“Yeah, whatever. Okay, I need a name for this detective. We’ll call him Arthur Slade, half my name, half yours, okay?”
“Not Arthur Tiffany?”
“Cut it out.” Ingrid stuck the cigarette back in her mouth and said in her Bogart voice, “Detective Arthur Slade, at your service, Mister.’”
“Good name.”
“Now give it to me straight. Any suspects?”
Ray tried to play along. “Let’s see, what’s my alibi for the night of the twenty first?”
“Oh, hey!” Ingrid interrupted in her normal voice. “I almost forgot. Mrs. Shepard—Evelyn—said somebody threw a rock through the window right before I moved in.”
Ray closed his eyes for a moment. For the last hour nothing had existed outside the fainting room save his own past and the dreams it had contained. Now he felt in his chest how Ingrid’s words had reattached this little room to the rest of the house: to the study with the broken window, to the cut on his temple that had healed to a thin pink line; to the kitchen in which there was a failed soufflé in the garbage disposal and half a dozen over-defrosted pork chops soaking in the sink; and to Evelyn, who would come home from the grocery store full of false and dangerous cheer, barely concealed self-recrimination. It was all too complicated.
“Don’t worry, I’m not scared,” Ingrid was saying. “Evelyn said the police thought it was a bunch of kids, but I thought maybe there’d be actual clues. You know, like, do you have any enemies? Were there fingerprints?”
Ray got up from the edge of the desk and looked out the window. His legs felt stiff. “ I’m sure the police were right,” he said. “Just kids making mischief.”
Ingrid scoffed. “Police always think kids are guilty. If there’s no evidence, they actually have no idea who it was, right?”
“I suppose so, if you put it like that.”
“Well, don’t you want to know who did it?”
Ray looked at her. “As long as it doesn’t happen again,” he said, “that’s enough for me.”
“Boy, what kind of detective are you?” She was utterly disgusted, with the complete and immediate surrender to one clear emotion that only those who are young can sustain.
“I’m not a detective, I’m an architect,” Ray said.
“Well, I think you should have written more detective stories.”
“It was a fluke that I even wrote that one.”
“Whaddaya mean, ’fluke’?”
Why could she not leave this alone? “When I wrote that story,” he said, “I was in a hotel room in Boston trying to wreck my college career. It was the end of my senior year at Yale and I had a kind of—I don’t know, a breakdown, I suppose you’d call it. I just left school, in the middle of finals. I took the train from New Haven up to Boston, and I was going to go home, but then when I’d got all the way to my parents’ house in Newton, I couldn’t go in. I stood there on the road across from the house for probably half an hour, and then I got back on the subway and went into Boston and spent the rest of the week in the Hotel Bristol, getting drunk.”
“Bristol, that was the name of the gambling boat in the story.”
“Indeed it was. I’d forgotten that. So there I was, sitting at the bar of the Hotel Bristol, and I decided I wasn’t going to be an architect after all. I was going to leave school and go to California and become a screenwriter.” He shook his head. “I thought I was actually going to move to Hollywood and become famous writing screenplays.” He laughed, to communicate the folly of it all, but the laugh came out sickly and died. “I decided I was going to start right then and there, so I got out the hotel stationery and started to write. But I had no idea how to begin writing a screenplay, all those directions for the camera and so forth, so I wrote a story instead, and the story was ‘Too Much Ice.’”
As he spoke, the experience swirled back to him like wine entering his bloodstream: the elation in which he’d finished his story, walked to South Station to buy a train ticket to Los Angeles. But at the ticket counter he realized he’d left his wallet at the hotel, and the giddy sense of freedom that had ballooned inside him was all at once punctured and became again a thing that lay heavily on his chest: the weight of the expectations that had coalesced around him all his life. It was this weight he had fled school in the hope of escaping, and he had not succeeded.
He returned to the hotel bar and drank and drank in an attempt to wash that weight away. He drank so much he was sick in the bathroom later. And later still, he awoke on the hotel bed and realized it was the next day. He felt lighter now, but emptier as well. Something had been removed from him and he could feel the place from which it had gone, as raw and tender as a new wound.
