Kavanagh mulled her words. “Sometimes a confession is so threatening,” she said, “that most people would rather go on being deceived.”
“Not me.”
“No?”
“No!” Jared glared at her. “No,” he repeated emphatically.
The doctor shrugged in acquiescence. “Perhaps had there been a discovery by you, that’s what would have happened. Or perhaps something else would’ve happened, and she was afraid of it.” She paused. “My guess is that’s what will still happen. This could be her way of confession, and revelation. When she returns it will be followed by the other things you mentioned.”
“She seemed exactly the same!” Jared exclaimed. “She did everything like always. She was beyond suspicion.” His voice got lower and lower. “She was a good wife. This makes no sense. It can’t be. I don’t believe it’s true.” His voice got louder and louder. “What you’re telling me is not possible. That is not my wife.”
Kavanagh said nothing.
“Was she unhappy?” asked Jared. “Did you ask why she didn’t talk to me?”
“She wasn’t unhappy,” the doctor replied. “She said she got herself in too deep.”
Got herself in too deep. What did that mean? “Did she…” An incredulous Jared couldn’t get the words out, “…
love
him?”
Kavanagh looked into her own twisted hands. “Yes. She said she did.”
Jared’s legs were weakening. The draining of blood, the evisceration going on inside him made it difficult for him to stand. He took a few shaky steps and sank into the hard chair by the window.
“Mr. Stark!” exclaimed Kavanagh. “I’m very sorry.” For a few minutes neither of them spoke. “I tried for months to get her to talk to you, to look at her life in a different way. Your wife loved you and the children very much.”
“How could you tell? Do her actions speak louder than her words?”
“She got in over her head. She thought she’d be able to continue living a double life.”
“How long had she,” Jared asked in a dying voice, “been living a double life?”
“When she came to me,” said Kavanagh, “she said she’d already been involved with him for a year.”
Jared drooped flaccid against the back of the chair.
How long?
he mouthed inaudibly. Kavanagh didn’t respond.
They just kept on coming. One after another. Gasping to stave off shock, he hyperventilated into his hands; he covered his face. “Are you telling me she was having an affair for eighteen months and I didn’t know it?”
Kavanagh said nothing.
“Who was it?”
“She never said.”
“Was it one of our friends? Was it Ezra?”
“Ezra?” Kavanagh frowned. “
Your
best friend?”
“No,
her
best friend.”
“No.”
“What, you think
that
would be beneath her?”
“I don’t know. I know it wasn’t him. In any case, is Ezra still present in your life?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, then, she is not with him.”
“No, but…” He raised his head. “Maybe she was so distraught over what was happening that she killed herself?”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” said Kavanagh. “Have the police looked into it?”
Jared started to shake, from his effort to think, to get his heart to pump again. His lips trembled. “She could’ve drowned. We may be looking for her in the wrong place. What if she couldn’t deal with it anymore, and left us, and him, and ended her own life? Somewhere we haven’t been looking.” He said this with the fiery excitement of a man on electro-shock
therapy, all twitchy and disconnected. “I mean, that’s
possible
, right?”
Kavanagh conceded it was possible.
“There! At least…” He broke off. “We’ll need to broaden our search, widen our efforts.” He had to look away from the doctor’s slowly blinking raisin eyes. “Did she tell you his name?” He jumped up.
“I don’t remember.”
He was pacing frantically. “You didn’t write it down in your little notebook?” He stopped in front of her.
“Do you see a notebook? And no, I didn’t write it down. She did tell it to me once.”
“So? What was it?” He clapped his hands together, half a dozen times, like applause during an intermission. “Come on, come on, come on. You must remember.”
“I mustn’t,” she said. “Sit down, Mr. Stark.”
He went back to pacing. “I can’t. What was his name?”
“It was a weird name, not usual. Not a name I heard before.”
“Unusual, like…Ezra?”
“Not Ezra.”
“Jonny?”
“No.”
“Fred? Richard? Tim? Jeff? Bob?”
“Bob is unusual?” Kavanagh thought about it. “But short like that. Like a clap. One syllable. Bob. Bob. Bob.” Thoughtfully she clapped her hands together, trying to remember and then glanced at Jared. “Why do you want to know who it is? Is that going to help you?”
