A Perfect Stranger (33 page)

They won't see us. And I won't stay more than a few minutes. Will you meet me?

She nodded slowly. Yes.

Ten minutes. I'll be there.

They hung up, and ten minutes later he was waiting nervously at the bottom steps where he had first seen her, her face silhouetted in the lamplight, the lynx coat swathing her in softness, but that in no way prepared him for the vision that came to him now as she walked down the flight of stairs. Everything about her was rigid and dark and depressing. She wore a severe black dress, no makeup, black stockings, black shoes, and a look in her eyes that frightened him to his very core. He didn't even dare to approach her. He simply stood there and waited as she came to him and then stood before him, with that haunting look of agony in her black eyes.

Hello, Alex. It was almost as though she were dead too. Or as if someone had killed her, which in effect her father had.

Raphaella' oh, baby' . He wanted to reach out to her but he didn't dare, instead he just watched her with a look of anguish in his own eyes. And then, Let's sit down. He let himself down on the steps and motioned to her to join him. Like a little robot she did, hugging her knees close to her chest in the chill air on the cold steps. I want you to tell me what you're feeling. You look so bottled up that it scares me, and I think you're blaming yourself for something you had nothing to do with. John Henry was old, Raphaella, and sick, and very tired. You told me that yourself. He was sick of living, he wanted to die. The timing was only coincidental.

Raphaella smiled bleakly at him and shook her head, as though she pitied him for being such a fool. No, not coincidental, Alex. I killed him. He didn't die in his sleep as it said in the papers. Or he did, but it was not a natural sleep. He took a bottle of sleeping pills. She waited for it to sink in as she watched him with her own lifeless eyes. He committed suicide.

Oh, my God. He looked startled, as though someone had slapped him, but now he understood what he had heard in her voice and what he now saw in her face. But do you know that for certain, Raphaella? Did he leave a note?

No, he didn't have to. He just did it. But my father is sure that he knew about us, so in effect I killed him. That's what my father says, and he's right. For an instant Alex wanted to kill her father, but he said nothing to her.

How does he know that?

Why else would John Henry do it?

Because he was so damn tired of living like a dead man, Raphaella. How often had he told you that himself? But she only shook her head now. She wouldn't listen. Alex was proclaiming their innocence, while she knew only too well the extent of their guilt. And if not his, then assuredly her own. You don't believe me, do you?

She shook her head slowly. No, I don't I think my father is right. I think someone must have seen us and told him, maybe one of the servants, maybe a neighbor when we came home one night.

No, Raphaella, you're wrong. The servants didn't tell him. He looked at her gently. My sister did, when you were in Europe last summer.

Oh, my God. Raphaella looked as though she might faint, but he reached out and took her hand.

It wasn't like that. Kay meant it to be, but it wasn't. One of his secretaries called and asked me to come to the house.

And you did? She looked shocked.

I did. He was a wonderful man, Raphaella. There were tears in his eyes now, as well as hers.

What happened?

We talked for a long time. About you. About me, I guess. About us. He gave me his blessing, Raphaella. The tears spilled from Alex's eyes. He told me to take care of you, afterward' . He reached out to her then but she pulled back. The blessing didn't count now. Even Alex knew it. It was too late for that. Raphaella, darling, don't let them hurt you. Don't let them take something away that we both want, that even John Henry respected, something that is so right.

We're not right. We were very, very wrong.

Were we? He faced her squarely as they sat there. Do you really believe that?

What choice do I have, Alex? How can I believe differently? What I did killed my husband, drove him to suicide. Can you really tell me that I've done nothing wrong?

Yes, and so would anyone else who knew the story. You're innocent, Raphaella. No matter what your father says. If John Henry were alive, I'm sure he would tell you the same thing. Are you sure he didn't leave you a letter? He searched her eyes as he asked her. It seemed odd that John Henry had left nothing, he seemed like the kind of man who would. But she only shook her head again.

Nothing. The doctor checked when he got there, and so did the nurses. There was nothing.

You're sure? She nodded again. So now what? You go to Spain with your mother to atone for your sin? She nodded once more. And then what? You come back here? He mentally resigned himself to a long, lonely year.

