“That was Linda,” I said. “I have to borrow a car. Right now.”
He forced himself to concentrate on what I was saying. “Yes, of course. But it’s snowing—take the Wagoneer. What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. She’s hysterical.”
“Well go, man. Go.”
He was saying the right things, but I detected a twinge of childish jealousy over my leaving him for Linda. Highat was still speaking quietly to Ray and moving with him toward the sitting room.
As I passed Nora, she said, “I hope everything’s all right at home, Bradley.”
“Please, Nora, keep them separated. I’ll be back when I can.”
She nodded in agreement.
“Did you hear me, Lennie?” I said. “I’ll be back when I can. Don’t do anything foolish. Remember, we have a plan.”
“What plan?” Nora asked, as I slipped into my jacket.
Without answering, I opened the door and hurried to Linda.
I was doing fifty by the time I reached the end of the drive and took the left onto Millbrook School Road toward New York Route 3. On the highway I kept the Wagoneer at seventy, slowed to sixty, and finally was forced down to forty-five as I battled snow for the entire trip into New York. All thoughts of Schoolcross were extinguished as I struggled to keep the car on the road. Over eight inches had fallen in the time it took me to reach Manhattan.
I had a key to the apartment in my wallet and I unlocked the door, but knocked softly before entering. Linda was rising slowly from the couch as I walked into the living room. She must have drifted off there while waiting for me. Her hysteria was gone. It was after midnight—officially Christmas Eve.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Linda?”
She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“I had a date. I should have known better.”
She must have still been wearing the clothes she had put on for her date—gray wool slacks, a pink cashmere sweater, and the gold chain necklace her mother had given her when her grandmother died. Her natural suede low-heel boots lay where she had kicked them off under the glass-topped coffee table in front of her. She sat back down on the couch. “I had the most wretched experience and freaked out. I’m sorry for calling you like that.”
“What happened?”
She looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “He shit in my pocketbook.”
“Your date . . . shit in your pocketbook?” I repeated. “Don’t do that! Why do you have to always repeat what anyone says to you? You heard me the first time!”
I do have the conversational quirk of repeating a person’s statement rather than using words of my own. It’s a technique I learned in the art business, to elicit information from clients in a neutral way.
“All right, but what does it mean—‘he shit in your pocketbook’? Is that some new expression?”
“My date really did shit in my pocketbook. Or at least he put an enormous turd in it.”
“Why would anyone do such a thing?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Go look for yourself,” she said. “In our bathroom.”
“What was he doing in our bathroom?” I said as I headed down the hall
I went to see for myself and shortly stood looking into the black leather pocketbook with the gold clasp that Mary had given to Linda on her last birthday. I’d helped pick it out at Saks. It was now sitting wide open on the edge of the sink, with a turd inside.
Linda was still on the couch in the living room when I returned.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked.
“He seemed so . . . nice. He’s an orthodontist. Actually, he’s kind of boring, a serious runner, who kept talking about ‘carbo-stoking,’ and how most people only run ‘garbage miles’ and he runs ‘quality miles.’ We went to Mortimer’s for an early dinner because it’s in the neighborhood, and he was awful with the waiter, interrogating him about fat content.”
“Linda, how did dinner at Mortimer’s come to . . . this?”
I gestured in the direction of the bathroom.
“I invited him back to the apartment for a drink.”
“You did what?”
“Dinner and drinks. That’s what the date was for. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?”
“Only if you were planning on having sex with him. It’s like a code, a silent language.”
“Well, how would I know that?” she asked. “I wasn’t planning anything. I haven’t been on a date since college. Why are men so calculating?”
“Why do women walk around wearing blinders?”
She opened her mouth to respond but caught herself before the words were out. She wasn’t in the mood to argue.
“I’m so tired of being alone,” she said. “Anyway, Luzia was shocked to see him with me, and she got this knowing expression on her face and left. But as the evening went on he started following me around the apartment—practically stalking me—while I was fixing drinks and putting on music. I could tell that Dan—that’s his name, Dan Diamond—was disappointed.”
“What were you talking with him about?”
“The usual small talk. Mary. How she’d had the stomach flu but had gotten over it.”
“Then what happened?”
“He said, ‘I know you didn’t invite me up to talk about your daughter’s stomach flu,’ and completely without warning he grabbed me and kissed me. It took me totally by surprise. I had to make an excuse but didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I pushed him away and said, ‘I’m not comfortable.’”
She was starting to cry. I sat closer to her on the couch and tried to put my arm around her, but she pulled away and continued her story.
“He smiled, but it was more like a leer, and said, ‘Okay, why don’t you put on something more comfortable?’ I went into our room and sat down on the bed. I didn’t know what else to do, so I stayed there.”
“For how long?”
“Forever. He called out to me, and I was worried he might wake Mary, so I opened the door.”
“You let this man into our apartment and our bedroom?”
“Megan had said he was so nice.”
“Well, then what happened?”
