by Lisa Unger
Linda pushed open the door and saw him there. A cigarette still burned in the ashtray. She was surprised, had never seen him smoke. She said it was as if the rest of the scene just didn’t register. All she could think about was that cigarette and how she just couldn’t imagine him putting it to his lips, drawing the smoke into his lungs. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there.
I often imagine her in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame, the other on the doorknob. The bright full moon making her white nightgown translucent, the slim form of her body visible beneath it. She might have shivered in the cold, wrapped her arms around herself.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?”
I know he never meant for Linda or me to find him that way. We were forbidden from bothering him when he was in there. He would have expected our mother to come out raging in the morning about how he’d stayed out there all night again, and didn’t he remember he had a wife?
A fog fell over our lives. And it never lifted, not really. The contrast between our life before that day and after was so stark that it seemed like two different lives. Suicide marks you in a way that no other tragedy does—especially the suicide of a parent. And maybe the worst part about the suffering that follows is that no one ever discusses it. People feel angry when they think about suicide, the coward’s way out. As if all there is to life is the bravery to soldier on. There’s blame for the deceased who chose to throw away something to which other people desperately cling, and even for the family he left behind. Didn’t someone know how unhappy he was? And, of course, you have all those thoughts yourself, even and maybe especially as a child. The Connelly sisters are lovely and smart, my father always used to say. Just not lovely or smart enough, right, Daddy?
People step away from the topic, avert their eyes from you. I don’t remember being taunted at school. The other children just seemed repelled by me, kept distance between us. As a child, this has the effect of adding shame to the powerful brew of grief, rage, and sadness. There are no platitudes to offer those grieving a suicide. No one says, “He’s in a better place now” or “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” He wasn’t taken by accident or illness. He didn’t allow himself to be part of God’s plan. In the ultimate act of rebellion or surrender or just irreverence, he left.
I remembered a particular feeling I had in the year after my father’s death. It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others.
I had that feeling again standing in the apartment I shared with my husband. The doorman had tried to stop me, to warn me that something was terribly amiss. A uniformed police officer held me up at the elevator for a few minutes, arguing, blocking my passage with his body. And then Detective Crowe came to the door of my apartment. It was odd to see him there, inside, while I awaited entry in the corridor. Infuriating was a better word. I moved toward him quickly. But he lifted a hand, gave me a look that stopped me in my tracks—some combination of warning and compassion.
“You don’t want to be here, Mrs. Raine,” he said gently as I approached, the uniformed officer at my heels. “Not right now.”
“I need to be here right now, Detective.”
Something passed between us, a tacit understanding, and he moved away from the door frame, allowed me to enter the shambles of my life with a sweep of his hand.
8
He awoke with a start, breathing hard. The room was dark. But he could see by the sliver of light shining in between the edge of the blinds and the window frame that it was daylight. How long had he slept? Too long.
She shifted beside him.
“Relax,” she said. “It’s over. By tonight you’ll be gone.”
He didn’t answer her. It wasn’t over. The money had been transferred, the evidence destroyed, arrangements for his departure had been made. But it wasn’t close to being over. In the comfortable life he’d made, he’d forgotten what it was like to be afraid.
He looked over at Sara’s long, lean form, feeling the powerful arousal the sight of her body always awakened in him. But he didn’t reach for her. Instead he moved away, took his phone from the pocket of his pants, which lay in a heap on the floor, and moved quietly into the bathroom.
Her apartment was a hovel, filthy. She lived like a man, without a thought toward design or cleanliness. It was just a place she came to sleep, nothing but a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, all featuring a grime and neglect particular to their functions.
He opened the keyboard on his phone, started tapping with his thumbs:
I DON’T WANT YOU TO THINK I DIDN’T LOVE YOU BECAUSE I DID. REMEMBER THAT I MADE YOU HAPPY FOR A WHILE, THAT WE WERE GREAT FRIENDS AND EXCELLENT LOVERS. AND THEN FORGET ME. MOURN ME LIKE I’M DEAD. DON’T TRY TO FIND ME OR TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS YOU’LL HAVE. I CAN’T PROTECT YOU—OR YOUR FAMILY—IF YOU DO.
It was a foolish thing to do, close to suicidal, and he was surprised at himself for even considering it. It would be far better for her to suspect that he was dead. But he knew her, knew the lengths she would go to prove herself right or to prove him wrong. The things she would risk, just to answer the most inane question. She’d walk the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city, just to authenticate her writing. She’d go alone, just to feel the fear, to find the words to describe it. He realized that she wouldn’t be able to live with the ambiguity of his disappearance. And if she couldn’t, he couldn’t help her, wouldn’t be able to save her from herself.
“Do you ever lose control, Marcus? Have you ever just blown your stack?” Isabel wanted to know during a recent argument. “Don’t you want to know what it would be like to just let it rip?”
“No,” he told her with a smile. “It’s not fuel-efficient. An engine runs best warm, not hot.”
“And too cold, it seizes. It cracks.”
