You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  “Caroline?” Amory is saying. I think maybe he has said it more than once. His hand is resting on my forearm and I do not want him to take it away. I look into his open, serious face. And then, just like that, we are kissing. He slips an arm around me and pulls me closer and I’m literally seeing explosions of color with my eyes closed. His lips open and I can taste coffee; my body turns to liquid right there on the bench next to the statue of Alice.

  “Oh!” I say, pulling away finally. I touch my lips with my fingertips. We look at each other and it’s new to me, not hiding what we are feeling.

  Without taking his eyes off me, still holding my hand, Amory strokes my cheek with the back of his other hand. I can see in his expression that I wasn’t wrong. He knows, and kiss or no kiss, is not going to be fooled.

  Still watching me, he reaches into his pocket, pulls something out, spends a moment arranging it on his thigh before allowing me to see. It is my beaded bracelet.

  I can’t breathe.

  I am done for.

  “Caroline,” he says. His tone is gentle. “You know your father has fired me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he has. I no longer work for him, no longer report to him. I’m not asking…”

  And then his arm tightens around me and his forehead is leaning on mine, we’re kissing again, I mean some hungry but incredibly tender kissing, like nothing I’ve ever ever—

  Finally I manage to pull away. I point to the bracelet. “Where did you get that?”

  He leans away from me a little, as though to see me from a different angle. “Rebecca. She found it in the bathroom on Sunset Lane after Wilson disappeared.”

  “You know it’s mine.”

  “I do.”

  “I was there six, maybe seven months ago? Wilson invited me out to a Green Day concert, it was a nostalgic thing for us. Rebecca was out of town and we…” I trail off. He knows. He’s not buying it. “I saw you talking to that cop,” I say.

  Amory nods but says nothing.

  Did he betray me?

  “Are you going to give him the bracelet?” I whisper.

  He looks into my eyes and puts his fingers under my chin. We look so hard it’s like we’ve left our bodies some way and are suspended in some other dimension, corny as that sounds.

  “Caroline,” he says into my ear before grazing his lips over my cheek and onto my mouth again.

  He touches my hair, runs his hand from the top of my head down to my shoulder stroking his fingers on my neck. “I don’t work for anybody,” he says. “I don’t want—look, stay away from that detective. He’s…just stay away from him, Caroline.”

  I’m breathing fast and my heart is galloping. I can’t handle this level of feeling, not by myself, not without drugs. I look wildly at Amory.

  “I’ve been wanting to say…” he says slowly, “I believe I could help you through this. If you wanted to explain, or…or even if you didn’t.” He leans his forehead on mine again and we stay like that for a long moment.

  Amory is magnificent, really he is. I’m on the brink of collapsing into his arms, of telling him everything. Right on the verge of letting him take me back to his place, hide me away, introduce me to some sort of new life I can’t even imagine. I’m teetering toward it, balancing on one foot, one toe, stretching out to hold onto him with all the strength I’ve got left.

  Except.

  I can’t forget the little bean. Amory might think he can forgive me my trespasses—and that’s already more or less unbelievable right there. But trust me, the baby would be something else altogether. That, as I believe the saying goes, would be a bridge too far for anyone.

  72

  Amory walks home across Central Park with his hands in his pockets, thinking so intently he nearly crashes into a parking sign. The cheap trick with the bracelet worked; she had nearly confessed. He saw confirmation in her eyes, even if that’s obviously not admissible in court.

  But the sudden offer he made to shepherd her through—that was unplanned, and he is shaken by it.

  He does love her, that’s just the fact, and no surprise. He knows he does not understand the why of any of it. He knows that absolutely. But he trusts that she has her reasons. That underneath her brutal crime is some sort of emotional logic, if he can only persuade her to explain it.

  He should have given Franks the bracelet. There is no argument he can make to convince himself otherwise.

  The feel of her lips opening up to his—

  She wants to tell him, he’s sure of it. He has to keep trying.

