We Were Killers Once

by Becky Masterman

  That’s what she did, stand there watching him and thinking. It was a game of chicken they played in the night. But Beaufort won the game.

  Gloria, defeated, spoke first. “What are you doing?”

  “Clearly there are trust issues here, and I don’t think it’s good for me to stick around,” he said. Trust issues. He was picking up more and more of the lingo of this new world.

  She didn’t beg him to stay so he pushed a little more, but kept his voice calm. “First you’re nosing around in my computer. Now this?”

  That did it. Rather than point out it was technically her hardware even if they were his searches, she all but fell to the floor and hugged his ankles. “Jerry, please don’t go.” It went rapidly to crying after that.

  “Have I ever struck you?” he asked, and his tone was aggrieved. “Have I ever so much as laid a finger on you in anger?”

  “No! You’ve been great!” she protested.

  “Then don’t embarrass yourself. You’ll feel lousy about it tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, I had no business looking in your wallet. I’m sorry.”

  “Honey, nothing has happened. I moved in for a while and now I’m moving out. I didn’t take anything from you that you didn’t want to give, am I right?”

  Gloria nodded, still sobbing and not bothering to wipe away the tears.

  Beaufort was glad to not move out. Right now he didn’t think she would do anything. What could she do? And on what grounds? So far he hadn’t committed any crimes. It wasn’t a crime to be an emotional freeloader and he had been careful not to step over any lines, never stole anything from her. Never even bruised her, though he had come to think that wouldn’t be a deal breaker for her. She was pretty much his.

  She followed him to the door, where he stepped into the shoes he always left in the front hall at her request. He had always hated doing that but he never objected. She tried to go into his arms, to let him feel her nakedness under the nylon material that covered it. Beaufort put down his suitcase, held her to him, and said, almost tenderly, “I wouldn’t tell anyone else about this. Not even your life coach. You wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

  She would know what he meant. She wouldn’t want anyone else to know her shame. Her desperation. Fags, junkies, lonely women. They were all the same, willing to do anything for a little love.

  For now he decided to stay.

  Thirty–eight

  When the framer was finished with it, and Carlo presented it to me with pride and a kiss, I would have hung the sketch of Dick Hickock in a place of prominence in the living room, but I realized there are lines you shouldn’t cross. So I put it on the wall next to my desk and admired it there. I imagined Smith doing it from memory while sitting in his cell on death row. The eyes were almost laughing, and the mouth wasn’t grim, a man in easier times. When were you? I thought to the picture. Was this before or after you killed the Walkers? Because you did kill the Walkers, didn’t you, Richard Eugene Hickock?

  The sketch would have been a magnificent gift by itself, but that letter had turned the sketch into what felt like a treasure map. The thought that Carlo and I were likely the only ones, besides Victor Santangelo, who had evidence of a new confession stirred up as nothing ever had my old excitement in the Walker case.

  I had spoken to Carlo about my plan to visit Meadows, see what I could find out about the mysterious confession, maybe go up to St. Dominic’s and talk to Abbot Franklin about whether Victor Santangelo had left any effects. No matter how confidential a confession was I couldn’t see him throwing out a historical document. At the same time I could do a little checkup on Jeremiah Beaufort in old records of the sheriff’s department.

  Carlo was being very gentle with me, like I might be troubled about what he’d told me about his relationship with Jane. He kept giving me these looks, but we didn’t speak of her, and how she had become so much more than just a ghostly presence with culinary skills. No, I had my feelings well in hand. I didn’t even want to look at their wedding bands to see if there was something engraved inside. I was big-girling all over the place.

  You want me to confess? Okay, God’s honest truth. Of course, yes, I was going to Sarasota to see what I could dig up on Jeremiah Beaufort. And while I was there I’d talk to Meadows, too, about him and his investigations into Hickock’s and Smith’s DNA. But I also needed to get away for a bit, to wrangle my feelings for Carlo.

  I need to be perfectly clear here, and forgive me if I’m repeating myself but that’s post-menopause for you. It wasn’t Carlo leaving the priesthood that stuck in my craw. It wasn’t even about him boffing Jane; I wouldn’t care if he’d done it in one of the church’s pews. I’m not a self-righteous prude. This was sheer jealousy over another woman, didn’t matter whether she was living or dead. Why oh why couldn’t it have ended in divorce rather than death. I would have felt better. Jealousy, simple but hardly pure.

  I thought about this. Okay, I didn’t just think, I obsessed about it, and wished there was someone I could talk to about girl stuff. A female friend? I had one once but that hadn’t worked out so well.

  Sigmund? He wasn’t so good at relationships himself. Plus I knew him well enough that I knew what he would say if I told him I was feeling like a second-string wife. What he would tell me:

  Try not to think about it.

  The stinking fact that was smacking me in the face like a rotting mackerel was that if I couldn’t talk to Carlo about something, I was pretty much alone.

  But then I realized I had been alone for most of my life. I didn’t need anybody.

