Missing Pieces

by Joy Fielding

  “Pathetic,” Robert Crowe pronounced.

  “What is?”

  “Courtroom groupies. Every trial has them. The more gruesome the crime, the more ardent the bimbos.” He shook his head. “It makes you wonder.”

  “About what?”

  “About what kind of lives these poor deluded souls live. I mean, look at that woman. She’s not bad-looking; she probably wouldn’t have any trouble getting a man, yet she chooses to go after a guy who gets his kicks from killing and mutilating women. I don’t get it. Do you?”

  I shook my head, although, in truth, I was barely aware of anything he’d said after “she’s not bad-looking.” Moments before he’d told me I was beautiful. Jo Lynn was merely “not bad-looking.” Shallow thing that I was fast becoming, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  “So, what does Larry’s wife do when she’s not attending sensational murder trials?” he asked.

  The second mention of my husband’s name snapped me out of my reveries. “I’m a therapist.”

  “That’s right, I remember you were always interested in that sort of stuff.” He managed to make it sound as if he’d actually been listening to anything I’d had to say thirty years ago. “So little Kate Latimer grew up to become the woman she always wanted to be.”

  Had I? I wondered. If so, then why was she such a stranger?

  “Well, Kate Latimer, it’s been very nice seeing you again after all these years.” He leaned his face close to mine. Was he going to kiss me? Was I going to let him? Was I a total idiot?

  “It’s Kate Sinclair now,” I reminded us both.

  Cocking his head to one side, his eyes never leaving mine, he took my hand in his and brought it slowly to his mouth. His lips grazed the back of my hand. I don’t even want to describe the effect this had on my body, which was already struggling to remain upright and in one piece. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  I froze. “What’s the matter?”

  “The bimbo is headed this way.”

  “Okay, we can go now,” Jo Lynn announced, arriving at my side, eyes wandering between me and Robert Crowe.

  “Jo Lynn,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Robert Crowe. Robert, this is my sister, Jo Lynn Baker.”

  “Please shoot me now,” Robert said simply, and I laughed. It felt good to be in control again.

  “Am I missing something?” Jo Lynn asked. Her voice was light, but her eyes flashed a familiar combination of anger and hurt. She didn’t like to feel left out. She hated being laughed at.

  “Your sister and I knew each other in high school,” Robert said, as if this were explanation enough.

  For some reason, this seemed to satisfy her. “Really? Well, then I guess you can thank me for this mini high school reunion. I’m the one who dragged her down here, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.” She leaned forward to shake his hand, her breasts all but spilling into the air between them.

  “Yes, I seem to recall that it’s pretty hard to get Kate to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” Robert’s smile grew wicked. He’d spent six months in high school trying to seduce me, then dropped me like the proverbial hot potato when it became apparent I was a lost cause.

  “We should get going,” Jo Lynn stated, then leaned toward Robert, conspiratorially. “Our mom is terrorizing the tenants of the old folks home she lives in. We have a meeting.”

  “Interesting family,” Robert Crowe said, as Jo Lynn led me away.

  “So, did you sleep with him?” she asked on the way to the Palm Beach Lakes Retirement Home.

  “No, of course not.”

  “But you wanted to,” she persisted.

  “I was seventeen; I didn’t know what I wanted.”

  “You wanted to sleep with him, but you were such a goody-goody that you didn’t, and you’ve always regretted it.”

  “For God’s sake, Jo Lynn, I haven’t thought about the man in years.”

  When I refused to discuss him further, Jo Lynn launched into a recap of the day’s proceedings. Angela Riegert was a disaster as a witness, she pronounced; her testimony had been more helpful to the defense than to the prosecution. It didn’t matter that she’d placed the defendant beside the victim shortly before the girl’s disappearance; all the jury would remember was that Angela Riegert was a beer-guzzling, marijuana-smoking, half-blind half-wit.

  Marcia Layton was similarly gutted, then tossed aside, as were the rest of the day’s witnesses, all of whom put Colin Friendly squarely in the vicinity of the murdered girls at the time they went missing. “Inconclusive,” Jo Lynn pronounced stubbornly. “Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.”