“So did you go to California later?” Ingrid asked. “After you sobered up?”
“I went back to Connecticut.” He had been just five years older than she was now, but too old for such recklessness, such irresponsibility. He knew it even then. “I’d missed half my exams, but my father took the dean out to lunch or something. Something was arranged, and I took my exams late and graduated with the rest of my class. Cum laude.”
The memory of graduation returned to him now as an itchiness along his back: sweating inside the black commencement gown, its long sleeves meant for a taller man. The smell of cut grass and women’s perfume; his father saying, not unkindly, “I see it was Winn Spenser’s son who got magna cum laude. That would have been you if you hadn’t pulled that little stunt, Ray.” He patted Ray’s shoulder. “Surely you’re brighter than Trip Spenser.” Thinking he was paying his son a compliment.
Ray looked at Ingrid. “I graduated from Yale, went back again for architecture school, got an internship at a prestigious architectural firm in Boston, and eighteen years later, here I am.” He spread his hands to take in the typewriter, the fainting room, the whole house, Evelyn.
“But why didn’t you get on the train for L.A.?”
“Because it was a passing whim. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You bothered to send in the story, and it got published, the first one you ever tried, and so now it’s like eighteen years later and you have all these detective novels lying around your house, and—” she nodded at the Emily Roseine pages—“you still know the formula and everything. How passing of a whim could it be?”
He hadn’t known, eighteen years ago, how easily one’s life could turn down a particular path, how even the slightest change of direction could eliminate a multitude of other choices, forever. And how subtle were the mechanisms that charted the course! Was it his father’s comment? When Ray showed him the published story he’d said: “Well, that’s fine, Ray, but don’t imagine you’ll earn a living writing pulp.” That had been part of it; Ray was already half-convinced his success on the first try was a fluke. And after architecture school it was the long hours he’d worked when he was first hired; at Dunlap and Scott there was an unstated rule that anyone who didn’t stay until midnight four nights a week was unfit for promotion.
Ingrid was waiting for an answer.
“I wanted to be an architect ever since I was your age,” Ray said, choosing his words carefully, “and I got to be one. Very few people accomplish even one childhood dream, let alone two. I’m grateful, and I’m not greedy. Besides, I am writing; I’m writing a book right now. It just happens to be about architecture.”
Yet looking at the typewriter on the desk, the same one on which he had typed up his scribbled draft of “Too Much Ice” eighteen years before, Ray felt absolutely certain that, had his wallet been in his back pocket when he reached the ticket counter, he would have been on a train to California that same day. He imagined himself sitting in the stage set Ingrid had created—his own feet up on the desk, a cigarette dangling from his lips, the whirring of the metal desk fan. On the pebbled glass door it would say, A.B. Shepard, Head Writer. Well, why not? His life could have been different, utterly different, were it not for the smallest of details, one tiny act of forgetfulness. He reminded
himself of what he’d just said: he had accomplished one childhood dream. And one should be enough.
He stood up. He’d spent far too long horsing around up here; it was almost 8:30; he’d be up half the night with his D and S work, he was starving, there was no dinner and still no sign of his wife. He turned to Ingrid. “Did Evelyn say which grocery store she’d gone to? Like, one in New Hampshire, perhaps?”
Ingrid shrugged. “She was kind of upset about her soufflé. Maybe she’s, you know, taking the long way back.”
A thought occurred to him. “By the way, Ingrid,” he said, “what I told you about leaving school in the middle of finals—I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to Evelyn. It’s not a secret; she knows about it, of course, but it I think it would upset her if she knew I’d told you.”
This was only half true: in fact, he had never told Evelyn. At first, there had been no reason to: when he was courting her he’d been trying to impress her with his stability, his success. And then after learning about her first husband’s drinking binges, it seemed cruel to tell her he’d once had one of his own. Besides, Joe Cullen’s drunken episodes had revolved around beating up his wife, whereas Ray’s had involved nearly flunking out of Yale and having delusions he could be a screenwriter—there was something embarrassing about that. Not that beating up your wife was what real men did, but his own misbehavior seemed too much the stuff of a neurotic, over-privileged adolescent.
