She sat at the desk now and looked around. No papers in the fax machine. No light blipped on the message machine. The desktop had been swept clean. Hospital-clean. So it was true. Parker was gone.
She felt that jagged pain in her chest again. What if she had a heart attack? Right now—with Parker gone Lord knows where, and Erin upstairs, sound asleep in their bed?
No, it wasn’t a heart attack, she decided. It was panic. Dread. Again she felt the same wave of nausea that had swept over her upstairs, where she’d crouched on the floor, reading the note by the closet light.
Gone. Gone where? And why?
Their life together was seamless as far as she knew. No major fights, no money worries. Mary Bliss taught at the public school, kept house, cooked, did volunteer work at the church and Erin’s private school. She visited Parker’s mother, Eula, once a week at the Fair Oaks Assisted Living Facility. They had dinner parties, went on vacation. Damn it, this was not a broken home. She had a normal, happy marriage. Didn’t she?
The problem was, one half of the marriage equation was gone and unavailable for polling.
She found herself praying, whispering aloud. “Please don’t let it be true. Please don’t let it be true.” Mary Bliss clamped her Harker lips together to make the praying stop.
The bank statements were neatly bundled together with rubber bands in the bottom drawer of the desk. When they’d first married, Mary Bliss had kept the household bills. She was good at it; liked toting up numbers, making a budget, keeping their little family ship afloat. But a year ago, Parker had insisted that his computer software could do a much better job of all that, so she’d reluctantly handed over the bill-paying to him.
It had hurt her feelings, his taking away her job, but she’d gone ahead and handed over the checkbook, and after a few months of not worrying over how many ATM withdrawal charges they were paying, Mary Bliss found she did not miss bookkeeping quite as much as she’d expected.
Everything was on the computer, she was sure. The problem was, Mary Bliss didn’t know where. She knew how to play solitaire and blackjack on the computer, knew how to pick up e-mail messages from Parker and her friends and former Agnes Scott classmates, but she had no idea where everything else could be.
She looked at the bank statements. For the first two months of the year, the balances in their checking, savings, and money market accounts looked fine. The checking account balance was a little low, but Parker did that intentionally because the bank didn’t pay interest on checking.
In March, the balance on all the accounts seemed to start dropping dramatically.
She skipped ahead to the most recent statement. May. It had been mailed only two days earlier. She looked at the number on the last sheet of paper and blinked. This had to be wrong. But the right account number was listed at the top of the sheet.
One time, a year ago, Parker had called from the airport in San Diego and asked her to call the computerized phone number to move some money around in their accounts. “It’s strictly for idiots,” he’d said when she’d protested that she didn’t know how. “Just listen to the instructions and punch in the codes when you’re given the prompt.”
She looked at the May statement again, found the telebanking number at the top of the first sheet. She dialed the number, followed the prompts, and listened, her pencil poised.
Zero. Zero in checking. Zero in savings. Zero in their money market account.
She heard a snapping noise and looked down. She’d broken the pencil in half.
5
Mary Bliss barely made it to the downstairs powder room. After the first spasm of nausea subsided, she managed to kick the door shut with her foot so that her retching wouldn’t echo through the house. She had no idea how long she stayed like that, sprawled on the cold tile floor, hugging the commode, bleating and sobbing and cursing and praying.
Finally, she got to her feet, scrubbed her face with cold water, and rinsed out her mouth with a tiny sample bottle of mouthwash she found in the cupboard under the sink.
The woman in the mirror stared back at her with red-rimmed eyes and skin gone pale under the summer tan.
“Christ,” she moaned.
After a while, she forced herself to go back to the den. Parker had made no attempt to hide what he’d done. She found the stack of bills tossed in the top drawer of the desk, the dunning notices paper-clipped to the front of each envelope. Atlanta Gas Light. Georgia Power. Southern Bell. Cablevision. Fulton County Tax Assessor’s Office. Piedmont Savings and Loan. Visa, American Express, Talbot’s, Land’s End.
