Sunburn

by Laura Lippman

  Adam starts the video from the beginning. Woman after woman, telling the same sad story. Boring in the way that only such mundane viciousness can be. He hit me here, he hit me there. At the end, there is an epilogue, noting that the governor’s decision to commute these sentences resulted in a Beacon-Light investigation that determined some of the women had not been properly vetted and probably should not have been released.

  Pauline Ditmars, whereabouts unknown, is named as one of the three women that the governor regrets releasing, in part because the large insurance policy she took out on her husband, three months before his death, did not come to light during the vetting process.

  17

  He’s changed.

  Polly can’t put her finger on it, but something is different about Adam. She had him. He was hooked, addicted. He was almost too far gone on her, gazing at her when he thought no one was looking, humming all the time.

  Now he steals glances when he thinks she isn’t looking.

  They still follow their same routine—friendly colleagues at work, secret lovers at night. Adam and Eve, whiskey down. If anything, he seems more passionate during sex. But out of bed, it’s as if a transparent screen has fallen between them. She catches him with his arms folded, considering her. He studies her face when she speaks. His food is getting crazier, as if he’s trying to impress her.

  He is trying to figure out if he can tell when she is lying.

  The next day at work, she oozes charm for the customers, turns it off when she’s talking to him. She doesn’t do the cold burn, shooting daggers at him with tight-lipped denials. I’m fine, I’m fine. That’s for amateurs.

  She smiles. She is polite and kind. Sweet, even. But there’s no fillip of teasing in her eyes or her smile. She’s his oh-so-professional colleague. When he says, “You okay?” she replies with buttery sincerity, “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She pays special attention to Max and Ernest, who love it, not that they’ll ever tip well. She giggles with Cath when she comes in to pick up her paycheck.

  “Summer’s almost over,” Cath says. It is mid-August, blisteringly hot. Hard to believe it will ever be cool again, yet somehow things always cool down.

  “It’s gone by fast.”

  “Always does.” Cath fans herself with her check. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “There won’t be enough work for both of us, come Labor Day. I told you that. It’s a seasonal gig.”

  “Even with Adam’s cooking getting all this new business?”

  “That’s temporary. Watch. Maybe they’ll let him stay if he wants because the boss doesn’t like to cook and he usually takes over in the kitchen come Labor Day. But they won’t need you. I guess you’ll be moving on.”

  Cath says the last part a little hopefully. Maybe she’s begun to suspect that Adam moved on before he broke up with her. Maybe she knows something else. How? It’s been years since anyone cared who Polly was and that Polly had a different name, Pauline Ditmars. A different body and different hair, too.

  It’s funny, all her life, she wanted to lose ten pounds. She wasn’t fat, but she wanted to be a size or two smaller. Nothing worked. She tried every diet, every form of exercise. Turns out all she needed was living on pins and needles while waiting to see if she was going to get a pardon. She’s glad now, in hindsight, that Ditmars made her dye her hair that awful blond color while they were married, that she wore a scarf during the interviews for the movie. Sometimes, she was so smart she was ahead of herself. She came out of prison ten pounds lighter, lost another ten pounds, let her hair grow. She was unrecognizable. Even if you remembered who Pauline Ditmars was, you couldn’t recognize her in Pauline Smith.

  She had never worried about Gregg putting two and two together. Gregg could barely put two and two together on his best days. One time, they had been out drinking with friends, and they had talked about her case right in front of her. She had made all the right noises. Oh. Ah. What an awful person. Killed him in cold blood, then made up a story when she caught wind that they were looking for battered women to pardon? And then they couldn’t take the pardon back, so all she did was jeopardize the women still in, the ones who really were battered women?

  She had yearned to tell them the truth. Yes, she had lied, at first. In part because she was scared of Irving. She had killed Irving’s cash cow, tricking Irving into paying for it in a sense, not that a dollar came out of his pocket. But he knew the signature was forged, yet couldn’t rat her out without implicating himself. It was a double betrayal and he took it personally. He was probably still out to get her, but there was no way that Irving knew where she was. The day the Baltimore paper sent a photographer for that article on the restaurant, she had kept in the background, made sure that Cath got all the glory.

