For a moment he looks wary, but it passes. Of course it does. He knows how to play this game better than all of us. But this time he isn’t going to win.
“Good thing I found you. You feeling okay? You look great. Must be all the rest you got. I told you this’d be a good idea, didn’t I?” He glances around the room. “Doesn’t she look good?”
“I’m well,” I say. “Mentally sound. Stable.”
“Of course you are,” Rio says. “And don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise. You were a little stressed out is all. Like your mom, you know, but a little treatment, some of that whaddaya call it, that shock therapy, and you’ll be good as new.”
“I am a lot like my mother,” I admit. “Or I was. But somehow I don’t think I’m going to need any shock therapy. In fact, you might be the one due for a little shock.”
“Me?” he says, following it with a nervous little laugh. “Okay, Teddi, honey. Whatever you say.” He does that macho swagger thing, pandering to the crowd around us, showing that he is simply humoring me. But I can see that he is nervous. In my whole life I have never felt so powerful, so in control. “You got a purse or anything? I got the Expedition parked out front and we better get going before some cop decides to tow it.”
“The Expedition? Would that be mine, or the one you rented?” I ask.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Gallo, that Teddi’s not quite ready to go anywhere,” Dr. Benjamin says. “At least not with you.”
“Why not have a seat?” Diane asks Rio, pulling out a chair. “I think there may be a few things that your wife wants to ask you.”
“What’s this all about?” Rio asks. He licks his lips and stares at the seat but doesn’t take it.
“Diane’s been earning her detective’s badge,” I say, stretching out the moment, reveling in it, knowing I am holding the bomb that will be dropped right in Rio’s good trousers—exactly where he deserves it. Giving a credit card to his girlfriend and telling me I should watch my spending! “And she’s been very busy and very successful—investigating you.”
I let that worry him for a while, wondering if Rio is into other things I have no idea about. Like business with the Nose.
“She even saw some tapes from a bank in the Bronx.” Okay, so I am making that part up. All banks have security cameras, don’t they?
He has no response at first. Of course he doesn’t. But it doesn’t take him long to make a joke of it. “Films, huh? Was I dressed, at least?”
“Fully dressed, and taking out seven hundred dollars each time. The same seven hundred dollars you accused me of withdrawing…”
“No way,” Rio says, as if he is sure he hasn’t done it. I think for a second that maybe I am wrong, that Diane and Bobbie have made mistakes, until Diane speaks up.
“We know all about your accomplice,” she says. “Ms. Healy?”
Rio pales. So it is true. All of it.
“Okay,” I say. “I get it. I see how you did it. I see how easy it was and how it worked. But I didn’t see why until my father told me about the agreement you signed with him. If you left me, you’d walk away with nothing, right?”
Rio doesn’t say anything at all. He grimaces, looks at Dr. Benjamin as if she is at the bottom of everything, and seems to be considering what to say.
“But what I don’t get is why you didn’t simply kill me. We had insurance on my life. You fixed my car all the time. Why didn’t you do something to my brakes? Get it over with if you hated me so much?
“The kids were away, so they wouldn’t have been in the car with me…why didn’t you just kill me?” I ask. I don’t realize that I am crying until I feel the wetness on my cheeks. I backhand them away and stare at Rio, waiting for him to answer.
“Who said I hate you? See, that’s what she always does,” he tells Dr. Benjamin and Diane, still playing to the crowd. “She makes something out of nothing. If I hated you, Teddi, would I be here?”
“If you loved me, would I be? You tried to make me crazy,” I say. “I have all sorts of proof. If that’s not hate—”
“That’s ridiculous and you know it. You’ve had two toes over the edge from birth, Teddi, and you fell over and I caught you. How the hell does that make me the bad guy?”
I try to draw an even breath. I am not going to come apart here, prove him right. I can fall apart later, alone, cry and shout and throw whatever I want. Here, now, I want to be completely in control. I swallow, lift my head and pray my voice will come out steady.
“I’ll ask you again, why didn’t you just kill me if you hate me so much?”