  There was no point in arguing. Jo Lynn had always believed exactly what she wanted to believe. She saw what she wanted to see. When she looked at Colin Friendly, she saw a lonely little boy with a sad smile, and she believed him to be innocent, as much a victim as each of the women he stood accused of murdering. Possibly more.

  It had been the same way with Andrew and Daniel and Peter. Andrew, whom she married at eighteen, broke first one arm, then the other; Daniel, whom she married six years later, stole her money and cracked her ribs; Peter, whom she married just after her thirty-second birthday and divorced just prior to her thirty-third, threw her down a flight of stairs on their wedding night. Still, in the end, it was Andrew, Daniel, and Peter who did the walking. I tried to get her into therapy, but she would have none of it. “It’s Mom’s fault,” she’d joke. (“Kidding on the square,” our mother would say, shoulders slumping forward, accepting responsibility.)

  “Would you slow down a bit,” Jo Lynn whined as we reached the front door of the retirement home.

  “Why’d you have to wear such high heels?” I asked, transferring my frustration from her to her fuchsia pumps.

  “You don’t like my shoes?”

  The lobby was large and cheery, all white paint and green trees and chairs covered in bold floral prints. At least a dozen senior citizens sat in a row of white wicker rocking chairs, staring out the large front window, as if at a drive-in movie. Thinning hair, liver spots, stooped backs, and sunken faces, an old man fumbling with his fly, an old woman adjusting her teeth—I looked at them and saw the future. It scared me half to death.

  Our mother was waiting for us outside Mrs. Winchell’s office. “Where have you been? It’s not like you to be late.” She looked from me to Jo Lynn.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Jo Lynn said immediately, her defenses, like fists, already raised.

  “I was just thinking how nice it is to see you,” our mother said.

  Jo Lynn made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort, and looked away.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I explained. “I met an old friend from high school.”

  “Who she wanted to sleep with, but didn’t,” Jo Lynn said.

  “What?” said my mother.

  “Jo Lynn …”

  “It’s true,” Jo Lynn said, smiling at our mother. “Did she tell you I’m getting married?”

  At our meeting Mrs. Winchell, whose tomato-red suit set off her velvety black skin but clashed with the rest of her predominantly canary-yellow office, made no effort to disguise repeated glances at her watch. She couldn’t stay long, she’d stated before the meeting got underway; we were almost forty minutes late and, regrettably, she had a dinner engagement in Boca.

  Got married. Moved to Boca. Got divorced. Moved to Delray.

  “Perhaps you could tell your daughters your complaints regarding Mr. Ormsby,” Mrs. Winchell began.

  Our mother looked surprised, then confused. Clearly, she had no idea what Mrs. Winchell was talking about.

  “Didn’t you tell me that Mr. Ormsby was harassing you?” Mrs. Winchell prompted. “Fred Ormsby is part of our janitorial staff,” she explained, checking her watch.

  “He’s a lovely man,” our mother added.

  “He hasn’t been calling you at all hours of the night?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  It was Mrs. Winchel
l’s turn to look confused. “Well, of course, he wouldn’t. He didn’t. I’m just repeating what you told me.”

  “No,” my mother insisted. “Fred Ormsby is a lovely man. He would never do anything like that. You must have misunderstood.”

  “Then there’s no problem?” my sister asked, jumping to her feet.

  “Apparently not.” Mrs. Winchell smiled, obviously relieved the meeting had reached such a surprisingly swift and satisfactory conclusion. If she had any other concerns, she wasn’t about to get into them now.

  “What did you make of that?” I asked my sister as we rode with our mother in the elevator up to the fourth floor.

  Jo Lynn shrugged. “Mrs. Winchell obviously got her inmates confused.”

  “I don’t trust that woman,” our mother said.

  Jo Lynn laughed. “You just don’t like her because she’s black.”

  “Jo Lynn!” I gasped.

  “Mrs. Winchell is black?” our mother asked.

