Sunburn

by Laura Lippman

  Six nights ago, she borrowed his truck again. A Tuesday, they both had the evening off, and she suddenly announced she was going to go shopping at the outlet malls on Route 50, almost an hour away. She came home empty-handed.

  “Nothing looked right,” she said. “I hate this year’s styles.”

  Then, this morning, she went to Winterthur, some old estate near Wilmington. She showed him the flyer over the weekend, saying, “The bus leaves from the mall at Dover at nine sharp, comes back at six.”

  “Doesn’t a trip like that make more sense in the summer, when the gardens are in full bloom?”

  “I want to see the paintings,” she said. “I like art.”

  News to him.

  But this morning he drove her to the parking lot at the mall, near the entrance to the Bon Ton, and watched her get on the bus. He thought about staying until the bus headed out, but how paranoid can a guy be? She was sitting in a window seat near the front, wearing a yellow dress with a jacket, a thrift store find. She’s right, old clothes, pieces from the 1950s, suit her better than new ones. She looked excited but was trying to rein it in, act cool. Excited to go to some old house.

  Now, back in the kitchen at the High-Ho, he reminds himself that the smallest things are new to her. You could argue she’s been a prisoner since she was seventeen, half her life. Married to an abusive fuck. Jail. Rebounding into another unhappy marriage, probably because she was broke. No wonder she seems content in Belleville. Getting up, going to a job she doesn’t mind. Pulling drafts for Max and Ernest. Serving his food, which she never ceases to praise.

  He remembers the grilled cheese he made for her, back when he was wooing her. Was he wooing her then or just trying to do his job? He can no longer remember how the job faded away, when he first started loving her. Maybe he should add that sandwich to the menu. Not with tomatoes, they’re out of season, but bacon and cheese never go out of style. He needs better bread—whole grain, high quality. Better bread means a better baker. Not on-site, but as a supplier. The one place in town—it can produce the quantities he needs, but it’s mediocre. Fine for desserts and cakes, but its breads and rolls are clearly an afterthought. What this restaurant really needs is biscuits, good ones, served piping hot. Everybody loves biscuits, and, although no baker, Adam can make those with ease.

  Except—he doesn’t want to be here, on a highway in Delaware, thinking about biscuits. He feels his world shrinking, rescaling itself to fit this town, this life. Just because she’s happy here doesn’t mean she couldn’t be happier still in a larger, grander life. He wants to take her to Botswana, show her a leopard lolling in a tree. Feed her real mole in Puebla, or fish tacos at a place he knows in Santa Barbara.

  They’re making love with less frequency. She’s started to stay up late, reading, not coming to bed, waiting him out. And he’s too proud to ask. If she doesn’t want to be with him, okay then. But she was so cute this morning, in her yellow dress, sitting on the bus, another lady going to Winterthur. He glances at the clock. He has to drive back up to Dover to pick her up at six.

  * * *

  When he pulls into the parking lot, he’s fifteen minutes ahead of the bus’s scheduled arrival. To his amazement, she’s there, sitting on a bench outside the mall.

  “I told you five,” she says, a little peeved, a tone she almost never takes with him. “I’ve been sitting here for an hour.”

  “No,” he says, “I’m sure it was six. Winterthur is at least an hour away.”

  “No harm, no foul. I was just worried about you. That feeling, when someone isn’t where you expect them to be—anyway, it’s a pretty night. And I loved Winterthur. I met the nicest lady on the bus, who lives up here. She asked me if I wanted to be in her book club. I told her I didn’t have a car. But maybe I should get one, used. We’ll see.”

  Just like that, the fight over his lateness is forgotten. Polly doesn’t go in for sulks. He made a mistake—although he’s absolutely sure she said to pick her up at six—and she let it go, right away. She doesn’t pout, or try the silent treatment. Of course, it would be hard to notice if Polly gave you the silent treatment. She’s not one to chatter. In the early days, he found that restful, but now it unnerves him. There was an Elvis Costello song a few years back, about his grandmother who had Alzheimer’s. What goes on in that something, something head of yours—Adam can remember the meter, but not the words—what goes on, something, something in the dark? Butter literally might not melt in Polly’s mouth. She’s that cool, that quick thinking.

