The Silent Wife: A Novel

by A. S. A. Harrison

  It’s by sheer chance, a chance determined solely by the flow of traffic, that he is caught by the red light, and it’s also by chance that the spot next to him becomes vacant. Once in place beside him, they see their opportunity. Taking stock, they identify the need for an escape route. As soon as the deed is done they will have to move, and so they watch and they wait. They watch the traffic and the pedestrians crossing in front of them and wait for the flow to subside. They watch the green light directing the flow and wait for it to change to orange. They watch the left-turning cars move into the intersection, and still they wait, like the half-mad, risk-taking mercenaries they are. Finally, the one who is not driving, the designated shooter, takes aim, extending his weapon through the open passenger window.

  How many shots did he fire? The news story doesn’t specify, but the wording of it, the notion that “one or more gunmen opened fire,” implies a volley. Did the first of the bullets hit home? Or did he have a moment to realize his peril, consider what was happening and why? She finds now that she wants very much for him to have seen it coming. This is her wish. That he registered the truth, understood it as her doing, saw that he’d brought it on himself. And yet she doubts that he would think of her because as far as he knew it wasn’t in her nature to cross him. The Jodi he held in his heart was not someone who could do this.

  Uncharacteristically, she gets ready for bed without setting the house straight first. Her dishes are in the sink unwashed, her suitcase in the foyer unopened. Sleep is a default mode brought on by her spent circuitry, but once the first layer of exhaustion has been sloughed off she finds herself back on the surface with her eyes open. Ambient light reveals the dark shapes of furniture and the orientation of windows and doors, but these fail to coalesce into anything she can recognize. The day, the place, the circumstances of her life all evade her, as if her mind were a glass of water that’s been poured out. She waits, and when her faculties return she identifies the breach as a complication of jet lag, compounded by her wish that she could go back in time and reconsider her choices.

  The sense of security and optimism she felt after reading the article in the paper—neither the car nor the perpetrators had been identified—is now displaced by the belated realization that being the victim’s ex-spouse automatically makes her the prime suspect, and that it will only be worse if she’s named in the will. The fact that this did not occur to her before—while she was plotting and scheming with Alison, hawking her household goods, fleeing to the tropics—she finds astonishing. It’s as if she’s been in some kind of trance, a self-induced hypnotic state, a stupor of wishful thinking. She panicked when the call came through in Florida, but that was nothing. That you could sleep off or drown in drink. This, what she feels now, is vicious and barbed, like circulation returning to dead limbs, like someone has shaken her up and made her blood fizz.

  Todd was a child in so many ways, in Freudian terms a case of arrested psychosexual development, a phallus-fixated five-year-old preoccupied with sexual ascendancy, still in love with his mother, displacing his desire onto all women, the embodiment of the Oedipus complex. Freud has never inspired her, but he really knew how to crucify a person. Let’s just say that Todd was not one for self-reflection and did not typically factor his own shortcomings into his worldview. Though in all fairness he also overlooked what was indefensible in others. He was a forgiving man. But that in no way absolves him. She would like to believe that in death he’ll be forced to face up to things, that even now he’s reflecting on his wrongdoings, whether in purgatory or elsewhere. But she can’t dismiss the feeling that he has somehow managed to escape, has finagled things so he gets off scot-free, like always.

  —

  When the knock comes in the morning she’s drinking coffee and reading the paper. Today’s story, downsized to a single column, provides no new information. Still damp from her shower, wearing a terry robe and white cotton socks, she’s thinking that once she’s finished her coffee, which she hopes will take care of her headache, she’ll go back to bed and catch up on the sleep she missed last night while lying awake with her mind racing. There are no clients due and she has no obligations since according to her schedule she’s still in Florida. She doesn’t know who’s knocking, but it has to be the doorman or one of her neighbors. Anyone else would have to buzz her from the lobby. Or so she assumes, forgetting that policemen have special privileges and go where they please.

  The detective, in his mid to late thirties, is a stocky man with a square face and eyes the color of soil, topped by eyebrows like dashes, straight and true. Under his coat, which is hanging open, he’s wearing a brown suit, a light blue shirt, and a tie with a bold, uncomplicated diagonal stripe. Even before she takes note of his wedding band she has him pegged as a family man—a man with three or four children under the age of twelve and a wife who likes the security he doubtless provides.

  “Miss Jodi Brett?” he asks.

  She nods.

  He takes out his wallet, flips it open, and holds it at eye level so she can see his ID.

  “Detective Sergeant John Skinner. Mind if I come in?”

  She stands aside and he steps into the foyer, closing the door behind him.

  “Sorry to intrude at such an early hour,” he says. A reference to her bathrobe. “If I may, I’d like to offer my condolences. I’m aware of how deeply affected you were when we gave you the news. It’s unfortunate that it had to happen that way—over the phone, I mean. We’d been in touch with the Jacksonville force, but there was some kind of mix-up.”

  “Was it you I spoke to?” she asks.

  “No, ma’am. That was Constable Davey. But he did inform me as to your considerable distress.”

