Duplicate Keys

by Jane Smiley

  “So you’re going to get drunk?”

  “How clichéd, right? You know something, when I met Jim, he had absolutely no talent for having a good time. His family were avid Presbyterians, no dancing, no drinking, no playing cards, the whole schtick.” Susan smiled. “And no Yiddish. Anyway, he set out to become bad. He started smoking, he started drinking beer and gin and then whiskey, he smoked dope, he took acid. I knew more about sex than he did, and that was just necking. I thought it was hilarious. It worked, though. Now he has fun. I bet he has only fun. He left me behind in more ways than just the one.”

  “Why do you always think that he went on to something better?”

  “Because he thinks that he went on to something better.”

  “Don’t you realize that what he went on to was another twenty-two-year-old? So now she’s twenty-four. I give her four more years at the outside.”

  “That’s what you’ve always said, but look at her. She looks like Sophia Loren, more or less.”

  “So, the next one will look like someone else. He likes twenty-two-year-olds. He was crazy about you when you were twenty-two.”

  “Was he?”

  “Yes!”

  “I could never see it.”

  “Well, I could.”

  “Did you ever tell me that?”

  “Over and over.”

  “Why don’t I remember? I just remember being his slave. He was crazy about me?”

  “Yes! I can never get over the way you’re so certain of what you think that it becomes the only reality for you. It’s like you don’t even sense any other possibilities.”

  “What do you mean, I’m narrow-minded, or I’m self-confident?”

  “Neither, only that you’re very loyal, to notions as well as to people.”

  “Wrong notions?”

  “Sometimes. I think this is a perfect example.”

  Alice considered, then said, “But why do you think I was always extraneous to the matter at hand, then? I always felt like Jim’s sidekick. Good enough company but not the focus of his attention.”

  Susan lifted a mouthful of peas on her fork, looked at them, and put them down on her plate again. “Partly I think they were all like that. They were all twenty-two just like we were. If you wanted something very badly, it was best to ignore it, you know?” Alice nodded. “And Jim seemed to want girls much more badly than anyone else, I always thought. That’s why he was always jumping up and down,- it was like he could hardly contain himself.”

  “Did you ever tell me this before?”

  “Something like it, but you wouldn’t listen, or you didn’t listen. You were very convinced that that woman was the love of his life.”

  “So was he!”

  “Not until you suggested it to him.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  Susan leaned forward. “No, really! There was a point when Jim was ready for his grand passion to go either way. He could abandon everything for it, or he could do the right thing and abandon it. I think that each course of action appealed to him.” She hesitated, looked at Alice, and ate the peas still balanced on her fork. After another moment, she said, “But you were so taken by the idea that this was the love of his life that you made it hard for him not to abandon everything for her.”

  “You don’t think he wanted to?”

  “Not at first. Then he got pretty fired up.”

  “I can’t believe this! When he came back, he was so dutiful and sad.”

  “But I’m sure he came back because he really was ambivalent, because he couldn’t decide which woman was better or which life was better. And then you were so certain that he was going to leave that he had to play it out.”

  “Well, yes I was certain, but that was the fruit of observation. I didn’t want it to be that way.”

  “Obviously. I don’t think you had this neurotic instinct for a failed marriage, and I do think that we’ve all suffered from mating ourselves so early in life. I think we set up structures out of ignorance, and then it was almost impossible to break out of them, even when we could see them. I mean, if you were in the habit of bitterly challenging him to be affectionate, how could he turn around and be affectionate without feeling defeated?”

  Alice was shocked and silenced, but not entirely displeased. While she had been stupid and had driven away someone she needed and cared for, at least she had been desirable.

  Susan went on, “I’m sure that’s why he calls you. He really isn’t being patronizing. I think sometimes he really longs to have you back. Sometimes it must be hard to be eight years older than your mate, don’t you think?”

  “She would have been seven for the Beatles.”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “And Jim is crazy for the Beatles.” Alice put the last bite of steak in her mouth and chewed on it. It was bitterly delicious, full of the welter of feelings she was experiencing while eating it. One of these was the pleasant image of herself stubbornly wrong about the murder and Honey right: There was nothing to prove Susan had done it but her own blind conviction. She ate as she might have tied a knot around her finger, so that every future steak would submerge her in these revelations. She did not speak for a long time, then she said, “What structures did you and Denny make? You were even younger than we were.”

  Susan sighed. “I think I was always challenging him to make it with his music. I don’t think I ever gave him a graceful way out of the business, or a chance not to defend Craig. I let myself be the south pole to Craig’s north pole. Denny could only travel back and forth between us. He couldn’t triangulate.” She smiled ruefully. “At least, that’s what I think when I’m feeling powerful. When I’m not feeling powerful, I see us all, the three of us, dog-paddling blindly in circles, and every time we meet up with one of the other ones, we try desperately to climb up whoever it is and get some breaths of air.”

  “Do we know any relationships that haven’t become awful?”

  “In our generation?”

  “Yes. I don’t know what my parents and grandparents are doing.”