  No, it must be Cath who has come between Adam and Polly. Has to be. She might not know anything, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make trouble. She probably told the boss to cut Polly loose at summer’s end.

  “Labor Day is two weeks away” is all Polly says to Cath. “Maybe I’ll find something else in town.”

  “Don’t count on it.” She seems to realize that she’s been a little too quick, too vicious in her triumph. “I mean—it’s a small town, quiet in the winters. Maybe you can find some work up at the chicken plants, but that’s a nasty business. Or the prison might be hiring. Good jobs, union jobs, but not my thing.”

  Not mine either, Polly thinks.

  At closing time, Polly tells Adam not to come by, that she’s got plans with Cath. He looks hurt, so she says: “I had to say yes or she’d get suspicious, ask me too many questions about why I never do anything with her. I can’t put her off forever.”

  Cath lives in the trailer park. It’s a nice one, better than some of the houses around here, with flower beds and sweet little “patios” created by pull-out canopies. People are sitting out, enjoying the relatively cool night, having one last beer. She knocks on Cath’s door.

  She doesn’t look happy to see her.

  “Kinda late to be dropping by.”

  “Well, I just got off.”

  “There’s this thing called a phone?”

  “I don’t have one.” Brandishing her paper bag. “I do have vodka.”

  “There’s a pay phone at work.”

  “I don’t know your number. Are you mad at me? You seemed a little mad at me today, when we talked.”

  It’s hard, sounding sincere about her concern. She’s not used to this kind of girlish chitchat. The reason she doesn’t like women is because they’re exhausting. If this is how they treat men, no wonder they all have relationship problems. Do you like me? Are you mad at me? So much emotional folderol. Maybe she was like other women, once, but Ditmars changed her. He made her weak, he broke her down until she had no choice but to become strong. It was get strong or die. Because not dying, not giving up, required the greatest strength of all.

  “No, I’m not mad,” Cath says.

  Because women aren’t allowed to be mad, right?

  “You seem awfully anxious for me to be out of town.”

  “Not exactly. But we’re not really friends, are we? I thought we were going to be. You were so nice when Adam—well, you know.”

  Polly walks past her and enters the little trailer without being asked, takes a seat on the plaid sofa. Cath’s not very neat. That’s kind, actually. Cath’s a slob. She follows Polly in, lights a cigarette from her stovetop burner. The woman cannot go much more than fifteen minutes without a cigarette. Her trailer reeks of tobacco, and there’s a film on everything. Even Cath.

  “What do we really know about Adam?” Polly asks her.

  “What’s there to know?”

  “I mean, it’s so mysterious, isn’t it? He’s like—Clint Eastwood in those old westerns, a stranger who just shows up. A great cook, someone who’s traveled a lot. How was he supporting himself before he took the job cooking?”

  “I don’t know.” Cath shrugs, bu
t Polly can tell her incuriosity is feigned. She longs to talk about him. She’s been denied that basic female right, the relationship postmortem. Polly doesn’t usually indulge this kind of talk, either. But then—no man has ever left her. She leaves, one way or another.

  “I think he has secrets,” she continues. “If I were you, I’d poke around.”

  “What’s it to me?”

  “Oh, come on. I know you still like him.”

  Cath wants to deny it, but can’t. “Yeah, but, it’s like that song from a few years ago, right? I can’t make him love me.”

  Polly has to be careful. She doesn’t want to point Cath in her own direction. “Well, I’d start with his license plates. Check to see if they lead to a different name, or an address. And you’re a local. I bet the motel people would tell you anything they know.”

  “Mainly wetbacks over there these days, doing the cleaning.”

  Ugh. She really is a terrible person. If she had ever said anything like that in front of Adam, he would have dumped her on his own. “What about the front desk? That nosy guy, Marvin, can’t help knowing some things. Like—I bet Adam pays his bills in cash.”