  She has the fleeting, wily thought that fainting the way she did has garnered her some sympathy and may conceivably be the reason for this excessive politeness. She invites him in and leads the way to the living room, which at the moment is spectacularly lit by the morning sun. Gravitating to the view, he says, “You must get a lot of enjoyment out of this.”

  “We do,” she says. “Or we did.” She falters and then collects herself. “I love the view and so did Todd. It’s pretty much the reason we took this place, which isn’t as big as some we were—” She lets the sentence drop, suddenly embarrassed by her privilege, thinking of the poky little house that would be all he could afford on his policeman’s salary, especially with a family of five or six.

  “Can I offer you coffee?” she asks.

  “Well now. If it wouldn’t be too much bother.”

  “No bother. I have some made.”

  “Black will be fine,” he says.

  When she’s back with a mug of coffee she hands it to him and excuses herself. “If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll just get into some clothes.”

  Escaping into the bedroom gives her a brief but much-needed respite. Her hands are clammy; her hairline is damp; she feels grubby in spite of having showered. If she had stopped to imagine a visit from the police it would have been nothing like this. To begin with there would have been two of them—don’t they normally travel in pairs?—and they would have been hard on her case, capitalizing on her state of undress to keep her off balance, using the conversational ball as a weapon. That, at least, would have drawn out her mettle and roused her defenses. Whereas this—a lone detective with an overly diffident manner—what can it mean?

  She returns to the living room in pressed trousers and a fresh shirt. She’s applied some color to her cheeks and tamed back her hair. The detective, who is standing at the window looking out, turns when she enters. She has made no sound, but he’s caught her in his peripheral vision. They both sit down, her on the sofa, him on a facing wing chair.

  “I know the news has come as a blow,” he begins. “In a perfect world we would give you time to recover before barging in on you, but we need to jump on this without delay. We have very little to go on, and with every hour that passes the trail gets colder. I’m sure you can appreciate
what we’re up against.”

  He raises his hands, palms up, a plea for understanding.

  “Without knowing it yourself,” he continues, “you may have information that will help us in our investigation. Details of the victim’s lifestyle, an account of his movements in the days and weeks leading up to the crime. These can be critical in piecing together what actually happened. Something he said or did, which you may have ignored at the time, could turn out to be an important piece of the puzzle. I can’t emphasize enough how valuable you could be in helping us solve this case. You are extremely important to us, and I want you to think of yourself in just that way.”

  She finds, to her dismay, that she can’t look him in the eye. Her guilt must be utterly transparent to a man like this, a stalwart man with a big backlog of experience. Why else would he torment her with all this guff about her value and importance?

  “I’m sorry but I’ve forgotten your name,” she says.

  He repeats his name—Detective Sergeant Skinner—but even as he says it she’s forgetting it again, still thinking of him as the family man.

  “About this business of prying into your affairs,” he says. “Believe me, I wish there were another way. Someone dies, you barely have time to register the fact, and here we are grilling you, asking you to dredge up memories that can only be painful to you at such a time.”

  His voice has a quiet, lilting quality that gets on her nerves. He’s poised, complacent, sure of himself, a cat grooming his prey. She looks at his squared-off fingers with their clean nails, at the virtuous stripe of his tie, at the lobes of his ears, which curve deftly into the sides of his head with no superfluous flap.

  “This part of the job is hard on everyone,” he says. “We don’t like it any more than you do. We try to go as easy as we can, but people are apt to take offense, and you really can’t blame them.”

  She feels hot and cold at the same time: head hot, extremities cold. Any second now she’s going to burst out laughing. She gets up from the sofa and rummages in the credenza for the pack of Marlboros that she knows is there. She doesn’t smoke, but right now it seems like a good idea.

  “Can I offer you one?” she asks the family man, holding out the package.

  He declines. She finds a book of matches and lights one for herself. She last smoked a cigarette twenty or more years ago, when she was still in school, but she inhales deeply nonetheless. Not surprisingly the room spins. She waits it out and then returns to her seat, cigarette in one hand and in the other her souvenir ashtray from Mont St. Michel, which she keeps because it’s cheerful.

  “About your relationship with the deceased,” he is saying through the haze of smoke. “If you would just clear that up for me.”

  She wants to tell him the truth, that the deceased was someone she barely knew—or not the man she thought he was, anyway. She says instead that she and he had lived together for twenty years. He pounces on this and bleeds it of every conceivable drop of suggestion, asking her why they never married, whether or not it mattered to her, how she felt about him leaving, if she’d seen it coming. He’s ghoulishly curious about their failure to produce any children; in his world it has to mean something. He wants to know if she’s acquainted with Todd’s fiancée, the woman he was living with at the time of his death. When she thinks he’s come to the end he circles back and begins again. What circumstances led to his departure? Did she subsequently have any contact with him? Has she consulted a lawyer? Does she know that at the time of his death he was a father-to-be?

  On and on he goes, working his way through ever more intrusive questions, leaning forward in his chair now, grave and intent. He learns about her practice, that she works part-time from home, that she went to Florida to attend a conference. “It’s too bad, ma’am, that you had to come all the way back from Florida,” he says. “You manage to escape from the cold, and then something like this has to happen. What kind of conference was it?—if you don’t mind my asking.”