  “Maybe they don’t do anything. Maybe that’s the point.”

  “But I’m happy.”

  “Are you?”

  Alice said, “Our friendship hasn’t become awful, do you think? Maybe it was each other we should have married to begin with. I do love you.”

  Susan smiled in acknowledgment, but seemed to retreat, as always, before the onslaught of intimacy. Alice wanted to embrace her.

  THE cab dropped Susan after midnight; Alice didn’t dare look at her watch when she got into her place. Because of the wine, her eyes opened for good at six, but she didn’t feel ill, or even disoriented. She awoke knowing everything was settled. Two weeks ago, the murder had exploded underneath them all like a landmine, scattering them aloft. Now they had all come down where Alice wanted them to be—Noah on a permanent vacation, maybe, Rya at leisure with her parents, Susan safe in her apartment, and Alice safe with Susan. The way Henry’s presence had divided her, even for only a week, had been a strain. She saw now that things had changed since Jim—that although she had plenty of time and energy for dates, there was just no room for someone as consuming as Henry. She looked out her bathroom window at his three quiet ones, experienced a moment of pleasurable regret, then turned away humming. She felt unusually alert, as fresh as the cool dry air blowing from the west. She went into her bedroom and opened the closet door. There was a muslin sundress back from the cleaners that she had been saving for some date with Henry. She ripped off the plastic bag with both hands, pulled it off the hanger and slipped it over her head. It fit better than last year. She closed the closet door, took clean underpants out of her drawer and stepped into them, then made the bed and turned the two spider plants in the windows, as she did every month or so. Usually she was proud of her plants, but the new, pristine bare look of Susan’s apartment made them seem scraggy and old-fashioned. Henry, too, would probably sneer at them. She went to the laundry room and got the dustmop.
Just then the downstairs door buzzed, which made her drop the mop, but she felt no intimation of danger, though it was not yet seven in the morning. She pressed the talk button and said, “Who is it?” then, “Who’s there?”

  No answer. She turned with the dustmop toward her room, and the buzz came again, this time longer and more insistently.

  “Well, who is it?”

  Nothing. In college people would play jokes on you—buzzing your room when they knew you had just taken a shower. Again the buzz. Alice hesitated a second, then pressed the talk button down firmly. “WHO IS IT?” she demanded.

  She was answered with a groan.

  Her reluctance to do anything, to acknowledge in any way that she should go downstairs and see what was going on, was immediate and potent. She felt herself being drawn in again. What she had thought was a thread around her wrist was really a rope around her waist, or her neck. Her instinct was to fight it. Instead, she dropped her hand down the handle of the dustmop, gripped it like a club and opened the door. Nothing there. Afraid to enter the solitary cubicle of the elevator, she began to descend the stairs. It was cooler than she expected, and she shivered. The elevator passed her, going up. She took the steps carefully but steadily, holding the dustmop in the air. Last flight. She leaned over the banister and peered into the tiny lobby. Nothing. But then, there couldn’t be. It had been the outside buzzer. She crept toward the inner door, trying both to see and not to. She took a deep breath, then saw the wino. A wino on the doorstep. She stood up straight and put down the mop, then she tapped sharply on the window, thinking that she would gesture that she was going to get help. The wino, reclining, began to lift himself up and turn toward her. She could see that there was something wrong with him and wondered if she should open the door after all and let him inside. He moved very slowly, and she waited, a little aghast. And then it wasn’t a wino. It was Ray, and his face and shoulder were covered with blood. She pulled open the door and he sort of melted through the doorway slowly, like Silly Putty, then he lay at her feet, with his eyes closed. There was blood all over him, and Alice felt the old disbelief freezing her, as it had two weeks before. But then she stamped her foot and sourly said, “Stupid bitch!” She grasped the dustmop more firmly, stepped carefully over Ray, and looked out the door. Up and down the street. No one. Out of danger, she dropped the dustmop and bent down to Ray. She unbuttoned his shirt, getting an impossible amount of blood on her fingers, and put her hand on his heart. It was still beating. After that, she opened his shirt completely and looked at his chest, to see if the blood was coming from there. It was not, although his chest and abdomen were discolored with bruises. It would have come from his face, then. She swallowed hard and sat back on her heels. Fresh, in the sunlight and open air, it didn’t seem like blood, didn’t have the odor of two weeks ago. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with her elbow, then looked carefully at Ray’s face. His eyelids, closed, seemed intact, if about to turn black and blue. His nose was a mess, and his jaw was broken. Some of the blood had been coming from his mouth, and she could see one small tear in his lower lip. Most of the blood, though, had come from his ear. His right ear. Alice bit her lip, then leaned backward around the doorjamb and rang for the super. After she had identified herself and told him as clearly as she could to come to the front entrance, she put her hand inside Ray’s shirt again, and sat there feeling his heart beat for forty-five minutes until the ambulance came. From the hospital she called Detective Honey, then went over to where they were working on Ray. He was conscious now, and she took his hand. The doctor and nurse worked around him matter-of-factly, without panic. Alice deduced from this that he wasn’t in lethal danger, and smiled at him. Another nurse came over with forms for her to fill out, and the doctor told her that Ray would have to stay under observation for at least a day. Alice looked at Ray, who looked relieved, and then sat down in a nearby chair to fill out the forms. They were amazingly complex. She put down that he had Blue Cross, although she didn’t know. Things could be straightened out after he was better. Finally the resident came over and sat down.

