Trial Run

by Anne Metikosh

  “What any other woman would have asked right away. Why I crashed the party.”

  I said, “It’s enough that you’re here.”

  David stared at me for a moment. He said something in a queer, tight voice, then pulled me to him again. He didn’t kiss me, but held me tightly and spoke over my head into the darkness.

  “Nina … Nina, listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  A shadow stabbed across the carpet, cutting the light in two. Someone had come to the doorway and stopped dead in the path of the glow from the hall. I jumped and swung around.

  Someone drawled, “Well, excuse me.”

  Whoever it was, was backed against the light, so I couldn’t see his face, but I felt David stiffen and his hand tighten convulsively on my shoulder. Then the figure turned away, toward the music and the light, and I saw that it was Randy Outray.

  The moment passed. I let out a shaky breath. “Well,” I said, as lightly as I could, “I’d better be getting back. I’m supposed to keep an eye on the caterers. If I’m not there, Sonja will be speculating wildly on the whys and wherefores.”

  “I don’t suppose she’ll have any doubts at all about the whys and wherefores,” David said, and laughed.

  I flushed and said tartly, “It’s all very well for you, carrying on regardless, but I’m only the hired help. I’ve got to face her tomorrow.”

  There was a low murmur in the hallway as several other guests glanced in on their way by. I recognized one as an inveterate eyebrow raiser.

  “I’d better go,” I said again.

  David hesitated, then bent and kissed me, a brief, hard kiss. “I’ll see you home later,” he said, and let me go.

  • • •

  The dining room was dazzling with people and gay with chatter and popping corks. I made my way through the crowd, trying to locate Sonja without actually catching her eye. She wasn’t there. On the far side of the room, Randy Outray lounged against the wall, looking bored. One of the waiters offered him a glass of champagne, the caterer’s assistant hard on his heels with a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Randy flapped a hand as though she were a persistent, annoying fly. As he turned away from her, the hooded eyes met mine. I saw them widen in recognition and sardonic amusement, then, slowly, deliberately, Randy Outray moved his tongue across his lips in an unmistakable gesture that brought the blood rushing to my cheeks. I turned and pushed my way back through the glittering crush of bodies.

  I crossed the hallway, gained the stairs, and mounted them hurriedly, seeking the time and space to gather the scattered rags of my self-possession. I was nearly at the top when the catch of my sandal came loose and the sandal came off. As I stooped to pick it up, Simone Outray slipped out of one of the bedrooms. The lank hair had fallen forward to mask her face. She hurried by me on the stairs without a glance.

  The sandal was my alibi. I waited politely for Simone to pass before I proceeded along the hall for the needed repairs. On the landing, a clock whirred to strike midnight. A thought touched me and I stopped short.

  Midnight. A dropped slipper. And Prince Charming?

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The corridor led to a bedroom with an en suite guests could use. Quietly, I opened the door and went in.

  Zoe Outray was sitting in an armchair by a curtained window. Her eyes were closed but she was not sleeping. I studied the famous face. She was, I supposed, about fifty years old, and still a lovely woman. Her skin was pale and clear and expertly made-up; her brows delicately drawn and arched with a faint arrogance. Her hair was sculptured silver. Only her mouth was too thin for beauty. In repose, she looked expensive, fragile, and about as approachable as the moon. Whatever her thoughts, they deepened the tiny wrinkles etching her eyes and mouth.

  “Bring it here,” she commanded in a cool, clear voice.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  Zoe Outray roused herself briefly to look at me. She apologized with chilly grace for her mistake and murmured something about a headache. I hesitated. The remoteness of her manner made her difficult to read. Her features were perfectly composed; nothing ruffled the silvery surface. But I noticed that the fragile pink silk of the chair arm had ripped under her nails, and I felt an unexpected surge of pity.

  “Mrs. Outray. Is there anything I can get for you?”