When she’d opened all the envelopes, faced all the facts, the desktop was littered with the pieces of paper that traced their lives for the last four months. The special dinners at Babette’s Café and Bones. Erin’s prom dress, $240 from Nordstrom’s. Four steel-belted radial tires for the minivan. Two black canvas Voyager suitcases from Land’s End, and six cotton pique sports shirts, for a total of $377.86.
But there were no other clues. No plane tickets or hotel reservations or rental cars. Nothing to explain Parker’s treachery, his decision to steer their little family ship smack into the shoals of humiliation and despair.
Mary Bliss reached across the mound of paper and picked up the framed photo by the telephone. It was an old black-and-white snapshot. Parker, his mama and daddy (bless his heart, Grampa Mac had his hands full with Eula), and Mary Bliss, holding baby Erin, standing in front of the cottage at the Cloister. The photo was taken right before Grampa Mac got sick. He’d taken them all to the Cloister for Easter that year. There was a palm tree in the background, and they were all tanned, smiling, looking, Mary Bliss always thought, a little like a southern version of the Kennedys. In the photo, Mary Bliss had Erin tilted toward the camera; Parker’s hand rested lightly on the nape of Mary Bliss’s bare neck, while Mary Bliss looked up at Parker in something like adoration, and one strap of her sundress had fallen off her shoulder. Grampa Mac was smiling down at the baby, and Eula, she stared straight ahead at the photographer, lips bared in the closest thing she could get to a grin.
It was the last picture they had of Grampa Mac. The leukemia had been deadly but quick. Bless his heart. Al McGowan didn’t have a mean bone in his body. What would he say about his only son leaving her in a mess like this?
She took the photo and whapped it hard against the edge of the desktop. The glass splintered into a bazillion pieces. With the edge of her hand she swept them over the edge of the desk and into the trash can.
Parker’s slot in the garage was empty, nothing but a small grease stain where the Lexus should have been. She leaned against the garage doorway and closed her eyes, smelling the garage smells—gasoline and weed killer and fertilizer. Where had he gone? Had he simply driven off, leaving them behind like a pile of old newspapers?
“You’re a good woman,” Parker had written. Good for what? Leaving?
The cicadas droned on and on. Out on the front porch, Mary Bliss tucked her legs under her and used the weight of her body to rock the old wicker chair in time to the rhythm of the whirring insects.
It was only slightly summer, technically, but the heat on the porch was already a damp blanketing presence. Her gown stuck to her back and legs, and her hair was soaked with sweat. Soon the county would start the water restrictions. Her lawn, her perennials and ferns, were already wilting in anticipation. And her tomatoes, the Early Girls, could not stand a drought right now. She got up, walked around to the side of the house, and turned on the sprinklers.
Then she rocked and listened to the soft swish of the water hitting the parched grass. A mosquito flitted around her head, and a moth danced around the porch light. Gradually, the navy velvet sky lightened, then washed into purple, then peach. The streetlights switched off, and slowly she saw porch lights flicker on at the house across the street. Fifteen minutes later, the house next door was lit up too. Discreet little FOR SALE signs had sprouted on the lawns at the Gasparinis and the Weidmans, like the first toad
stools of summer.
Fair Oaks taxes were sky-high, and everybody sent their kids to private schools. A divorce usually meant a reshuffling of finances. Mary Bliss still couldn’t believe Katharine intended to sell her house. It was the biggest and oldest in the neighborhood, but Katharine said it was a mausoleum, and she intended to buy one of the new condos being built at the back of the old Connelly estate.
Directly across the street, even the pearly morning light was not kind to the Bowdens’ house. It looked more than a little tatty. The lawn needed mowing, weeds were as high as the azaleas in the pine island, and four or five days’ worth of newspapers were piled in a heap by the front door. Randy Bowden’s little green Saab backed slowly down the driveway and out onto the street. Mary Bliss scrunched down in the rocker so that Randy wouldn’t catch sight of her. She felt sorry for him, that was for sure. Did he know what his wife was up to in that Winn-Dixie parking lot last night?
It wasn’t until the Saab was out of sight that she remembered to feel sorry for herself. Parker was gone, and from the look of things, so was all their money.
