The Other Widow

by Susan Crawford

  Lucas treads over to a small table at the edge of the only real room. The light is soft. The space is warm. Pillows with yarn stitching lie along a love seat. One plump chair sits in the corner. A woven round rug, orange and gold and red, pulls the room together in amber light from a lamp Maggie picked up at an art show the summer she moved in. A truck screeches somewhere down the block, and she brings coffee in her favorite cups—another find, another summer—cuts a piece of cobbler for the two of them, two forks, one plate, dabs whipped cream along the top. She sits beside him on the braided rug.

  “Great,” he says. “Beautiful.” But he’s looking at her. He kisses her.

  She dips a blueberry in whipped cream and presses it between his lips.

  “Like that old song,” he says. “Suzanne by the river . . .”

  “It was oranges,” she says “ ‘She feeds you tea and oranges.’ ”

  He kisses her again, sets the plate down on a coffee table, a board on bricks.

  “I have a skylight,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “There. Over the bed.”

  “Can you see the stars?”

  “On a clear night.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  XXXVIII

  KAREN

  Karen’s cell phone beeps in her purse on the dining room table. A new message from Tomas. Since they spent the afternoon together, he’s texted her nine times. She’d texted back two short, clipped answers, distancing herself, even though she knows what happened was her doing. He’d hardly had to drag her to his place. She feels her face go red. Flutters her fingers through her hair, folds them together as if to keep them from calling him back.

  She’ll read his message later. Maybe she’ll even— No. She shakes her head, drops the cell back in her bag. She can’t. Not now, with her feelings in such a muddle. She’ll give it a few weeks and reconsider. Even if she isn’t in love with him right now, that could always change. She’ll read his text later.

  She finishes her coffee and calls Home Runs, asks for Francine. She’ll take her out before the woman leaves for—where was it Edward said she planned to go? Paris, was it?— A farewell lunch, she tells Francine, when the silly temp manages to connect her to the right office. “Twelve thirty, then,” she says. “Can’t wait.”

  Three hours later, Karen sits at a small table at Chips on Charles. Francine looks a lot older than she did the two or three times Karen saw her in the past. “How long has it been, Francine?” she says, when the waiter has taken their orders and scampered off toward the kitchen, pad in hand.

  “Oh Lord.” Francine fiddles with her silverware, sticks her napkin on her lap. “Years. Wasn’t it shortly after the company opened? I’m usually out of town during the Christmas holidays, so I always missed the office parties. Haven’t been to one for years.”

  “I guess it has been ages,” Karen says, and for a moment she’s amazed at the passing of time. “It seems like just a few years ago—a couple of years ago and now Joe’s whole lifetime has finished. It doesn’t seem—”

  Francine is not a hands-on kind of person. She isn’t motherly. She’s reserved and Bostonian. She looks away. Uncomfortable. “Yes,” she says. “Such a shame. Are you all right? Financially, I mean. I hate to be crass. None of my business at all, of course. It’s just that when my own husband died several years ago, and we hadn’t really expected—weren’t prepared—and me with a career in finance. ‘Physician heal thyself,’ eh? Anyway, Mort’s passing left me nearly penniless. Our savings were gone, our bank account—in tatters.”

  “Yes. Well, I’m all right for the moment,” Karen says. “But, speaking of finances, I am a little confused about the ones I found on Joe’s laptop. They don’t seem to match up with what Edward’s—”

  “Afraid I can’t help you there,” Francine says. “On the other hand, Dorrie might be able to shed some light.”

  “Dorrie?”

  “Yes.” Francine butters a biscuit and takes a leisurely bite. “She’s got a head for numbers, that one. She remembers everything. Like a flipping savant. Like Dustin Hoffman in that movie. Remember? Rain Man? When he rattled off all those— Anyway, Joe had her training for my job. To save hers, I suppose.”

  Karen spears an olive with her fork and chews. Great. Fucking great. Lover, protector. What the hell else?

  Francine wipes her mouth, reaches in her purse for a small lipstick and mirror set, silver, with birds etched into the case. “I’m sure this isn’t helpful in any way, but there was something a bit odd, I thought.”

  “Such a pretty mirror set. So what is that, Francine? What was odd?”