  * * *

  Instead, I focused on things that couldn’t threaten the equilibrium of my marriage. “I want to draw out Beaufort, and I’m trying to decide if it’s better to tip my hand and let him know I’m going to be in that area ‘asking some questions,’ or whether it’s wiser to go first, see what I find out, and then surprise him,” I said.

  “That’s your expertise,” Carlo said. He seemed to have lost interest.

  It was the afternoon before my trip to Sarasota, and I had an early flight the next morning. I made a decent dinner, chili, something I could count on because I’d made it before. But something drove me to do things I hadn’t tried since the earlier days of our marriage. I opened one of Jane’s cookbooks that were usually out of sight in one of the kitchen cupboards, and rather than choose something at random, I paged through until I found a page with a spot on it. Something she had made for Carlo, I was sure of it. Strawberries in a meringue cloud.

  Was I doing this to, in a way, thumb my nose at Jane’s ghost by summoning her? Or did part of me want to watch how Carlo responded, what other memories the dessert would reveal?

  While a small voice in my head kept telling me to have some self-respect, I set about making the meringue clouds. My goodness, they really did look like little clouds. I put the pan in the oven and closed the door.

  Felt satisfied.

  Remembered that I had neglected to add sugar. That couldn’t be good.

  I took the pan out of the oven, scraped all the meringue into a bowl, added the sugar, and remixed it. I was feeling less satisfied as I spooned the white crap onto the cookie sheet again, and put it back in the oven.

  When they came out, they didn’t look bad at all.

  The nights were chilly now even at our elevation, and Carlo made a fire in the pit on the back porch. We sat there wearing sweaters, getting extra warmth from the hot chili. We didn’t talk much. We had already talked out all the logic behind me going to Florida, how Hickock’s letter had me interested once again in the Walker case and how I could kill at least three birds with one stone, showing the letter to Meadows to see if he had any leads on where the confession might be and what it might have to do with the Walker case, finding more about Jeremiah Beaufort’s activity in Florida, and visiting Abbot Franklin. No, around 5:30 P.M. we were just a couple of old farts eating chili out of cracked ceramic bowls. No candles
, no white tablecloth, no fancy dress. No romance. Who needs it?

  Denial is highly underrated.

  When we had finished the chili I took in the bowls, told Carlo to stay put because I had a surprise, and pushed two of the clouds onto their own dessert plates. I was glad the meringue didn’t break apart when I pushed them. That should have been my first warning.

  “Want coffee?” I yelled through the open back door.

  “No thanks,” he yelled back.

  Romance, ha. Better this way.

  I took the plates out to the table and set his down with a flourish. I admit that I watched his face to see if I could tell whether he thought of Jane. Why did I do any of that? Why would I do that to myself?

  He didn’t look nostalgic for times and loves past, if there is a look for that. After commenting that it looked really good, he picked up the dessert fork and applied it to the meringue.

  The meringue didn’t budge. I thought back about how I had mixed the stuff twice, once without sugar and then after I had added some. Does that do something bad?

  It’s rare when dessert calls for an executive decision. Carlo stood, picked up my plate and his, and headed inside the house. When I walked into the kitchen the garbage disposal was running, but it sounded like it was losing the race. I flicked off the switch and carefully extracted the meringue from the disposal. Carlo held open the lid of the garbage bin where he had thrown the other.

  “Is that a hint I should give up cooking?”

  “No, I’m trying to show you different people are gifted at different things. And that you should stop trying to bake things.”

  My mouth going, as usual, to a point from which there would be no return, I asked, “Well, then, what am I good for?”

  Carlo stood there, processing, possibly wondering how we got from a bad dessert to an existential dilemma.

  “See, there’s an example,” I said. “I impulsively open my mouth and things spill out, but you, you think it all through before answering the question ‘how are you.’ For me most of life is like, like the garbage disposal switch. On. Off. Alive. Dead. Good. Bad. I like action movies and you like art films.”

  “I actually enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy.”

  “You’re a man of deep faith and I’m an atheist.”

  “I acknowledge if there is a God, She’s got a lot of explaining to do.”

  “You’re a Democrat and I’m a Republican.”

  Now he paused. And leaned back against the kitchen counter. He said, “You’re a Republican?”

  “Aargh!” I said.

  “Seriously. Who did you vote for in the midterms?”

  I slammed the top of the garbage bin down on the travesty that had been the meringue shells. “How the fuck did we end up together? And why do I feel like you’re committing adultery?” I asked, feeling grief in my voice, and mentally kicking myself for talking like every woman in every romantic comedy I’d ever endured.

  Carlo looked at me longer than anyone normally does in a conversation, before saying, “Adultery?”

  “You said you didn’t want to be disloyal to Jane. Is that how I make you feel?”

  Again he paused longer than normal people do, at least the ones in my family when there’s an argument in process. This was possibly why Carlo and I never argued—it took too long and we’d both get bored. Then he frowned, and stared, and processed some more, and finally said, “I think we may have a misperception,” as if he were disagreeing with an academic colleague over some complex point. But then he bent down and swept me into his arms, so unexpectedly I couldn’t think about resisting.

  “Your back,” I warned, relishing the thought of him hurting himself.

  “You’re not that heavy,” he said.