  That cool, that quick thinking.

  Tonight, she’s unusually lively. Funny, he never noticed her longing for female company or museum trips, but the Winterthur visit seems to have jazzed her up. She doesn’t want to be with a book tonight, that’s for sure. And she laughs while they’re making love—not in a mean way, simply flushed and happy. After, she starts to talk again about opening a bed-and-breakfast, maybe in one of the old Victorian houses near downtown. He flashes on her in the window of the bus, how she looked like a kid on the first day of school, tight with nerves, trying to conceal them. It is touching how little she wants.

  But does he love her enough to stay here, restless as he’s feeling? How can anyone want to stay in Belleville, where the best scenic view is the sun setting over the cornfields? It’s small enough to be boring, big enough to be charmless. No, my Handsome Polly-O, I do not want to run a B and B here.

  That night, as she sleeps, he goes through her purse. He finds nothing. How do you go to a place like Winterthur and not have a brochure, a ticket, a receipt for a cup of coffee? Her purse has an old-fashioned wallet—another thrift store find—a lipstick, a hairbrush, two pens, and a tiny notebook. He opens this, sees a list of numbers. Dates? Accounts? Dates, he thinks, from the 1980s. She has jotted down a series of dates that, best he can tell, correspond to the final months of her marriage.

  Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O?

  32

  Pauline Ditmars walks through Irving Lowenstein’s front door the Tuesday after Yom Kippur, bold as brass. She’s wearing a dress the color of marigolds and a lightweight, nubby wool coat, her hair piled on top of her head, like she thinks she’s Audrey Hepburn. She even has gloves.

  “So,” he says, “the mountain came to Mohammed.”

  “I think we both know you’re the mountain here. And I’m no Mohammed. I’m not even sure I know who Mohammed was.”

  Noting Susie’s interest in the visitor, Irving takes Pauline into the back. By any objective standard, she is more attractive than she was when Ditmars was alive. Thinner, less defeated looking. But he preferred her as she used to be, and it’s not just because of what he knows now about her proclivities. Still, he has to admit that yellow, the color used for warnings and caution, suits her.

  “Why are you here?” No reason not to be blunt. He has nothing to hide. Adam Bosk, on the other hand, has probably concealed his connection to Irving. That’s why he was so happy to be fired as of Labor Day. He tried to make it like he was quitting, but all he did was save Irving the trouble of saying those words.

  “I’m here to make amends. I’m in a twelve-step program now and that’s one of the steps.”

  Irving assumes most Gentile women drink, but he doesn’t remember that being Pauline’s problem. Lord knows her husband was the worst—drink, cocaine, pills, whatever. Whereas Irving drinks only a little sliwowitz, maybe three times a year.

  “You going to give me some money? Because you owe me. Even your husband, horrible as he was, knew to kick back something when he used someone.”

  He sees a flash of anger, something the old Pauline never allowed herself to show. Interesting reaction, for a woman trying to make amends.

  “I didn’t take that money from you. I took it from an insurance company. And it was to care for my daughter. But if I asked Ditmars to sit for a medical exam—you know he wouldn’t have done it. Not because he suspected anything, but because anything I asked for, he said no. It was
only a matter of time before he killed me and then what would have happened to Joy? He would have put her in some horrible, cheap institution.”

  “She ended up in an institution, anyway.”

  “In a good one. Paid for with that money. That’s how I justified it. As I said, I didn’t see how I was hurting another person.”

  “I was investigated by the state insurance board, which wasn’t exactly good for my business. And your husband got hurt, didn’t he? I mean, I think it must hurt to have someone drive a knife through your heart. It’s not exactly a mercy killing.”

  There it is again, a flash of anger, at odds with her penitence. “You know better than anyone what he was capable of. How many people do you figure he killed while he was on your payroll?”

  Irving holds up his hands as if to stop a car coming toward him in a crosswalk. “Hey, hey. I don’t know any such thing. I don’t know where you get your ideas. For one, he wasn’t on my payroll. He worked for someone else.”