“Why would it upset her?” Ingrid asked.
“Evelyn? She—she’s had a complicated life.”
“Complicated how?”
“Ingrid, all adults have complicated lives simply by virtue of being alive long enough to acquire them. Give yourself another ten years and you’ll have one too, I promise.”
Ingrid scowled at the obvious condescension of this remark. He’d been scattering clues like cigarette ash, Mister, but then he clammed up faster than a speakeasy at the sight of a prowl car. I’d have to take it slow. “I won’t tell her,” she said after a moment.
Outside Ray heard the sound of tires crunching the gravel and realized he’d been listening for it all along. He stood up to go, but paused at the door.
“As I said, it’s not a secret or anything, it’s just—”
“Professional ethics, Mister.” Ingrid cocked her jaw. “Detective Slade never rats on a client.”
Though she’d gone back to clowning, he could see in her eyes that she meant it.
9.
Subject: White female. Estimate 30 years of age, height 5’7”. Hair red, eyes blue.
Identifying features include freckles, long scar on right hand.
Possibly has other scars—subject wears long sleeves even in summer.
Occupation: Housewife.
Life: “COMPLICATED.”
Ingrid took up her post on the stone wall at the end of the backyard and waited. She’d noticed Evelyn sometimes sat in the backyard after dinner and read a magazine or filed her nails. It would be the best time to get information—Evelyn had usually had a glass of wine by then, so she’d be more likely to talk, and Ray never came outside until later—he was always trying to finish up some detail of work, and then he liked to mix an after-dinner drink.
Evelyn spread a beach towel over the lawn chair to soak up the little rain that had fallen earlier. This was her favorite time of day in the summer, after dinner but before sunset, the hour that was cool enough to sit outside and be comfortable, especially if you were wearing half-sleeves. When she’d invited Ingrid to live with them she hadn’t considered what a hassle it would be to keep her tattoos covered up all the time. Again it occurred to her to forget about hiding them, and again she rejected the idea. She was tired of being stared at, tired of being found interesting only because she was a freak, and the freakishness wasn’t even her, not really. It was flash and shill, it was painted on.
She stretched out on the lawn chair. Ingrid had been here two weeks and Evelyn was beginning to feel a tentative equilibrium. Although Ingrid had not become her friend as she had hoped, having a third person in the house did take the focus off her, and feeling less like she was in the center ring let her relax a little more. She and Ray were having more sex and fewer arguments. Besides, now that she had Ingrid to cook for, there was less pressure from Ray for her to go out with his friends or give parties. Evelyn could not say she was happy, but she was not feeling unhappy, nor furious in the mind-bending, crazy-making way she had felt the night she’d thrown the rock. Except for the garbage bag still taped over the window and the faint scar on Ray’s forehead, she could pretend that it hadn’t happened. She let her magazine fall open and began reading.
When she turned the page, Ingrid spoke almost in her ear; Evelyn jumped. Ingrid was standing right beside her. How long had she been there?
“Jesus, girl, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” Ingrid said. She nodded at the magazine. “I was just saying, I saw her once. Faye Dunaway.”
Evelyn looked down at the magazine. The photo spread was of a blonde actress whose cheekbones looked like polished marble. The room in which she posed was something Evie Lynn would have clipped for her Dream Life scrapbook—white leather sofa, open French doors that gave onto a view of cliffs and blue sea, filmy white drapes billowing into the room.
Evelyn ran a finger over the cheekbones and the pale opaque gaze and looked back at Ingrid, dark-eyed, spike-haired. “You saw her in person?”
“Yeah. I was in Hollywood with my dad and stepmother and we saw her going into some restaurant.”
“Hollywood,” Evelyn said wistfully, the way people who had never been there said the word. “What’s it like?”