  With a surge of energy, he walks quickly the rest of the way to his apartment and bounds up the stairs and up to his place on the second floor. It’s late afternoon by now. He grabs a bag sitting on a table by the window and leaves again, splurging on a cab.

  In fifteen minutes, he is across town, shooting down Park Avenue to 744. “Hey Ricardo,” he says with a warm smile. “Gordon Crowe in?”

  “I’ll give him a buzz,” says Ricardo, who is not entirely won over by Amory, and feels protective of the Crowes. He murmurs into the intercom after pressing a button.

  “All right, sir!” Ricardo says, after Lillian gives him the okay. “Go on up.”

  Amory looks into the security camera’s fish-eye on the way up, remembering watching Caroline on the blurry video, carrying the backpack with the star-shaped tag.

  The elevator opens directly onto the foyer. The weak sun of late January afternoon filters into the living room, and everything is quiet. He turns to Lillian Crowe, who is making her way over to him, holding a glass of milk in one hand.

  “Hello, darling,” she says, holding out her other hand to shake.

  “Mrs. Crowe,” says Amory. “I’m very sorry to bother you. I’d like to have a quick word with Gordon, if he’s here?”

  “His library,” says Lillian, waving her hand down the left corridor. She wanders back the way she came without saying anything else.

  Amory takes a deep breath. He’s carrying the glass with Caroline’s DNA on it, a piece of evidence that technically belongs to Gordon, per the non-disclosure contract Amory was obligated to sign. Amory can’t bring himself to deliver the goods to Franks, but at least he can let Gordon know he doesn’t have his daughter’s secrets all to himself. He can try to wedge a thin blade between the man’s ribs, and cause him some pain.

  The carpet in the corridor is plush, Amory is wearing sneakers, and his approach is nearly silent. He reaches the door of the library and looks in.

  Caroline is sitting in a wing chair, next to the fireplace, dressed in a skirt and tights. A fire is blazing and Amory sees light and shadow moving across her face, and thinks for the hundredth time what an unusual and beautiful woman she is.

  He is about to speak when Gordon appears from the side of the room. His back is to the door and neither of them sees Amory. Gordon steps over to his daughter and bends down. Tenderly, he brushes her hair back from her face, cupping her chin in his hand. The fingers of his other hand trail along her leg, moving up along the inside of her thigh.

  He leans in, slowly, and kisses her on the mouth.

  Amory steps back out of sight.

  What did I just see?

  Blood whooshing in his ears, he leans just far enough for another look.

  He sees.

  Heart racing, he scrambles back to the foyer and jabs at the elevator button, and gets the hell away from these people.

  Part V

  73

  2003

  Jamaica

  One thing Lillian liked about spending Christmas in Jamaica was that hardly anyone they knew was there. The villas on either side of theirs sat empty, though beginning the day after Christmas, the throngs would begin to arrive in preparation for New Year’s. In the meantime, Lillian cherished her freedom. She didn’t have to dress up, be charming, have anyone over for drinks. She could sit around the villa playing Parcheesi with the children and eating Ugli fruit all day if she felt like it.

 
Although that was something of a theoretical proposition, since the children were fifteen and thirteen and considered Parcheesi a game for little kids. Also, Lillian had not sat down and played a board game with Caroline and Wilson even once. But the point was, Lillian thought as she wandered from her bedroom through the living room to the porch, she could have played Parcheesi with them if the urge happened to strike, without worrying that someone from New York would show up with any sort of social expectation.

  She could hear voices from some other part of the villa, Caroline’s and possibly Gordon’s. Wilson had probably gone over to one of the beaches closer to Montego Bay where the resorts were, now that he had started to show some interest in girls. A sweet boy, Wilson. Always knew just the right thing to say to soothe her often jangled nerves. Perhaps not the sharpest child—Caroline got the brains—but we couldn’t all be geniuses, right? Of course, if she had been able to choose, it might have been better for the boy to get the smarts…but she thought of all the men she knew who were extremely successful and also, to her mind, lacking in intellectual potency, and shrugged. (Lillian spent a great deal of time by herself, and was in the habit not only of talking to herself but accompanying her talk with gestures as well.)

