Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  He lowered his eyes. “I can’t comment.”

  “You can’t even confirm or deny?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about who killed Clio?” Frances asked.

  “Morbid curiosity is not something I indulge in,” Dr. Prescott replied.

  She got up to leave. For reasons she couldn’t precisely identify, she didn’t like Dr. Prescott. She knew from years of experience how easy it was to hide behind legal privileges, to withhold the truth under the guise of principle. She just hadn’t expected him to be so tight-lipped about his murdered patient.

  As she slid out of the banquette, she turned and left a dollar bill on the table. “By the way,” she added, “when did you see my picture?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You said on the telephone that you’d know me because you’d seen my picture.”

  “Clio. The last time I saw her, she showed me a photograph of you and your sister.”

  It had never occurred to her that Clio would bother to mention her, the stepdaughter, not to her therapist. Frances couldn’t imagine that she and Blair even passed through Clio’s mind now that they were grown and out of the way. If they did, it could only have been as irritants, not something worth analyzing. What had they discussed? What had Frances and Blair done to warrant Clio’s attention? Or had it been wrath? She looked at Dr. Prescott, who sat expectantly. Did he know what was racing through her mind? It was his job to know, wasn’t it?

  Frances turned away. Whatever Clio had shared, she didn’t want to know. It was too late for reconciliation.

  As she sped east on Route 495, the wind whipped around the cabin of Frances’s pickup, making the truck weave ever so slightly within its marked lane. She looked at the odometer. She had driven hundreds of miles in the last week, back and forth from the north and south forks of Long Island, forty-five miles each way, plus two trips to Manhattan in less than a week, more than she remembered making in the last year. Despite her sore back, stiff legs, and the late hour, she felt compelled to add a detour to her journey, to stop in Southampton, to speak to the woman who shared her stepmother’s psychiatrist. Beverly Winters was hiding something. She wanted to know what.

  There were several lights on downstairs. Frances rang the doorbell and waited.

  Beverly’s obvious displeasure registered as soon as she opened the door. She clutched a tumbler in her right hand and a cigarette in her left. As she pitched forward slightly, the ice cubes rattled in the glass. Frances surmised that whatever she was drinking, it was not her first of the evening.

  “What can I do for you?” She seemed to strain to open her bloodshot eyes wider.

  “I want to talk to you about Dr. Fritz Prescott.”

  If the name was familiar, Beverly gave no indication. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and I don’t appreciate the interruption. I’m busy.” Her lips tripped over her words.

  “I know for a fact you do. You’re a patient of Dr. Prescott’s. Clio Pratt was, too, before she died,” Frances added. “I need to know whether you and Clio ever acknowledged that to each other.”

  Beverly took a sip of her drink but said nothing.

  “Did Clio know you were a patient of Dr. Prescott’s?”

  “What difference does it make?” she mumbled into her glass.

  Frances didn’t want to answer. The significance was in how Clio apparently reacted to those who she perceived had vulnerable information about her. The permutations of Clio’s psyche that Frances was in the process of discovering could not be easily explained. “Were you aware that Clio went to see him?”

  Beverly looked up. Her eyelids drooped. Her mascara had smeared. “Not until you appeared out of the blue.”

  “Neither of you knew about the other one.” Frances’s words came out more as a comment than a question.

  Beverly leaned against the door frame. She flicked her cigarette butt past Frances, then ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair. “Why are you here? Do you think I had something to do with Clio’s death, is that what you’re getting at?”

  “Could I come in?” Frances asked. “I won’t take more than a moment of your time.”

  Beverly looked again at her tumbler, rattled the ice, and nodded. “I could use a refreshment anyway,” she said. “If we’re going to be standing around chatting.” She forced a smile.

  Frances followed her down a hall dimly lit by only one of two shell-shaped sconces. The other light bulb had blown. The hall opened into a large rectangular room. Pale pink drapes were drawn in front of every window. Frances counted six couches, each covered in faded blue chintz, clustered in three different seating areas. Beverly stopped at a butler’s tray table. “Can I get you something?” she asked. She lifted up a bottle and turned it toward her to read the label. “There’s plenty of gin,” she said, adding a healthy dose to her glass.