  “I’m small, but I’m dense,” I said.

  With that less than erotic exchange, he carried me all the way into the bedroom and put me down on the bed as if I was breakable.

  “Just like a man,” I said, nursing my resentment with full-on gender bias while curious about what would come next. “You think sex solves everything.”

  “No, I don’t,” he answered. “I promise you, this isn’t about sex.”

  Sentimentality is out of fashion, so instead of letting myself feel, I reached playfully for him. If that’s how he wanted to go, who was I to turn down an orgasm?

  “Right. So tell me, what am I gifted at?” I asked. “This?”

  He drew a sharp breath. “This and that.” He sighed.

  “Oh. That.”

  Then he said, in a tone of voice that said we were having any old conversation, almost as if he was talking quietly and solemnly to himself, “Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, / Until I labor, I in labor lie.”

  While he whispered those lines he was gently unbuttoning my blouse. He had never spoken to me in poetry before. Was it part of his nature that he thought I wouldn’t have understood? That I would laugh, or wasn’t intellectual enough? How would Jane have responded? I struggled to keep Jane out of the bed.

  “That’s hot,” I said, still guarding myself with detachment.

  He didn’t answer immediately, his mind on other things. More curious than aroused, I helped with a slight rise of my hips so he was able to pull off my jeans, and then I watched him next to the bed, doing the same, slipping off his jeans, leaving his shirt on but unbuttoning it the way he had unbuttoned mine.

  “Want more?”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re going to have to tell me you want more.”

  “More, please,” I said, but still playfully.

  He lay down beside me, his fingers roaming as he whispered, “License my roving hands, and let them go, before …

  behind …

  between …

  above …

  below.”

  This time I was the one to catch my breath. I lifted my chin and closed my eyes. I lost the contact of his hands. Then I sensed more than felt him over me, but while I anticipated what would come next, he stayed still.

  “Brigid,” he said. “Open your eyes.”

  I did, and found his face close to mine, his own eyes staring into me as he started to move. “No, keep them open,” he said in response to my natural reaction. “Keep them on mine.”

  “It’s hard.” I smiled. “To keep my eyes open.”

  Instead of kissing me he rubbed my nose gently with his own.

  “Open your eyes, my love,” he said softly.

  And when I did, he repeated, “Keep them on mine.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, my only Brigid, this is what it’s about. I want to assure you. I want you to know for once and for all, that when I’m making love to you, I think of no one but you.” His eyes, wide open in mine, were deep, and dark brown, and true.

  “And at every other time,” he said, “I see no one but you.”

  I trusted him, because what else can you do? “Okay,” I said. “Now can it be about sex?”

  “Okay.”

  Then the conversation ended.

  * * *

  His head resting on my belly. My heart feeling safer than it had felt in a while.

  “Who were you quoting before?”

  “John Donne. A sixteenth-century rogue turned Anglican priest.”

  I said, “I never knew poetry that old could be that sexy.”

  “Yes, unfortunately we’re still living with the fallout from the Victorian era. But enough of the small talk. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and not hurt you.”

  “I admit, you could have lived a long and successful life without telling me all that.”

  “I know you won’t believe this, but you’re nothing like her, and that’s a good thing.”

  I noted that at this point he wouldn’t even risk saying her name. “Why is it good?”

  “Without being disloyal to her memory, I think I can say that when you’re in a relationship for a long time, you understand why bubbles are made to burst.”


  “Please. You don’t have to try—”

  “Too bad you don’t like sci-fi much,” he continued. “There’s an old Star Trek episode where Mr. Spock says, ‘You will find that having is not altogether so good a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.’”

  His struggling to make it better, and with a Star Trek quote no less, was only making me incredibly sad. That to some extent, in order to love me, he needed not to love Jane. I managed to say, “So much for grand passions.”

  “Yes. Are you sure you’ll be safe?” he asked, rapidly switching gears so as not to restart the argument.

  “I’m sure. Just promise me you won’t let that man, whatever his name is, inside the house.”

  Carlo promised.

  “Now tell me,” I said. “What is my gift?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said I couldn’t bake, but that I had my own gift. What am I gifted at?” Grabbing hold of my old jokey self, I reached out and put a finger on his lips. “And before you speak, you better come up with something better than I’ve got a great ass.”

  Carlo stayed quiet, and I thought I might have maneuvered him into a corner, but it was only that philosopher habit of his. He was thinking about the words to express his thought as seriously as if the question had been asked at a conference with four hundred people in the audience. “Dr. DiForenza, does your wife’s primary quality lie in her ability to bring you to orgasm?”

  He finally rolled over to his left side so our eyes met once more. I tried to match his gaze, but I was still the first one to look away. He said, “Sex is terrific, but you. You take all the pretentiousness and posing of the world, even mine, and smack it down with a single look. You’re an original, Brigid Quinn DiForenza. You’re such an original that I confess I’ve sometimes feared that you would grow bored with this tired philosophy professor and leave me for someone who could offer you more … danger. And, forgive the cliché, I hope to God I die first, no matter from what disgusting and painful disease, so I never have to know a life without you in it.”