  Hazel appeared and asked about the dinner menu and what kind of fruit Lillian would like for lunch. Lillian really wished Hazel would simply take care of things and stop asking so many questions. She had no appetite, so talking about a menu was pure torture—having to pretend it mattered, that she cared even a little about any of it.

  After Hazel was gone, Lillian drew in a deep, flower-scented breath, and raised her arms up over her head for a healthful stretch. Then she walked into the small yard with the red poinsettia hedge and stood for half a minute before turning back to the porch and going straight to the corner of the living room where the small bar was set up. It was as though Lillian Crowe were on a leash, always tethered to the bar, always drawn back to it even when she tried to put some distance between herself and the three or four different kinds of rum, the cut-up limes, the tonic water, the silver bucket of ice, all laid out after breakfast by Hazel on Lillian’s instruction.

  She poured herself a stiff drink, since it was already eleven in the morning and the ordeal with Hazel had worn her out. Her thoughts of her children and husband became kinder after a few large sips. The tension around her eyes eased, the corners of her mouth slackened. She tapped her fingers on the glass in time with a reggae song Hazel was playing in the kitchen.

  And after several more sips followed by a freshening of the drink that included only a whisper of tonic and a big glug of Myer’s, she felt a pang of loneliness and went in search of those voices. Perhaps a game was already underway and she could join in, and it would feel like she was at the cottage in Maine, still a teenager herself, with her mother making something special in the kitchen, the smell of vanilla so vivid she would swear it was not a memory.

  Lillian walked toward the children’s rooms, which were on a separate hallway from the master suite where she and Gordon were staying. She could hear Caroline’s laugh, a high, nervous sound, abrupt. And then Gordon’s voice, a low rumble.

  The door to Caroline’s bedroom was closed. The sounds were almost certainly coming from within. Lillian stood there for a long minute, listening, and trying to sort out the barrage of thoughts and feelings coming too quickly.

  She heard Gordon groan. Then a whispery sound she couldn’t identify but that felt like a knife in her chest.

  She opened the door.

  She saw.

  Caroline was standing next to the bed, where Gordon was sitting. His hands were gripping her hips and he was kissing the inside of her thigh. She wore a bikini bottom and no top. She was fifteen, a sylph, an innocent.

  Lillian said, “Oh!” and closed the door, but not before she saw the expression of fear on Caroline’s face.

  Gordon did not bother to turn around.

  Well, she said to herself, speed walking in the direction of the bar in the corner of the living room.

  Well.

  Onward.

  74

  Caroline

  Not to make excuses, because I am quite clear there are none that count, but I do think my attachment to cocaine has been a mistake. I’m not finding my yearning for it to be lessening, and in order to protect the little bean, this afternoon, once the horrible memorial was over with and I was back from seeing Amory in the park, I finally felt strong enough to take a necessary step. I emptied my vial into the toilet, then added my secret emergency stash and flushed it all down, sending those delectable molecules of stimulant on their way to the East River. It gave me some pain, I won’t lie. Like I was stripping off my life preserver before leaping into the sea, out of sight of land.

  As a result of that, and also the ceaseless stress of everything, despite Gordon’s reassurances that he’s taken care of whatever needed taking care of—and of walking away from Amory, that almost more than anything—I am feeling a little raggedy. I decide to see if I can avail myself of Mummy’s stash of benzos, since I can cut the pills up and just have a smidgen, not enough that the bean will even notice. It’s dinnertime, and doubtless as usual Mummy is burrowed in her bedroom, but I’m hoping she’ll be hammered enough that I can slip into her bathroom and get the pills without her knowing.

