Gert tried to imagine her father being that decisive about anything. “How did you feel about this?”
“In a word, shocked. It’s one of those times I can remember exactly where I was, what I was doing. I was in this sleazy motel outside D.C., prepping an interview with a guy who claimed he had dirt on the junior senator from New York. There was a single, coin-operated bed in the room that had the most hideous green and orange spread on it. The walls were covered in cheap paneling and were too thin: for about an hour, I’d been listening to a couple on one side of me having drunken sex, and a baby on the other side of me wailing. Very nice. It was a little after nine o’clock; I had the TV on in an attempt to drown out the circle of life around me and the theme from Dallas was playing. When the phone rang, I thought it was my editor, calling with yet another last-minute question. The senator already had a reputation as a vengeful son-of-a-bitch, and my editor was nervous about any story that wasn’t ironclad.
“Anyway, I heard your father’s voice, and at first, all I could think was, How did he get this number? Then I caught up to what he was saying and,” Victoria shook her head. “If you’d had a feather, you could have knocked me to the floor with it. I consider myself pretty perceptive. There isn’t much that happens with my friends that I didn’t see coming a mile away. But this . . . ”
“What was it that surprised you?” Gert said.
“Are you kidding? Your father was cheating on your mother. He had been all through their relationship, their engagement, their marriage. Who does that? Okay, plenty of people, I know, but your father, he was—I guess you could say, he played the part of the devoted husband so convincingly . . . that isn’t fair. He was devoted; it’s just, he’d gotten himself into such a mess. I screamed at him: What the fuck have you done, you asshole? I mean, there was your mother with two little kids. What was she supposed to do?”
Was the alcohol slowing her comprehension? Gert said, “What about the other woman?”
“Her.” Victoria spat out the word as if it were a piece of spoiled meat. “I know,” she said, holding up her hand to forestall the objection Gert wasn’t about to make, “that isn’t fair. It takes two and all, but . . . ” Victoria slapped the table, drawing glances from the diners to either side of them. “She was already married, for Christ’s sake! She had been for years.”
“Did—did you know her?”
“No, which is funny, because she lived three doors down from me. This is back when I had the place on West 71st. Over the years, I must have seen her God knows how many times, but I’d never paid any attention to her. Why should I have? Little did I know she was—well, little did I know.
“That changed. Although it was after eleven when I finally hung up with your father, I was back on the phone right away. There was this guy, Phil DiMarco, a private investigator we used at the paper. He specialized in the cheating spouses of the rich and powerful; we turned to him whenever the rumor mill whispered that this politician or that movie star wasn’t living up to their marriage vows. He was expensive as all hell, but he and I had this kind of thing, so he said he’d have a look around and get back to me.”
“Why?” Gert said. “Why did you call a PI?”
“One of my oldest friends had just admitted that he’d been lying to me for years: not exactly a statement to inspire you with trust. Who knew if this was him coming clean, or some other lie? I was pissed off. I was afraid, the way you are for your friends when they’re sliding down into something very bad. I felt sick. I kept thinking about your mom and you and your brother. This was when you were living in the house on Oat Street; I don’t know if you remember it, but the front door was this gigantic thing you’d expect on a castle, not a modified Cape. It was ridiculous. Whenever I hauled it open, Web would shout, Aunt Wicky! and run at me on those chubby legs of his. You were much more reserved: you’d hide behind your Mom with that bear, Custard, clutched to your chest like a shield, until she stepped aside and urged you forward. And now . . . your father had fucked up your lives royally. The whole situation was so unfair—I figured I could at least find out if he was telling the truth; it seemed like one thing I could do for your mother, for you.”
“What did this Phil guy find out?” Gert asked. “Was my father telling the truth?”
“As far as Phil DiMarco was able to determine—he did a more thorough job than I’d expected; although he said he could take things further if I wanted him to, which I decided I didn’t—anyway, yes, your Dad had been honest with me, with us.
“Which was good,” Victoria said. “I mean, it beat the alternative. But there was still the matter of what he’d been so honest about. There’s no way you and Web could remember any of what followed, the next year. Not to sound melodramatic, but there are large portions of it I’d like to forget. There wasn’t—it’s difficult to see, to hear people you love in pain. And I did love both of them. Furious as I was with your father, he was still my friend who’d made a terrible mistake he was trying to set right. Your mother was—she’d been very happy with your father, with you and Web, with all of you as a family, and then, it was like . . . ” Victoria waved her hand, a gesture for chaos, unraveling.
“How is everything?” Their waitress stood beside the table, nodding at their untouched salads.
“Wonderful,” Victoria said.
“Are you sure?” the girl asked. “Because—”
“Wonderful,” Victoria said. “Thank you.”
While Victoria had been speaking, Gert had been aware of restraining her emotions; in the pause created by the waitress’s interruption, a flood of feeling rushed through her. Gert could distinguish three currents in it: relief, regret, and dread. The relief, sweet and milky as chai, was that her Auntie V could remain her Auntie V, that Gert would not have to hate her for an error she had made decades prior. The regret, sour as a rotten lime, was that her father had in fact betrayed her mother, that her and Web’s elegant theory had been incarnated into sordid fact. The dread, blank as water, was that she had not yet heard the worst of Victoria’s story, a groundless anxiety which, the instant she recognized it, she knew was true.