“If she’s not with him, that’s helpful, no? Then we know my theory is correct, something terrible’s happened to her. Can’t you remember?”
“No.”
“What about now?”
“Don’t badger me, Mr. Stark.” She kept clapping her hands.
“Kai,” she finally said. “It was Kai.”
Oh my God. The car dealership! That salesman he hated from the first time he saw him. Oh my God. But he…
“No, that can’t be. That’s wrong,” said Jared, shaking. “That kid was barely out of high school.”
Kavanagh said nothing.
It was like Jared was hit by a fastball in the temple. She flamed up, burned through, settled down into her betrayal, over the course of sixteen, eighteen months, seventy, eighty weeks, six hundred days, mornings, nights, and all the while he lived his life, worked, slept, made love to her, as if things were normal. He felt sick. He started to retch. He was sick in the wastepaper basket.
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-one.”
As he staggered out of the office and drove blindly down the street, Jared knew this wasn’t Kavanagh’s fault, but he wanted to blame her. Eighteen months! He couldn’t imagine what he would say, but it didn’t matter. Creativity in action always followed rage.
It was Tuesday nearly 1 p.m. when he stormed into the Jaguar dealership. The receptionist, a vacant-looking chick with braces said, “Can I help you?”
Wild-eyed he searched the floor. “I don’t know if you can help me,” he said. “Is Kai here?”
“Who? Oh, Kai. Um, no. Unfortunately he, uh, he doesn’t work here anymore.”
“What? Where’s the manager?”
“Jim?”
“Yeah, whatever. No, Chad. He around?”
“I think so. Let me page—”
But Jared was already walking to the business office in the back, where four men stood behind the counter, having sandwiches for lunch.
“Hey,” said Chad who had recognized him. “How you doin’, man? Everything cool with the car?”
“What car? Oh. Yeah, absolutely.”
“So how can we help?”
“Is your salesman here? Kai?”
“No, sorry. He quit. But Gary can help you. He’s excellent.”
“Quit? Do you know where he went?”
“I don’t. He just said he had to be movin’ on. Salesmen come and go in this business. He was a young kid. He stayed a lot longer than we thought he would. What a tremendous salesman. Actually won a Jag for himself. We haven’t had that happen in seven years. Traded it in, got some dough, then quit.”
“I knew we should’ve never traded it in for him. He’d still be here.”
“Well, how could we not trade it in? That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but now what are we going to do? Our sales will be in the toilet.”
“We’re temporarily screwed. We gotta get someone else as good.”
“No one’s like him. And I’m a salesman twenty years. Takes a lot for me to admit that.”
Chad and Jim suddenly turned their attention back to a waiting Jared, head lowered, fingers gnawing the counter, his own palms. “Um, everything all right? Can we help you with something else?”
“Yeah. Does he live around here?”
Chad became less friendly. “What’s this about anyway?”
“Not much. Just have to ask him a quick question. I gave him a copy of my tax records. Turns out I misplaced the ori ginal. Wanted to see if he could make a copy for me.”
“Your tax return from
last
year?”
“Yeah. Don’t have it.” It’s a good thing they’d forgotten he was the CFO of an investment bank.
“Well, he didn’t leave anything in his desk, if that’s what you mean.”
“You don’t happen to have his cell, do you?”
“We do, but he turned off his service. We tried to call him ourselves this morning.”
Jared took a step back, turned around, walked away. The receptionist became friendlier when he stopped at her station and pretended to chat with her. He was inventing small talk on the fly; it was like learning English.
“So he left, huh? Bet you miss him around here. He was good, right?”
“He was the best,” she said wistfully smiling, all metal braces, name-tagged Crystal. “He really was. He was so fun, and great with the customers. We went out a couple of times. I was sorry to see him go. We all were.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“Nah. He didn’t talk much about his business. He just said it was time to start movin’ along.”
“Strange, right? He was so successful,” prodded Jared.
“Oh, he was,” said Crystal, lowering her high-pitched voice to a dog whistle whisper that grated on Jared like a tree saw on metal. “We all think something major was up. He didn’t get another job, he just left.” She raised her painted eyebrows. “In a hurry.”