  “It is pretty, isn’t it? A gift from my daughter last year on Mother’s Day.” Francine applies her lipstick and presses her lips together to blot them, making a small popping sound in the quiet room. “A man came in—it’s been weeks ago now. Months. Shortly before your husband’s accident. Same week, as I recall, just before he—Joe—went out of town. Or. No. He was already out of town. That’s right. The man was frantic to speak to him. ‘He isn’t here,’ I told him. ‘Won’t be back until the end of the week, if then. Monday would be better, really.’ He said it was pressing—that he was a city inspector and he—Lansing, I believe he said. Edwin Lansing? Earl?—Everett Lansing. It was Everett Lansing. I’m sure of it. Most unpleasant.”

  “Did he say why he had to talk to Joe? What was so urgent?”

  Francine shakes her head. “No. He just threw up his hands and stomped back out. Frightening man. Public official at that. What has this city come to?”

  Francine declines dessert, putting up her hands as if she’s stopping an onslaught of angry, buzzing bees—and Karen gives her a small hug on the sidewalk. “Best of luck to you, Francine,” she says. “Joe thought the world of you,” she adds, although, really, he didn’t at all. She’s much more Edward’s employee than mine, he used to say. Acts like I’m intruding when I ask her a simple question. But the woman has more than paid her dues, put in her time. She certainly deserves this little send-off lunch.

  It seems to Karen as if the world is conspiring against her. Even Francine was snooty in a civil sort of way, not at all forthcoming. And here’s a new voice mail from Brennan. Karen hits PLAY, listens as she walks back to the car park. “I’m at work,” Brennan says, “so I just have a second, but I’ve turned this whole business over to the Boston Police. I’m a little out of my league with this, way over my head, but you should be getting your check once they finish the investigation and you’re cleared. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something. Take care.” Karen hears the click of Brennan’s cell phone disconnecting.

  Good luck, Brennan. And good luck to the Boston PD, sorting through all the lies and cover-ups. “Yeah,” she says loudly. “Good luck figuring out about Joe and the fake spreadsheets and his other woman and his trying to save her job and maybe his, too, by sliding the little twit into Francine’s position. A head for numbers, that one, Francine had said. Like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Maybe it’s time to pay Dorrie a visit, Karen thinks. Maybe it’s way past time.

  And the city inspector, this Lansing. What the hell was that all about? What urgent business did he have with Joe? Was Edward right? Was Joe involved in some nefarious dealings with this man who bullied poor Francine? She ponders this, walking to her car in a nearby parking space—a lucky find, a spot just steps from Chips on Charles. She beeps the car door open and slides inside. There’s something under the wiper. Oh. God. Will this day never—a ticket? Has she parked illegally? They really need to make it clearer where customers can park and where they can’t. She’ll call City Hall. She’s had enough! Lansing and now this! She slides back out and grabs the paper from her windshield and stares at it. It’s not a ticket. It’s a note. Handwritten. Be strong, it says. You are not alone.

  She looks around, sticks the note in her purse, and screeches out of the parking space, locking all her doors. Just what she needs to hear, that she is not alone
. She laughs, a nervous titter. And then she laughs louder, harder; she laughs until tears stream down her cheeks. She’d give her left arm to be alone, to not feel watched, observed, and now this stupid note. Of course, it’s probably just a well-meaning zealot, roaming the streets of Boston with a pad of paper and a pen. You are not alone, as in God is with you? Really?

  At a traffic light she reaches in her bag and pulls out this little missive. She stares at it, the perfect script, the exaggerated slant. The flourish. Tomas!

  XXXIX

  DORRIE

  Dorrie wakes up thinking that she has to find Karen. Not necessarily to talk with or even actually approach, but just to—what?—she wonders, lying in bed, wrapped like a mummy in a pile of quilts. Samuel complains constantly about their gas bills, about therms and leaky windows and improper insulation. “Hemorrhaging money,” he says. “Just use more covers.” And so she does. The heat is somehow better up the hall in Lily’s room and the bathroom, but the bedroom she shares with Samuel is icy cold in winter, burning hot in summer. Is the vent even open? She keeps forgetting to check; meanwhile, she sleeps like an entombed queen.

