“I just hope I get everything finished, after I bragged to you about how well it was going,” he said. “I’ve hit a snag. I’ll be working late tonight and maybe tomorrow. Don’t wait for dinner, promise?”
“Sure.”
Sarah came home about six and went straight to her room without greeting me.
“Do you want dinner, honey?” I asked.
“Not hungry,” she said. The two words were dropped on me like flat stones. I spent the night brooding on the couch, aimlessly channel surfing. When would Sarah return to her cheerful self? Why was her father working late? Jack wouldn’t lie to me, would he? Not after the way he’d loved me last night. Of course, my father had lied to my mother. Easily.
Jack came home after midnight and woke me up. I’d fallen asleep on the couch. “Come on, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’ll be more comfortable in our bed. I want to hold you.”
I followed him upstairs, trying to drown out the voices that said he was betraying me. Jack took off his tie and rumpled suit jacket. “I have a lipstick stain on my collar,” he said. “Do we have any stain remover?”
“How did you get lipstick on your collar?” I asked, trying to sound light and unconcerned.
“Sandy, the office manager, is moving to Seattle with her new husband. You remember her. The pretty one with the brown eyes and dark hair. We had a party at the office, and she gave me a good-bye kiss.”
That sounded like the kind of excuse my father used, I thought. My father the cheater.
“Just drop it in the laundry basket,” I said. “I’ll treat the stain in the morning.”
The lipstick on the collar nagged at me. I spent another restless night, then got up to kiss Jack good-bye and see my daughter off to school. She was wearing a tiny skirt and a scoop-neck top.
“Sarah, is that outfit appropriate for school?” I asked.
“Mom,” she said. “Everybody dresses like this. Anyway, I’m going to be late for the bus.”
“At least put on a jacket over it.” I handed her the cropped jacket we’d bought as part of her back-to-school wardrobe.
“Gotta run,” she said and was out the door before I could tell if she’d put it on or stuffed it in her backpack. I sighed. At least she hadn’t dropped the jacket on a chair.
I examined the lipstick stain on my husband’s shirt. The lipstick was a pale pink. Would a brunette wear that color? Didn’t Sandy wear darker colors? But Angela was wearing something similar. It must be back in style.
Angela. What if that wasn’t Sandy’s lipstick on my husband’s shirt collar? What if it was Angela’s?
“Your Jack is working late a lot lately, isn’t he?” my grandmother had asked. I’d defended him. He didn’t get in until midnight last night. He was working late tonight, too. On his project—or on Angela?
I had to know. I wasn’t going to be a fool like my mother. I drove over to Jack’s office in downtown Kirkwood. His car was parked in the company lot in his reserved space. I parked across the street and waited. At twelve fifteen, he left the building and went to Spencer’s Grill. I got out, pulled my winter hat low, and walked past the old-fashioned diner. Jack was sitting at the counter, reading a magazine and munching a grilled cheese sandwich.
I watched him walk back to his office while I stood in a store across the street. Jack had a corner office, and I could see him at his desk. The lights were on in the gray winter afternoon, and the building was too busy for a dalliance. I went home until five thirty and called him.
“Still have to work late, honey?” I asked.
“Afraid so,” he said. “I’m sorry to leave you home alone again, but you can spend the time thinking about what you can do with the extra money. Maybe we can take a February vacation to someplace warm.”
“I’d love to go to the Caribbean. What about St. Bart’s? Or St. John’s?”
“Any saint you want,” he said.
He hung up, and I started brooding again. My husband had sounded suspiciously cheery—the way my father did when he was cheating on my mother. Mom took it, year after year. Well, I wasn’t going to be Jack’s doormat. If he was cheating, I wanted to know. Then I’d get the best divorce lawyer.
I waited until seven o’clock, when I knew Jack would be getting hungry, and drove to a Maplewood brew pub, the Schlafly Bottleworks. I ordered a bison burger. I’d surprise him with his favorite sandwich if he was at the office working. If not, well, he’d get a different surprise.
I saw Jack’s light was on and his blinds were drawn. I barged right into his office.
“Surprise!” I yelled.
Jack was surprised. He was sitting at his drawing board, with paper spread everywhere.
I felt foolish, standing there with a bison burger. “I brought you a present.” I handed him the bag.
Jack’s face lit up when he unwrapped his burger. “You didn’t have to,” he said. “But you’ve saved me from eating pretzels from the snack machine.”
“That’s free-range bison,” I said. “I wonder where in the U.S. the buffalo roam.”
“Like me, not far from home,” he said, kissing me on the nose.
“Now I really do have to get back to work.”
“I have to get home,” I said. “Sarah’s rehearsing for the school musical. She should be back any moment.”
It was so cold my car didn’t warm up on the short drive home. I passed Smart Women and saw the lights were off. I hoped Angela was enjoying her last night on earth. She only had four hours left, if Grandma was right. Of course, Grandma had been wrong about my husband, Jack. Maybe she was wrong about Angela, too. Maybe she was turning as strange as her brother Oswald, who lived in the state mental institution and talked to imaginary people.
Our house was dark when I parked in front of it. I killed the lights and went in the front door. Sarah wasn’t home yet, unless she’d fallen asleep.