I don't know. I'll have to come back to settle things. I'll put the house on the market after the estate has been cleared. And then she faltered and stared at her feet as she spoke in a monotone I suppose I'll go back to Paris, or maybe Spain.

Raphaella, that's crazy. He couldn't keep his hands from hers anymore. He clasped her long thin fingers in his own. I love you. I want to marry you. There's no reason for us not to. We haven't done anything wrong.

Yes, Alex. She pulled away from him very slowly, retrieving her hand from his. We have. I have done something very wrong.

And for the rest of time you'll bear that burden, is that it? But more to the point he knew as he sat there that for the rest of time he would remind her of what she considered her great sin. He had lost her. To a quirk of fate, of timing, to the insanity of a tired old man, to the evil interpretations of her father. He had lost her. And then, as though she knew what he was thinking, she nodded and stood up. She stood looking at him for a long moment, and then softly she whispered, Good-bye. She didn't touch him, or kiss him, and she didn't wait for an answer. She simply turned and walked slowly down the stairs as Alex watched her, aghast at what he was losing, at what she was doing. In her unrelenting black garb she looked like a nun. This was the third time he had lost her. But this time he knew it was for good. When she reached the well-concealed garden door, she pushed it open and closed it behind her. She did not look back at Alex, and there was no sound after the door had closed. Alex just stood there for what felt like hours, and then slowly, aching and feeling as though he were dying, he walked painfully up the stairs, got into his car, and drove home.

The funeral was as private as they could keep it, but there were still well over a hundred people in the pews of the little church. Raphaella sat in the front pew with her mother and father. There were tears on her father's cheeks, and her mother sobbed openly for a man she had barely known. In the pew immediately behind them were the half-dozen relatives who had accompanied her mother from Spain. Alejandra's brother and two of her sisters, a cousin and her daughter and son. The group had allegedly come to lend support to Raphaella as well as Alejandra, but Raphaella felt more as though they were the prison guards, come to escort her back to Spain.

It was she who sat dry eyed through the funeral, staring blindly at the coffin covered in a blanket of white roses. Her mother had taken care of the flowers, her father the rest of the arrangements. Raphaella had had to do nothing, except sit in her room and think of what she had done. Now and then she thought of Alex, of his face when she had last seen him, of what he had told her. But she knew that he was wrong in what he was thinking. It was all so obviously her fault, as her father had told her, and Alex was only trying to assuage her guilt. It was strange to realize that she had lost both of them at the same time. She had lost Alex as much as she had John Henry, and she knew as she sat there stiffly, listening to the music, that she would never see either of them again. It was then that the tears began to flow slowly, rolling mercilessly down her cheeks beneath the thick black veil until they fell silently onto her delicate hands folded in her lap. She never moved once during the entire ceremony. She only sat there, a criminal at a tribunal, with nothing to say in her own defense. For a single mad moment she wanted to jump up and tell them that she hadn't killed him on purpose, that she was innocent, that it was all a mistake. But she wasn't innocent, she reminded herself silently. She was guilty. And now she would have to pay.

When it was over, they drove to the cemetery in silence. He was to be buried beside his first wife and their son, and Raphaella knew as she looked at the grassy knoll where they were buried that she would never rest there with him. It was unlikely that she would ever again live in California. She would return for a few weeks, in a year, to pick up her things and sell the house, and then one day, she would die and be buried in Europe. It seemed more fitting somehow. She had no right to lie here with him. She was the woman who had killed him, his murderess. It would have been blasphemy to bury her in his plot. And at the end of the prayer said by the priest at the gravesite, her father glanced at her as though saying the same thing.

They drove back to the house once again in silence, and Raphaella returned to her room. Her packing was almost done. She had nothing to do and she didn't want to speak to or see anyone. No one seemed particularly anxious to speak to her. The whole family knew what had happened. Her aunts and uncles and cousins did not know about her affair, but they knew that John Henry had committed suicide, and their eyes seemed almost accusing to Raphaella, as though they were saying again and again that it was her fault. It was easier for her not to see them, not to see their faces or their eyes, and now she sat in her room, again like a prisoner, waiting and envying John Henry for his courage. If she had had the same bottle of pills, she would have taken them too. She had nothing left to live for and she would have been grateful to die. But she also knew that she had to be punished, and dying was too easy. She would have to live on, knowing what she had done in San Francisco and enduring the looks and whispers of her family in Spain. She knew that forty or fifty years later they would still tell the story and suspect that there was more that they didn't know. By then perhaps word of Alex's existence would have accompanied the rest of the story. People would talk about Tia Raphaella who had cheated on her husband' you remember, he committed suicide ' I don't know how old she was' maybe thirty' you know, she was really the one who killed him.