  The gray eyes opened again but, before she could respond, the door opened and Simone came in carrying a steaming cup of what smelled like tea laced with brandy. She looked startled at the sight of me, bent to restrap my sandal. The cup she was carrying was overfull. As the girl bent to place it in her mother’s hand, some of the tea slopped over the edge of the cup and onto the skirt of Zoe Outray’s dress.

  The effect, on both mother and daughter, was remarkable.

  Simone’s face, always pale, was now ash white. She stammered something that was meant to be an apology but her mother cut across it in a voice that bit like a whip.

  “Look what you’ve done! You clumsy little bitch. Even getting a cup of tea is asking too much of you. Look at me! How can I go back downstairs with tea stains on my dress?”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Simone spoke in a small shaken voice. Resentment had flattened her features into a sullen mask that made her look retarded. Something came and went in her mother’s face. It was the merest flick of an expression, like the flash of a camera’s shutter, but the girl took a quick step backward and I crossed the floor swiftly, taking the cup from her trembling hand and offering to fetch some soda from the kitchen to deal with the stains.

  “Thank you, you’re very good,” Zoe Outray said. The words were pleasant, but formally spoken, and the smile had gone. She did not meet my eye. Sonja Reid may have placed me above the salt for the evening but her friend would be sure I kept to my own side of the table.

  She had turned back to Simone and though the bite was gone, I heard the taunt in her voice as she said, “It’s just as well that your forays into polite society are restricted to one or two a year. That crowd you hang around with obviously sets a very low standard.”

  I saw the swift upward slant of Simone’s lashes. The sullen look deepened.

  Something sparked inside me. Zoe Outray had every right to ignore my presence if she chose, but none at all to castigate her grown daughter in front of me, a stranger. I said as evenly as I could, “I know Sonja would expect me to take care of her guests. If Simone will come with me to the kitchen, I’ll get her something for the stain.”

  I stopped. I had seen the faintest, least definable shade of what looked like amusement in Simone’s face, but it was amusement at some joke I couldn’t see. The impression was peculiarly unpleasant. In the next moment, it might have been illusion. Ducking her head, Simone scuttled to the door in my wake and I steered her toward the back stairs that led directly to the kitchen.

  “Your mother must be under a terrible strain,” I said.

  “Are you a shrink or something?”

  I ignored the rude tone.

  Her anxiety, like her mother’s anger, had seemed out of all proportion to the incident I had witnessed until I remembered some of my own mother’s outbursts, when she learned that she had Alzheimer’s. The hospital psychologist had explained that people coping with mortal illness, or great emotional stress, go through “steps” in their effort to reach some level of acceptance of their pain. One of the steps is anger. Anger needs a focus. And it is easier to zero in on something trivial that has gone awry than to try to encompass the enormity of the tragedy in your life. My mother’s catharsis had come one morning when she discovered that a neighbor’s dog had dug a small pit in the middle of her perennial garden. She had chased the animal away with a broom, shouting imprecations I never imagined she knew, before returning to weep over her ruined flowers as if they were lost souls.
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br />   I tried explaining something of this to Simone.

  We stood at the end of the deserted upper hall. The girl listened with bad grace to my little homily, staring at the carpet, face set in the martyred lines of one accustomed to receiving lectures. Something dark and unreadable moved behind her still features. When I finished, her eyes came up to meet mine.

  “You think my mother treats me like a moron because she’s upset, is that it? You have no idea.” She opened the door and started down the back stairs but she had only gone a few steps when she stopped and turned to face me again. “This isn’t a new behavior for her, you know.”

  “Your brother … ”

  “My brother,” Simone cut in, in a flat little voice, “Is a tin god who can do no wrong. Not in Mother’s eyes.” Resentment burned in every syllable and her voice hardened. “I know he’s in big trouble — this is the worst so far — but I don’t see why the whole family has to revolve around him. He’s not the only one suffering because of it. God, I’d have to come down with some kind of terminal disease to be able to compete. Simone, the ugly duckling, should be hidden away in a closet. After all, she can’t even carry a cup of tea without spilling it. But Randy, wonderful Randy, why he can get away with murder.” She giggled as though she’d told a slightly naughty joke but the note of acid amusement in her voice made me as uncomfortable as the determined grievance she seemed bent on sharing with me.