I heard a noise upstairs. “Hello?” I called. No answer. I armed myself with the fireplace poker. I took out my cell phone and pressed 911, but didn’t hit the call button. I slipped it in my pocket and tiptoed upstairs.
More noise, thumping and moaning. The sounds were coming from our bedroom. A burglar was hurting Sarah. I raced down the hall, flipped on the bedroom light, and saw Angela in my bed. Naked.
With my daughter.
Their clothes were scattered all over the floor.
“You slut,” I shrieked. “That’s my innocent daughter!”
I struck out with the poker and hit Angela on the head. I heard Sarah scream, “No, Mom, you don’t understand!” She tried to grab my arm, but I shook her away.
I kept hitting Angela until I realized that brilliant red was not her hair, but her blood. By then Angela was dead, and my sobbing daughter had called the police.
When my husband got home at midnight, I was being led away in handcuffs.
My daughter still won’t speak to me. Sarah told the police and the reporters that she loved Angela and they were planning to marry someplace where it was legal. Sarah said she didn’t tell me about their romance because she was afraid I’d overreact, and Angela’s murder proved she was right. I didn’t want my daughter to be known as a nerd, and she isn’t. The tabloids call her the Lesbian Lolita.
Will I be convicted of murder?
My lawyer says it depends on the jury. The law is tricky in Missouri. Seventeen is the age of consent, but if Angela believed Sarah was older and my daughter had given her consent, then Angela would not have been guilty of sex with a minor.
But Angela knew Sarah was only fifteen. She went to our daughter’s birthday dinner with us. My husband can’t find the photos to prove that. I wonder if my daughter destroyed them. She’s testifying for the prosecution. They’re saying my little Sarah was sexually emancipated. A TV talk show shrink said when Sarah brought her lover into her parents’ bedroom she was declaring herself a sexual being. He didn’t mention that the bed was a lot bigger than hers.
Jack sold our house to help pay
for the best criminal lawyer in the city. He and Sarah rent a small apartment near his office. Grandma sleeps on a pullout sofa in the living room. She’s moved in with them. She sold her house to pay for my legal bills. My grandmother wants to testify on my behalf. My lawyer says she’ll help prove a family history of mental illness.
The last time Grandma visited me in jail, I asked if she saw my future. Grandma said she saw nothing. The dead no longer visit her in the new apartment. She’s glad her so-called gift is gone.
Her tiny house has been leveled, and an upscale subdivision is being built on the site. These grand houses will have two baths, marble fireplaces, three bedrooms, and walk-in closets.
I wonder if one will have a walk-in bedroom doorway.
The Conqueror Worm
By BARBARA D’AMATO
Neal Hofstra had been home from work just three minutes—time enough to throw his coat on the sofa, stop in the bathroom, get a bottle of water from the fridge, and sit down at his computer and click up his e-mail. Although he complained about e-mail to his girlfriend, Sandy, claiming that because of it he never got away from his job, in fact he loved it. Neal was aware he wasn’t the most assertive man on the planet. Telephone conversations made him uneasy. He never quite knew how to end one and was left saying, “Well, okay—” or “Um, that’ll be fine, then,” and hoping the person on the other end would firmly say “Good-bye.” But with e-mail he could get the wording exactly right. Plus he could send off a note to a friend or even an order to a supplier—his job was supply manager for a chain of office supply stores—at any time of the day or night and not have to worry about disturbing the addressee. When he was forced to actually telephone somebody, he was sure he was interrupting. After all, if the person was at work, she was busy and shouldn’t be bothered. And if she was at home, she was resting and shouldn’t be bothered.
He sat down in his swivel chair and opened nkHofstra. He clicked on in-box. Three new messages in the in-box. It was like opening surprise packages.
From subject received
Sandy Hossler dinner tonight? 11/5/2008 2:44 PM
JDPutnam Brant erasable pens order 11/5/2008 5:01 PM
Earl Think reminder 11/5/2008 5:17 PM
The one from his girlfriend Sandy was a nice thing. He’d like to do dinner tonight, but he deleted it and would get back to her in a couple of minutes. The one from his boss with the pen order wasn’t such a nice thing. The 5:01 time made it irritatingly clear that Mr. Putnam knew he had left work on the stroke of five.
Well, screw him. Neal would get the stupid pens order in tonight. Brant’s took orders 24/7.
The mystery e-mailer was interesting. No attachment, so he opened it.
The message read:
Hello, Inky.
Neal shoved himself away from the desk so hard his chair caught its wheels on an electric cable, and he tipped over onto the floor. Grabbing the chair by the back, he slammed it down in front of the desk and dropped into it.
The rest of the message read “Just asking how you are after all this time.” It was signed “l. Amoco.”
Neal hit reply and typed “Who are you?” Then he hit send. He got up and walked around the room a couple of times until he realized he was holding his breath. The message was a joke. A stupid joke. He ought to be angry. No, he was angry. He sat back down and, furious, he deleted the original message with a hard thumb on the delete key.
But now there was an incoming message. This one from Moca Hooy, which had to be something different. Neal opened it.