The morning quiet was split by the throb of a bad muffler on a rusted white Cadillac that came rattling slowly down the street. She knew without even looking that this was not a vehicle owned by a Fair Oaks resident. Sure enough, when the car rolled past, she saw a dark, sinewy arm extended from the driver’s window, and she saw the rolled-up newspaper go sailing onto the Bowdens’ front yard, plonking onto the sidewalk near the pine island, not far from the other, yellowing newspapers.
The arm extended again, and the newspaper sailed over the top of the Cadillac, landing neatly at her own curb.
At least Parker had cut their grass before leaving. He’d been meticulous about their lawn, lavishing it with iron supplements and fertilizer, aerating twice a year, spring and fall, trimming and weeding until it was the deepest green on the block.
The McGowans had won “Yard of the Month” so many times from the Fair Oaks Garden Club, it had gotten embarrassing.
Now, with Parker gone, how long would it be before the neighbors were tsk-tsking under their breath about her weeds, her scraggly azaleas, and her yellowing stack of newspapers? When a yard in Fair Oaks went to hell, it was the first sign, she thought, that a marriage was on the rocks.
“Welcome to Split City,” she told herself.
6
“You’re late,” Katharine said, glancing at the thin platinum watch on her deeply tanned wrist.
It was past ten. During the summer, when school was out, they had a Coke date every morning, alternating houses.
She frowned as she assessed Mary Bliss’s appearance. “You look like shit on a shingle,” she said, holding the back door open to let Mary Bliss enter. “And I’m the one with the hangover.”
Mary Bliss pinched her lips together to hold back another wave of nausea. She dropped down into one of the high-backed chairs in Katharine’s breakfast room. “I didn’t sleep very well last night. I almost didn’t come over this morning.” She blinked rapidly in the strong sunlight that poured in through the wall of windows overlooking the Weidmans’ rose garden.
Katharine poured two Diet Cokes into cut-glass highball tumblers, then added a slice of lime to each. She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a tray of Sara Lee cheese Danish, which she’d already sliced up and arranged on one of her mother’s Wedgwood platters, with a garnish of strawberries and fresh mint leaves.
Mary Bliss managed a wan smile at the snack. “You’ve got style, Katharine. That’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you. You manage to make Sara Lee look like something out of Gourmet magazine.”
“I always thought you thought I was kind of trashy,” Katharine said, popping a strawberry into her mouth.
“Trashy-talking,” Mary Bliss said. “But you do everything with such elegance, I forgive you.”
She took a sip of the Diet Coke. It felt good on her dry throat. Another sip.
“Ask me why I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Was it Parker’s night for a double-header?” Katharine wagged her eyebrows, trying to look like Groucho Marx. She came off more like Bette Midler doing Groucho Marx.
Mary Bliss’s face crumpled. Her upper lip started to tremble, then her chin, then her hand shook so badly that she spilled Diet Coke all over the tile-topped table.
“What? What is it?” Katharine asked, taking the glass from her friend’s hand. “Darlin’, tell Kate. What’s the matter? Do you want another Coke? They had twelve-packs at the Citgo for a dollar ninety-nine.”
Mary Bliss shook her head violently, and the tears came again. She was sobbing and trying to cover her face with her hands, and she’d smeared her lipstick badly, making her look like a three-year-old who’d gotten into her mommy’s makeup.
Katharine was startled. Except for the lipstick, Mary Bliss wasn’t wearing any makeup, which was totally un-M.B.-like. She never, ever left home without base smoothed over her face and a light coating of mascara and concealer.
“Tell me,” Katharine said, grabbing her friend by the wrist. “Please, hon, you’re scaring me. Is it Erin? Is she all right?”
“It’s Parker. He’s left me. Note in the closet. And there’s no money.”
Katharine got up from the table and went to the kitchen cabinet. She brought out a handful of pill bottles, squinting at the label on each until she found the one she wanted. She opened it, shook a small blue tablet into the palm of her hand. She opened another bottle and took out a red-and-blue capsule.