“And I’ll tell you again. I don’t hate you. Ti amo con tutto il cuore,” he says in the private voice he uses in our bedroom to say he loves me with all his heart. “Tirami su.”
Tirami su, I think. Hold me close.
And then I don’t have to work at it anymore. Those two little words we always laughed over tear it all. “Oh, please!” I say, only now I am laughing alone.
“You don’t think I do? You don’t think I coulda walked loads of times, that I coulda found someone who—”
“Could have? You did. And you gave her my necklace and lingerie from Bloomingdale’s and then you accused me of losing one and spending too much on the other. And on top of that, you gave her—” how was I suppose to put it? “—the physical affection that was supposed to be mine.”
There is some satisfaction as the blood drains from Rio’s face. “Come on, Teddi. You know how things were between us. I was so afraid to push you, to make demands. Marian was only a piece of ass, you know? A goomah without an ounce of your goodness. It wasn’t like it was with you. It wasn’t even good for me. Men need—”
Beside me, Bobbie groans loudly. The truth is that I don’t really care about Marian. How long ago did I let go of Rio in my heart and hold on by inertia? He is a twelve-year cigarette and it is time to kick the habit before it kills me. “Who cares? It wasn’t like our sex life was satisfying, anyway,” I say, letting him cringe in front of Dr. Benjamin and a bunch of strangers. “But driving me crazy, Mario?”
I keep calling him Mario to remind myself that this isn’t the man I loved, gave my heart and soul and body to, had children with. God, what if my friends didn’t believe in me when I’d stopped believing in myself? What if I’d had to stay at South Winds, believing that I really did lose my mind? What if my children had to grow up with the fear that they, too, would need to be put away in the end, the way I’d been so sure about myself? “Why the hell didn’t you kill me?”
“She’s getting all upset, Doc,” Rio says, pointing at me while, if the looks on their faces are any indication, everyone around us seems to think I am doing pretty well. “Shouldn’t you maybe give her something to calm her down?”
Dr. Benjamin answers. “She’s angry Mr. Gallo. A perfectly natural response. In fact, she’s calmer than I am.”
“She’s a freaking wack job, just like her mother,” Rio says. “Look at June…”
CHAPTER 30
“If you think for a second I’m going to let you open my valise and steal my Godiva chocolates like you did the last time…” I hear my mother shouting from down the hall “…you’re loonier than I am. Call my doctor and tell him I’m baa-aack.”
“And speak of the devil,” Rio says, gesturing with his head toward the hall. “This is my life. If even one of you knew what my life was like—I just needed somebody who—”
He is still hung up on his infidelity, as if that is what matters to me.
“And it was only once, Teddi. She was a whore who didn’t charge me nothing. I mean, yeah, I called her a lot and we talked about it a lot, but I was trying to be faithful to you. I was with her twice, I swear it.” Only he isn’t looking at me anymore, he is looking at the doorway, where my father stands fuming and my mother fiddles with her valise.
“Marty!” Rio shouts. His voice cracks before he can get control of it. “Thank God you’re here. Teddi’s got this crazy idea into her head, and the doc here�
�”
“Rio, Rio, Rio,” my mother says, shaking her head. “Whatever happened to ‘hello June, how are you’? I got that much from the nurse in Admitting. She always tries to butter me up when I’m here. Wanted to go through my suitcase and take my Godiva chocolates, no doubt. Well, I told her we’ll have none of that this time.”
My father looks wide-eyed at everyone, as if to say, See? I’m not the only one that lets her get away with it.
“I’m going to put my things in my room,” my mother says, putting up a finger to keep everyone quiet. “Don’t say anything until I come back. I don’t want to miss a word.”
For a moment after she leaves, no one says anything, as if we are going to respect her wishes and wait for her while she rolls her Louis Vuitton drag-a-long down the hall. But then we all begin to speak at once, my father calling Rio a goddamn son of a bitch, swearing he’ll get him even if the police can’t do squat, Rio saying that he has to get me to Bellevue because a doctor who can really help me is waiting, Dr. Benjamin saying that Rio has played a very dangerous game and is lucky that he’s been found out before it is too late, and me repeating the same question over and over.