“He probably got a job at the BMW dealer down the street.”
“Nah. We know those guys. He’s not there. Kai would’ve told me.”
“Well, he has to pay his rent somehow. Doesn’t he live around here?”
“Yeah, right on Albright Circle, a block or two away.”
“Albright what?”
“Here, let me check for you…I have his records in the computer…here it is. Albright 12. I just sent his last paycheck there on Friday.”
“He didn’t come in for his paycheck?”
“No. Thursday was his last…”
Jared was already out the door.
Twelve Albright was a large old yellow house. He couldn’t imagine a young kid living here unless it was with his mother. He parked in the front, knocked on the front door, knocked again loudly, waited.
She came to the door, an old woman in a housecoat, awake but barely dressed, her hair gray and mussed.
“I’m looking for Kai,” Jared said.
“Who?”
“Young kid who lives here? Kai.”
She shook here head. “Not here no more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean not here no more. Paid me till the end of May, then split last week. Just like that. One day here, moved out the next.”
“When was this?”
“Right before the long weekend. Paid me and split.”
Jared couldn’t stifle a tortured groan. The landlady looked at him funny.
“Do you know where he went?” he managed to ask.
She shook her head. “I don’t ask. He pays me my money, I don’t ask nothing.”
Unsteadily Jared took out a picture of his wife. “Have you seen this woman around here?”
She squinted. “I don’t have my glasses,” she said. “There
was
one woman who used to come by here. Drove a sports car.”
“What color?”
“What color woman?”
He grabbed hold of the railing. “What color sports car?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Some funky thing. Non-descript. Like the color of water.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Do you want to see the place?” she said. “Maybe rent it?”
“I don’t—” But how do you pass that up? “Yes. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Sinesco. Who are you?”
“Jared.”
Slowly she came down her stairs and they walked around back to the gravel lot. “What did he drive?” Jared asked.
“He had a motorbike,” she said. “Very snazzy. Hid it in the garage. Loved it like a child. Bathed it every Sunday.” Slowly she made it up the stairs. “I used to tell him, Kai, you gotta love somethin’ else in your life like you love that bike, and he would say, why do I gotta? Gotta paint these again,” she muttered, going slow, lifting her legs, clutching the chipping wooden railing. “Paint’s peeling bad. Sorry about that. If you move in here, I’ll paint for you. I’ll give you a discount on the rent if you help. What did you say? Speak up, because I can’t hear too good.”
Jared was lifting his own legs slowly, clutching the railing. “I didn’t say anything,” he said. He crawled up the stairs like old deaf Mrs. Sinesco.
She opened the door and he walked in to the sunlit room, large and wood-floored. The place was furnished, and the brass bed stood at the wall between two windows where the white curtains fluttered. The bed was freshly made. All the personal things were gone. The bookshelves were empty, the open fridge turned off. He stumbled around, even peeked in the bathroom. All was gone. Not even a smell of her remained.
“I cleaned it real good,” Mrs. Sinesco said. “Lots of bleach. To get it ready for the next tenant. It’s a nice open room, don’t you think? A good bachelor pad for someone.”
“Yes.” He grabbed on to the door.
“You okay? You want to rent it? A thousand a month.”
“I’ll think about it.”
And he did think about it.
But he couldn’t think about it too long, because he had to race from Albright Circle to make it to Michelangelo’s school by 2:40. He was a few minutes late. Both the teacher and Michelangelo glared at him. “We’ve never met,” said the teacher. “I’m Mrs. Brown.”
They shook hands. He took his son’s hand.
“So will you be picking him up from school from now on?” the teacher asked.
Jared tried not to stutter. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
“Because pick-up is promptly at 2:40,” she said.
“Yeah, Dad,” stage-whispered Michelangelo.
When they came home, Jared immediately went into his office. He slumped into his chair and…
“Dad? What are you doing?” Michelangelo was standing in front of his big polished cherry wood desk.
“I don’t know, bud. What are
you
doing?”
“Well…I’m standing here. I need a snack. Then another. And a drink. I need my show put on. Then we do homework. What day is today?”