Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  Aurelia didn’t respond.

  “What? You can’t tell me? He’s no longer my boss, so what does it matter?”

  Aurelia looked up. “That isn’t it. If I’m reticent, it’s because I’m not used to having my own daughter grill me on my romantic life.”

  Frances realized that she and her mother had never discussed boyfriends in any detail. Aurelia hadn’t even asked why her relationship with Pietro had ended. Instead of the intimacy and friendship that could have developed between them as she grew up, they had become increasingly distant. They shared little of their emotional lives.

  “Let’s see,” Aurelia began, as if to embark on a recitation she had rehearsed several times before. “Henry and Louise Lewis invited me to a fund-raiser for Malcolm about a month ago. It was at their house here. I think they called it ‘an effort to retire his campaign debt.’ Henry thought I might be interested in meeting him, especially because of you. Taking an interest in my daughter’s career. So I gave my fifty dollars. I was hardly one of the big donors, but it got me in the door.”

  Money well spent, Frances thought, judging from her mother’s upturned mouth and twinkling eye.

  “He’s a charming man.” She blushed and suppressed a smile. The color in her skin made her look years younger.

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Fanny!”

  Frances slumped in her chair. Her mother and her boss, or exboss…that was about the last thing she would’ve expected. She thought of her conversations with her mother over the last week, discussions of Clio’s murder and the investigation, of leads and dead ends. Now she understood how Malcolm knew what she had been up to. Aurelia had been reporting on her whereabouts, keeping the district attorney apprised of actions that Frances wished he knew nothing about. Perhaps she was also the source for information on Frances’s relationship with Clio.

  “Did your decision to quit have anything to do with Clio’s murder?” Aurelia asked.

  “Have you and Malcolm discussed the investigation?” Frances threw back.

  “Not much.” Aurelia had never been particularly good at bluffing, and today was no exception. Frances knew she was lying. “I know they don’t have a suspect, but that’s about all. I also know that Malcolm wants that to stay out of the press.”

  “I’m surprised the press isn’t on to the two of you,” Frances said.

  “We’re discreet. Besides, who really cares what two middle-aged divorced adults do in their spare time.”

  “Malcolm’s not divorced.”

  Aurelia snorted in disgust. “He’s been separated from that… woman”—she said the word as if it were a fungus stuck to the roof of her mouth—“since the election. It’s only a matter of weeks until things become final. But I don’t appreciate the insinuation. I’m not a marriage breaker.”

  “The expression is home wrecker.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  “Are you two serious?”

  “I’m surprised by your curiosity.” She smiled. “Let’s just say we’re getting to know one another. Now, I would like to change the subject. What have you decided to do instead? For employment, I mean?”

  “I don’t have any immediate plans.”

  “I don’t understand you. You were doing well there. Malcolm is quite disappointed.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it under the circumstances,” Frances replied.

  “Fine. I can respect that,” Aurelia said. “But I’ll just say one thing. Whatever you want to think about the situation with Malcolm, I’m still your mother. I know how much you’ve invested in that career of yours, and I’m concerned. It also upsets me that Clio’s murder is the thing that precipitated your departure. As if that woman didn’t do enough damage while she was alive.”

  “It’s not this investigation. It’s not any one case in particular. It’s just the whole thing, the whole profession, the system.”

  Aurelia furrowed her brow.

  “You don’t want to hear all this,” Frances said by way of cutting the conversation short.

  “That’s not true. You may think I don’t. But what matters to you, what motivates you, matters to me.”

  Frances’s and Aurelia’s eyes met. Frances felt her heartbeat quicken as her mother extended a hand and rested it on top of her own. She shivered slightly, startled by the physical contact.

  “Talk to me, Frances. I know you think you’ve got everything under control, and you probably do. But just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “It’s hard to explain, really,” she began, searching for words. “It’s not something that happened overnight. It’s just been a gradual realization that I shouldn’t be in this business.” She drank from her glass and felt the cold juice soothe her throat. This was not the conversation she had anticipated when she’d asked Meaty to drop her off. After her discovery of Katherine Henshaw, she’d simply wanted to see her mother, spend time making small talk, just visiting. She needed some semblance of a maternal bond, but she hadn’t intended to delve into her current occupational decisions.