  “How could she not know the woman is black?” I whispered as we exited the elevator and proceeded along the peach-colored corridor. “Do you think something’s the matter with her eyes?”

  “She just didn’t notice.”

  “How can you not notice something like that?”

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not polite to whisper behind people’s backs?” our mother asked pointedly, stopping in front of the door to her apartment, making no move to open it.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jo Lynn said. “There’s nobody home.”

  My mother reached into her pocket for her keys. She was elegantly dressed in a soft pink skirt and matching sweater set, highlighted by a single strand of pearls. “I was just thinking.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About what I’ve done that would make Mrs. Winchell not like me.” Her voice carried the threat of tears.

  “She doesn’t like you because you’re Jewish,” Jo Lynn said.

  “I’m Jewish?” our mother asked.

  “She’s joking, Mom,” I said quickly, glaring at Jo Lynn, feeling like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

  “So was I,” our mother said, smiling mischievously as we stepped into her small one-bedroom apartment. “Where’s your sense of humor, Kate?”

  I left it at the courthouse, I thought, my eyes taking in the room in a single glance. The living area contained a small love seat and matching chair, with a glass coffee table crowded in between, and a standing lamp cramped into one corner. Pictures of me, my daughters, and Jo Lynn covered every available surface, including the windowsill that ran along the far wall, overlooking the parking lot below.

  “It’s like an oven in here. How high do you have the heat?” Jo Lynn moved to the thermometer. “It’s eighty-three degrees. How can you stand it?”

  “Older people feel the cold more,” our mother said.

  I took off my jacket, threw it across the back of the beige chair.

  “What are you doing?” Jo Lynn said, scooping it up again, handing it back. “We’re not staying.”

  “We can stay a few minutes.”

  “Of course you’ll stay,” our mother insisted. “We’ll have some cake.”

  “Not a chance,” Jo Lynn said. “You trying to poison us like you did old Mr. Emerson?”

  Our mother was already on her way to the tiny galley kitchen, opening the fridge, removing a slightly lopsided angel food cake. “Oh, Jo Lynn,” she said. “There you go again, kidding on the square.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, coming up behind her, spying a large bottle of dishwashing detergent on the refrigerator’s top shelf. “Mom, what’s this doing in the fridge?”

  Jo Lynn was immediately at our side. “God, Mom, is that what you’ve been cooking with?”

  “Of course not,” our mother scoffed, removing the detergent from the fridge, putting it by the side of the sink. “Don’t you ever make mistakes?”

  “Something’s very wrong,” I said as we were driving home. “She’s losing it.”

  Jo Lynn waved dismissive fingers in the air. “She got confused.”

  I invited Jo Lynn over for dinner and was grateful when she said no. She wanted to relax and get a good night’s sleep, she said, so she’d look fresh for tomorrow’s day in court. It was important that Colin have attractive people around him to boost his morale. Besides, his attorneys might try to contact her, and she didn’t want to miss their call.

  “Whatever,” I said, dropping her off at her low-rise apartment near Blue Heron Drive, watching till she was safely through the lobby’s front door. My sister was pining for a serial killer and my mother kept dishwashing detergent in the refrigerator. Interesting family is right, I thought, recalling Robert’s words, squirming in my seat as I turned the car back toward 1-95.

  Now, I am not anything like my sister. I am mature, levelheaded, not given to flights of fancy. If anything, I am too firmly grounded in reality. I have a clear understanding of my strengths and weaknesses; I’ve come to terms with my foibles and insecurities. I am decidedly unsentimental; I am definitely not a romantic. So, what did it mean that I was suddenly, inexplicably, overwhelmingly, desperate for a man I hadn’t seen in over thirty years, a shallow jock who’d wooed me, then dumped me when I wouldn’t put out? Why couldn’t I get his sly smile out of my mind? “You’re very beautiful,” he’d said, the facile phrase repeating itself over and over in my head, attaching itself to Dwight Yoakam’s country twang. Station WKEY, I realized, wondering when I’d changed the dial.