But he wasn’t as cold as she thought. It was just that her engine ran so white hot that everything else seemed frigid. Her temper, her passion, the heat of her desires, opinions, drives, that’s what drew him to her. She thawed him. His time with her had changed him in ways he hadn’t anticipated. He’d stayed with her far longer than he should have.
If he’d done what he set out to do and moved on, he wouldn’t be in the position he was in now, with more blood on his hands, forced to make changes in a hurry, enlist the help of people he’d hoped not to associate with again. He felt a simmer of regret and anger in his belly. He tamped it down; he’d need to ice over again, freeze like a still lake in winter, the summer of his time with Isabel just a memory.
His finger hovered a moment over the Send button, and then he pressed it. He felt a rush of emotion as he did so, sadness mingled with fear. Then he removed the battery and SIM card from the phone, flushed them down the toilet, and tossed the shell in the trash.
“What are you doing?” she called. “Come back to bed.”
He looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. Two days without shaving and already the stubble on this face was nearly as thick as his goatee. He had dark half moons under his eyes, a drawn, gray look to him. Not forty-eight hours ago, he was making love to his wife in their beautiful home. He had a successful business. Because of mistakes he’d made, betrayals he’d invited, it was all gone. He would go back to being what he was before he knew Isabel. Nothing. He barely took comfort in the great wealth he had amassed in his time with her, some of it earned, some of it stolen. It didn’t bring him the satisfaction he’d imagined. In fact, he’d never felt more hollow, lower.
Sara called his name and he hated her. He didn’t blame her. Without her, he’d be dead right now. He would never have been able to accomplish what he had in the last forty-eigh
t hours without her help. Everything he had worked for would have been lost. But he still hated what she represented.
They’d known each other since childhood. Her body was the first place in his grim adolescence where he’d found comfort in another. But the world had treated them differently, and they had taken different paths. He tried to escape the place they came from, to take more from life than they had been offered. She, like Ivan, succumbed.
What she was now, he didn’t quite know. She was vague about the details of her life since he’d left her in the Czech Republic to come to school in the U.S. He just knew that she was much changed. The vulnerability she’d had when he knew her was gone, replaced with a raw power—sexual and otherwise. He had needed her various skills, and she had helped, never asking for anything except his affection. The one thing he couldn’t give her.
She pushed the door open.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, moving behind him, wrapping her arms around his body. “I can take care of Camilla.”
“No. It’s my job to finish.”
He didn’t look at her or respond to her touch, and after a moment he felt her stiffen, then she left the bathroom.
“You’re weak when it comes to women,” she said, closing the door.
She was right about that. When he thought about Camilla and what she had done, how she’d wept when she confessed to him, he didn’t feel the kind of anger that he should have. He knew what he had to do. But he had no desire to do it.
She was waiting for him now, thinking he was about to make good on years of promises he’d never intended to keep. She was dead wrong.
When he left the bathroom, he saw that Sara had returned to bed. She was staring at him in the dim light. The sheet was pulled up to just below her perfect breasts. He felt heat in his groin, that magnetic pull from her body to his drawing him near. She didn’t smile; she rarely smiled. But she pulled him to her, wrapped her long legs around him. Her kiss was salty, urgent. Not sweet and yielding like Isabel’s. He was deep inside her, then, fast and hard. As he made love to her, he watched her face for that vulnerability to return when she was unguarded, had surrendered to pleasure. But it never did.
LINDA DIALED ISABEL, first at the apartment, then on her cell. Both calls went to voice mail but Linda didn’t bother to leave a message at either number. She knew when her sister was avoiding her; Izzy would call when she was ready and not before. So Linda sat, phone in her hand, debating about whether to call her mother, even though her sister had expressly asked her not to do so. Not until we’re sure what’s happening. There’s no need for her to worry. It’ll just add more tension.
Linda didn’t really want to call their mother, but still the temptation was strong, almost as though some dark motherly force compelled her to dial the number. She knew Margie was away, some spa trip with her friends, but she’d be reachable on her cell phone. A younger Linda would have called and then been angry at herself and her mother for doing the dance they always did. At some point, after becoming a mother herself, she realized that if you want to change the dance, all you have to do is sit down. So she rested the phone on the counter and walked away from it, went to the kitchen and poured herself another cup of coffee. Brown watched her from the couch, where he had no business being.
“Off the couch, Brown.” He stepped off resentfully and flopped on the floor, issuing a deep sigh.
Linda and her mother had never really gotten along, not that they didn’t love each other. And it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Margie particularly; she had been an intelligent and caring mother, if not a particularly loving or affectionate one. Margie rarely raised her voice, had never struck the girls, was always there when she was needed—cupcakes for school, chaperone for field trips, help with homework. But the chemistry between Margie and her eldest daughter just wasn’t there. If they’d met on the street, they wouldn’t have chosen each other as friends. Linda’s mother claimed this was true from the womb. Though Linda was the good baby, the easy one, Margie asserted that Linda just never seemed to like her very much. How this could be true, Linda didn’t know. It seemed a ridiculous assertion, typically vain and narcissistic. Of course, none of that—whether they liked each other or not—really mattered, because Margie was her mother. And that relationship wasn’t designed for friendship necessarily; it didn’t need to be that to be successful. Even though they both had ugly memories of each other after the death of Linda’s father, they loved and accepted each other now; that was enough most of the time.
