lunch. And Tommy is so excited that you’re coming, Joey.” Tommy was her youngest, a three-year-old mechanical genius who had once fixed my toaster. Marilyn took Joey’s hand, pulled him gently inside and said, “See you later.”

  I tore across the street and paced my lawn, from the now-barren tulip bed to the white birch tree and back again. Within a minute, two police cars screeched up. Four men leapt out of the cars.

  “You the lady who called about a break-in?” asked a heavy, gray-haired cop with three chins.

  “Yes. This way.”

  I took them in the front door, through the hall past the living room and dining room and into the kitchen.

  “Geez,” said the gray-haired cop to a tall, good-looking blond one. “He took the fucking handle off the goddamn door. Hardly ever see that. They usually just kick the whole door in.”

  I waited for him to turn to me and say, “Pardon my language.” Instead, he demanded in a harsh voice: “Did you touch anything?”

  I was about to say no, that I had been very careful, but at that moment he and the three others noticed my refrigerator. Then they glanced at each other. One of them, a short pale man with gold-rimmed glasses, sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He looked like an accountant whose books wouldn’t balance.

  “Lady, was this here before?” asked the gray-haired one, pointing to the scarlet M.Y.O.B.

  Did I look like the type who would go in for that kind of decorating scheme? “No. Whoever broke in did it.”

  “You and you,” he said to the accountant and a black cop with a very sad face, “check out the house and outside.” He turned to the beautiful blond whose name tag said “Hogan.” “Okay, Jimbo, what the fuck does M.Y.O.B. mean?”

  “It means mind your own business,” Jimbo said.

  Jimbo. Jim. Jim Hogan. My God, Jimbo is Nancy’s Cupcake. Tall and Troy Donahue handsome, with a firm, square chin and soft blue-gray eyes, he looked like he should have a cheerleader tucked under each arm.

  “Who would want someone here to mind their own business?” the gray-haired one asked. His name tag said “Brown.”

  “Did you hear anyone enter the premises?” asked Cupcake.

  “Did you touch anything?” demanded Brown.

  “Is your husband home?” Cupcake asked.

  “What does my husband have to do with this?” I inquired. They gazed at me blankly. I sat down in a chair, my elbows resting on the table, my forehead in my hands. Then, glancing up at them, I said: “Now, first of all, I didn’t touch anything except for the door from the garage and the telephone. I had to call you. I didn’t hear anyone leave, and I was out all morning at a friend’s house. Nancy Miller over on Blackthorne Lane.” I gazed at Brown as I said this, not wanting Cupcake to know that I knew. But it wouldn’t hurt if he knew I was Nancy’s friend. Maybe he’d look harder for the intruder. “And,” I said, “as far as minding my own business, I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?” Brown snapped.

  “Easy, Roy,” murmured Cupcake.

  The phone rang. I knew it would be Bob, making his prelunch checkup.

  “Hello,”
he said, still distant after the previous night’s fight. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you. The police are here.”

  “The police?” he demanded, not sounding anywhere near as startled as I imagined he should. “What are the police doing?”

  “Someone broke in, so I called the police,” I answered.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they take my cameras?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been downstairs yet.”

  “I’ll hold on. Go check.”

  “Bob, I’m sure everything’s all right. Whoever it was just sprayed some graffiti on the refrigerator door.”

  “What?”

  I knew an explanation was in order, but with the police milling about the kitchen, I decided to be as literal as possible. Also, I had a faint, nearly futile hope that Bob would not demand an immediate accounting. “Whoever it was just wrote M.Y.O.B. in red spray paint.”

  “What?”

  “M.Y.O.B.”

  “I heard you. I heard you. I’m coming home.”

  “You don’t have to come home, dear. I’ll manage.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Judith? Some goddamn crazy breaks into my house and defaces my property, and you tell me not to come home. Now, listen, just sit tight and I’ll grab a taxi. I should be home in about forty minutes.”

  I hung up the phone and turned to face Brown. “You didn’t answer my question, lady.”

  “The phone rang.”

  “All right. I was asking you who would tell you to mind your own business.” He took his index finger, placed it in his ear, and twirled it around several times. Then he peered at me, ready to listen to my response. I glanced at his ear, with its generous tuft of gray hair sticking out. “Well, lady?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled, shrugging my shoulders, trying to appear as befuddled as the police. “Maybe it means something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe it’s the initials of some radical political group.”

  “You in politics, lady?”

  “Well, I’m a registered Democrat.”

  “That’s not politics. I mean, are you in any extremist group?”

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think M.Y.O.B. is some group’s initials? Why couldn’t it be for ‘mind your own business’? Huh? Why not?”

  The sad-looking black cop returned to the kitchen. “Nothing upstairs,” he said sorrowfully. He had a round, babyish, unhappy face, like a very dark Dean Rusk. As he finished speaking, the bland, forgettable accountant/cop reappeared.

  “Outside’s okay,” he reported to Brown. He peered at me. “Did you know you have a crack in your foundation, near the azalea bushes?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, you do, and you should take care of it. Otherwise, you’ll start getting water.”

  Brown glanced at him with mild distaste. “Why don’t you two guys get going? We can take it from here. Actually, I can take it from here. Why don’t the three of you leave? I’ll see you later.” They shuffled out obediently, Cupcake flashing a dazzling, whiter-than-white toothy smile at me.

  “All right, let’s get back to my question,” Brown urged gruffly.

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No. Now, look, I want to get down to business. I’ll say it again, lady. Who would want you to mind your own business?”