  She doesn’t really want to talk with Karen, or even deal with her. Maybe it’s just nosiness. Dorrie yawns. Or maybe it’s her reluctance to let go of Joe. She’s handed Brennan all the information she’s managed to dig up. Now it’s up to Brennan and the cops to decide what, if anything, it means.

  Dorrie throws off the covers and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. There’s something just there at the edge, something she can’t quite see. She senses it, though, like a heavy fist poised above her head, the same dread she felt the morning of Jeananne’s hit-and-run—dread and fear, mixed with the tinny voice on her cell, the Why are you still here?, the texts from Joe’s burner phone, the clicking of high heels in the basement garage—a collage of shapes and sounds, of wisps and whispers, of swerving cars and words of caution—her mother’s, Brennan’s—a black glove flying out a windshield, landing on her husband’s workbench, and Jeananne bleeding in the snow. She stretches, lies back down, pulls the quilts over her head, and knocks the alarm button with her sheeted hand when it begins to ring.

  A pot bangs on the stovetop in the kitchen and Dorrie drags herself into the bathroom, fixes her hair and carefully applies her makeup, dabs concealer, heavy, in the hollows underneath her eyes. She hesitates for just a second before she gets dressed.

  “Mom!” Lily yells from somewhere near the kitchen, and Dorrie grabs a scarf on her way downstairs.

  “Wow.” She stares at her daughter. “You’re already dressed!” Like Dorrie, Lily is not a morning person. Peas in a pod, you two, Samuel always says. Used to say. Lately, Lily is pulling away, her life shifting toward boys, toward the guy behind the counter at the corner deli, and now the science nerd. Dorrie sighs.

  “I told you last night.” Lily gulps down her orange juice and sticks the empty glass on the kitchen table. “Remember? The early study class? The science test?”

  “Right. And Mia’s going to—”

  “Yeah. She’s—actually, I think she just pulled up.” Lily peeks out the kitchen door and holds up one finger for Mia. The soft whine of a song drifts from the car, and Dorrie wonders if Michael the science nerd will be in study class, his light hair slightly ruffled with sleep, unguarded and alluring at this early hour. She kisses her daughter, holds her just a second before she releases her to fly out to the driveway, to wave her small gloved hand as the door swings shut behind her.

  Dorrie watches as they pull out of the driveway. The sky is pink and gray. Samuel squints toward the Keurig, pats down a cowlick with the palm of his hand.

  “By the way,” Dorrie says. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you seen my black glove?”

  Samuel appears to be mesmerized by the swooshing of the Keurig. “Nope.”

  “You sure?”

  He shrugs. “Not that I remember,” he says, but he doesn’t turn around. “Why?”

  “Well,” she says, “I lost it. Why else?”

  “I don’t know. You sounded worried,” he says. “Like it was a big deal or something.” He waits for the Keurig to finish spitting coffee into his mug. “Why don’t you just buy another pair?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I really should.”

  It’s Wednesday, the one day of the week she actually knows where Karen will be, at least if she’s kept up her old routines and Dorrie thinks she probably has. “Karen’s such a creature of habit,” Joe used to say. “All her traditions, her holiday dinners, and her . . .” At that point, Dorrie had stopped listening and tuned him out, having absolutely no desire to know the ins and outs of Karen’s family traditions. She remembers this one, though, that Joe’s wife and her best friend always got together on Wednesdays, whether Karen was at work or not. It was always at the same place, midafternoon. Something to do with the Tarot. The King of something. No. The Queen. The Queen of Cups.

  Occasionally, Dorrie thinks about her impulsive drive down Karen’s street. Ridiculous. Crazy, really. But there was some reason she was there; something pulled her across town to Joe’s house. And it wasn’t only curiosity and closure, if she’s honest with herself. It was answers. She is impulsive, has always been. But not scattered as people think. There’s usually a reason she does the things she does, even if not even she knows what it is. There was the time she felt she had to drop everything and visit her grandmother the day before she died of a sudden unexpected heart attack or the time she felt compelled to leave the dinner table in the middle of dessert and walk around the house to the backyard, where she discovered Purrl, apparently abandoned, half frozen, her beautiful white fur matted with dirt. It was her mother, Dorrie always thought, who put these thoughts into her head, flicked her magic wand and disappeared.