“Why didn’t you…?” I stop midway when I see my mother coming back into the room. She is wearing yet another ecru knit outfit. In her left hand she has her Gucci mock-croc handbag. In her right, she carries what looks like one of Rio’s smaller rifles. “What the hell is that?”
“I believe Rio calls it his Saiga-12,” she says, raising her eyebrows at Rio. “Isn’t that right? This was the one you were showing off to that police officer at the house, isn’t it?”
“June, for Christ’s sake!” my father says, stepping toward her to find the gun pointed at his midsection. “Where did you get that?”
“While you were running around Teddi’s throwing all Rio’s stuff out onto the lawn, I was checking out his shed,” she says simply.
“Well, that’s great,” Rio says. “You ever hear of private property? You better give it to me, June. It could be loaded.”
“Oh, it is,” my mother says with a Cheshire cat grin. “You’re really anal-retentive about your ammunition, aren’t you? All those little boxes, labeled so carefully…”
“Loaded! Oh, my God. Put it down, June,” my dad says, his hands doing that calming thing that people inexplicably do. “Gently. Don’t drop it.”
“You know,” Mom says, casually pointing the stubby rifle this way and that, first at Rio, then at Marty, even for a minute at Dr. Benjamin and Bobbie. “I was a lousy mother.” She waits a minute for someone to disagree with her. Even with a gun in her hand, no one denies it.
“Don’t all yell at once,” she says sarcastically. “Anyway, it was a worthless life. I did nothing right after Markie. I did nothing at all. Nothing seemed to matter. I failed you, Marty, as a wife.”
“No,” he says softly. “That I can’t agree with. Even with a gun to my head.”
“Then how do you explain Angelina?” she corrects him.
“That was my failing, not yours.”
I have never found my father noble, but with those words, there is something new there. Something gentle and admirable.
“What I did to David!” she says, shaking her head. “Driving him away, so I could have you to myself.”
“David’s back,” Marty says. “He’s home now, for good.”
The rifle is getting heavy, and my mother puts down her handbag so that she can hold it with both hands. “He’s already packed, Marty. He’s already got his reservations. They haven’t changed any more than we have. He still wants something we can’t give him, the same as Teddi does. Only she’s more forgiving.”
“What do they want?” my father asks, but I already know the answer.
“They want to grow up in a normal house with a normal mother and father,” June says with a quick shrug that acknowledges that is never to be. “They want to rewrite history. I think they get that from me.”
She swings around with the rifle, taking aim at Rio, who has moved several feet closer to the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asks him.
“Look, June,” Rio says. “Don’t you want to help Teddi? Don’t you want me to take her out of here, and then you—”
“How the hell do they expect me to rewrite history?” my father asks, and slumps into a chair, but my mother ignores him.
“You never answered her question,” my mother tells Rio.
“What question is that?” Rio asks, as if he doesn’t know.
So I ask again why he didn’t kill me. “Did that agreement say you got nothing if I died? Was that it? So even though you hated me…”
“I don’t friggin’ hate you,” Rio shouts, throwing up his hands. “You think I want to see the mother of my children dead? You think I could hurt them like that…?”
“But it was okay to hurt me, to make me think I was losing my mind?”
“You gonna tell me you’re not losing your mind? That you haven’t been losing it since day one? You’re always expecting it. How many times do you ask me if I think you’re normal ’cause you feel this or that? Alls I did was make sure that it happened while the kids were away. Did you want to lose it in front of them?”
“All,” I say, interrupting him. “Not alls. All.”
“All,” he says sheepishly, and I know he is seething with embarrassment and I am so small and petty I enjoy every second of his discomfort.
“Not that this is about grammar,” I concede.
“Right,” he agrees readily. “The important thing is that you’d get better. And when you were fine again, I’d be there for you.”