  “So? From what I hear, you do, too.”

  Oh, it is a gossipy little town. She’s been as careful as possible to keep the relationship with Adam a secret and, so far, so good. But it will get out if it keeps on. She’s going to have to break things off with him, leave town as she planned. The thought saddens her more than she thought possible.

  Fuck it, she’s in love. She can’t afford love. No matter how much money she ends up with, it won’t be enough to have love, too.

  “You’re right,” she says. “I’m just making trouble. Let it go. You’ve handled this whole thing with a lot of dignity. Do you have a mixer for the vodka?”

  Cath rummages inside her little refrigerator. “Only Coke, and that’s gross.”

  “I can drink it on ice if you can.”

  They sit outside with sweating tumblers of vodka, swap stories. Polly’s are all made up. Maybe Cath’s are, too, although they’re certainly boring enough to be true. Younger sister was the pretty one, made the good marriage. I made some mistakes when I was a teen and my family never lets me forget it. Blah, blah, blah.

  Maybe everybody lies, all the time.

  18

  On her next day off, Cath goes up to Dover to see her younger sister. She loves June, but she wouldn’t wish a sister like her on her worst enemy. June is a little prettier, a lot more accomplished, everyone’s favorite. She has a career as a court stenographer, while Cath’s still trying to figure things out. June has a nice house, too, and it’s the house that Cath envies the most. Not the husband, who is the reason that June could afford a house. Cath thinks she can do better than the husband and is secretly pleased that her sister has settled.

  But she loves their house, which was brand spanking new when they moved in a year ago. The kitchen is huge, with a family room alcove and one of those big islands with a marble top. Everything is white. It’s like something out of a magazine. June even has white roses in a milk-glass vase. Cath sits on a white wooden stool, watching June cut up vegetables for a salad while they both sip white wine.

  “Be careful,” June’s husband, Jim, warns. “You could blow a .01 with even one glass of wine in you. And there’s only so much that I—”

  “I know my capacity,” Cath says, but not too pertly. He did her a favor, after all. That’s why she’s here, to find out what her brother-in-law, a state trooper, can tell her about Polly and Adam.

  She knows they’re together. She’s not dumb. She’s confused why Polly is pretending to be her friend, though. And when Polly showed up at her place with no explanation, then tried to plant the idea that Cath should be checking out Adam, Cath realized it was Polly she needed to research.

  “So how do you know this person?”

  Some instinct tells her to lie. “She’s looking at a lot in the trailer park.” God, I hate that place, she thinks, glancing covetously around her sister’s gleaming kitchen. So Martha Stewart. “She seemed—off to me.”

  “Your instincts are good,” Jim says. “She killed her husband.”

  Oh, this is even better than she dreamed. Cath takes a big swig of wine.

  “Then what is she doing running around loose?”

  “Sentence commuted four years ago. Governor wanted to show women some mercy in his final term, I think. Picked thirteen inmates he was told were victims of abuse. But the nonprofit he worked with didn’t vet them well. There were some straight-up killers in that group. She was one of them.”

  “Huh. When was this?”

  “Been almost ten years since she killed him. She stabbed her husband in the heart while he slept. While he slept.” Jim brings his arms up, miming the thrust of a knife into his own heart. “Do you know how cold-blooded you have to be to do that? Then she tried to claim he was killed by a burglar while she was sleeping in her kid’s room.”

  “Are you sure?” She wants to believe it, but it doesn’t jibe with the woman she knows. A man-eater, sure. A man killer? No way. “I mean, if he did beat her and she had a kid, maybe she couldn’t imagine any other way.” Cath has read everything she can about the OJ case. Of course, if any man ever raised a hand to her, she’d be out the door—or he’d be out the door—the next minute. But some women aren’t strong the way she is.

  “There’s more,” Jim says.