Some of what she was feeling must have been visible on her face, set loose by the alcohol she’d dropped into her empty stomach; it prompted Victoria to say, “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. This is too much, isn’t it? Maybe we should change the subject, talk about the rest later.”
Gert shook her head. “It’s all right. I mean, it is a lot, but—go on, keep going. Tell me about the woman, the one my Dad was with. What was her name?”
“Elsie Durant. Did I mention she was married? I did, didn’t I? She was a few years older than he was; I can’t remember exactly how much, six or seven, something like that. Coming and going from my apartment, I kept an eye out for her, and managed to walk past her a couple of times. She was nothing special to look at: pointy nose, freckles, mousy hair that she wore up. About my height, big in the hips, not much of a chest. When I saw her, she was dressed for work, dark pantsuits that looked as if she’d bought them off the rack at Macy’s.”
“How did they meet?”
“At a convention out west, in Phoenix, I’m pretty sure. Your Dad was looking to drum up clients for his business, which was only a thing on the side back then. She was a sales rep for one of the companies he was hoping to snag. When they met, it was as professionals, and that they both came from the same town was a coincidence to be exploited so he could continue his sales pitch. Their conversation led to drinks, which led to dinner, which led to more drinks, which led to her hotel room.” Victoria shrugged. “You’ve attended these kinds of things, haven’t you?”
Gert nodded.
“You know: a certain percentage of the attendees treat the event as an opportunity to hook-up. It’s like, while the cat’s away, she’s gonna play. If I were a sociologist, I’d do a study of it, try to work out the exact numbers.
“So your Dad and Elsie started out as one more tacky statistic. They could’ve stayed th
at way if he hadn’t called her the week after they returned from the convention—to follow up on the matters they’d discussed. Fair enough. He had a legitimate interest in securing this contract. It was just about enough to allow him to ditch his day job, and it was the kind of high-profile association that would put him on the map. Obviously, though . . . ”
“His motives were ulterior.”
Victoria smirked. “You might say that. I’m not sure if he knew that she was married, at first, but if he didn’t, then he found out pretty soon. Her husband was a doctor, an endocrinologist at Mount Sinai. He was Polish, had immigrated when he was eighteen. In another instance of six-degrees-of-separation, one of my friends was under his care for her thyroid. She said he was a great physician, but had all the personality of a pizza box.”
“Did he know? About them?”
“I don’t know. Your father insisted he must have, and it’s hard to believe he didn’t suspect something. Although, apparently he was a workaholic, out early in the morning, home late at night, busy weekends, so maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Or could be, he was carrying on his own affair.
“To be honest,” Victoria said, “there’s a lot of this part of the story I have only the faintest idea of. The night your father called me, I wasn’t especially interested in hearing the detailed history of his relationship with this other woman. Later on—when, I admit it, I was curious—encouraging him to revisit the details of his and Elsie’s affair seemed less than a good idea. I have the impression that things were pretty intense, at first, but aren’t they always? If you’re in the situation, it’s . . . its own thing, fresh, new; if you’re outside looking in, it’s a movie you’ve seen one too many times. He wanted her to leave her husband. She promised she would, then changed her mind. He threatened to go to her husband. She swore she’d never speak to him again if he did. Eventually, they settled into an unhappy routine. A couple of pleasant weeks would be followed by one or the other of them promising to break things off because of her marriage.
“After your father met your mother, he and Elsie didn’t see one another for a while. Apparently, she was pretty pissed at him for becoming involved with somebody else. Hypocritical, yes, but what’s that line about contradicting yourself? I don’t know why he returned to her, and I cannot understand how he continued the affair once he was engaged, and then married, to your mother. I gather their encounters had slipped from regular to occasional, but even so . . . ”
“You must have asked him about it,” Gert said.
“Oh, I did. He told me he’d been in love with two women. He had been, but he’d decided to make a choice, and that was your mother.”
“Do you . . . ”
“Do I what? Think he was still in love with Elsie?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother asked the same question,” Victoria said. “She was obsessed with it. Of course your father had told her that she was the only woman he loved but really, what else was he going to say and have any chance of her not leaving him? This left it to me to hash out with her whether he was telling the truth.”
“You told her he was.”
“What else was I going to do? I knew that he loved your mother—that he loved you and your brother. If he and your Mom could hang in there, gain some distance from what he’d done, I was sure they would work things out. Which they did,” Victoria said, “more or less.”
“You still haven’t answered the question.”
“You noticed that. Sweetie, I don’t know what to tell you. I thought he was fixated on her, mostly because he’d been unable to have her . . . completely, I guess you could say. Because she’d remained with her husband. I tend to think that isn’t love—it certainly isn’t the same as what he felt towards your mother.”
“But it could be as strong.”
“It could.”
“Obviously, Mom decided to stay with him,” Gert said.
“She told me your father had chosen her, and that was enough. Maybe she believed it, too—maybe it would have been, if—”
“What? If what?”