“You’re the one who’s out of your mind,” I say, staring at him. Can he really think he’s done me some sort of favor? “And Marian? She was to relieve me of the strain of having sex with you? You’re too good to me, Rio, really you are.”
“It sounds bad, but that’s not the way it was. Try to put yourself in my shoes for a minute instead of always looking at it from your side.”
Diane is trying to sneak up on June, who keeps shooting looks at her that back her up. Bobbie, totally ignoring the fact that my mother is standing with a rifle pointed at all of us, is huffing and puffing and making indignant noises as loudly as she can. Dr. Benjamin looks at me with utter confidence. You’re fine, the look says. Better than fine.
I nod at Rio to continue.
“It’s your fault, you know. If you just agreed to come here in the first place, a month ago, you’d be getting out of here by now. But no, you had to be strong. I waited and waited, but you didn’t get it. I had to have some space, don’t you understand that? Do you have any idea what it’s like for me? I leave you and your father expects me at the store an hour later. I leave work and you expect me home an hour after that? Where’s my time off for good behavior? When do I get to do what I want to do?”
My mother bangs the rifle butt against the floor. “This isn’t about you,” she says. “It’s about me.”
I can’t help smacking my forehead. Here Rio is, admitting that he tried to drive me crazy, and it’s still all about my mother. I glance over at Dr. Benjamin, who, despite the seriousness of the situation, can’t help smiling, too.
“Let’s move on to how I failed Teddi,” Mom says. “That was the worst of it, I think. I showed her how to blow a marriage, and I showed her that she was worthless because she’s a woman.
“I really blew it,” she says, her gaze wandering to the window, where we can all see two police cars, their sirens blaring and their lights flashing, pulling up in the circular drive in front of the hospital. “I think I’ll have to skip the rest of the speech,” she says, and for the first time I’ve ever seen her do it, she bites at the side of her lip.
“June,” my dad says softly. “Put down the gun. Give it to me, or to Diane there. She’ll know what to do with it.”
“I didn’t do one thing right,” she says sadly. “I dragged everyone I loved to hell and
back, and for what? To live to be embarrassed when the neighbors finally found out that my husband was fooling around with my maid, to see my daughter being driven crazy by her husband, to watch my son take off from our lives again…”
“Who?” Marty asks. “Roz? Are you saying that Roz Adel-stein found out about Angelina? Is that what this was all about?”
My mother looks at him as if he is stupider than dirt for not having figured that out.
“Listen to me,” Marty says. “Who cares who knows what? I love you, June. Don’t ask me why, but I do, and I’ll try harder.”
“What about you?” June asks Rio.
“Me?” Rio asks, and I can see it is the wrong answer.
She glances at the window. “I don’t have time for this, Rio,” she says, listening for the police in the hall and bracing her elbow on her hip. Diane lunges forward, but before she can get to her, my mother pulls the trigger.
I am screaming. I try to run to Rio, but someone is holding me back. I see Rio fall, and try again to get to him but the arms hold me firmly. “You’ll be in the way,” Bobbie tells me, turning so that I have to look over her shoulder to see Dr. Benjamin and Diane crouching beside Rio.
“Shit!” he is shouting, smacking one of his imported leather shoes against the linoleum floor. “She shot me! Oh, shit, it hurts. Did you see that? She shot me!”
Actually, he has a lot of energy for a man who’s been shot.
“Am I gonna die?” he asks Dr. Benjamin, grabbing onto her lapels while she rips open his good trousers, the ones I had cleaned for him all those weeks ago.
“Probably in fifty years or so,” Dr. Benjamin tells him, apparently very unimpressed with what she calls a flesh wound to Rio’s thigh. “A couple of inches to the right and you’d be a soprano, but you’ll live.”
“I should have gone to riflery more often,” Mom says, handing the gun to Diane and nodding at the nurses standing in the doorway, their faces frozen in horror. “But they gave you a choice at Camp Runamok, and I always chose golf. I’d have gotten him where I was aiming with a five iron, I think.”
Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway? Page 22