  * * *

  By the time Cath heads south on Route 13, she figures she has had almost three glasses of wine, but that’s because June kept topping her off. Sabotaging her again. June is more invested in being the good sister than even she realizes. Aware that she’s a little affected, Cath drives supercarefully. Almost too carefully at times—her speed drops and brights flash in her rearview mirror, warning her that she’s driving erratically. But she doesn’t think it’s the alcohol, not really. She’s trying to take in everything that Jim told her. A lot of it is gossip, he says, not written down anywhere, but he knows a cop who knows a cop who knew Polly’s ex and this cop swears by his info. Polly-Pauline spun it as if she were selfless, putting her kid above everything. So why isn’t she with that kid now? Why is the state paying the kid’s bills if she inherited all this money?

  Cath knows some people would think she’s a hypocrite, dragging up a person’s past. But she was only seventeen when she got in trouble, a kid. And it was an accident, awful as it was. If that railing hadn’t given way, no one would have been hurt seriously. Her parents found a good-enough lawyer, she did anger management, and the records were sealed because she was a juvenile. That’s totally different.

  When she gets to Belleville, it’s almost eleven. Over at the High-Ho, everybody will be heading home soon. Polly to her apartment above the old Ben Franklin, Adam to his motel room. Cath’s torn about where to go. She wants to tell Adam first, see the look on his face, but it won’t matter, she thinks. Even if he gives up Polly, he won’t choose Cath. Especially if she’s the one who tells him.

  No, she’ll go to Polly’s apartment.

  “What’s up?” Polly says, opening her door to her, but not wide enough to let her in.

  “Just thought I’d pay you a visit. Sauce for the goose, right?”

  “So am I the gander in this situation, or are you?”

  “Oh, I think we both know who the gander is.” She pushes her way in.

  “At least I didn’t come empty-handed when I dropped in on you,” Polly says, but her voice is mild, as if she’s teasing an old friend. As if. Polly opens her fridge, pulls a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. The fridge is ancient, looks like something from the 1950s, with its rounded top and single door, the freezer a metal compartment with ice trays and a buildup of frost. The oven is old, too, one of those white enamel jobs. Metal table with one wood chair, not much else. Cath glimpses an iron bed in the next room, a quilt neatly folded at the foot. Polly won’t be here long enough to need that quilt, Cath will see to that. Everythi
ng is so old-fashioned, not to Cath’s taste at all. Adam probably thinks Polly’s quirky, special. She’s special all right. Cath studies the magnetic strip above the stove where three knives hang.

  “So I did what you suggested. Kinda.”

  “Yeah?” The glasses are that thick Mexican blue glass. More quirk. Polly has certainly made herself at home here. But because there’s only one chair, she has to lean against the counter while Cath sits.

  “I didn’t go to the DMV, though. I didn’t have to. My brother-in-law is a Delaware state trooper.”

  “Oh?” Surprised, but trying not to show it.

  “Nothing much came back on Adam. His driver’s license goes to a place in North Baltimore. Big apartment building.”

  “That was a bum suggestion on my part,” Polly says cheerfully. “I was silly to waste your time.”

  Cath, looking at her, knowing what she knows about her—she just doesn’t get it. How did she wrap Adam around her little finger? Her figure’s pretty good, but her face has that narrow, foxy look common to redheads. People are always going on about how women pick the bad boys, but men have similar weaknesses. Is Polly better in bed than Cath is? What really makes a woman good in bed? Cath has a pretty high opinion of herself as a lover. She’s enthusiastic, up for almost anything, although she’s keeping a few things back for when she’s engaged, proper.

  “Oh, no, it was a good suggestion. Because he told me some stuff about you.”

  “Yeah?”

  Waiting, not even that curious. What kind of person doesn’t get nervous in this situation?

  A person who knows exactly what she’s done.

  “This is a small town. When word gets out—”

  “Isn’t it already?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m guessing you went straight to Adam, told him everything you know.”

  “No, I did not.” Happy to play the high-road card here, no need to explain her thinking behind it. “I came to you first. I think it would be better for everyone concerned if you left town.”