  “Simone … ”

  “She’s always thought the sun rose and set on him. I was just an afterthought. A mistake. Randy is her golden boy. Don’t you think there’s something just a little bit sick about a fifty-year old woman fawning on her twenty-two-year old son?”

  I was appalled at the venom my ill-advised attempt to help had unleashed. Desperately I reviewed my words, trying to understand how I had invited such dreadful confidences from this virtual stranger and trying to think of a way to dam the flow.

  “And as for my Daddy, huh. He’s too busy with other things to even notice. If he’s not at the office, he’s at the Clubbe, working out. I know what kind of ‘working out’ they do there. They think I don’t, but I do. I’m not stupid.”

  She was in full cry now.

  “Simone … ” I said again, not wanting to hear.

  “I wish they were dead,” she said. “I wish they were all dead!”

  Her voice cracked. She began to tremble.

  We had reached the point where the staircase bent to create a small landing. Hurriedly I sat the girl down and, not knowing what else to do, put my arms around her, and rocked her as I had rocked my young nephew when he skinned his knee. Then, a kiss and a few soothing words had been all that was needed to set the world right. Now, holding this child-woman in my arms and understanding but little of her pain, it seemed to me that Rory had never seemed so completely gone. I said it to myself deliberately; so dead.

  The thought stilled my rocking. The girl in my arms had stopped trembling; her eyes were dry and I wondered, fleetingly, if she ever shed tears, or if her pain went too deep for them. I stood up, smoothing the wrinkles out of my dress. Simone retreated once again behind the sulky mask, and insisted on taking the stain remover back up to her mother herself. I didn’t argue. I had no wish to become mixed up any further in the Outrays’ domestic tragedy.

  • • •

  The party wound down around two in the morning. I held David’s hand as we walked to his car. Snow dusted the boughs of the pine trees lining the drive and sparkled in the moonlight. It reminded me of the angel hair my mother used to put on our Christmas tree.

  “I always hated that stuff,” David said. “It looked so pretty but every time I touched it, I got those sharp prickles in my hands.”

  I snuggled deeper into my coat. The evening had been a huge success. Sonja had thanked me for my help with a smile that promised a large bonus. She made no comment on my prolonged absence; she had seen me with Simone in the kitchen.

  The remainder of the night had passed without incident. I watched Zoe Outray as she danced with her son. She looked radiant. Not a mark showed on her shimmering dress; the nasty little scene upstairs might never have taken place. As Randy smiled down at her, Simone’s words echoed in my mind. What she had implied was nonsense, it had to be, born of the girl’s unhappiness. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering if there might not be something in it, if there wasn’t something more than simple mother love to explain Zoe Outray’s support, more, adoration of her son. Well, it was not my problem. Whatever I felt about the Outrays, however much I pitied the Forresters, their lives touched mine only peripherally. And if their lives were full of puzzles, it was no business of mine.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  David turned out to be a bit of a clown in bed, funny and inventive, generous and warm. It had been so long since I’d been with a man that I was nervous, afraid of disappointing him. He went slowly, giving me time. A touch. A kiss. An undemanding smoothing of his hand over my skin. I had forgotten how completely sensation can blot out thought. The little glow of smug self-satisfaction I felt afterward surprised me.

  “What happened to that post-whatsit depression you’re supposed to feel?”

  “Hmm. That’s only for amateurs.”

  “Oh, and you’re a pro, is that it?”

  “Remind me to resent that when I’m feeling more earthly.”

  It was almost dawn when we finally fell asleep.