  “If you have vodka, I’d have a sip,” Frances said.

  As Beverly focused on the other bottles, she rocked slightly. “Doesn’t look like there is. Anything else?”

  “I’m all set, then.” Frances reminded herself that she still had nearly an hour to drive before she could collapse in her own bed.

  “It’s a shame to drink alone.” Beverly wandered toward her, then half fell, half sprawled, onto one of the couches.

  Frances sat across from her. She found herself playing with a loose thread in the well-worn fabric of the upholstered arm. She wanted to put her feet up but thought better of it. One edge of the glass coffee table between them already had a pronounced chip.

  “So, what do you want to know about me?” Beverly asked. Her eyes closed briefly as a smile passed over her lips.

  “What happened between you and Clio?”

  “Hmm…that’s a question I wasn’t expecting. How shall I answer it? In the Southampton style, short and superficial, or are you interested in the real version, the ugly truth?”

  Frances surmised that the question was rhetorical and sat silent.

  “Let’s see…” Beverly shifted against the cushions and stared up at the ceiling. “Dudley and your father were good friends. They trusted each other. You may not know this, but Dudley was your father’s accountant up until he got too sick to work. The accountant for Pratt Capital, too. So they had known each other a long time, and there’s something about being friends for many years, sharing the same basic experiences. A loyalty develops. A camaraderie and comfort that comes from having the same frame of reference. Maybe you’re too young to realize that yet.”

  Frances thought for a moment about her own friendships, what few she had. Aside from Meaty and Sam, neither of whom she had known all that long, there was nobody. When she’d left Manhattan, she had left everything, and everyone, behind.

  “Your father never said a word about his divorce. He never even officially told us. It was just that one day your mother wasn’t there, neither were you two girls, except on weekends and school vacations. It wasn’t hard to figure out, but your father was very private about it.” Beverly kicked off her shoes. They thumped as they fell to the carpeted floor. “When Dudley and I first came to Southampton, it wasn’t at all like it is now. Nobody had a forty-five-thousand-square-foot house, or armed guards. It was a very conservative, stable summer community. Everyone stayed married. Only relatively recently did the second and even third wives show up. Babies whose mothers were thirty and whose fathers were sixty. Your parents’ divorce was unusual at the time.”

  Frances nodded. Throughout elementary school she had been the only child whose parents weren’t married. Every time she went to the refrigerator, where her class list hung by an alligator-shaped magnet, she was reminded of that distinction. Ms. Aurelia Watson, designated as her parent. No Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pratt with Aurelia noted in parentheses like everyone else.

  “When your father married Clio,” Beverly continued, “we were thrilled for him. But the crowd out here can be tough. People knew yo
ur mother. Clio was a newcomer and, at first, wasn’t treated very well. I was one of the few women who accepted her. Dudley and I saw how happy your father was, how happy she made him. Early on in their marriage, the four of us did stuff regularly. We even went to Bermuda for a golf tournament once.” She looked down into her drink. “Stayed at the Reefs. I remember one night, your father and Clio were late to meet us for dinner. They arrived out of breath. Clio was wearing the most beautiful pale pink silk dress—I still think about that dress. It was exquisite. It had a square neckline, and as she breathed, her tanned chest rose and fell. There was sand on her kneecaps, and she was carrying her sandals. They’d been out walking on the beach, she said, and lost track of time. But we knew. The way they smiled at each other, a tender complicity. I could see Dudley was jealous. I was, too. It was hard not to be.” Beverly’s voice cracked. “Clio and Richard had themselves one helluva love affair. Even years later, after the rest of us had grown pretty tired of our spouses, they were still enamored of one another, happiest in their own company.” Beverly paused, took a sip of her drink, and smacked her lips.

  Discussion of the intimacies of her father’s second marriage made Frances uncomfortable. She wanted to get the conversation back on track. “When did you and Clio have a falling-out?”