  In fact, it doesn’t require a great deal of psychoanalyzing to figure out my state of mind: I was getting older; my life with Larry had settled into a comfortable groove; I’d seen flashes of my own mortality in the face of my mother; my sister was driving me nuts. Robert Crowe was a harking back to my youth, my innocence, a reminder that my whole life lay before me. Plus, of course, he was a symbol of all that was desirable but unattainable, the one who got away.

  Jo Lynn was right. I’d wanted to sleep with him very badly when I was seventeen. I’d been severely tempted on more than one occasion to throw caution to the wind, along with my morals and every article of clothing on me. I’m not sure what stopped me, other than the certainty that once I gave in, he would undoubtedly lose interest and move on. Well, he’d lost interest and moved on anyway. Then he’d moved away altogether and I never even had the chance to change my mind.

  I’d lied earlier when I told Jo Lynn I hadn’t thought about him in years. The truth was that I thought about him more often than I cared to admit, more often than I’d even realized. His features may have faded, blurred, grown indistinct, but he was always there, lurking, a symbol of simpler times, of youthful ardor, of lost chances, of what might have been.

  Dinner was already on the table when I arrived home. I was grateful to Larry, who was a better cook than I was, probably because he enjoyed cooking and I didn’t. At any rate, he’d made some sort of chicken dish that Michelle didn’t eat because she said it was too spicy and Sara didn’t eat because she said she was getting fat. I wolfed down everything on my plate, and almost choked on a piece of chicken.

  “Are you okay?” Larry asked.

  “Do you need the Heimlich maneuver?” Michelle was already on her feet. She’d taken a St. John’s Ambulance course the previous summer and was always asking if anyone needed the Heimlich maneuver.

  “Sorry, sweetie, no,” I told her.

  Both Sara and Michelle left the table while Larry and I were still eating, Michelle to do homework, Sara to return to school. There was a rehearsal for an upcoming fashion show; she was in it and she couldn’t be late. An interesting concept for Sara, I thought, who had no such qualms about being late for anything else.

  Larry and I chatted briefly about our respective days, then lapsed into silence. I found myself studying him as he ate; he was a nice-looking man of average height and weight, growing bald with grace, his eyes a grayish blue, his complexion fair, his arms and legs on
the thin side, any extra weight he’d acquired over the years having comfortably settled in around his stomach. He’d turned fifty the previous July with a minimum of fuss and even less angst. When I’d asked him how it felt to be fifty, he’d smiled and said simply, “It beats the alternative.” How would Robert respond to a similar query? I wondered, trying to shake free of his memory as I cleared the table of food. But it was no use. Robert’s presence pursued me into the kitchen as I cleaned up, crowded between Larry and me as we watched TV, followed me into the bedroom after I gave up waiting for Sara to come home.

  Larry was already in bed. The fourteen decorative pillows that sit on top of the ivory bedspread during the day were now scattered rudely across the ivory carpeting. Larry hates the pillows. He says they’re a pain in the neck, and he’s right, they are. But I love organizing them in the morning, arranging them in neat little rows, and truthfully, I don’t really mind taking them off and stacking them at night. Probably, it gives me the illusion of control. Larry has no such illusions. He simply throws them into the air and lets them fall where they may.

  I undressed and climbed into bed beside my husband, reaching for him in the dark. He sighed and stirred, turning onto his back, taking me into his arms, welcoming my touch. “Hi, funny face,” he whispered as I kissed the side of his neck, my fingers drawing a slowly swirling line through the curly hairs of his chest, edging downward. A slight groan escaped his lips as I reached lower, cradled his penis in the palm of my hand.

  I don’t know why I always feel a little insulted when Larry isn’t already fully aroused when I touch him, but I do. I know this is irrational, that it takes men longer to become aroused as they get older, that certain body parts no longer snap to attention at the merest whiff of sex, that gentle perseverance will pay off in the end. Still, it disappoints me, even angers me, if I’m being really truthful, that my mere presence beside him in bed is no longer enough. I know we’ve been married almost twenty-five years; I know my body isn’t the same as the body he married; I know things have become somewhat routine; I know romance takes hard work. Haven’t I already confessed I’m not a romantic?