  Karen was the last person she wanted to encounter while Joe was alive. Yet Karen, Dorrie knows on some level, has the answers she needs to pull the puzzle pieces together—possibly even to save her life. And all this time, all these scattered thoughts and trips to nowhere, all these scanned bills and dredged-up e-mail addresses, spying on the company, on Edward, even on Joe, and now, his widow. It has all been to find answers, to keep her small, imperfect life intact.

  The drive to Waltham was a bit extreme, but eating at the same restaurant, sitting in the same public space, just happening to be there at the same time as her dead boss’s wife—that wouldn’t really be so strange. Coincidence, at the very most, if Karen were to see her, if she even noticed Dorrie there at the back of the room with her hat on, dark glasses masking half her face. “Oh,” she could say on the off chance that should happen. “Karen! Lovely to see you! I’ve been meaning to call to ask how you are, to see if there’s anything at all I can do to—” To what, exactly? No she’d leave that part out, stop at meaning to call. And then she’d simply leave with a brief but empathetic hug, a sad little wave, make her way down the cramped aisle. Unless there’s more. Unless Karen looks at her and says something that makes sense of all this crazy stuff that started on the night Joe died. Or, really, months before. She’ll know, Dorrie tells herself. When she sees Karen, she will know.

  She takes the train to work. She sits at her desk, does the usual obligatory things, but she feels restless, as if she’s at the very edge of something. Again, she thinks about Karen. It’s probably been a year since Joe mentioned his wife coming in to Boston on Wednesdays. For all Dorrie knows, she’s switched to another day. There are six others, any one of which Karen might find more convenient than Wednesday, even if she does hate change.

  Dorrie glances at her watch. One thirty. She puts on her coat. “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she calls to anyone who might be there to care or even notice that she isn’t at her desk. “I have a couple of errands to run.” She has the vague impression of an answer floating up the hall from Francine’s office, but she isn’t sure.

  Nor is she sure she can even find the tea shop. She’s only
seen it driving through downtown with Samuel. She’d glanced up once, just as they passed the medieval-looking sign. She knows it’s on Tremont in the middle of the block, but which block? She walks quickly to the train. The day is freezing. Clear, but freezing. In time the cold will give way to spring, and snow will fold itself into the fecund ground. Soon the flowers will nudge their way outside the cold earth. Dorrie pulls her coat more tightly around her. She isn’t ready yet for spring.

  She finds the tea shop with the painting of a Tarot card over the door. The Queen of Cups is a bustling, cheery place with yellow walls and framed oil paintings of éclairs and pink-frosted doughnuts. Dorrie orders coffee at the bar in front, two cinnamon buns—one for now, one to take home for Lily. She makes her way to the very back of the tea shop, where she sets her meager lunch down on a small wood table and slides into a bench beside it—a place for one, a small, dark nook on the way to the ladies’ room, where she is basically invisible.

  She stares at her nails, where the polish has chipped off, where the edges are ragged and uneven. She stares at her hands and thinks of Joe. And then, without meaning to, she thinks of Karen. Karen, the wife, who doubtless misses him even more than Dorrie does. Differently—in a less desperate, but a far more basic way. She sips her coffee. Again, she feels a sense of dread. A sense there’s someone . . . She glances here and there around the small space of the room, the almost claustrophobic heat, the crowded clumps of chairs and tables. She feels trapped. Hunted. Threatened—but she can’t pinpoint the source. Goose bumps stand out on her arms. Her stomach rolls. Her heart pounds. Voices chatter. Indistinct. A noisy hum. And then the separate, clearer voice. Her mother’s voice pressed up against her ear. Be careful, Dorrie!

  The front door opens. Karen comes in with a woman who must be the old friend, and Dorrie is suddenly ashamed to be here, for hiding underneath her hat, the large dark glasses. She feels silly, like a spy, like a voyeur. She wants to get up and leave, but she doesn’t. She can’t. She feels again that she is somehow under scrutiny—the watcher being watched. The sense of dread is suffocating now, her mother’s voice inside her ear, insistent, urgent, like the night she tugged her daughter from the car. Like the night that Joe died. Leave!