  I woke not long after, disturbed by a dream in which I stood balanced on the edge of a precipice. David’s legs slanted diagonally across the bed, his right arm out-flung, constraining me to a sliver of mattress and a thin wedge of pillow. I found myself hoping the position wasn’t habitual and smiled at the implications even as I drifted back to sleep.

  “What do you like for breakfast?” I asked a few hours later.

  He attempted a lewd grin, but it didn’t mesh with the baggy eyes or the froggy voice. I laughed.

  “If you’re one of those insufferably cheery morning people, our relationship is doomed,” he said.

  We spent the day sprawled by the fire, reading the Sunday comics and rehashing The Party. Naturally, the Outrays and their coterie pulled focus.

  “I can’t believe that guy showing up, acting like some kind of pop star. He’s practically admitted to murder, for God’s sake!”

  “He is out on bail,” I pointed out. “There’s no law against him going to a private party. I agree it’s in poor taste … ”

  “Taste. That asshole butchered two people. Was that poor taste, too? Or just poor judgment? What about the poor victims?”

  I stared, disconcerted by his sudden fury.

  David was on his feet, pacing the room as he harangued me.

  “The whole thing stinks. Did you hear them talking last night?” I stood on the fringes while Mel Deloitte held court there in the living room. He was talking as though getting Randy Outray acquitted was practically a done deal. “We just have to find the right buttons to push,” he was saying. As though the truth had no part in it. As though making some excuse for what Outray did was enough to somehow right the balance. “You saw that mock jury — they were buying into all that abuse crap. Enough of them on a real jury and Outray could walk! Hell, you were there. What do you think?”

  He had been standing by the window, staring out at my garden. The snow was still falling, flattening the contours of my flower beds, and creating its own profile against the fence and the trees. David spun around to face me, stabbing a finger in my direction like a prosecutor with a hostile witness.

  I answered quietly. “I think he might have a chance of getting off. Not through me, I don’t believe in TV intoxication or junk food syndrome any more than you do. But you know as well as I do that finding excuses for violent behavior has become the fashion. The system allows for it. What is a jury, after all? It’s twelve people of
average intelligence applying their own values to the law. If a lawyer is lucky enough, or canny enough to pick the right ones … ” I shrugged helplessly.

  David argued, “But that doesn’t make sense. If, as a society, we say an individual isn’t responsible for his actions — for any reason — aren’t we saying that he is, in fact, irresponsible? And doesn’t that in itself make him a threat to the rest of us? If we absolve him of blame, shouldn’t we also deny him trust, and keep him off the streets? Letting someone like that loose on society is like throwing a bomb into a crowd and waiting for it to explode.”

  I said, “You’re saying good versus bad outweighs healthy versus sick.”

  “Damn right.”

  “But there’s the sticking point. The concept of evil is hard to accept. There’s no defense against evil. It’s much more comfortable to find some excuse for abhorrent behavior, something that has gone wrong in a life. Then you can label it, and treat it, and maybe legislate against it.”

  “Treat it? You mean they can stick Randy Outray in a fancy private clinic somewhere and in a couple of years, maybe less, some expert will pronounce him cured. Then he’ll be free. But Susan and Tracey Forrester will still be dead.”

  The bitterness in his voice was a warning. For a few minutes, neither of us spoke. Then David said, “The other night, you told me Kerrin Adams was your sister.”

  “That’s right. She is. Why?”

  “It’s ironic, that’s all.”

  “What is?”

  “Susan Forrester was mine.”

  We were sitting on the couch, my head resting on his shoulder. Outside, the rising wind slanted snow across the window.

  “Sukie was three years younger than me,” David said. “She used to tag along wherever I went. God, she was so beautiful. Half my friends were in love with her. When … it … happened, Dad sent me a telegram.” He paused, reliving the moment. “Have you ever thought, when something terrible happens, ‘a moment ago things were not like this; let it be then, not now, anything but now’? And you try to remake then, but you know you can’t?”