And what she'd become was becoming something different, fast. The admirers were still there, yes. Thank God. But inside, the flasks, the shaking. Hidden bottles under the cupboard. Night panics. Her thoughts racing. How easy it would be to break this bottle and take that sharp edge and put it in my neck, my wrists, my gut.
Oh fuck! Fuck this body, fuck this heart. Why?! Why did he do it?
And so, as the nights were getting longer and slurrier and more careless, dangerous, slapdash nights with seedier mornings,
it wasn't a difficult decision to make when Lt. Colonel Charles Krause came waltzing through the door of Clark Monroe's Uptown House, went up to the drop-dead girl at the bar, a girl with pitch-black hair and ghost skin, and said, “I'm going to marry you and take you back with me to Michigan.”
She laughed at the arrogance. They all did. But looking into his sky-blue eyes and blond crewcut hair, weighing the odds of her ending up with her throat slit on the street against those ice-blue eyes and a place called home with a front porch swing and a man who loved her, she knew. She said to herself, under her lips.
Yes.
D
anek wasn't about to let anyone leave without realizing he was the smartest kid in the room. The most talented. The one who was going places.
He hadn't thought, driving up to this humble little home, classmates in tow, over the gravel and through the pines, that he would give a flying fuck what these old geezers thought.
Er, he meant, the parents of the victim. Lt. Colonel and Dorothy Krause. I mean, they were ancient. They would probably just blather on the whole time. They would probably smell like soup.
He was prepared. He had a notepad. Different pens. Black with felt tips, for writing faster. He would get what Lars, Brad, and, oh . . . even Katy . . . missed. He, alone, would figure it out. He, alone, would be the hero.
He was not prepared. When the door opened and he saw that face. Jesus. You would not have guessed that Dorothy Krause was in her seventies. I mean, he knew they had children earlier back then, but holy smokes. He thought . . . not thought exactly, maybe felt, when that door opened and that face appeared . . . he felt drawn to walk up the stairs behind her, into the study and stay there, in this house, this home, for the winter.
They were good people.
Yes, it's a simple phrase. One he could hear himself saying in the documentary. He would pause, then, for effect.
Danek Mitchell, what a dreamer!
She had made tea and an assortment of cookies, which they first refused, then picked at, then devoured. Everything placed gracefully on a silver serving tray, a silver service, wasn't that what it was called? You just didn't see it anymore. Tea in a silver serving kettle, on a silver tray, with teacups, tiny dishes beneath, and precious little flowers, daintily flaunting their tricks. Sugar, milk, lemon, if you need it. They just didn't do it like this anymore.
Dorothy Krause. Dotsy. With sable hair, ivory skin, that perfect, damned-near-perfect-placement face and those green, almost emerald eyes.
Simple really, there in a vanilla blouse, gray wool pants. Nothing showy. There were lace embellishments of some sort on the blouse, he couldn't remember, something small and sweet. But her way, her soft, gentle, unassuming way. Her sheer grace. It was disconcerting. Had Beth Krause, yes, Beth Krause, the one they were here about, the one they were gonna win an award with, the one found crumpled by the side of the road, had Beth Krause inherited this grace? These willow eyes? This unassuming, intoxicating nature?
If so, you could see why she was dead.
A
nd that could be something, too. The taste of a shell, or the dodge of a hand . . . something always, not infuriatingly, but rivetingly . . . just out of reach.
Danek tried not to think about Dorothy Krause in this way. It was inappropriate. It was ridiculous. And yet.
A sentence never uttered.
A something never had.
He wondered what she carried around underneath that ebony, ink-like crown.
She was a raven.
Odd, wasn't it, that he should feel this, feel anything really, this . . . grappling. And yet, there it was, right in front of him. He wanted to laugh. Wished he could laugh.
He found himself thinking of her, drawn to her name.
Dorothy Krause. What had it been before? Maybe he could ask her. But how could he ask her?
Matter of fact.
Put it with a lot of other questions.
