Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  “Witnesses who last saw Victor Winslow alive testified that the glamorous young couple left a Democratic Party function together, with Mrs. Winslow at the wheel of a late-model Cadillac. Though her blood alcohol level tested within legal limits, she reportedly drove erratically and with excessive speed . . .”

  Courtney Procter summarized the known details of the accident while the process servers consulted each other over the hood of the car. A producer seemed to be mapping out the most advantageous shot of the front door.

  “. . . grieving parents have initiated a civil suit against Sandra Winslow,” Procter stated, “charging her in the wrongful death of their son . . .”

  The camera panned and tightened its focus on the constables crossing to the front of the house. In moments they would force their notification on Sandra.

  Mike flashed on an image of his kids, sitting at her kitchen table and drinking spiced cider. Then he remembered the day he’d received the divorce summons and complaint. He’d just stepped out of the shower and stood on the doorstep wearing nothing but a towel, dripping water on the document and staring at it as though it were a package delivered in error. The shame and failure of that moment lived like a rock inside him, but at least he’d been the only witness to it.

  A predatory sparkle flashed in Procter’s eyes. One of the men pounded at the door.

  It all happened in a matter of seconds. Mike held the nozzle in one hand as he flipped on the compressor with his foot. The machine roared to life and the hose bucked and stiffened. The wild stream struck the satellite dish on the van, knocking it to the ground. A fountain of sparks erupted, and the startled constables ducked low, yelling in confusion. He killed the compressor with a touch of his foot, just as the front door opened a crack. The stream of water died in a gradual arc, but not before spraying one of the cameramen. And Courtney Procter.

  “Fuck,” she said, dropping the mike.

  Mike hurried forward. “Geez, ma’am, I’m sorry as I can be. I don’t know how the heck that happened.” He took out his bandanna and dabbed at her shoulder, her silk scarf. Half of her blond hair hung down as though it had melted.

  “I hope to God you’re bonded,” she sputtered, grabbing the handkerchief from him and taking over. “Because you’re about to get sued from here to kingdom come.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the front door open, heard the constable speak in a commanding voice and Sandra’s halting reply. The envelope changed hands and the door closed. The moment was over almost before it had begun.

  “It was an accident,” Mike said.

  Chapter 13

  Journal Entry—January 10—Thursday

  Ten Synonyms for Desperate

  7. hopeless

  8. splenetic

  9. woebegone

  In the hours following the visit from the process servers, Sandra remembered how she had felt, waking up in the CCU after the accident. She knew she was wounded, but a numbing cushion of shock kept the pain at bay—for a little while. Gradually, though, the cushion deflated until there was nothing but a bright window of pain. Milton had warned her this was coming and she’d braced herself, but she knew no preparation could keep her from feeling the broken shards of betrayal and disbelief.

  She wondered if she should have—could have— handled the incident differently. It had all happened so fast. She’d taken a step back from the door, folding her arms in front of her, but the envelope had been pushed into her hand anyway. She didn’t remember what the constable said, didn’t recall her wooden-tongued response, but a few moments later, they’d left her holding the papers, her forehead pressed against the front door, while outside, Courtney Procter gave Mike Malloy a piece of her mind.

  The summons now sat untouched on the hall table. She gave the manila packet a wide berth each time she passed it, as if it were a disgusting piece of taxidermy.

  Wrongful death. Victor’s parents were suing her for killing their son. Loss of society, companionship, care, counsel. . . Negligent infliction of emotional distress . . . The litany of damages read like second-rate free verse.

  Calling on her well-developed talent for avoidance, she retreated to the study, closed her journal and read over the final chapter of her book, taking refuge in a fictional world far more hospitable than the real one. The story was a sanctuary, a place where she could make everything turn out all right. Simple Gifts, a novel of loss and redemption, was finally done. Charlotte, the main character, had come to accept her grandmother’s irreversible senility, the grandchild becoming the old lady’s caretaker in a role reversal that Sandra had wept through as she wrote it. With acceptance came healing, like a single trickle of sunlight through a midwinter day. On her friend Barb’s advice, Sandra briefly considered letting poor Charlotte get a puppy in the end, maybe even a basset hound, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The simple gifts of the title were much more subtle than that.

  She used to have a ritual to celebrate the moment the final draft of a novel drifted out of her printer. She and Victor would share a bottle of champagne, indulged in only on special occasions. Tipsy after a glass and a half, she’d giggle through her acceptance speech for the prestigious Addie Award, doing a wicked imitation of Victor addressing the Daughters of the American Revolution.

  She wasn’t sure what to do now. How could she finish a novel without Victor around?

  “You got any naval jelly?” called Phil Downing, the workman who had been banging around in the basement for most of the day.

  A sense of the surreal passed through Sandra as she went to the top of the basement stairs. “What kind of jelly?”

  “Naval. As in navy. Pink stuff that comes in a white container, for removing rust.”