Victoria answered by draining the remainder of her Bloody Mary. Her heart suddenly jumping in her throat, Gert brought her own glass to her lips. The alcohol eased her heart back into her chest, allowing her to repeat her, “What?”
“That first year was bad,” Victoria said. “Your father spent months alternating between the couch—until your Mom couldn’t stand having him around, and ordered him out of the house—and a motel room—until your Mom freaked out at the prospect of him there by himself and ordered him back to the house. There wasn’t much I could do for him: when I phoned, your Mom wanted to speak with me, and it wouldn’t have worked for me to take him out somewhere. He had done wrong; it was his duty to suffer. Once in a while, I would stop over and find your mother out; then I would have a chance to talk to him. Not that there was much to say. Mostly, I asked him how he was doing and told him to hang in there, your Mom still loved him.
“Which was the same thing I said to your Mom: He loves you; he loves you so much; he’s made a terrible mistake but he loves you. Nights your Dad was home to watch you guys, I’d take her out. There was a little bar down the road from the house you were living in, Kennedy’s—we’d go there and order girly drinks and she could say whatever she needed to. What didn’t help matters any was that your father hadn’t stopped traveling. In fact, he was gone more. He’d won that contract with Elsie’s company, and their association had had exactly the effect he’d expected. By the time he met your Mom, he was worth a couple of million; by the time you arrived, that amount had tripled. But whatever the money his firm brought in, it wasn’t enough. (I swear, how he found the time to carry on an affair, I’ll never know.) For about a month after he came clean on Elsie Durant, your Dad put that part of his life on hold, turned the day-to-day running of the firm over to his number two guy. During that month, though, Number Two was on the phone to him at least three or four times a day, and in the end, he made the decision to return. I wanted him to sell the business, take the money and invest it, live off that, but that was a non-starter.”
Their waitress passing near, Victoria held up her glass.
“So . . . what?” Gert asked. “Was my father meeting this woman on his trips?”
“Not as far as Phil DiMarco could tell. Your Dad went where he was supposed to, met with whom he was supposed to, and otherwise kept to himself. No clandestine meetings, phone calls, or postcards. His one indulgence was presents, mainly toys for you and your brother; although he brought back things for your Mom, sometimes. Most of it was jewelry, expensive but generic. Your Dad’s never had much taste when it comes to stuff like that; all your Mom’s nice jewelry is stuff I told him to buy for her. There was one thing he brought back for her, a little figure he found on a trip to, I think it was Utah of all places, that was kind of interesting. It was a copy of that statue, the Venus of Willendorf? It’s this incredibly old carving of a woman, a goddess or fertility figure, or both, all boobs and hips. The copy had been done in this grainy stone, not sandstone but like it, coarser. It was just the right size to sit in your hand.”
“Okay,” Gert said, “I’m lost.”
“Here you are.” Their waitress placed a fresh Bloody Mary beside Victoria and removed the empty glass. “How is everything?”
“Wonderful,” Victoria said. This time, the waitress did not pursue the matter, but smiled and departed. Looking over the rim of her drink, Victoria said, “By your third birthday, your parents were—I wouldn’t say they were back to normal, but they were on the mend. Finally. And then, one afternoon, the phone rings. Your Mom picks it up, and there’s a woman on the other end. Not just any woman: her, Elsie Durant.”
“No.”
“Yes. She said, My name is Elsie Durant. I know you know who I am. I’m sorry to call you, but I need to speak to your husband.”
“What did Mom say?”
“What do you think? What the fuck are you doing calli
ng here, you fucking bitch? Haven’t you done enough? She was so angry, she couldn’t relax her grip on the phone enough to slam it down—which gave Elsie the time to say, Please. I’m dying.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of . . . ?”
“I know,” Victoria said. “Your mother said the same thing, How stupid do you think I am? But the woman was ready for her. She told your mother she’d sent a copy of her latest medical report to your parents’ house, along with her most recent X-ray. Your mother would have it tomorrow, after which, she could decide what she wanted to do.”
“Which was?”
“To start with, she called me and asked me what I thought. I said she should forget she’d ever spoken to the woman and find out what she’d have to do to have her blocked from phoning them. What about the report, the X-Ray? Don’t even open that envelope, I said. Take it out back to the barbecue and burn it.”
“She didn’t.”
“She didn’t. As I’m pretty sure Elsie Durant must have known, the lure of that plain brown envelope was too much. She tore it open, and learned that the woman who had been the source of so much pain in her marriage was suffering from glioblastoma multiforme. It’s the most common type of brain cancer. It’s aggressive, and there were fewer options for treating it then than I imagine there are now. The patient history included with the report revealed that Elsie hadn’t sought out treatment for her headaches until the tumor was significantly advanced. As of this moment, she was down to somewhere between six weeks and three months; although three months was an extremely optimistic prognosis. When your mother held up the X-Ray to the light, she could see the thing, a dark tree sending its branches throughout the brain.”
Gert said, “She told him.”
“She did. How could she not? That was what she said to me. How could I keep this from him? She’s dying. It was too much for her to keep to herself. I would lay money that bitch knew that was exactly how she’d feel.”
Ghosts: Recent Hauntings Page 17