  Frances looked at her mother and wondered for a moment what to say, then decided on the truth. “Most everyone there has an agenda of some sort or another. Malcolm wants the publicity, the attention that comes with being a politician. He’ll run for higher office one of these days. People like Perry Cogswell, the assistant in charge of Clio’s murder, he wants power, underlings, the feeling that he can control the day-to-day life of others. I don’t want that. I don’t share those ambitions. Since I don’t want whatever this job may have led to, that left me with just a job. All I’ve done for the last thirteen years is process cases. Investigate them, indict them, try them, or plead them and try to get the court to impose a substantial sentence. My responsibility ends when the bailiff takes the defendants away, even if only metaphorically. For what? You know, I’m happiest in my garden with Felonious and Miss Demeanor.” Frances stopped talking. Her mouth felt dry.

  “But it’s important work, keeping the streets safe and all that,” Aurelia said.

  “Even the Fair Lawn Country Club isn’t safe. People talk a lot about justice being served. If a defendant gets convicted and sent away, then ‘justice is served,’ like some special item on a menu. I’ve seen the families of some victims where vengeance becomes their reason to live. All the rage and energy they can muster is poured into some perceived punitive goal. If they attain it, they lose the reason to live. Then there are others for whom the process—whether the killer is found, tried, even executed—is virtually irrelevant. What victim is ever really made whole? Look at Dad.”

  Frances thought of Richard in his wheelchair, staring out across the lawn of his exquisite, empty home.

  “You know, I remember the first time that a guy I prosecuted was sentenced to prison. It wasn’t even my case. Just after I got to the Manhattan DA’s Office, before I’d even been admitted to the New York Bar, I second-chaired a trial, you know, helping the prosecutor out, preparing witnesses, handing him documents. The defendant was the principal of one of the public elementary schools on the Lower East Side. He embezzled funds, including state money allocated for students with special needs. It was truly heinous. The guy spent the cash that was supposed to go to build the handicapped ramp for two kids with cerebral palsy on an apartment for his girlfriend. The kids’ lunch money went to pay for a trip to the Bahamas. The judge sentenced him to three years while his loyal wife and two kids were in the front row of the courtroom crying hysterically and calling out that they loved him. The special needs kids were there, too, confused by the proceeding, not really understanding why their principal was being manhandled by a couple of court officers. It was all I could do to get out to the street, before I burst into tears. Who was the winner in that situation?”

  “Why now? Why did Clio’s investigation make you quit?” Aurelia asked.

  “I think I’ve had these questions simmering in the back of my mind all along, but I nev
er paid much attention to them. Another day. Another defendant. Now I see Dad, and it finally hit me. Nothing, not finding the killer, not tearing his eyes out, not sentencing him to death, will make Dad feel any better. For him, Clio’s death is no different from Justin’s. Whether by murder or by accident, he’s left with an unfillable void.” Frances looked up at her mother. She suddenly felt exhausted, overwhelmed by articulating the thoughts that had spun in her mind. She couldn’t hold back her tears. Eyes burning, she rested her head in her forearms and let the sound of her own sobs envelope her.

  She felt her mother’s hand rubbing her hair in slow circles. It was a familiar sensation, something that Aurelia had done over and over for Frances as a child, a soothing contact that, in Frances’s memory, seemed to substitute for words unsaid and conversations not had, but which had established an intimacy between them. It had been a part of their good-night ritual, until Frances had reached an age when such rituals had to be abandoned.

  As Frances’s sobbing subsided, the rubbing stopped. Frances heard her mother push her chair back and get up from the table. When she looked up Aurelia was at the sink. She put on rubber gloves and turned on the faucet to do the dishes.

  “I’m sorry,” Frances said.

  Aurelia did not turn around. “It’s hard to watch you in such pain.”