As she heard the words in her head, she dropped her face in her hands and began to cry. She cried for the children who would never know her or know the truth about what had happened to her here, she cried for Alex and what had almost been, for Mandy whom she would never see again, and at last for John Henry ' for what he had done' for what he had once been ' for the man who had loved her so long ago and proposed to her as they walked along the Seine. She sat alone in her room and cried for hours, and then silently she walked to his bedroom and looked around for a last time.

At nine o'clock her mother came upstairs to tell her that it was time to leave the house to catch their plane. They were taking the ten-thirty night flight to New York, which would get them in around six in the morning. New York time, and at seven o'clock they would catch the flight to Spain. The plane would arrive at eight o'clock that evening local time in Madrid. She had a long journey ahead of her, and a very long year. As the man who did their heavy cleaning picked up her two bags and took them downstairs, she walked slowly down the main staircase, knowing that she would never live here again. Her days in San Francisco were over. Her life with John Henry was gone now. Her moments with Alex had ended in disaster. Her life was, in a sense, over.

Ready? Her mother looked at her gently, and Raphaella looked at her with the empty eyes Alex had seen that morning, nodded, and walked out the door.

In the spring she received, via San Francisco, a copy of her children's book, which was due out sometime late in July. She eyed it quietly, with a sense of distance. It seemed a thousand years since she had started that project, and it seemed so unimportant now. She felt nothing for it at all. As little in fact as she now felt for the children, for her parents, her cousins, or even for herself. She felt nothing for anyone. For five months she had moved like a zombie, gotten up in the morning, dressed in her black clothes of mourning, gone to breakfast, returned to her bedroom, answered the scores of letters they were still forwarding to her from San Francisco, all of them letters of condolence to which she responded on the heavily black-bordered stationery suited to the task. At lunchtime she would emerge again from her bedroom, and immediately afterward she would once again disappear. Now and then she would take a solitary walk before dinner, but she was careful to discourage companionship and to beg off if someone insisted on coming along.

It was clear that Raphaella wanted to see no one, and that she was taking her year of mourning very much to heart. She had even decided immediately after her arrival that she had no desire to stay on in Madrid. She went to sequester herself at Santa Eugenia, to be alone, and at first her parents agreed. In Spain her mother and the rest of the family were accustomed to the business of mourning, they did it for a year, and the widows and children of the dead always wore solid black. And even in Paris it wasn't an entirely unusual thing. But the zeal with which Raphaella threw herself into her mourning struck everyone strangely. It was as though she were punishing herself and atoning for countless unspoken sins. After the first three months her mother suggested she go to Paris, but the suggestion met with an instant refusal. She wanted to stay at Santa Eugenia, she had no desire to go anywhere else. She shunned everyone's company, even her mother's. She did nothing anyone knew of except stay in her room, write her endless letters in response to the cards and letters of condolence, and go for her solitary walks.

Among the letters that came after her arrival was a long and heartfelt one from Charlotte Brandon, reaching out to the young woman. She told her bluntly but kindly that Alex had explained the circumstances of John Henry's passing and that she hoped that Raphaella would be wise enough not to blame herself. There was a long philosophical part of the letter, in which she wrote that she had known of him as a young man and she had gathered over the years that his infirmities must have come as a spirit-crushing blow, that in light of what he had been and then had become, in light of his affection for Raphaella, his life must have been a prison that he had longed to flee, and that what he had done, while certainly difficult for those who survived him to understand, may well have been the final blessing for him. Although a selfish act, Charlotte wrote to Raphaella, it is one that I hope you will come to accept and understand, without the egocentricity of self-accusation and selfflagellation. She urged Raphaella to simply accept it, be kind to his memory, and to herself, and move on. It was a plea to Raphaella to be good to herself, whatever that might mean.