  “Miss Ellis,” he said.

  “Mrs. Ellis.”

  “Are you engaged to Mr. Reschley or anything?”

  “No, I’m an old friend. We’re from the same hometown. I take it he looks worse than he is?”

  “Not exactly, but he’s not in danger of his life. Mrs. Ellis, I’ve, urn—”

  “Is there something besides cuts and bruises?”

  “Dr. Lee can talk to you about that, but I wanted to tell you that I—”

  “About what? Who is Dr. Lee?”

  “Dr. Lee is a staff otolaryngologist, he should be down again in a little while. But also, Mrs. Ellis, I called the police.”

  “So what? I called the police myself. But tell me why you called Dr. Lee.” Alice spoke briskly, but she shrank to hear. The resident looked around, then clutched his clipboard more tightly. Finally, he said, “Mr. Reschley’s right eardrum was repeatedly pierced with a sharp object, Miss Ellis.” Alice looked away, toward the nurses’ station, then back at the doctor. His own ears were rather prominent, she thought. She licked her lips, then said, “Would that hurt a lot, Doctor?”

  The resident nodded.

  12

  DETECTIVE Honey was much brisker than usual. For once he seemed to be agitated, annoyed with Alice and with her friends. What time had the first buzz come, how long had it taken her to get downstairs, had she seen anyone, no matter how remote, on the street, had Mr. Reschley said anything, had Mr. Reschley been conscious at any time. Alice’s replies were monosyllabic; Honey hadn’t the time for anything else. Finally, he said, “Is there any reason why Mr. Reschley should be deposited on your front step?”

  It was impossible not to answer candidly. “I don’t really know, except that he stayed with me earlier in the week.”

  “When the department was under the impression that Mr. Reschley was away from the city?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Mrs. Ellis, you didn’t inform me that you had seen Mr. Reschley this week.”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  Honey’s eyebrows lowered. “Mrs. Ellis, I’m not going to tell you about the penalties for giving misinformation in an investigation. You know that there are such penalties. I’m going to talk to you about something more personal.” Someone had drifted toward them. Honey looked up and glared; the man scurried away. “I realized before this, Mrs. Ellis, that you were not being very co-operative in this matter. As I look back on the past two weeks, I see a reluctance on your part to participate in the investigation, even when you seemed to be co-operating.

  “In a professional sense, this reluctance is neither very unusual nor very inconvenient, which is why I have overlooked it up until now. At first I thought the problem was mine, that you might have co-operated more enthusiastically with another detective on the force.”

  “Ray wasn’t under arrest. How was I to know that the stuff about him being in Miami wasn’t just a trick on your part? I assume you know what you’re doing.”

  Honey ignored her. “Do you know what a violent crime is, Mrs. Ellis? Among other things, a violent crime is the beginning of a train of events, and a sign that whatever balance a given social network has achieved is strained. The crime is a change, and the change is always sudden and profound, affecting every member of the network in unforeseen ways and often violently. Sometimes the murderer kills again, and other times violence simply happens again, through other agents. Something else is always true. The parties to the violence, whether guilty or not, always assume that they know what is going on and can predict what will happen and can make their own judgments about what to do, when nine times out of ten, they don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t. In the end, the investigating officer, whose job is to try and see the larger picture, is blocked and hindered by the ignorant confidence of these parties, and violence that might not have erupted does, and another person is hurt or killed. Do you understand?”


  Lectured, Alice snapped back, “Are you blaming me for this beating?”

  “Should I?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to tell me everything you know. I want you to understand that you have to gain by the investigation, not to lose by it. I want you to take precautionary measures for your own safety, such as having your locks changed, and I want you to understand that your relationship to every associate has changed in ways you can’t even guess.” He looked at his watch. In spite of her aggressive tone, she felt dumbfounded.

  “Now, Mrs. Ellis, is there anything else that you haven’t told me about your activities or the activities of your friends?”

  “Do you want to know about Jeff Johnson, Ray’s friend? He was there with Ray at my place before.”

  “I have interviewed Mr. Johnson, although not in this matter.” Honey made some marks in his notebook. “Anything else?”

  Alice shook her head.

  “Do you understand my remarks about candor, Alice?”

  Alice nodded. Honey stood up with a sigh and called over the doctor, who said that Ray might be able to talk late that afternoon, and in a moment the detective was gone. Alice sat quietly, her head against the wall, for a short time.

  WHEN she walked into her apartment, her phone was already ringing. Assuming it was Honey, Alice picked it up gingerly. It was the voice of Jim Ellis, deep, breathy, forever intimate. “Alice?” he said. “What’s happening? I was hoping you would call me.”