  Frances sat for a moment, watching her mother scrape the plates, rinse them quickly, and load them into the dishwasher. Her head was pounding. “Do you have any aspirin?”

  “Check my medicine cabinet. There should be something.”

  Frances helped herself up and slowly worked her way down the hall to the bathroom at the end. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it all the way open. Sunlight through the window filled the white-tiled room. Frances turned and stood facing the mirrored cabinet. In her reflection, the shower curtain behind her provided a colorful floral background to frame her red, swollen face. She reached for the handle and pulled open the medicine cabinet.

  Frances took the plastic aspirin bottle off the shelf and shook it gently. Nothing rattled. Empty.

  Bending over, she opened the undersink vanity and perused the clutter, rolls of toilet paper, antacid tablets, cough syrup, antihista-mines, disinfectants, and bandages. She pushed aside several bottles, searching for ibuprofen, aspirin, any pain reliever, but found nothing. Then, a single sheet of paper folded multiple times into a one-inch strip caught her eye. She pulled it out.

  Her hands shook as she unfolded the paper and stared at the words. Active Ingredient: Dexedrine. It was the directions and warnings for the use of Thinline appetite suppressants.

  Do not take more than one capsule per day. Use of this medication has been associated with strokes, seizure, heart attack, arrhythmia, and death. Do not take if you are taking a prescription monoamine oxidase inhibitor for depression.

  Phenelzine and Dexedrine, Nardil and Thinline, a fatal combination.

  Frances stifled a cry. She found herself gasping and managed to keep herself erect only by leaning against the vanity. Water on the rim of the porcelain basin seeped through the fabric of her shirt.

  “Did you find it?”

  Frances jumped back at the sound of her mother’s voice, dropping the Thinline package insert onto the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Aurelia’s eyes fixed on the paper. She bent and picked it up. “I thought you were interested in aspirin.”

  “When—when did—you…buy Thinline?” Frances stammered.

  “Several months ago,” Aurelia answered quickly. Her voice was flat, controlled. “They made me so jumpy, I couldn’t concentrate. Then I ate to try to calm myself down.” She forced a laugh. “These hips will be mine until the day I die. There’s nothing I can do to change nature.” She patted herself. “Your father used to tell me that he liked voluptuous women. Either he changed his mind later in life, or he lied.”

  Frances felt her heartbeat quicken. Her mother had been at the Fair Lawn Country Club on July Fourth. She had been with Louise Lewis. She had gone to the bar to say good-bye. She knew what Louise had ordered. “You killed her.”

  Aurelia squinted at Frances but said nothing.

  “Why?”

  Aurelia’s lower lip began to tremble. She diverted her eyes. Suddenly her legs buckled under her, and she lowered herself to the floor. “Stop, Frances. I didn’t do anything. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Why did you do it?” Frances repeated. She didn’t move.

  Aurelia tilted her head back and rested it against the wall. She placed her hand on her neck, fingering her throat. “I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t have that capacity. You’re not a mother. You weren’t forced to watch what that woman did to your children, how she made them feel, these young girls, good girls, sweet girls, made to feel bad, monstrous, as if you were undeserving. She wouldn’t have come into your existence if it weren’t for me, if I hadn’t left your father. So it was my responsibility to eliminate her.”

  Frances’s head pounded. “Why now?” Whatever misery Clio had inflicted on Frances and Blair as children, nearly thirty years had passed.

  “Why not now? I should have acted sooner. Every time I turn around, she’s caused more hurt. Your sister was going to lose her business because of Clio, because she wouldn’t allow your father to help out. As if they would even miss the money.” Aurelia covered her mouth with her fist and seemed to chew on her fingers. Then she dropped her hand to her lap. “And rather than just tell Blair no, Clio managed to make her feel worthless, incompetent. Your sister has worked extremely hard to build that gallery.”

