Another You (19 page)

Two-percent milk
.

Much healthier to drink low-fat milk. I’m a very literal-minded kind of guy. You know how it is: you can get fixated on things when there seem to be gaps. The gap in time here disturbs me. I figure you weren’t out buying milk for approximately two hours, but hey: a person can have a private life. I notice, though, that you don’t volunteer information about what you were doing when you weren’t buying milk.

This is all just some confusion—my confusion about what time I left the house, I suppose. In fact, I was going in to school to pick up a book I’d forgotten, but the weather was bad and I turned around. I phoned McCallum. I guess I talked to him longer than I thought
.

When the cop shrugged and opened the door without comment, Marshall walked to the waiting room, haunted by the cop’s sarcastic words. Bothered that McCallum’s wife would lie and say she knew him and Sonja when she didn’t, but more upset that because he was unwilling to mention anything about Cheryl Lanier, some cop who prided himself on his professional skepticism had cornered him, revealed him to be a liar, then let him go as if he were throwing back a small fish. The cop had made him feel small, and slimy. He wriggled uncomfortably on the bench, filled with shame, though he knew there was no objective reason why he should feel that way, knew that all he was guilty of was having touched his lips to Cheryl Lanier’s in a dark car, and what was that in the long run? What was that compared to people like McCallum …? But McCallum was in the hospital, in serious shape, and he didn’t want to think bad thoughts about McCallum. He wanted Sonja to emerge from the room where she was being questioned. It was ridiculous that they were keeping either of
them so long, ridiculous because the police had a confession, they must have found fingerprints on the knife, he and Sonja weren’t the kind of people who should be questioned about where they were and what they were doing every second of what would have been a perfectly ordinary evening if not for their goodwill, their only involvement in the whole horrifying affair having been a willingness to extend themselves to two people who turned out to be murderers and assholes—McCallum was at least an asshole, whatever self-righteous justification he offered about the time he’d spent with Livan Baker. When Marshall exited the room where he’d been questioned another policeman walking by had told him that McCallum was in intensive care. They had operated for over three hours to repair his damaged kidney. Jesus: the woman had stabbed him in the kidney. She had been hurt herself, also—something Marshall hadn’t even thought about. McCallum had fought her off, hit her, but then he had collapsed, and if she hadn’t confessed to—could that really be what they said? a post office employee?—if she hadn’t confessed, he might have bled to death in the house. That was what Green Eyes was now saying to him; that he and Sonja could not return to the house, because it had been sealed off. The cop was asking him if it would be a problem to find somewhere else to spend the night, and he was saying—realizing as he spoke that he was telling another half-truth—that of course they could stay with a friend. They could stay at a motel, he said. That would probably make more sense, even if they did have friends, but the notion of being in some motel, shut out of their house, which was probably bloodier than he wanted to imagine, depressed him, as if he and Sonja were two stray children with nowhere to go. He tried to pull himself together, he was sinking so fast into self-pity; he began fabricating something he suddenly wanted to be the truth: him and Sonja starting over, united by their having been victims in someone else’s drama, McCallum, strangely enough, having done them a service by bringing them closer as his own marriage collapsed. This whole nightmare now seemed so protracted, so ultimately silly; if not for McCallum’s wife’s frightening insanity, it could simply serve as a lesson in not being dragged into other people’s problems. Like falling dominoes, now Cheryl Lanier had learned that lesson from getting involved with Livan Baker’s problems, and he had learned that lesson from getting involved with McCallum’s problems. Cheryl was young and inexperienced—easy to see how she was taken in—but he had
helped no one, had not even been genuinely concerned, as Cheryl had been, about anyone’s well-being: in the end, McCallum had pressed himself on him; Livan Baker had interested him only to the extent that Cheryl was troubled by her behavior, and some part of him had wanted to help Cheryl. At least that had been genuine. To what end, though? To settle her problems so he could then extricate himself from the situation, or to try to help so she’d be impressed, grateful—so he might become closer to her? That was the answer, he suspected: otherwise, why was he constantly reminded of the smell of her freshly washed hair, why was he troubled—increasingly troubled—that he had left her off at a house in Dover and driven away? He had instigated something—or had he finalized something—when he drew her to him in the car. She would be horrified when he called and told her what had happened. He should be the one to break the news to her about McCallum; though she didn’t know him, he’d come to influence her life, he’d indirectly caused her worry and trouble and pain, and although what had happened to McCallum had nothing to do with what he did or did not do to Livan Baker, still Cheryl should know what had happened to this man she’d been made to think so much about. He could do it now, call her, except that he did not want to be overheard talking to her in the police station.

Sonja came down the hallway to where he sat on a bench in the waiting room. Pale and sullen, she wordlessly slipped her hand in his. He was sure he could read her mind, sure that, like him, she wanted only to be gone from the police station. The two reporters waiting outside came as a surprise to them both. In this small community, two reporters were waiting to interview them? The younger reporter might have been a student at Benson; he was red-haired, his mouth the same color as his hair, which he kept sweeping out of his eyes. “Is Mr. McCallum dead?” the reporter wanted to know. The other reporter was older and wore dog tags with a picture ID, but Marshall did not want to focus on him. The younger man took a photograph of Marshall and Sonja, arms interlocked, with a small Instamatic camera. These people were here because someone’s wife had tried to kill him? Didn’t that happen every day in Harlem? Detroit? After all, McCallum was alive, his wife in custody—to his surprise, Marshall heard himself telling them that McCallum was alive and well, as Sonja tried to hurry him along.