  “Ah, yes. I was getting there, I suppose, in a rather long-winded way, now, wasn’t I?” A laugh rattled in Beverly’s throat. “Dudley and I began to have marital problems, I guess that’s what you could call them, about the time that our daughter, Deidre, left home for boarding school. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but things seemed to deteriorate. We were having a pretty rocky time of it when Dudley got emphysema. That brought us together, kind of a bunker mentality. I think I appreciated him more when I realized I was going to lose him. Typical, isn’t it?”

  Yes, thought Frances, despite her abhorrence for clichés. She too had realized the importance of a relationship when it was too late to rescue.

  “For a while, we were consumed by his illness, seeing doctors, getting second and third opinions, exploring treatment options. But ultimately, it was just a distraction. The foundation of our relationship had cracked years earlier, and no amount of crisis could rebuild it. Besides, Dudley got to the point where he needed a nurse, not a wife. I wasn’t particularly good as either. It made sense for us to separate.”

  “Did you?”

  Beverly twirled a lock of hair around her finger and chewed on her lower lip. “I told Dudley I wanted a divorce. He acted surprised, as if he hadn’t even acknowledged our growing estrangement. He begged me not to go. It was quite pitiful.” She shut her eyes. “He was in his wheelchair in the library of our house. By that time, he was weak and quite thin. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, as if he were praying, and he cried. He told me he’d be dead soon enough. Why did I have to leave now? He said he couldn’t bear for the last major event of his life to be a divorce. I wanted to be convinced, but despite how pathetic he was, I needed to get away. I couldn’t sacrifice my life to him any longer. That’s what I told him.” She paused, opened her eyes, and looked over at Frances. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s late. We’re both tired. And I’ve probably drunk too much.”

  Frances said nothing. Neither did she make any motion to leave. The two women sat in silence.

  “Ah, what the hell,” Beverly said. “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. So what’s telling you gonna hurt me?” She laughed again, but it sounded forced. “Dudley had a life insurance policy. A substantial one. When nothing else worked, he told me he would change the beneficiary, give it to Deirdre, if I left him. I hadn’t counted on that, on Dudley’s shrewdness, but it was a lot of money. In retrospect, I probably could’ve gotten most of it in a divorce settlement. We were married a long time, but the thought of poverty during a protracted legal battle terrified me. I agreed to stay. He slept in the guest room, not that it made much difference, but we stayed married, kept up appearances. I wasn’t proud of myself.” She stuck a finger in her glass and stirred the ice cubes. “Nine days later, he strapped himself into his wheelchair, wheeled himself into our swimming pool, and drowned.”

  Frances closed her eyes, horrified by the image. “I’m sorry,” she said, although the words felt superfluous.

  “I found him the next morning. His determination astounded me more than anything else. He had been so sick, could hardly eat, and yet he managed to secure himself with leather safety straps. The weight of the chair made him sink.”

  “When was this?” Frances asked.

  Beverly hummed for a moment before responding. “Two years, eleven months, and twelve days ago. I could probably tell you the hours if I thought about it for a moment. What time is it, anyway?”

  Frances ignored her question. “Did you talk to Richard and Clio about his death?”

  Beverly wiped at her eye with a red-enameled fingernail. “Most of the world was sympathetic, sweet to me. I was the poor wife who had struggled to care for her dying husband, then lost him to a horrible suicide. But Clio and Richard knew what had happened. Dudley apparently told Richard of our discussion, of my wanting to leave, and of our agreement that I would stay for the insurance. At least that’s what he told me in his good-bye note, if that’s what you call it. The fucker…” She shook her head. “His suicide meant the policy wasn’t effective anyway. I would have gotten several million dollars when he died of emphysema, but I got zilch because of his preemptive strike. I guess he got the last laugh.”

  Beverly swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself up, wobbling slightly as she stood. Then she moved to a breakfront cabinet against the wall. Bending over, she opened the bottom drawer. “Here, this was what I meant. Dudley’s good-bye. It’s short. You can read it if you want.” She came over to Frances, dropped the single sheet of stationery in her lap, then went back to the butler’s tray to refill her drink.