  She sucks on the stub of her cigarette, squinting against the smoke, eyes watering. The head rush brought on by the first intake of nicotine and carbon monoxide has been replaced now by a tightening in her chest. “It was a conference on stress and aging,” she says. “For mental-health professionals.”

  “Was there a special reason for you to be there?” he asks. “Were you invited to speak, for instance?”

  “I wasn’t a speaker,” she says.

  “Do you attend such events on a regular basis?”

  “Not on a regular basis.”

  “How often then?”

  “I don’t know. When something comes up that’s important to my work.”

  “When did you last attend a conference, prior to the one in Florida?”

  “I’d have to think about that.”

  “Take your time.”

  “There was a conference in Geneva, oh, maybe two or three years ago. I guess it’s been a while.” In spite of herself she laughs apologetically.

  “In what way was the conference in Geneva important to your work?”

  “The theme was communication. That’s a key area for any counseling psychologist.”

  “So the last conference you attended, prior to the one in Florida, was on communication, and it took place in Geneva either two or three years ago. Have I got that right?”

  “It could have been four years ago.”

  “So then. Can we say four years?”

  She knows what he’s getting at. That she happened to be out of town at a conference on this particular occasion is a little too convenient, a little too pat. In spite of the story in the paper with its angle on drug-crazed teens and organized crime, this detective knows exactly what he’s dealing with, and the big tip-off is her airtight, impregnable alibi, which is now working against her and which in any case she didn’t need because no one was going to suspect her of taking part in a drive-by shooting. That it was a hired kill would be obvious to a ten-year-old.

  “Oh hell, how should I know?” she snaps. “Maybe it was five years ago. How can you expect me to remember something like that at a time like this?”

  “Now, ma’am, try to calm yourself,” he says in his unperturbed way. “I know how difficult this must be for you, but as I said before, it sometimes happens that a seemingly trivial piece of information turns out to be an important clue. Nothing can be neglected. I’m sorry to put you through this, I truly am, but getting the case wrapped up is in your best interests too.”

  She finds the room so airless and stifling that she fears she might keel over. She thinks of getting up to open a window but instead takes a copy of Architectural Digest from the stack of magazines on the coffee table and uses it to fan herself. Meanwhile, the detective moves on to ever more forward questions. What is your income? What was the income of the deceased? Did he give you any money after he left? What is the total worth of his estate? Are you familiar with the terms of his will? And still he’s not done. Not until he’s asked about her parents and her friends and taken down their names. But not Alison’s name. This she has withheld.

  When he gets to his feet at last, he turns once again to the view and comments on the cloud formation over the lake. “Cirrostratus,” he says. “Snow on the way.”

  She looks out at the white haze. Now he wants to linger and talk about the weather. Next he’ll invite himself to lunch. She moves deliberately toward the foyer, leaving him little choice but to follow. On his way out the door he hands her his card and says, “Call me for any reason. As I said, we’re counting on your help. Crimes get solved because people tell us things. Call me even if you think it’s not important. Let me decide. You have my number right here.”

  —

  She keeps an eye on the obituary pages of the Tribune and in due course comes across the announcement. It’s brief, just a few lines, ending with the particulars of the funeral. There’s nothing about the way he died, and she, Jodi, is not mentioned. Natasha, who no doubt wrote the piece, has positioned herself
and her fetus as the chief mourners. “Todd Jeremy Gilbert, 46, entrepreneur, is survived by his loving wife-to-be and their unborn son.” Jodi’s own twenty years with him, her care and attention, devotion and forbearance, have not qualified for the public record, while he himself is dismissed in his own obituary as an “entrepreneur.” Natasha must know his story: that he rose from humble beginnings, met with success under his own steam and through his own mettle. Todd was the ultimate self-made man. If there’s a time and place to give him credit, surely this is it.

  Whether or not she will attend the funeral is yet to be decided. She’s been keeping her clients at bay, sleeping a lot, and mostly staying home. Maybe during her period of confinement she got used to not going out, and maybe, too, she needs a chance to catch up with herself. She’s having memory lapses, forgetting for long moments at a time that he ever left her. Even his death is not firmly established in her mind. Parts of her seem unaware of it—or maybe just refuse to believe it. On one occasion, as she navigates the mists between waking and sleeping, she makes up her mind to call him and ask him outright if he’s dead or alive. “Tell me the truth,” she means to say. “I need to know.”

  More than once she dreams that he’s come back to life. For the most part it’s all very prosaic. They’re sitting down to dinner and she says, “I thought you were dead,” and he says, “I was dead but I’m not anymore.” Or she’s riding the elevator with a stranger and the stranger turns out to be him. And always there’s a sense of relief. Something was horribly wrong, but now all is well and life can return to normal. It’s this intermittent backsliding that finally makes up her mind about the funeral. Although she’s apprehensive about appearing in public as the discarded wife and as much as she’d like to preserve her pride, she needs to have closure. She needs to teach herself that he’s dead.