  “I don’t know.” I concentrated on a thread hanging from the hem of the tablecloth, rather than on Brown and his bullet-laden gun belt. I had no doubt about what the right thing to do was: tell the police that I had spoken to some of the people involved in the Fleckstein case. But Brown seemed extraordinarily unsympathetic, incapable of registering any really human feeling beyond annoyance. And if I mentioned speaking to some of the principals in the case, I might have to tell them about Mary Alice, who, so far, was safely out of the running. I glanced at Brown, at the solid roll of fat resting on top of his belt, and realized how ridiculous it would seem to such a man that I had become enmeshed in a police matter. More than ridiculous—unnatural. I was an object, a minor pain, an itch in his hairy ear. “I really don’t know,” I reiterated.

  “Well, lady, you’d better think about it. I mean, this isn’t your average burglary, where I can just go back and make a report and you call up your friendly insurance man. This is what I call a weird thing. Now, can you think of anyone...?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really. All right then, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got to get back to do a few things, but I’ll be back later. Now, listen, don’t let anyone in this kitchen. Get me? The guys from forensics may want to look this over. And while I’m gone, why don’t you just sit down and do some real serious thinking?”

  I promised I would, and he left after writing down my name and phone number. “Don’t forget, lady,” he called as he walked down the path toward the driveway, “try to do some serious remembering.”

  I trudged up the stairs and walked into my bedroom. It looked curiously peaceful, the yellow walls and yellow bedspread and curtains gave off a warm, pleasant glow, the comfortable, hazy feeling you get lying on a quiet beach with your eyes closed. I called Marilyn Tuccio, telling her that the police would be back and asking if she could hold on to Joey for the rest of the afternoon. Yes, she said, no problem at all and sorry about my trouble.

  I kicked my shoes under my dresser and lay down on the bed. For a minute or two, I managed a serious internal debate over how to handle the grand pickle I was in—the hang-out route or stonewalling it. A weepy, sniveling, embarrassed confession versus a cool, remote denial of any involvement in murderous doings. But my mind, weary, began to meander, back to college, back to old boyfriends, old pleasures, into its favorite idle pastime—recalling old sexual encounters. I was back in the summer of fifty-nine, relishing Danny Simon’s perfect seventeen-year-old body when I heard Bob’s familiar two short rings on the doorbell. Retrieving my shoes, I shuffled downstairs, knowing that when I opened the door I would be facing a thirty-seven-year-old man who had never given me as much joy as Danny had that July and August before college.

  “All right. What happened? For God’s sake,” Bob blurted, pushing past me to get into the house. “Where’s Joey?”

  “He’s over at Marilyn Tuccio’s. I sent him there because I didn’t want him to get upset.” I spoke in a slow, calm, deliberate voice. My soothing tone was contagious. Bob stopped his angry stomping toward the kitchen, returned, and put his arm around me. Turning, I hugged him hard, knowing that within five minutes an embrace would be out of the question, even the lightest kiss would not be considered. So I hugged his slim, tight, pampered waist and then let go, taking him by the hand, leading him into the kitchen. We stood before the refrigerator like two aborigines examining an artifact of a culture vastly more civilized and complex.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “It means mind your own business,” I explained softly.

  “Oh,” he said, and took two steps to the left, as if to view the painting from another angle. “How do you know that?”

  “I know it. That’s all.” My volume control was going awry; my voice was becoming loud, strident. “Didn’t anyone in high school ever say M.Y.O.B. to you?”

  “Never.”

  “Well, maybe you just never got involved enough with people.” It was a mean, hurtful remark, and I began regretting it as I uttered the last syllable. I began to apologize, but Bob cut me off.

  “Listen, Judith, let’s get out of high school and into the present, if you will. Now, what is this all about?” Again I opened my mouth, hoping a few soothing words would spill out, but he persisted before I could find anything nice to say. “Come on. Why would someone come in and do something like this? Do you have any idea?”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Good. Perhaps you would like to share it with me.” He brought his lips together. His mouth was tight, hard, u
ngenerous. His face was about a foot from mine, and I could smell his aftershave lotion, sweet, citrusy. I’ve never liked perfumed men, moving in on me like ambulatory limes.

  “I think it’s all because of the Fleckstein murder.” I waited for his eyes to widen with amazement, for him to speak, to press me for details. But he just stood in place, staring at me. “The Fleckstein murder, you know.” I briefly considered extricating myself gracefully. I knew just how to do it; the script was an old one. I could stand just where I was, eyes cast down, and slowly, slowly lift my head so Bob could see two shimmering tears, one on each pale cheek. He would be moved, but only slightly, so then I would collapse softly into his arms, give a gentle sob, and sniff, “Darling, I’ve been such a fool.” And he would put his powerful arms around me and say: “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of everything.” He might even stroke my hair. “The Fleckstein murder,” I repeated. “I told you about the whole goddamn thing. Don’t you ever listen?”

  “What does the murder have to do with us? Who the hell broke into my house?”

  “Might I point out to you, Robert, that we own the house jointly? Don’t you think you could whip it up enough to call it ‘our house’?”

  He slammed his fist against the refrigerator door. “All right,” he bellowed, “would you please tell me what that cocksucking murder has to do with our motherfucking house? Is that better?”

  “You’re so cute when you’re mad,” I said lightly, and instantly saw I had gone too far. Both hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, Bob took a step toward me. “All right. Calm down. I was doing a little investigating. Nothing serious.”