“Take these,” she said, shoving the pills into Mary Bliss’s hand.
“Drugs?” Mary Bliss was appalled.
“Shut up and swallow,” Katharine said. She picked up her own Diet Coke and held it to Mary Bliss’s lips. “Drink it down, now.”
Mary Bliss did as she was told. She squeezed her eyes shut. As the pills slid down the back of her throat, she had a vision. The beginning of a downward spiral. She could see it now, drugs and Diet Coke. Valley of the Dolls, in Fair Oaks, Georgia.
Still, she needed some help in coping this morning. This once wouldn’t make her an addict, would it?
She swallowed, then burped a little from the carbonation.
“What was that?” she asked, reaching for a napkin to mop her face. “Halcion? Ativan?”
“Midol,” Katharine said. “With a diuretic chaser. Don’t hate me for telling you this, but I am your best friend. And I think you’re retaining water, Mary Bliss. Now. What’s this shit about Parker?”
7
Katharine’s kitchen was trashed. Empty Diet Coke cans littered the stylish black-and-white tiled floor. The Sara Lee had lasted only five minutes into Mary Bliss’s detailed accounting of her disastrous financial situation. Katharine had pulled out a box of Gino’s frozen mini-pizzas, a bag of ranch-style Doritos, and a jar of peach salsa. The salsa made her thirsty, so Katharine whipped up a batch of banana daquiris in the blender. She ate and drank while Mary Bliss talked. The awfuller the story got, the hungrier and thirstier Katharine got.
Once the diuretics kicked in, Mary Bliss talked and cried and peed and kept drinking all of Katharine’s expensive bottled water, but she wouldn’t eat a thing.
By noon, they were both nauseous and exhausted.
After a while, they moved into the den, where they lolled on the matching sofas facing Charlie Weidman’s big-screen TV, which was tuned to Oprah, but with the sound turned down.
“You’re really broke?” Katharine asked again. “And you’re sure he’s really gone?”
Mary Bliss nodded. “That’s why I was so late. I called the branch manager at the bank to have them double-check the computers. I called the mortgage company too, and the ‘customer courtesy’ line kept me on hold for forty-five minutes. When the girl finally got on the line it took her about a minute to tell me that Parker hasn’t paid the house note since February. Then I called Libby. You know, Parker’s assistant. She was as shocked as I was.”
Fo
r the first time that morning, Mary Bliss cracked an honest-to-God smile.
“At least I know he didn’t run off with Libby. I was always sort of secretly jealous of her, if you want to know the truth. Parker used to talk about what a terrific-looking neck she had. Like Audrey Hep-burn’s. And she wore the cutest clothes. You know, Ann Taylor, that kind of thing.
“Anyway, the office phone had been disconnected. I called her at home. Libby was as hysterical as I was. When she got in to the office this morning, the building manager was having the janitor haul their files and stuff into storage. They wouldn’t let her in. Said Parker was three months in arrears. And Libby’s paycheck bounced. Her bank said Parker’s business account was closed on Friday.”
“What about your stocks and bonds and stuff?” Katharine asked.
“Not good,” Mary Bliss said. “I called our stockbroker. He was surprised to hear from me. Parker told him I had malignant bone cancer and that’s why he was liquidating our accounts. Because the insurance company wouldn’t pay for the bone marrow transplant, because it’s considered experimental.”
“The son of a bitch,” Katharine shouted. “Parker Son-of-a-Bitchin’ McGowan. No offense, M. B., but I never would have thought he had the balls for something like this. I mean, to give you bone marrow cancer. Jeez. That is cold.”
“I know,” Mary Bliss said, sniffing. “This from a man whose idea of a walk on the wild side was ordering chocolate jimmies on his fat-free frozen yogurt.”
Katharine drummed her long nails on the top of the cocktail table. Mary Bliss gave her a look, and Katharine put her hands in her lap.
“He’s cleaned out checking and savings, sold your stocks, and the house could go into foreclosure at any time. Credit cards?”
“Maxed out.”
“Your car?”
Little Bitty Lies Page 3