“He came in and started kissing me again. It was awful. I stood there with my body all stiff and my eyes wide open. He put his tongue in my mouth and was touching me all over, but I turned into a stone statue, completely rigid. He finally figured out that I was repulsed by him and pulled away and said, ‘I’d better go.’ He asked if he could use the bathroom first, so I went back to the living room. He wasn’t in there for long, and he left the apartment without saying good-bye.”
“How did he get your pocketbook?”
“It was in the bathroom. What am I going to do?”
“Try to forget it,” I said. “Forget the whole thing.”
“Yeah, right, sure, just forget it . . .”
“That’s the best thing you can do. The guy is a monster, Linda, but you’re not totally blameless either, you know.”
“How can you defend him?”
“I’m not defending him. What he did was heinous, inexcusable. But . . .”
“But what?” she demanded.
I kept quiet. There was no use discussing what had happened with her. She’d invited a stranger up for drinks, put on music, and stepped into the bedroom to slip into something more “comfortable.”
“You’re right. What he did was indefensible. We should call the police.” She stared for a moment as we both contemplated the call to the New York City Police. Then we were laughing and crying at the same time. Even under the circumstances it felt good to be with her again.
Finally I said, “We’ve got to get rid of that thing.”
“How?”
“We could throw gasoline into the bathroom and light a match.” She smiled at my joke. “Or maybe hire the Mafia,” I said. “They could put the pocketbook into a block of cement and dump it in the river, like the body of a gangster. ‘Don Tur
do sleeps with the fishes.’”
She was still smiling. “No, seriously,” she said. “My driver’s license and credit cards are in there, and maybe forty dollars in cash—I don’t know what else.”
My joke about the Mafia gave me an idea.
“I don’t care what you have in that pocketbook. To try to salvage anything is beneath human dignity. It’s all got to go. I’ll give you some cash and my credit card.”
“Bradley . . .”
“Please, Linda. It’s the only way. I’ll put the pocketbook in a trash bag, maybe throw in one of my little dumbbells—I never use them anyway—and wrap it in duct tape. When I go back to Millbrook, I’ll toss the damn thing into the Hudson.”
“You think we should throw everything away?”
“That’s right. You can get new credit cards. It’s the only solution.”
She delivered a line from happier times.
“My hero.”
I took a moment to go into Mary’s room to make sure she was sleeping. She had a frown just like her mother’s as I knelt down to kiss her cheek and cover her snugly.
When I went back into the living room it seemed like we were back in the old days—“Bradley to the rescue”—until a serious expression came over her face.
“There’s something important I’ve been trying to tell you for a long time,” she said. “It’s about what happened to our marriage.”
“It’s about Tom, isn’t it? You had sex with him.”
“No,” she said. “My secret has nothing to do with Tom. I mean, yes, we did have sex, or tried to. He couldn’t do it.”
“What do you mean, ‘He couldn’t do it’?”
“I mean he couldn’t do it,” she screamed. “Do I have to draw you a picture?”
We heard Mary’s voice coming from her bedroom and were both quiet for a moment. There was silence. Mary must have been calling out in her sleep.
Linda was breathing heavily now and there was wildness in her eyes.
“I’m telling you something important,” she said. “Why do you have to keep twisting our conversations into talk about sex?”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Tell me the big secret.”
“I’ve blamed you for years that Mary might be retarded.”
I couldn’t believe she used the “R” word. Neither of us ever used the “R” word.
“There’s nothing wrong with Mary! And even if there was, how can you blame me?! She had spinal meningitis when she was ten months old. That wasn’t my fault.”
“Bradley, her ERBs are in the bottom quartile. I know our marriage will never be the same after I tell you this, but I can’t hide it anymore. Our marriage is all fucked up now anyway.”
“Why is any of this my fault?”
“Do you remember the night before Mary went into the hospital? She had a bug and had been feverish, but she calmed down and was sleeping so peacefully.”
“I guess,” I said, surprised by the turn of the conversation. “Not specifically, but that sounds right.”
“We’d been planning on going out that night. Mr. Bell was in town and wanted us to go with him to a Broadway show—it was Cats—and we’d hardly left the house since Mary was born.”
“I remember now,” I said. “I’d never wanted to see Cats anyhow, and I ended up hating it.”
“As we were getting ready to leave for the theater, I said we should stay home with Mary instead of leaving her with a young sitter. You called me ‘an overprotective mother.’”
“I do remember that,” I said, “but if you think I’m going to sit here and listen to you blame me for Mary’s illness because we had to go to the theater with an important client that night . . .”
“I’m not through talking,” she said, “and, yes, for once in your life, you are going to listen. You’re going to sit there and listen until I’m through talking.”
I sat silently.
“When we were ready to leave, I checked on her one more time. I picked her up and kissed her on the top of the head, right on her soft spot, and I thought, My little girl is growing up. Her soft spot has closed over. She’s not a baby anymore. But it hadn’t grown over; it was pressure from the meningitis.”
She was weeping, and for the first time in years, I cried too, because I remembered so clearly what happened next.
“You called out, ‘Jim, come look at your daughter.’ And I said, ‘Linda, would you please put that baby down? We’re going to be late.’”