  I am unprepared in every way you can think of to find Gordon in Mummy’s room, standing next to the bed, embracing her. Her head is cuddled against his neck and her hands are caressing his back.

  I have never seen this before. I literally gasp.

  “Darling,” says Mummy, breaking away when she hears me.

  “Caroline,” says Gordon, his expression closed.

  “We were having cocktails before dinner. Would you like to join us?” I see five glasses on the bedside table, along with an ashtray and several cigarette butts.

  “Are you smoking?” I say, the smell so unexpected that my brain did not recognize it at first.

  “Why not?” says Lillian with a raspy laugh.

  Gordon just shakes his head. I notice that despite his show of grief, he has not neglected to put pomade on his hair, and his Cary Grant hairline is looking very well tended.

  I look again at the cigarette butts and the empty glasses, then at my parents’ faces. Then I mumble something and take a few steps backwards, forgetting all about the benzos, about Wilson, Amory, about everything but this new twist. What does it mean, Gordon embracing Mummy?

  Is he sleeping with her?

  His library door is open and I go sit by the fire and try to collect my thoughts. By now you know me well enough to guess that the jeerlings are griping and bawling beyond anything. I close my eyes and am horrified to feel wetness springing up and slipping down my cheeks.

  Gordon comes in and closes the door. With the barest glance at me, he fiddles with the fire, stabbing the logs and putting a fresh one on with such energy you would think we were on the verge of frostbite and only his exertions with the poker will save us.

  “She is understandably distraught,” he says finally, and his tone is gentler than I expected it to be. “And never forget, Caro, mia cara, she is the mother of my children. That is, whether you like it or not, an unbreakable bond.”

  I bow my head, praying he does not see my tears.

  Of all the feelings, shame is king when it comes to misery. In my opinion.

  “Caro,” he says, coming closer, and lifting my chin so that my face is turned up to his. “Stop crying. I am here, just as I have always been.”

  I muster up an approximation of a smile. The image of Mummy’s hands running up and down his back is like an infection in my thoughts, spreading doubt in every direction.

  “It’s been quite a month, hasn’t it?” he says, taking a volume down from the shelf and opening it, a movement which is nothing but an unconvincing piece of stagecraft. It helps to see him make that faltering step. The tears stop rolling and I sit up straight. It occurs to me that I have not to
ld him about the little bean because I do not want him to know.

  “One thing I did want to mention to you,” he says. “Amory—such a nice young man, isn’t he? A credit to the Porter family. He did a fine job, overall, wouldn’t you say?”

  I sit up straighter. I do not like his tone.

  “You remember those emails Wilson and Rebecca got, inviting them away for a night or two?” He waits for me to nod before continuing. “Amory discovered that the emails were not written by their friends at all.”

  “I know, Gordon,” I say, allowing myself some impatience.

  “Amory guessed that the author of those emails was attempting to set up a burglary. You know, get them both out of the house so they could steal at their leisure. That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  Gordon turns back to the fire and gives it a savage jab with the poker. “And more than that, an awful lot of trouble for someone to take, given that Wilson had virtually nothing of value in his house.”

  Out of the inundation of words spilling through my head, none are spoken aloud.

  “Curious, wouldn’t you say?” he says.

  He puts his hand on the mantel and looks up at all the books he never reads. Maybe I was foolish to think I could accomplish such an undertaking without his knowing. Maybe I wanted him to know.

  75

  Caroline

  I go to my room to be alone. I close my eyes and am surprised to see my thoughts flowing by in pictures, bright snapshots of the beach in Negril, the bunk of a sailboat, Varick Street in a blizzard.

  Memories are so odd and random. I lie still on my bed, on my back, letting them float without any direction from me, and they fly along, unattached to any particular feelings, almost as though they are someone else’s memories. Wilson playing a board game with a teddy bear in the corridor outside my room. The way Marecita’s feet never look happy in shoes. Big tropical leaves, a dense green, moving in a breeze.