“Scuzzy.” Ingrid leaned over and tapped one of the photos, Faye Dunaway posing in the open French doors. Behind her were tall gray cliffs, crashing surf. “That’s not Hollywood. Hollywood doesn’t look anything like that.”
“In the pictures it always looks glamorous,” Evelyn said. “The movie openings and the restaurants, and all the mansions.”
Ingrid removed a cigarette from behind her ear and twirled it through her fingers. “In the pictures you can’t feel how dirty and noisy it is.”
“But you do see movie stars walking around?”
Ingrid scoffed. “The movie stars drive. And they all live in like Pacific Palisades or Bel Air or something. The only people walking around in Hollywood are tourists.”
“Well, you saw Faye Dunaway there,” Evelyn said.
Ingrid opened her mouth to reply and instead put the cigarette between her lips. She wanted to light it but didn’t in case the smoke bothered Evelyn. After a moment she asked, “Why not just go there, if you want to see it so much?”
“I’d like to,” Evelyn said, and then realized that this was in fact in the realm of possibility now. It was not Evie Lynne Cullen who was wishing, paging through magazines that advertised shampoos she couldn’t afford, never mind vacation packages. But was Hollywood something Ray would want to see? He’d probably think it was childish.
Ingrid sat on her heels in the grass. Evelyn wanted to say something else, to keep the conversation going. Ingrid seemed to have come over to her with no intention other than to chat, which was nice but seemed suspicious: although in general Ingrid was perfectly polite—offered to help with chores, cleared the table without being asked—she had never seemed especially friendly. All the conversations in which she acted truly interested seemed to be with Ray.
But now Ingrid looked up at her and offered something that might even be construed as a smile, if you could call a smile that sideways thing where only half her mouth moved. Evelyn decided to take the risk of saying what she actually thought.
“I guess,” she said, “that since I grew up reading about all these movie stars and stuff in magazines—” she waved at the one in her lap and a little self-conscious laugh escaped—“you kind of just want to see Los Angeles and Hollywood and all that for yourself, you know?”
Ingrid took the cigarette
out of her mouth. “Yeah, I guess I do,” she said. “When I lived in Melvin, I was always trying to get to L.A. too, by running away on my bike. Not to see movie stars, though. I wanted to go to this punk club called the Hong Kong Café.”
Evelyn had been wondering something about Ingrid for a while, and now seemed like the moment to ask it. She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase it so Ingrid wouldn’t be offended, and then ventured, “Is that why you dress like, you know, like what they call punk—because you love the music?”
Ingrid felt herself bristle in irritation. It was too much like the kind of thing her father’s girlfriend Linda asked: Why do you have to go out of the house dressed like that? Ingrid looked down at her clothes—black jeans she’d cut off above the knee and a black Suicidal Tendencies tee shirt whose sleeves had been razored away. She chewed her unlit her cigarette and tried to remember her objective.
Play nice, Slade. Don’t antagonize your witness. I’m dressed
She knew what she would have said to Linda: I’m dressed like this because I accidentally flushed all my alligator shirts down the toilet. But the look on Evelyn’s face didn’t seem judgmental so much as curious, like maybe she really wanted to know. So what was the real reason?
“I guess at first,” Ingrid said slowly, “I started wearing the tee shirts because I liked the bands. Not just the music but what they were saying. Like, wake up, stop pretending that everything’s fine when it isn’t. So then the clothes—you know, all the black and the combat boots and the thrashed leather and shaving your head and stuff—it felt more...well, more honest.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, there were all these girls at my school in Melvin, including this girl who’s the daughter of my dad’s girlfriend, and they’re all running around like, concerned about blow drying their bangs correctly, and whether they have this new shade of Bonne Bell lip gloss, and agonizing over it, like the idea was that some boy might like them more if they had the new raspberry flavor, and it was all so totally mundane and stupid that it just made me feel kind of sick. And I didn’t want anyone to think I was like that.”
The Fainting Room Page 11