Erik had taken the kids to school and she was alone with Brown in the apartment. When the door closed and all their voices—usually raised, laughing or yelling or horsing around, but today quiet, muted, somber—faded with the closing of the elevator door, she released the breath she’d been holding. She always felt like that when they left, like her energy could expand and she could think. She wasn’t wife and mother, monitoring needs, cleaning faces, packing lunches, answering questions, reprimanding, instructing, nagging, kissing, hugging. She was just herself, free to pour a cup of coffee, maybe even go to the bathroom without someone calling after her. This was the space where she was most creative—in the aftermath. When she knew the kids were cared for and off to start their day, she could finally see the world with the clear vision she needed to do her work.
It wasn’t that motherhood made her less creative; it was just that it created a maze that she must navigate to get to that still, center space within her. And the twists and turns were guarded by hobgoblins—guilt and worry and sometimes just exhaustion—which could take her down and smother her. But somehow the gauntlet she had to run to find that energetic well made the time she spent there so much richer. It focused her attention, forced her to maximize every moment. She knew she was a better artist for the emotional wealth of her life, that she was richer for the depth and breadth of her love for her children. But a better life didn’t mean an easier one.
But she wouldn’t be working today. Today she needed to take care of Izzy help her through whatever was happening. And what if Marcus was gone for good? Well, she shouldn’t even think like that.
With the thought of her brother-in-law, she remembered Izzy’s description of the call she’d received, and started to feel a little flutter in her belly. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave her sister to it. What if the threat to her safety hadn’t passed? She decided to shower and go after her sister, whether Izzy wanted her around or not. She glanced at her cell phone, which rested on the bar. No messages. She was relieved and disappointed in equal measure. She didn’t have time for that particular mess.
She took her coffee into the bathroom and placed it on the marble countertop, avoiding her reflection in the mirror. She ran the water scalding hot so the bathroom filled with steam, was about to strip her pajamas and step in when the buzzer from the street door rang and Brown started barking.
Linda walked over to the intercom, expecting to see Erik and the kids on the small black-and-white screen, having forgotten homework or cell phone or lunch box, too lazy to come back up. But it wasn’t her family. She drew in a deep breath at the sight of the man who stood there, snapped up the phone from its cradle.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, peering up at the lens. “I watched them get on the train.”
She raced through calculations in her mind—twenty minutes to school, fifteen to get them settled and dropped off, a stop at the bank and the grocery store. Erik would be another hour and a half at least. He’d asked that she be there when he returned, had something he needed to discuss. She told him she needed to focus on Isabel and could it wait? No, he said. It couldn’t.
“You have to leave. Right now,” she said. Even in her anger, in her fear, there was a snaking pleasure, a guilty desire. She shot Brown a look and he stopped barking and walked away, went back to the couch. She didn’t bother reprimanding him.
“Please, Linda. I need to see yo
u.”
She thought about having him up, making love to him hard and fast in the shower. She thought about releasing all her tension with an earthquake of an orgasm. But no, she wasn’t that low, that stupid.
“I’ll meet you,” she said. “There’s a coffee shop on the corner. Go there. Ten minutes.”
“Let me up,” he said, moving close to the lens. She could feel her whole body go hot.
“No,” she said. “You’re crazy.”
“I told you. I’m desperate.”
She leaned her head against the wall, fought the awful waves of temptation. The thought of him walking through the door, those hands roaming her body, his desperation like a rocket through her, made her weak and ashamed. How could she be having an affair, her of all people? The good girl, the woman with the perfect marriage, the perfect life. It was disgusting. She hated herself. But she couldn’t give him up.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Linda.”
“Go.”
He groaned and disappeared from the screen.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said, moving toward the shower. She tied her hair up so that it wouldn’t get wet, showered, and dressed quickly. She grabbed her coat and her bag and headed out the door. She’d stop and see him quickly, then go straight to Izzy’s. Erik would have to wait.
“Be a good boy,” she called to the dog who was fast asleep.
9
It felt oddly right that the apartment I shared with Marcus was in tatters. As I walked through the detritus of our life together—an oil painting we bought in Paris slashed and knocked to the floor, a crystal vase we’d received as a wedding gift in big jagged pieces, our bedding cut with scissors—I wasn’t outraged in the way one would expect. I recognized the poetry of it. We’d built a life, collected memories, had things to show for that journey. As I walked through the rooms crowded by my memories, somehow it seemed appropriate in this moment that those things should be in pieces. The air hummed with malice. It didn’t even seem like the place where I’d lived for the last five years of my life.