And the name Dorothy. Wasn't that simple? Was she named, after all, after Oz?
Simpletons!
But yet, there she was, Dorothy Krause, with the invisible maiden name. Invisible life. What had she been before she had been . . . his?
His thoughts raced imagining her then, way back then. He did not want to, would not let himself think, count, calculate, how long ago it actually was. He would not add it up.
It dangled right there, right beyond, the edges of what he would and would not think. A thought-not-thought. A word not spoken.
Much like the fleeting glimpse, the don't-allow-yourself-to-think-it image of her daughter draped down dead in the snow. No, no, keep that for someone else to think. Throw it out the back screen door and give it to the sparrows.
No one could hurt her now at least.
T
he first week was a bore, unbearable. No snow on the ground, but it was ice-bite, see-your-breath cold. There was no escape. Muskegon, 1952. Trapped there, in the gray, ash landscape, stuck. So far away from the Downbeat Club, the Three Deuces, and Sardi's. She thought she might die. Or, maybe, make herself die, it wasn't that difficult. If she had to, she'd do it. What was all the fuss? And where were all the cocktails? That was the real question.
Weekend excursions, past the still glass lake, Highway 94, over to Chicago. He tried to keep her happy. Nights at Palmer House, fireworks off Navy Pier, games at Wrigley, dinners at the Drake. But, cut to the chase. It was no New York. It was not New York and he was not Edward.
Again, she wondered what had become of him, where had he fallen. Maybe he was still in New York, or maybe Paris, London, knowing him. He could not stay put long. Fancied himself a world traveler. Coming back from Paris, Rome, Venice, he'd put a magnet on his refrigerator, a different magnet, bought on a lark, but a specific lark, from a silly funny gift shop. These Edward would bring home and place lovingly on his fridge in his kicky impress-you apartment on Fifth Avenue. This magnet fridge of trinkets, a
cocktail-party conversation piece, a few witticisms in the kitchen, fetching ice. A way of saying, “I've been farther than you. I've been around the world. And I will leave you.”
Thinking about those days, weeks, months after he'd slaughtered her in the heart, Dotsy was relieved, grateful to feel nothing. If I can only feel nothing, for the rest of my life, I'll be lucky. Knowing now, thinking it over, what a fool she'd been, a fool for love as they say. Of all the captains of industry, steel magnates, robber-baron sons, war profiteers, of all the bigwigs, postwar moguls and masters of the universe, she'd chosen this oneâthis losing proposition, this bon vivant, this dilettante. This Edward. If she'd only thought it out, she'd be in a penthouse overlooking the park, not some ranch house in Muskegon, Michigan. But she hadn't thought it out, had she? It had simply run its course.
Even so, she didn't let herself resent her husband. It wasn't Charles's fault. She knew, staring at him rolled silent in his sleep, she knew she was lucky to have him. A good man. Improbable as it was to her, despite her hungover days and nights of spiraling, blitzkrieg intoxicationâshe'd somehow managed to find a good man. A solid man. A man with his head on his shoulders.
Yes, she knew, in passing, the days he'd spent after the war, before he met her . . . she knew those D-Day stripes and that save-the-world uniform earned him a special reward, a girl reward, and she knew he took it. In spades.
Strange, how that reassured her. Yes, he is bad, too. He can be bad, too. Like me. Dotsy knew she was a hundred percent pure bad person in disguise. It was clear to her. And when Edward gave her the high hat, it was confirmed. Of course he didn't love me,
I'm just a yokel from Odessa, Texas. Loving me would be a humiliation, really. I am a step down. I am a step away from the social register, the Knickerbocker Club, this blue-blood aristocracy and all the things he holds dear.