  Glancing down, he notices a stain on his shirt, coffee from his breakfast. Birdy never would have allowed him to go out of the house like this. It bothers Irving that he’s been walking around with a stain, even if the only people he’s seen all morning are Susie and Pauline. She looks good, Pauline. Healthy, rested. All buffed up with love. Adam Bosk is a schmuck, but it’s hard to blame him.

  “He told me everything, Irving. To scare me, to keep me in line. You arranged the policies. As a broker, you could spread them among several companies, disguising the pattern. And it wasn’t always property, right? Sometimes the guy—what was his name, Ford? He took out life insurance policies. On his own people. Then bought them back at a fraction of face value. He got the idea from you, right?”

  “Maybe Ditmars did beat you. I think you got brain damage.”

  “No, I’m smarter than ever. Wised up. Now I see I should have made a deal with you, offered to give you a percentage instead of rewarding you with that sad little screw in my kitchen.”

  It’s strange, how much that hurts. He’s known for a long time that she used him, but he still thought it might have been pleasant for her. Ditmars was no prize. Irving, in his youth—well, not his youth, but he was ten years younger then, well preserved, meticulous in his hygiene—he had prided himself on being a very thoughtful lover. Birdy never had any complaints. She was an animal, this one. The kind that devours her male partner immediately after rutting.

  “Again, you have a strange way of making amends.”

  She lowers her gaze, seemingly contrite. “I’m sorry. It’s harder than it might sound, saying you were wrong, taking responsibility. Putting—other things aside, I should have offered you a cut. That’s how it worked. I knew that.” A pause. “I almost feel as if I need to make amends for Ditmars. He cut you out, sometimes.”

  “How so?” he asks, adding quickly, “Not that there was anything to be cut out of. But—he talked behind my back?”

  “It was one of the last fires he set. He said that you and the other guy—what was his name?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “He bragged how they cut you out. They cut you out a lot, went to other insurance brokers. That guy, the drug dealer, he saw that he could buy properties cheap, take out policies, then let Ditmars burn them down. Did you know that? Anyway, the last fire, the one that Ditmars modeled after a real fire he had investigated—open the gas jets, light a candle—was just meant to damage the house as I understand it. He didn’t know about the girl sleeping upstairs, with her baby. He was haunted by that. He tried to tell himself that they died from smoke inhalation, but the autopsy couldn’t rule out that they had been killed by all that flying debris. That was on Eutaw, I think?”

  “Paca,” Irving says. Hard to forget Paca. He wished they had cut him out of that one. Pauline killed Ditmars two months later. If only she had done it sooner, Paca never would have happened.

  “Right, Paca. Winter 1986. A fifteen-year-old girl and her baby blown sky-high. They weren’t supposed to be there. It was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty job, a complete loss on the house so—what was his name?”

  Irving doesn’t provide it.

  “Whatever happened to him, that guy?”

  “Still don’t know what you’re talking about—and neither do you, Pauline. So be careful. That’s my friendly advice. Don’t go around talking about these things. Because some people might wonder how deep you were in it.”

  “So,” Pauline says, rising to her feet. “I’m sorry I deceived you. We okay now?”

  “I’m not sure. You hurt my business there for a while. That agent never worked with me again.”

  “But you’re doing okay?” She glances around at his less-than-impressive surroundings and he feels an instinct, quite foreign to him, to justify himself.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “A rich man by anyone’s measure. What about you?”

  “Poor as a church mouse, whatever that means. Working as a waitress. It’s hard, starting over.”

  “That why you got a drinking problem?”

  “Who says I have a drinking problem?”

  “You said you were in a twelve-step program.”

  “But I didn’t say it was for drinking. And, you know, we’re supposed to be anonymous. In fact, I can’t figure that part out. How can I be anonymous and make amends to those I’ve wronged?”

  “Where you living these days?” As if he didn’t know.

  She smiles, doesn’t answer. She was always shrewd, this one.