  “Oh. It’s possible. You could check the garage.” When she was small, her grandfather used to putter each summer away in the old carriage house that smelled of motor oil and insecticide, pursuing his unfathomable passion for taking apart small motors. Fixing a lawn mower made life worth living for the old man, who had died so gently when Sandra was in college that she wasn’t even certain how to grieve. He had left the old summer place to her—now she wondered if he had a sense of humor she was only just discovering.

  “Help yourself to anything you need out there,” she said to Phil as he passed through the kitchen. “Some of that stuff in the garage has been sitting around for half a century, though.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take a look.”

  Phil clomped up the stairs, his tool vest clanking with wrenches and volt meters. He was the sort of person who didn’t seem to want to take up much space—he held himself coiled inward and regarded the world with a tired wisdom in his eyes, lines of trouble around his mouth. There was a shiftiness about him Sandra didn’t quite trust, but he worked quietly and steadily on the house, and unlike Mike Malloy, he didn’t distract her.

  Malloy was another issue altogether. She could see him in the front hall, standing halfway up a ladder as he inspected the fanlight casement. Late-afternoon sunshine streamed over his long body, his dark hair, his muscular forearms. He had the flat stomach and narrow hips of a trained athlete, though he didn’t strike her as the type to spend hours at the gym. There was no hint of classic refinement in his face; it was the sort of face you saw in war movies or outdoor-equipment catalogs.

  But the attraction was more than physical. Beneath the tough-guy exterior, she had glimpsed a surprising, bright humanity; it was evident when he was with his kids, and again when he’d seen the original house plans. And maybe, just maybe when he fixed her blistered hands the first day she’d met him.

  Or maybe not, she told herself. Maybe she was reading too much into a guy who simply intended to restore her house. Even so, she kept thinking about the way he watched his children, with love and pride and uncertainty. Or the way he drifted somewhere far away as he studied the antique blueprint. Or the way he touched her, with a gentleness that nearly made her cry, because it reminded her of how long it had been since any man
had touched her.

  She picked up her manuscript, fitting a long rubber band around the loose pages. With a Magic Marker, she addressed a big padded envelope to her agent. Though not a superstitious type, she didn’t feel quite right about simply stuffing the two hundred eighty-four typed pages into the envelope and shipping it off without a second thought. This was Charlotte, after all. Charlotte, who had lived in her imagination for over a year, and who had been a part of Sandra for much longer.

  Despite the fact that she was a fictional character, Charlotte was a powerful force. She’d been present, with her stringy hair and big uncomprehending eyes, all through the tragedy with Victor. She’d helped keep despair at bay even in the darkest moments of the night. She acted out a shining life on the page that was far nobler than any life in the real world.

  For that, Sandra loved her in a strange, abstract way. Impulsively, she lifted the stack of pages and pressed her lips to it.

  At the same moment, Mike Malloy walked through the door carrying a stepladder. The oddest expression came over his face as he set aside the ladder.

  She froze. “I know how weird this must look.”

  “I’ve seen weirder.”

  “I was just about to mail in this book manuscript,” she explained, fumbling with the envelope.

  With unhurried deliberation, he took it from her, holding the edges open so she could drop in the pages. “What kind of book?”

  “I write novels for children.”

  “Yeah?”

  His closeness unsettled her, yet at the same time, she craved it. She became acutely aware of his body warmth, his smell, the way the worn denim work shirt lay across his shoulders. She could even hear him breathing, which should not have been a remarkable thing, but when was the last time she’d stood close enough to another person to hear him breathe? There was something else, too. That little shock of recognition a woman gets from knowing a man wants to touch her. Despite her lack of experience, Sandra felt that shock now and recognized it for what it was.

  Flustered, she rummaged in a kitchen drawer for a stapler. “I studied writing in college and published my first book under my maiden name a few years ago.”

  “That’s something. Really,” he said. “I wonder if my kids have ever read any of your books.”

  “Mary Margaret might have. They’re aimed at her age group.”

  “She’s a big reader. Always bringing home stacks of books from the library.” He gave her the envelope, and his hand brushed her forearm. An accidental touch, but a current of warmth ran through her.

  She flashed a nervous smile even as she stepped away from him. “My kind of kid.” With three quick squeezes, she stapled the package shut, eyeing him furtively the whole time. It had been so long since she’d had an ordinary, personal conversation with anyone. But more than that, she was drawn to other aspects of him, aspects that in-appropriately fascinated her—the negligent way he stuck his thumb into the waistband of his jeans. The heat of his gaze lingering on her a heartbeat too long.

  He didn’t deliberately draw attention to himself, but her nerves hummed with awareness every second he was around. And against all logic and expectation, she caught herself thinking about the shape of his mouth, imagining the feel of it on hers, the caress of his hands, touching her in a way she hadn’t been touched since . . . well, maybe never.

  “So you’ve always been a writer?” he asked.

  “Ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon. I never wanted to be anything else.” She hesitated, pretending to check the address on the envelope. “Anyway, I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier. The thing with the news crew.”

  He positioned the stepladder under the trapdoor to a crawlspace above the kitchen, tilting his head back to see inside. “Purely an accident.”

  She pictured the stream of water taking out the satellite dish. Then she glanced at Malloy’s hands. They were broad and strong, not the hands of a man who did things by accident.

