“You can always be a technical writer,” he said to her. “That way you can write and make a living.” Now that she thought about it, he may have been trying to prevent her from writing about him. In all the years of their relationship, from her early abuse by him until their adult relationship came to an end when he started seeing Sandra, Marie kept a diary. Nowadays they call it journaling. But back in her youth, she kept her private thoughts under lock and key. Her sister Sharon had given her the first diary—a vinyl-covered book with a cartoon of Annette Funicello as a Mouseketeer on the cover. It had a small lead lock with a key on a string. The innocent icon of her childhood held a volume of adult sexual knowledge. She hid the diary in the basement of her family home in Brooklyn and wore the key around her neck. She wrote copiously about her life with Jack and Pam before they had children. Once the babies came, she filled a book a month.
After the first sexual encounter with Jack, she came home and was up all night, writing page after page of
incriminating narrative. She still had them, stacks and stacks of notebooks. In her forty-five-year lifetime, she had had two abortions—Jack’s babies—and two serious bouts of anorexia that required hospitalization. She had a lot to say about surviving abuse. The sad fact was that she listened to Jack and didn’t become a writer. But she wasn’t dead yet.
She would go to her job as a technical editor and do what she had to do to pay her mortgage, but starting Monday, she would begin to write her story. Jack may have thought that not leaving any money to her in his will would force her to work to support herself, but it didn’t occur to him that, if he died, she would suddenly have every single night of the rest of her life without him, long stretches of time, just made for writing. If that was, in fact, his plan, it had backfired on him.
She was stuffing sheets into her washing machine when the thought came over her:
There might be life without Jack
. Allowing the sheets to fall to the floor, she once again that evening felt the power of the universe and its plan for her life. Slowly dropping to her knees, she bowed her head and started to weep. It was possible that what had been a wasted life may end up having some relevance, after all.
After a productive ride from the city, Pam returned home with a list of things she wanted to accomplish running through her head. In spite of not feeling well, she made some decisions. First of all, she wanted to spruce up the veranda. Autumn at the beach was a lovely time of year. They had a heater out there for chilly days and nights, so
even though it was nearing the end of summer, she figured there was at least two more months of veranda weather. She was going to get new furniture and do some landscaping. She wanted less of Jack, more of her, out there.
Secondly, she wanted to connect with Anne today. Something Bernice had said resonated with her.
Had she asked Anne about the checks?
Pam did what Andy had told her to do once the discovery that the checks had been cashed was made. She should have called Anne immediately and given her an opportunity to tell her side of the story. It wasn’t too late; Monday was still a long way off.
And third, she wanted to call her sister Marie. They had been avoiding serious conversation, and she felt awful about it. She held no ill will toward her regarding her relationship with Jack. She understood what had happened and took responsibility for her part in it. Why she chose to ignore warning signs that her sister was having an affair with her husband was something that she was going to have to investigate when she felt up to it. They were practically begging her to intervene. She remembered an episode years before when Marie and Jack had a screaming fight on the beach one evening that could be heard in the house, through closed doors and windows. Pam got the children occupied in the den by turning the television up louder. When it was over, Marie came into the house and went straight to her room, closing the door. Jack came into the kitchen, where Pam was preparing Saturday-night dinner. He was chuckling to himself.
“What was that all about?” Pam asked him. “The kids and I could hear you yelling at each other, but I couldn’t make out the words you were saying.”
Jack laughed out loud. “She is pissed off about last weekend. She actually said she was going to report me.”
“I’m afraid to ask for what,” Pam replied, trying to remember what they had done a week before. She vaguely remembered that they had a tennis match, which often provoked an argument between the two of them.
“Ask her,” Jack said in his cocky way, sure that Marie wouldn’t do or say anything that would jeopardize her relationship with him.
So the next morning, after her sister’s anger had defused and she was feeling protective of Jack again, Pam cornered her. “Jack said you told him you were going to report him. Who were you going to report him to?”
Marie was clearly uncomfortable, looking a little surprised that Jack would reveal that information to his wife. “To anybody who would listen,” Marie answered. If she had been asked the night before, she would have said, “Child Protective Services.” But this morning, she had already forgiven him; he had visited her in the night for makeup sex and was in Marie’s good graces once again.
Examining why she failed to protect her sister would be done at another time. Right now, all she wanted to do was heal from the trauma of losing her husband and find out what she could about his other life.
She made a conscious decision every morning to change her source of thinking from an angry perspective to one of forgiveness and love. She understood that since Jack was dead, the only one she would be hurting was herself and, ultimately, her children if she dwelled on his misdeeds. She dealt with each new revelation as it came to her, getting angry, finding a rationalization for it that satisfied
her for the time being, and then putting it out of her head. Even seeing Marie and Sandra every weekend had taken a toll; the two of them had issues that they wanted to hash out, and it was becoming too much for Pam. She decided a little space was called for.
But right now she missed her sister. She put her purse and gloves away and changed her Sunday city clothes for comfortable jeans and picked up the phone to call Marie, who was in Rhinebeck. She was grocery shopping upstate for the third time that weekend.
“What’s going on? Is he having a party?” Pam asked.
“Not that I know of,” Marie whispered. “It’s all we have done—go to the grocery store in Hyde Park, drive back here, go to the farmers’ market, drive back up to another grocery store. I’m losing my appetite just repeating it.”
“You won’t believe this, but I had a date at a grocery store last night, too,” Pam admitted.
“How was it?” Marie asked.
“Okay while we were there, but not so good once we got back here. I started thinking about you know who.”
“Oh, Pam,” Marie said. “I keep comparing this poor man to Jack,” she whispered again.