She was sitting on the couch sobbing as if she might never stop.
“And you’ve blamed me all this time?” I said, wiping my eyes. “I can’t believe this.”
“I don’t want to, but yes, I do,” she said through her tears. “If you’d come in and looked, if you’d taken any interest, we’d have talked about what was happening. Maybe we would have brought her to the doctor that night, instead of waiting until she was comatose the next day.”
“God, Linda. I can’t stand this. You noticed the soft spot was hard? And now you’re blaming me for your negligence?”
“Stop it! You always want everything to be convenient for you. You want to go to the theater? Fine! I’m an overprotective mother! You want to deny responsibility for what happened? That’s easy! I’m a negligent mother! Well, make up your mind—which is it? Overprotective or negligent? Because you can’t have it both ways.”
My anger was so great that I was transported outside my body. Looking down from the ceiling, I watched myself storm out of the apartment and take the elevator to the lobby. Then I turned around and came back. Linda was sitting on the couch, still crying, as I walked down the hallway toward our bedroom. I’d forgotten to leave her my credit card and cash, and take away the pocketbook.
Once I had reached the street it took only a moment to realize that what Linda had said was true. I’d done the unforgivable. I’d sacrificed my little girl so that we wouldn’t be late for Cats.
The revelation struck the core of my being, and I was in the car and driving north before I realized where I was going. I was so preoccupied that I didn’t consider what awaited me at Schoolcross until I was almost there.
It was after two when I reached the ramp onto the Taconic Parkway and headed north into the storm, back toward Millbrook. Exhaustion was setting in; the phrases “put that baby down” and “bottom quartile” kept repeating in my head.
I turned on the radio and scanned the stations, searching for something—anything—that would distract me. Finally I found a country music station with a strong signal and, although I hate country music, I turned up the volume. Actually I shouldn’t say I hate country music. Until that night it was something—like professional wrestling, or bass fishing tournaments—outside my realm of experience. To keep awake, I concentrated on the lyrics. After twenty minutes, I realized that all country songs, or at least all those played after two in the morning, are about the heartbreak of adultery.
Mr. Bell calls country music “cheatin’ music.” Now I understood why. I kept the station on, even turned the volume higher.
I was glad Tom “couldn’t do it.” But what did that mean? That he’d had an attack of scruples? Or that he literally “couldn’t do it”?
“Do you want me to draw you a picture?”
“Frankly, yes,” I should have said to her. “A picture would be helpful.”
The picture couldn’t be any worse than what I drew for myself. The image was one of my wife working fruitlessly and with increasing shame and humiliation on another man’s flaccid penis. Or maybe the guy had Lennie’s problem, and the “lovemaking” had been over before it started. Or maybe . . . I remembered Nora’s cries as I had listened to her and Ray through the front door of the Keeper’s Cottage yesterday morning.
Why is everything always about sex? I asked myself. Is it me? Is there something wrong with the way I look at the world?
The cheatin’ music played on. I needed to think about something else, so I reviewed my plan for calling the police and
telling them about what had happened with Raider. It was still the best of several dreadful alternatives. In that early morning hour, I had a crazy fantasy.
When this makes the newspapers, the price of Lennie’s paintings will go up fifty percent and Ray’s will double. I wonder if there’s any way I could get the two of them to pose for a picture with the miniature sword before Ray goes back to prison. Maybe have Nora standing in the background showing cleavage. After all, this is America, where Everyman has the opportunity to cash in on his misdeeds.
The fatigue was making me punchy. I checked the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of the pocketbook in the backseat. I hadn’t had a chance to get a trash bag or duct tape before I left the apartment, much less a dumbbell. Suppose I got into an accident or was stopped by the police? How could I explain the pocketbook and its contents? I slowed the Wagoneer to forty, which was probably a good idea anyway.
By the time I reached Schoolcross the storm had lifted and a full moon lit the snow-covered countryside. But a hundred yards from the Big House, as I was admiring the beauty and breathing a sigh of relief at returning safely, I swerved to avoid a snowy tree branch and the Wagoneer slid off the driveway. In low-range four-wheel drive, the tires spun on packed snow. The car was hung up on its front axle, and I didn’t have a flashlight. I’d have to walk, unless I wanted to spend the night sitting in the front seat.
When the driver’s door wouldn’t open because of the snow bank, I got out on the passenger’s side, and as I paused in the middle of the driveway, powdery crystals blew off the pines and into my face. Luckily, I was still wearing my winter coat and walking shoes, but in my haste to reach Linda, I’d left my gloves at the Big House. Instantly my hands were freezing. I thrust them into my pockets and headed up the driveway.
I jogged through the snow until the outline of the Big House appeared; its windows were completely dark and the house silent, although smoke rose from the fireplaces. I moved past carefully, looking for signs of life within, then hurried toward the Quaker Cottage. When I saw tracks in the snow, my heart skipped a beat and began racing wildly in my chest. Two sets of footprints led to my cottage, but only one returned.
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