  “Either way,” she said, “you spared me from being the lead story on the local news.” She only wished he could have spared her from receiving the summons.

  He climbed halfway up the ladder. “They’ll still report it.”

  “But there won’t be any film for people to slaver over.”

  “Is that what they do?” He raised his arms to dislodge the trapdoor. “Slaver?”

  “That’s what it feels like.” She gave an involuntary shudder, envisioning the long envelope in the constable’s black-gloved hand. She felt a wave of nausea, as if her body were rejecting what her mind knew to be true.

  “You okay?” Malloy asked, frowning down at her.

  “I can’t believe they’re actually doing it. I can’t believe they’re suing me. These people whose son I married.”

  He shuffled his feet on the stepladder. “Tough break.”

  What did she expect from him? He was a carpenter, not Sir Galahad. “I have to get this to the post office,” she said.

  “Okay.” He climbed higher, so that only his lower half was visible through the trapdoor.

  She stared at his faded Levi’s, his thick-soled work boots. She thought of the big, squarish hands and the shaggy dark hair that needed cutting but probably wouldn’t get it anytime soon. And she blushed at the high, unholy heat that burned inside her.

  Every time she caught her thoughts wandering to that forbidden place, she tried to bring them back on track—to focus on practical matters rather than impossibilities. But she couldn’t deny it—she needed warmth, connection, no matter how many times life had taught her that those were things she would have to do without. Usually she could control her blurry, unfocused yearning, deny the constant thud of need. But more and more frequently, in the middle of moments when she was supposed to be thinking of something else, she thought of this. Of skin pressing against skin, lips to lips, hands writing wordless poetry on her bare skin. There was something exquisitely ironic and painful in imagining something so vividly and knowing it was out of her reach.

  Grabbing the summons and hurrying out, she decided to drive all the way to Newport to mail her package. She told herself it was because she had to meet with her attorney, but the real reason was that the local post office was run by one of Ronald’s parishioners, who had known Victor since he was a boy.

  Paradise was full of them—people who knew Victor. They all remembered him as a gifted, golden-haired lad, spit-polished in his Boy Scout uniform as he organized the annual paper drive, standing proud and tall to receive a Rotary Club honor, or grinning for the camera in front of the “Welcome to Paradise” sign that declared, “Home of Victor Winslow, 1982 State Wrestling Champion.”

  The whole town had always owned a piece of his triumph. People felt it gave them special access to him. It seemed only natural that after distinguishing himself at Brown and then at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Victor would return home to run for public office.

  To be elected by people who claimed they knew him, who had loved him, who mourned him.

  Everyone, even those who didn’t know Victor personally, felt diminished by his death and offended by the fact that she had survived.

  Her palms grew sweaty as she drove onto the high, arching bridge that connected Conanicut Island to the mainland. The span seemed endlessly, torturously long, peaking in the middle, a dizzying height above the slate-gray waters of Narragansett Bay. Nausea churned in her gut. Keeping her gaze trained straight ahead, she gritted her teeth and counted slowly, telling herself she’d make it to the end. And she did at last, hounded by nightmare memories. The blinding jolt of headlights, reflected in the rearview mirror—they were being followed. Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear . . .

  Victor’s shouting and then her own. The smell of rain-wet asphalt. The black lash of sleet on the windshield. The dull gleam of metal in his hand. The scream of the tires when she slammed on the brakes. She remembered thinking it couldn’t be a gun. Victor had written the state’s most recent handg
un control legislation himself. He would never own a gun.

  She could still feel the wallop of the car slamming against the bridge rail, breaking through, and then the powdery explosion of the airbag, forcing her hard against the seat.

  Breathe, she told herself, her count winding down as she approached the end of the bridge. Just breathe. But at the other side of Conanicut lay another bridge, this one leading to Newport on Aquidneck Island, another few miles farther.

  There was always another bridge to cross. She dragged herself through the ordeal again, forcing her mind to empty, her lips to count, her nerves to stop their silent shrieking until the gray steel naval yard on the west side of the island came into view. She turned gingerly to the right, where the city lay, postcard-pretty even in the dead of winter. Centuries-old brick walkways and buildings clustered around the pristine harbor, devoid now of the summer crowds.

  After stopping at the post office, she found a parking space in front of her attorney’s building on Thames Street. She and Victor used to love coming to Newport, with its rainwashed brick market, its cozy restaurants, busy nightlife and myriad shops. The little arts and crafts gallery near Bannister Wharf even carried his handmade suncatchers of colored glass—all profits to charity, of course. The gallery owner declared them best-sellers—everyone wanted to own a little piece of Victor Winslow, it seemed, even broken shards of colored glass.

  Gathering up the summons and related documents, she hurried inside. The building dated from 1741, a narrow Colonial distinguished by clean red bricks, white-framed windows and a wrought-iron fence enclosing a highly disciplined collection of shrubberies.

  Taking a deep breath, she entered the reception area. By now, of course, the staff here knew her.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Winslow,” the receptionist said. “You can go right up. I’ll let Mr. Banks know you’re here.”