  To my wife, it began.

  To say I wish things could have worked out differently seems trite. I have no intention of minimizing the magnitude of my suffering or the magnitude of my disappointment. We didn’t talk because you couldn’t talk, and eventually neither could I. I hope the shock of finding me will stay with you forever. The hurt you caused me would have stayed with me forever. No one knows of what transpired between us except Richard, who has promised to keep my confidence, not out of respect for you, but out of respect for me. I am proud of our daughter and hope that you and she can help one another in the future. She is a remarkable woman. Tell her I love her. I wish I could say the same to you. I wish our good years together didn’t seem so distant.

  Frances reread Dudley’s suicide note several times. She didn’t know what to say. She had never seen such a document and wondered why Beverly would keep it to haunt her. Finally she spoke. “Did you ever talk to my dad, or Clio, about this?”

  Beverly shook her head. “What was there to say? They knew my darkest secret. They hated me for it. I couldn’t blame them. I hated myself, too.” She settled herself back on the couch. “I was never going to be able to explain to them that the initial problems, the intractable problems, were created by both of us. That’s something most people don’t understand. I guess it’s easier to pick a side, cast blame, aspersions, whatever, than it is to appreciate the complexity of a marriage, to understand that people are a mixture of good and bad. Clio and Richard saw Dudley as the saintly victim and me as the materialistic bitch anxious to abandon her husband in his hour of need.”

  “How did you know they disapproved if you never spoke to them about it?”

  “I knew. At first, I got the cold shoulder. I’d hear of their parties, ones that a year earlier I’d have been invited to without question even if Dudley was too sick to accompany me. Before he died, they would’ve found an extra man to sit next to me, but I didn’t get shit afterward. Clio stopped returning my calls. If I invited them to something, she’d tell me they were busy, had plans. It was always polite, but formal. She’d send a no
te with their regrets, as if we hardly knew each other. After Richard’s stroke, it got worse. Clio started talking, telling people I killed Dudley, even if not literally, that I was responsible for his death, that I’d made the last months of his life miserable. I don’t know whether she relayed the whole business with the insurance, but I assume she did. That’s when virtually all the invitations started drying up. Here I was, alone, and friends that I’d seen for years didn’t call, didn’t include me. The only parties I ever went to were the huge ones, the ones where you invite virtually everyone you know. Those don’t mean anything. It’s not like the hosts care whether you’re there. They just fulfill all their social obligations at once.” She gulped her drink, swilling the liquid in her mouth before swallowing.

  “One time, last summer, I planned a dinner. Forty people seated. Engraved invitations, custom tablecloths, the works. I figured I’d splurge and really do things right. You know, have a party that people talk about for at least a few days afterward. One person, or rather, one couple, accepted the invitation. Everyone else said no. And I’d mailed the invitations six weeks in advance. That nearly killed me.” Beverly stared down at her newly filled glass and spoke into it. Her voice seemed magnified. “I wasn’t going to go through that again this year. I decided that after a cocktail party that the Von Fursts threw. I heard Clio had been on a new gossip spree about me. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t room for two of us in this community, and I thought I should try to stand up for myself, establish some boundaries. I knew she wouldn’t return a call, so one day in early June I followed her home from the Fair Lawn Country Club and confronted her in her driveway. Was she surprised to see me! The look on her face, eyes bugged. I actually think she was scared for a moment. But she kept her composure. Invited me in to talk. Clio was honest, I’ll give her that. She told me she thought I was selfish. She loved Dudley and couldn’t accept what I’d done, which seemed even worse to her now that she was dealing with her own husband’s illness. It was an unpleasant conversation. We were both awkward. I was probably defensive and angry. She was smug and self-righteous, you know how she can be. Could be,” Beverly corrected herself. “Like she was the perfect wife. But I felt better about the situation afterward. We sort of agreed to a truce, a moratorium. Our tennis game on the Fourth was the first time we’d spoken to each other since that afternoon. We played tennis. We passed briefly on the porch. And that was the last I saw of her.”