Still, it cut her in two she'd been so stupid to think it, to fall for him. She should've seen the signs. For instance, what did he “do” exactly? Well, nothing. He was one of the great nothing-doers of New York, a long-held tradition, one to upholdâand he upheld it, martini in hand. What was he really? A dandy. An aesthete. Feckless as the waves lapping the East Egg sound. Christ, she'd never even seen him eat a steak! No, the signs were all there, right from the start, but had she heeded them? No, sir, she'd let herself fall straight in love with this nothing man. This sometime vegetarian. This Hudson scarecrow. This New York “man.” A breed grown nowhere else in America. Witty in conversation. Always. Articulate. Check. Well dressed. Well, that goes without saying. On the most polite side of politics but ask him in private, he's quite progressive. Yes, another heartless revolutionary. So kind to those he's never met and cruel to those who loved him.
She hated him.
Disgusted at herself for allowing it to happen. How could she? She was a steadfast girl from Texas, as constant as cactus. She was smarter than that. It's not like she was some lily-lilted girl from Charleston. Some wallflower from Charlotte. The whole thing, as far as she was concerned, was a magic trick.
And then, ten months after she married Charles, came baby. The three months of puking her face off in the toilet, the three months of walking on air, sex fever. The three months of
walrus waddling around the house and wanting to say fuck you to the postman. The conked-out birthâshe wanted it that way. After nine months of sobriety, she practically grabbed the needle out the doctor's hands and gave the injection herself. Shut it off! Shut off my brain! I'm sick of myself! Waking up in that sterile mint hospital room, Lt. Colonel Charles at her side, a face full of hope, had he been crying? And a so-small tiny baby girl. A gorgeous little pie-face with white hair and saucer blue eyes. A towhead. Elizabeth. My little Beth. We can call her Lizzy or Betsy or Betty. Maybe Betsy. Betsy and Dotsy. My little own baby girl. A drug made of love coursing through her brain, her heart, her veins.
No, after that, she couldn't have picked out Edward from a lineup of Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler. He had disappeared, somehow. The space in her memory taken up, knocked out, bulled over for new space. Baby space. Love-for-baby-girl space. And now Edward was nothing more than a question mark. Who? Oh . . . him . . . right. Yes. I remember. Kind of.
Like an early child memory before three, there it goes. Gone for good. And suddenly it was like it had never happened. Not cured, exactly. Just never was. Erased.
But, she'd heard something, something not entirely insubstantial, from her girlfriends back at Sardi's. He'd not come to much. He'd never managed to get the airplane off the ground, so to speak. They said, to her disguised delight, “He's gotten older. You wouldn't recognize him, Dots.”
And Dotsy would pretend this was never-care news, weather news, sports-team news. “And the other thing, Dots. You'll never
believe it. He's asked about you. All the girls . . . Ethel, Irene, Rita, too. In whispers, late night. Asked about you and your husband. How could you leave?”
Dotsy stiffing up now, baby cooing up from her basket, little basket on the table, swaddled in pink. A love bug. A snug little bean. “Dotsy, he gets shit-faced and asks about you. I swear. You wouldn't recognize him. He's lost it. Whatever it was, I swear, he lost it.”
And Dorothy Krause wishing she were the kind of person who could transcend idle gossip, wishing she were the angel-face she knew she was supposed to be, couldn't help, upon putting down the receiver,
click
, looking down at her pink baby towhead swaddled and big-eyed and pudgy, couldn't help but think, a selfish little greedy greedy thought, a thought she shouldn't allow herself, a slaying thought.
Ha. I won
.
H
ow stupid they found themselves. Disgusting. Thinking about those moments before they had met the Krauses, or then . . . the victim's parents. It had meant nothing to them. Names on a paper, nothing more.
And now, they couldn't bear to look at each other. Never mentioned it, not even in passing. Danek at Katy, Brad at Lars, Lars at Danek. Knowing that six months earlier they had actually contrived . . . a trap. A trap for the Krauses! They would make them cry on camera! Now that would make the documentary.
But that was before.
And now . . . half a year later, sitting in the unassuming, well-appointed blue, a sitting room neat as a pleat, across from Lt. Colonel Charles and his fair wife, Dorothy . . . they might as well have stapled their belly buttons to their spines. Rot gut. A blushing guilt.