You know who I am. Your old friend Berko.
Although Neal was trembling now, he managed to type a reply.
But you’re dead.
A ten-second pause and another message. This one from acc most.
Nope. Can’t get out of it that way, Inky.
Neal punched Delete. Went to the second message and deleted it. Then, thinking he was going to vomit, he ran to the bathroom. But as soon as he got there, the anger took over instead. He washed his hot face with cold water. Then washed it again.
All right. He was furious with whoever it was. But this was not the time to get crazy. Who else knew him by the name Inky? Berko had invented the nickname from his initials, N. K. Hofstra. He was always making up mildly insulting nicknames, like calling Henry Caringella Zorro because he got a zero on his first differential equations test. It wasn’t quite insulting, because it wasn’t Zero. Berko never used these names except in one-on-one conversations, as if it were some sort of intimate endearment. Neal had only heard about the Zorro name because Henry told him. Neal had certainly not told anybody about the Inky name.
Time to trace this thing. He wished he were a computer genius. Sitting back down again, he checked his in-box. Gone, of course. He had deleted the messages. But they would be in the delete file.
He clicked on the delete file. Oddly, the messages weren’t there. Could he have emptied the file? Well, he certainly didn’t remember doing so, and there was the deleted message from Sandy. And besides, he would have had to answer “Yes” when the program asked whether he was sure he wanted to permanently delete the messages, and then he would have had to return to his in-box, because that had been up on the screen when he got back from the bathroom.
And he certainly had not done all that and been unaware of it. There had been no mental blackout. He was angry, not insane.
What was the name the first message had come in under? Something about an oil company? He couldn’t remember.
Of course! He was so rattled he wasn’t thinking. Look in sent items! The first message would be there, attached to his response.
But it wasn’t. It and his response were gone.
The phone rang. He was trembling so much he could hardly answer.
“Hi, hon. Get my e-mail? Let’s do dinner.”
“Sandy, I don’t think I’m up for dinner tonight.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling very well.”
“You sound funny. I’ll come over and take care of you.”
“No, honey. I think I’d better just hunker down. I’ll call if I need you.”
She was ringing his doorbell twenty minutes later.
He had loved Sandy when he first heard her speak. Her voice summed her up so well—gentle, willing to listen but willing to speak her mind, too. There was a trace of sadness in Sandy, which he thought was the result of her divorce. She had the air of a person who had made a mistake and grown as a result.
The first time she visited his apartment, he’d cooked for her. She’d had a hard day at her job as a paralegal. The lawyers had kept her working through lunch. Without thinking much about it, he’d taken a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. He cracked six into a bowl, whisked them with a fork, and poured them gently into a pan where butter was bubbling on low heat. While they were scrambling, he took lox and a red onion out of the refrigerator. He sliced two bagels and lowered them into the toaster.
Sandy said, “Now I know you’re not a computer nerd.”
“What?”
“You cook.”
“Oh, yeah. You mean I don’t send out for pizza and have empty pizza boxes and Mountain Dew cans all over the floor.”
“Exactly.”
Tonight, she had not only hurried over, she had brought a large shopping bag that emitted the odors of Thai curry beef and coconut milk soup.
“Now I’ll go to the kitchen and dish out, and then we’ll eat, and you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”
While she was in the kitchen—a very tiny space with one work counter and room for a two-foot-diameter round table and two chairs, Neal edged cautiously to his computer. He touched the keyboard gingerly and looked at the monitor.
Another message. “Ah, much of sadness, more of sin, Inky. I’m going to get even.”
“Sandy! Come here quick! I’ll show you.”
“What?”
“Look at this!”
She peered over his shoulder. “What, Neal?
A message from your boss?”
Sandy said, “You’d better call Beetlejuice.”
He explained what was happening, the vanishing messages, but not the underlying reason. And certainly not the horrible thing he had done that caused all this. He knew he had to tell her eventually, but he had to work up to it. What would she think of him, once she knew? He didn’t want to lose her.
BEETLEJUICE Thomas said he’d come right over.
The man had been named by a mother with an antic imagination. But he thought his name was pretty funny. “Nobody forgets who I am,” he said.
When he burst in the door, he shouted, “You lucky folk, it’s me!”
But seeing Neal’s face, he sobered up.
Neal explained, just as he had to Sandy, what was happening, but not the story behind it.
Beetlejuice sat at Neal’s desk, flexed his fingers dramatically, and said, “Got any Jolt?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Mountain Dew?”
“I think so.”
Beetlejuice clicked keys for several minutes and began to look annoyed.
Neal said, “No luck?”
“Not yet. Why don’t you go get a soda for yourself and let me work?”
“Have you ever seen a problem like this before?”
Hearing Neal’s tacit criticism, he said, “Yes, actually, I have.”
“Did you fix it?”
“I’m researching it.”
“So when was this?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“Did you find the problem?”
“I haven’t yet.”
“How is the person who has the problem dealing with it?”
“I haven’t heard from him recently. I’ll have to check.”
Neal paced back and forth. Sandy brought him a glass of grape drink, but he just held it. He felt queasy. He peered over Beetlejuice’s shoulder. Which wasn’t appreciated.
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