  Frances thought of Blair at Clio’s memorial service, telling Penny Adler to come visit the Devlin Gallery’s new space. Blair, so animated about the discovery of Marco, her secret playboy, who within twenty-four hours of Clio’s death had managed to turn the bad situation around, to take advantage. Miles had, too. He had jumped on the bandwagon of revelers profiting from Clio’s death to cement his Pro-Chem deal.

  “Clio kept Henry Lewis out of Fair Lawn. After years of friendship with his in-laws, after Louise and Blair had grown up together as children, she threatened to blackball him. So his daughters, his adorable little girls, will be excluded, treated differently, just like you and Blair were ostracized. You two didn’t even feel like you had a home. The effect of that woman continues.”

  Aurelia rubbed her eyes, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I see it every time I look at you. You were the most joyful, trusting child. If you had seen yourself with your father. You sat on his lap every night and told him all the details of your day, what happened to you, what books you read, what games you played. Then she came into his life, and it was as if you were afraid. Your affection withered. Your whole sense of the world, the goodness of the world, changed. I see you alone, because you have no faith in relationships. I see you isolated, because you can’t trust anyone enough to get close. I see you unable to love, because you’ve never understood that you were lovable. And that’s because of her.”

  Frances listened, but only partially heard, as her mother explained what had happened. The idea had come to her not long ago, after her show at Guild Hall had been a failure. Depressed, she’d thought that a diet and exercise regimen might help her spirits. She’d bought a package of Thinline. The pharmacist had recommended it as the number-one-selling appetite suppressant in the country. After she’d read the package insert, though, she had realized that amphetamines were contraindicated because of her heart condition. Several weeks passed, and she forgot about the pills. She had been caught up in the agonies inflicted by Clio, comforting Blair and Henry, both injured in their own ways by her malevolence. As she was lying in bed one night, unable to sleep, it had occurred to her that her money had not been wasted. The dosage in one box of Thinline was enough to kill Clio. It said so right on the label. Death by overdose of diet pills—the perfect weapon in a society where everyone wanted to be thin. Who would ever suspect
murder?

  The planning had been relatively simple once she’d made up her mind. She and Louise played tennis. Aurelia had a chance to look over the sign-up sheets at the Fair Lawn Country Club. She could see when Clio’s next game was, and Louise was only too happy to play anytime. July Fourth. The tournament. A big day. Aurelia hadn’t been sure the opportunity would arise, but it was a good guess.

  She had seen Clio seated with the Bancrofts. Louise would be uncomfortable in Clio’s presence. When Aurelia found Louise at the bar, she knew that her opportunity had come. Clio had offered to buy the round, and wanted a Perrier for herself, but there was a long line for the bartender. Louise asked that the drinks be brought to their table when the order had been filled.

  Aurelia thanked Louise for the match and said good-bye. Louise returned to the porch. But instead of leaving, Aurelia went out to her car, got the Thinline capsules, emptied their contents into the palm of her hand, wrapped the empty capsules in a paper napkin, and slipped back through the crowd to the bar. She dropped the bundled plastic capsules into the waste container on the porch as she made her way back.

  Inside the bar, the Pratt order sat on a tray, ready to go. The place was mobbed, people clamoring for drinks, chatting and socializing, oblivious of the single woman with a handful of Dexedrine. Leaning over the bar, she was able to empty her fist into the sparkling water without anyone noticing. Later that night, Malcolm confirmed that her plan had worked.

  “Did you know Clio took Nardil?”

  “I had no idea,” Aurelia responded. The amphetamines were sufficient on their own. That they did it quicker because of the interaction was a fortuity.

  “Was winning Malcolm over part of the plan?” Frances searched her mother’s face. That she was gazing at a calculating killer seemed impossible.

  “It only occurred to me later how much our relationship could protect me. Malcolm trusts me. We’ve discussed the investigation all week. He kept saying he shouldn’t say anything to me, but then he would laugh. ‘Who are you gonna tell?’ he said. Malcolm would never think of me. Who would? Richard and I have been divorced for more than thirty years. He’s been good to me, financially and otherwise. I have no complaints, virtually no dealings with Clio. And I don’t belong to Fair Lawn.”