“Over here,” Tony Hembley hollered, beating the side of his car as he shouted out the window. Of course; he’d driven Sonja, who was so terribly upset, and all this time he’d been waiting. His outstretched hand seemed to symbolize their escape. Marshall thought:
Oh yes; of course I have a friend
. Then he and Sonja rushed to the car, away from the still-popping flash on the little camera, ducking their heads as if they, themselves, had something to be ashamed of.

Martine
,

Truly, you have been most generous with everything you have thought to do. Please do not think I mistake it for mere duty, as I am quite aware that no check can compensate for your endless goodwill toward the boys, and toward Alice and me. I am delighted that Amelia was able to stop by on her trip North. She reported to me only after the fact that she had made the journey, and I do hope you were not inconvenienced by an equally impulsive arrival on her part. She does live quite simply in New York, but I know from experience that almost nothing can be deduced about people’s personalities once they have escaped the city limits. In a way, New York breeds a kind of anonymity. It is not until they are elsewhere that you really come to know them, I think, which is very different, for example, from the way one comes to know people in other large Eastern cities, such as Boston. I know she was eager to report to Alice that all was well, the flowers growing, the children prospering, you, yourself, bearing up well. But she was only able to speak to me, as the doctors continue to refuse her any visitors except—Martine, you will not believe what I am about to tell you now. The doctors, who are quite curt with me, and one of whom always accompanies me when I visit Alice in the sitting room—these men have granted the most ridiculous request Alice has ever made, to my knowledge (when do I not have to qualify my remarks these days, humbled, as I am, into admitting I may know Alice very slightly, indeed?). When the weekly bill was mailed to me at the Waldorf, I scanned the itemization of charges and found a visit from a Madame Sosos who, upon my questioning them, turns out to be a fortuneteller! I find that this defies belief, that men of science would allow a fortuneteller to have exchanges with Alice, while they stand like policemen when her own husband comes to visit. A fortuneteller! It is enough to make one wonder if circus performers would be admitted, if Alice decided a high-wire act was just the thing to lift her out of her depression! I am afraid that I was so aghast, I made the mistake of speaking to the head doctor when I was in a
rather overwrought state—why, she has never put the slightest stock in such nonsense, as you know—and the doctor became quite inappropriately analytical of my overreaction. Then began my recent travails. I see that while Dr. St. Vance was quite happy to admit Amelia to his office, on the spur of the moment, he, like the doctors, has insisted upon taking a firm line with me, insisting not only that he prefers to communicate in person, but in fact sending word that he will no longer respond to my letters, as it is necessary for us to discuss all matters face-to-face. I have explained to him the difficulty of this, but he is unwavering in his position and has even written the doctors in Connecticut to inform them that he has told me this. I am not this man’s patient, I am the beleaguered husband of one of his former patients, yet he refuses to be in any way flexible, and will correspond not even with Alice, apparently, but only with the hospital doctors. I am, of course, most unhappy about this, as I felt he could provide valuable assistance directly to Alice, but when a doctor makes a decision, other doctors inevitably rush to their colleague’s side to support whatever decision has been made, as we all know
.

How I wish I had a happier report, but she seems remote, tired, preoccupied. I know I am an impatient person, but I am beginning to question whether she is in the right place, and have phoned a former Yale schoolmate who is himself a neurologist to see if he might consult with the doctors in Connecticut to assure me that he thinks they are proceeding correctly. I thought to tell him about the fortuneteller, but felt I would hold that card until the last, because if he pronounces these doctors good professional men, I can then ask him to consider that opinion in light of my new piece of information. A fortuneteller! Who has ever heard of such a thing, in a hospital for disturbed people? It is as if the world’s gone mad
.

My love to all, my thanks, and do, please, smell the roses for me. Maine has become in my imagination even more of a paradise, and you the presiding angel
.

With affection
,
M
.

10

TONY HAD GONE
to Sonja and Marshall’s house earlier that morning and returned to pronounce it “fine, except for a little blood. Not weird, no bad vibes.” The night before, he’d driven Sonja and Marshall home from the police station, Marshall’s car still parked at the college, her car in the parking lot outside the real estate office, where she’d left it when the call came from the police. She could remember her own puzzled speculation, her pointless chitchat with Tony, the reassurances that everything would be fine, how they’d taken turns telling each other things would be fine—that from such a brief, essentially one-way conversation on the telephone, little could be known about the events that must have taken place after she and Marshall left their house earlier that morning.

Driving to the police station, she had given Tony only the barest outline—not because she wanted to withhold information, but because the information she had just been given did not quite register. She explained the late-night visit of Marshall’s colleague McCallum; his odd entanglement with a student who was now accusing him of having done terrible things—whatever he’d done to her quite possibly exaggerated, or who knew? Not exaggerated. A long night of talk, a brief conversation with Marshall once they went to bed—Marshall, who had, as she and Tony talked, already arrived at the station. And then when they had both been questioned, instead of their being able to return to their own home after such a terrible day, the house had been sealed off and they had had to go to Tony’s. That was probably just as well, because it allowed them to escape the cars passing by,
those incomprehensible people who acted as if, in coasting to a stop in front of the house where something shocking had happened, they could have the same pleasure as turning into a drive-in movie: the place would light up; the movie everybody had been talking about would be magically shown, right in front of their eyes. She agreed with Marshall:
Wasn’t
it true that such things happened every day in America’s cities? All of it happened every day: domestic discord; the pressure gauge going too high; violence. But let it happen in a sleepy town and gossip would spread and people would leave their homes to take a look, expecting some excitement might still be hovering, something they could absorb into their blood like a vaccine, immunizing themselves against personal danger.