“How’s he measuring up?” Pam wanted to know.
“He lost,” Marie said and started laughing. “No one will win that contest.”
Pam smiled. “Oh Lord, I guess it’s hopeless.”
The two women said good-bye to each other, with promises they would talk when Marie got back to the city that evening.
While she was still in a talking mode, Pam looked for Anne’s phone number and dialed it.
She answered on the first ring.
“Anne, it’s Pam,” she said.
There was silence.
I’m not saying anything
, Pam thought.
Maybe she will hang up
.
Finally, though, Anne spoke. “I was wondering when you were going to call me.” She had a tone to her voice that Pam found disconcerting.
Is Anne going to blame me for something?
“Why is that?” she asked, deciding to play dumb.
“Well, since you shot him, since you shot Bill, and your accusations put my husband in jail for two months, it would seem like the decent thing to do would be to at least find out how we are doing,” Anne said.
“How
are
you doing, Anne? It’s not that I didn’t want to know or didn’t think of you. There were other things on my mind this summer, that’s all. It was nothing personal,” Pam explained, thinking,
Why am I even going there?
“I think you have a lot of nerve calling me. Did you ever once think that we might be in trouble here with Bill gone? You knew about the mess we were in financially, in large part because of Jack.”
“I am sorry. I did know about the mess you were in, which is why I continued sending money to Bernice. My understanding was that she shared that money with you and Bill.” Pam decided to ignore the comment about Jack.
“It never occurred to you that my boys would love to spend a day on the beach or that I would like to get out of the city?” Anne said.
“Actually, no, I never thought of it. Why didn’t you call me and ask? Or just come over? This house has been open to anyone who chose to use it all the years we have lived here. My feeling has always been that it was too far from the resorts, that it wasn’t a real vacation spot.” And then Pam remembered Bill’s insulting comment to Jack. “Bill even told Jack one time when he refused our offer to have you here for the weekend that, if we wanted company, we should have bought in the Hamptons.”
“That’s an outright lie! I was in on that conversation! Why would we want to come there and have you flaunt your perfect life in front of us? I knew Jack had taken more than his share from the business so you could have that house! It was Jack’s fault that we were in trouble!”
“Anne, you have to believe me when I tell you that my life is far from perfect, and if you feel we flaunted that in front of you, I am truly sorry. Truly. And as far as Jack taking more than his share from the business, he only worked for Harold for a short time. He went out on his own before we were even married. He started his business when he was still in graduate school.”
“I know for a fact that Harold financed Jack’s business and the start-up was all from him; Bill sacrificed so Jack would have clients.” Anne was out of breath. Pam thought
Anne might be repeating lies Bill told her to keep her from being angry with him
.
“Bill was still in high school when Jack went out on his own! Anne, I can prove what I am telling you. No one wanted to ruin Harold or see him ruin his business. You just have to trust me.” And then, suddenly, Pam wasn’t so sure.
What if Jack had lied about the business the same way he
lied about everything else, completely and without conscience?
She didn’t want to talk to Anne anymore, not now or the next day or the day after that. Anne could hire attorneys to figure out who stole what from whom, if need be, but Pam wasn’t going there. She hung up without saying goodbye.
Stunned, Pam sat down on a stool next to the phone. She let the phone drop from her hands.
What in the hell was that?
She started laughing. She roared with laughter a good ten minutes, tears rolling down her cheeks. She slid to the cold stone floor and rocked with laughter.
Oh my God! I have lost my mind!
And then she started to weep. Still crying, she pulled herself up and went to the front door and locked it, then moved to the sliders out to the veranda and locked those as well. She wanted to be left alone, she wanted to miss her husband, and she wanted to grieve. Hopefully, Anne hadn’t recorded their conversation. But Pam knew one thing for sure: She was pressing charges against her sister-in-law, making Anne a target for her broken heart. She was finished being a doormat. Pam had shot Anne’s husband, Bill, and if she had to, she would do it over again to protect her loved ones. Exhausted, she went to her room, pulled back the bedding, and got into bed for a long summer’s sleep.
Bill left his house in Greenwich Village and got a cab headed uptown. He was forty-seven years old, and he was going to live with his mother. Well, at least he would spend the night there that night. He was taking it one day at a time. He didn’t call ahead; Bernice would ask too
many questions of him. It was easier to just arrive there unannounced.
Bernice was sitting in the courtyard, thumbing through a magazine. She didn’t hear Mildred open the door for Bill. She would bring him out to Bernice, overnight bag in hand.
“What’s this?” she asked, looking down at his carryall.
He swung it up onto an empty chair. Waiting until Mildred had left, he answered, “Okay with you if I stay a couple of days? Anne’s on the rag.”
“Oh God, don’t be so disgusting,” Bernice answered, but she laughed. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, but you should be with your family.” She didn’t like enabling her boys to mistreat their wives. She was afraid it might backfire. “Pam was here earlier,” she added, with just a slight twist to her lips.
“What the hell did she want?” Bill asked. “Hasn’t she caused enough trouble around here?” He dropped in a chair. “Buzz for Mildred, will you, Mother? I’m starving.”
“She paid the staff and gave me some money for food and incidentals. We should be nicer to her.” Bernice was still smirking.
“Did she give you money for the beauty salon? You sure look a lot better.” He looked at the paper, reaching over to choose a section.
Bernice remembered the gentle way Pam bathed her and did her hair for her. “No. And don’t be rude.”
“She called the cops on my wife,” Bill added.
Bernice nodded her head yes. “She told me. I guess it was her right. What did your wife keep that money for, anyway? The checks were made out to me,” she said smugly.