  He walks up front with her, stops to confer with Susie while he watches Pauline head out into the parking lot. Plenty of spaces in front, but she turns to the right and is quickly out of sight. Did Adam drive her here? What was her real agenda? The one thing Irving is sure of is that it’s not a twelve-step program, because they don’t have those for lying nafkehs.

  33

  Halloween falls on a Tuesday this year, which means a long buildup to the holiday, starting with a bonfire on Friday night. Bonfires are a big deal in Belleville. Polly finds this charming, but Adam says it’s just proof what a hick town it is. The site is still smoldering when they drive by late that night, after work. They get out and inspect the remains, enjoying the heat in the cool October air.

  Polly, holding her hands toward the embers, tells him: “There was a movie I saw once—I think it was set in Paris. A man kills a woman. It’s not exactly an accident, but it’s also not exactly his fault. He’s going mad. Anyway, it’s the night of a big bonfire, in which people bring anything they want and throw it on the pile. He wraps up the body in a carpet and throws it on the fire, then runs away. But he still gets caught. Something to do with an earring. I think.”

  Adam doesn’t seem particularly interested, but she finds she can’t stop herself.

  “It was on Picture for a Sunday Afternoon. Oh, I forgot—you didn’t grow up in Baltimore. That was a local thing. Picture for a Sunday Afternoon. Which sounds kind of churchy and nice, but it was amazing the movies they showed sometimes. Horror movies. The Leech Woman was a big favorite of mine. She stayed youthful forever by killing men and drinking their blood, but then she killed a woman and the spell reversed itself. They also showed women-in-prison movies.” She laughs. “Go figure, those weren’t exactly factual.”

  Polly waits to see if Adam will offer a corresponding story about his childhood. But he doesn’t. It’s rare for either of them to talk about the past. It’s not something they agreed on, merely a pattern that emerged. Once all the secrets—well, most of the secrets—were out in the open, there was no reason to talk about the past. What does she know about Adam? He went to college in Ohio, then attended some famous cooking school in New York, although he didn’t graduate. Went from there to working on a yacht, first as a deckhand, ended up as the chef. He grew up in the Bay Area. His parents are dead. He liked them a lot, especially his mother.

  What does he know about her? Not as much as he thinks he does. Suddenly, it is important to
her to let him know that she had a nice childhood, too, warm and safe as his. Her parents were good people, much too nice to prepare their daughter for a world of people like Ditmars and Irving and that guy they worked with.

  “On Sunday afternoons, my mom ironed in front of the television in her bedroom. It smelled so good. You know that smell—scorchy and warm. She had a bottle that she filled with water, for the things that needed to be ironed on the steam setting. She put some kind of scent in it. I don’t think it was made to be a sprinkle bottle for ironing—there was a tiny picture of a woman on it, but it was starting to flake off. If I could have one thing of my mom’s, it would be that bottle. I don’t know what happened to it when she moved to Florida.”

  Better not to mention that Polly was in prison at the time, that her mother died in Florida of a broken heart.

  All Adam says is, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you iron.”

  “If I had her sprinkle bottle, I think I would. I wish I had her sprinkle bottle and this one bracelet she had, with these flat glass beads with pieces of peacock feathers set inside. My mother loved Halloween. She liked scary movies, too. She would let me watch anything. But then—it’s not like anything really scary came on TV back then. I remember House of Wax. And She—remember She?”

  “Who?”

  “The movie She. There’s a beautiful woman who’s hundreds of years old. She invites a man to bathe in this fire that makes you immortal. But it turns out that if you go into the fire twice, the spell reverses and you age to your real age. She turns into a skeleton, dies, reaching for him. So he’s immortal now, but he’s betrayed everyone and she’s gone. He’s going to live forever, but alone.”

  Adam puts an arm around her, hugs her closer. “I think Halloween is making you morbid. Let’s go home.”

  On Tuesday night, actual Halloween, Polly dresses all in black, in a 1950s cocktail dress unearthed at the church rummage sale a few weeks ago. She has bags and bags of candy—miniature Hershey bars, Reese’s cups, small boxes of Dots, because there’s always some weird kid who doesn’t like chocolate. But the trick-or-treaters don’t seem to realize that someone lives in the garage apartment, and they skip her door.