“Yepper, maybe I’d go with the maroon. I could live with the maroon. I bet I could pick one up, used. That shop in Montgomeryville, they’d have it.”
I opened the cardboard cover of the third sketchbook and froze on the spot. It was a sketch of Paul. His eyes were closed, in sleep, on a lacy bed. He was naked, with a sheet draped carelessly over his thighs. I wanted to cry out but didn’t.
“Maybe I should ask for it for Christmas?” Johanssen said.
I felt stunned. “Uh … worth a try.”
“We could take long trips together. She’s always saying we don’t spend enough time, just the two of us. Be good for our marriage.”
“Sure. Sounds like it.” As if I knew what was good for a marriage. I tore through the other sketchbooks. Paul wasn’t in any of them, but the young black man was, the one with the short dreadlocks. I returned to the drawing of Paul, holding the sketchbook in my hand. Deciding what to do with it.
“Yes sir,” he said, and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I think I’ll put it on my Christmas list.”
“Good idea.” I wanted to throw the sketchbook across the room, but I did something smarter. I shoved it into my purse.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Johanssen said.
Oh no? Watch me.
13
I
almost came to understand Fiske’s alibi because I drove for the next full hour with the convertible top down and the sketchbook in the backseat of the car. Hot summer air whipped my hair around and makeup melted off my face, but I didn’t care how I looked. I didn’t even care where I went. I just drove. Fast. Very fast.
That I got no speeding ticket is a miracle, but that I did not rack up the car and kill myself stands to reason. First, I would never do that to my car. Second, I am not one of those women who turns her anger inward, the suicide prototype. I am quite proficient in turning it outward, and regard this as an improvement on the old-fashioned, Valium-taking, feminine-mystique model. After all, it wasn’t me I wanted to kill, it was Paul.
For the first twenty-five miles or so, I actually considered this. How to commit murder, how to get away with it. You would think the fact that I had just examined a gory crime scene would counsel against my homicidal ruminations, but the opposite was true. It gave me a kind of permission. See, other people do it, you can, too. Like cheating on your in-home office deduction.
It took me thirty more miles to pass through the acutely felonious stage, but by mile fifty-five I had just enough high-octane bile left to make good company, so I roared home. I pulled into the driveway behind Paul’s Cherokee, spraying its gleaming finish with gravel. I cut the ignition, grabbed the sketchbook, and slammed the car door, regretting only this last act. I never slam the car door, I care for my car. It pissed me off so much that when I got in the front door to the house, I slammed it so hard that the windows on either side rattled in their glazier’s points and Paul came running downstairs into the entrance hall.
“Rita!” he said. His alarmed expression reflected how deranged I must have looked, with my crayoned eyes, shiny face, and hair styled by Cuisinart.
“What’s the matter, Paul? Don’t I look like the woman you want to marry?” I did a model’s pirouette and wobbled not at all.
“You look … fine.”
I eyed him up and down in his pressed pants, black rayon shirt, and silk print tie. “So do you. All for me?”
“I was at Mom and Dad’s. The police came and searched the house, the closets, even the garage. It took all afternoon to put everything back together. They took Dad’s car, too. Where have you been?”
I brandished the sketchbook. “Tell me, does this look familiar?”
“I don’t understand.”
“But then again, maybe you don’t recognize it. You were sleeping, as I remember. You must have been so exhausted.”
“Rita, are you okay?”
“Why? Don’t I look okay?”
“Well, you look a little—”
“Crazy?” I said crazily.
“No, but—”
“Boo!”
He took a step backward.
“Well, I’m not. Crazy, that is. I may drive a little too fast, I may bet a little too hard, and I may be committing malpractice on a murder case, but I am definitely not crazy.” I held the sketchbook higher, like the Statue of Liberty on Ritalin. “I thought you were cheating on me and I was not crazy. I thought you gave me a virus and I was not crazy.” I advanced on him with the book in the air. “Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”
“Honey—”
“Don’t honey me,” I said, which is something I always wanted to say. Then I took aim and hurled the sketchbook directly at his face. He shouted and his arms went up protectively—he was always so good at net—so the book bounced off his fingers and hit another of his treasured watercolors, knocking it askew. He looked over his shoulder at the painting, then back at me angrily.
“What is going on here?” he asked sternly.
“Pick up the fucking book and look at it! Chapter One is you asleep naked. Chapter Two is you asleep naked. Chapter Three is you asleep naked, too, so the book is not what you’d call plot-driven. Don’t you just
hate
literary fiction?”
He didn’t reply, and plucked the book from our pretentious carpet.
“It would help if you’d gotten up and done something, Paul. Poured coffee, made a drink. Nuzzled her ear, cleaned her brushes. But I guess you did clean her brushes. You must have or I wouldn’t have this fucking virus.”
He opened the tan cover of the book, then slowly turned the pages one by one.
“Now, you piece of shit, you have one minute to tell me why you did this to me. Then you can pack your fucking bags and get out.”
He couldn’t meet my eye.
“Forty seconds.” Boy, I felt as good as you can feel when you catch your lover cheating on you. “
Thirty
seconds.”
“I can explain,” he said quietly, still looking at the book.
“So can I. You’re a piece of shit. A tall shit, a very handsome shit, but a shit just the same.”
“That’s not helpful, Rita.”
“Fuck you! I’m not trying to be helpful!” I took off my jacket and threw it down on the rug. I cannot explain why I did this, except there was nothing left in my hands to throw. Paul watched my rage striptease with a sort of horrified confusion, then held up a hand.
“Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”
“In the name of love?”
“I had an affair.”
“No shit, Sherlock! I may not know
The Mikado
, but I’m smarter than I look.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I found myself pacing. “Granted, sometimes you have to draw me a picture. Lots of them. Color would have helped, but I recognized you right off. I said to myself, I know that guy. He’s the one who keeps asking me to marry him. That’s what you wanted, right? A commitment? Give me a fucking break!”
“Do you want to listen to me or do you want to curse at me?”
“I want to curse at you, you asshole!” I was spitting at him as I yelled, and I did not care that this was unattractive. “And when I’m done cursing at you, I want you to pack your bags!”
“You said you’d listen.”
“You had ten seconds and you blew them.” I started to leave the room, but Paul grabbed my arm from behind.
“Rita, wait.”
“Get off of me!” I wrenched my arm free. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare touch me.” My whole body shook.
“Do you want to know why it happened?”
“You should be on your knees, begging me. You should be begging and saying you’re sorry and groveling at my feet.” I heard my voice grow thick. “Begging and saying you’re sorry.”
He sighed and stepped back.
I sighed, too, but only because I sounded so dumb. I didn’t want to sound dumb, or be helpless. A victim. I wiped my eyes. We were silent for a minute.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he said.
“Why don’t you shut up?”
“I’ll get you some water.” Paul went to the kitchen, where I heard the cabinet door open and close and the water go on. By the time he came back with a tumbler in his hand, my body had stopped shaking. “Here,” he said, but I only glared at him in response, so he set the heavy tumbler on the dining room table and sat down at one end. “May I explain now?”
I plopped into a chair at the other end. Between us was a runway of mahogany, a crystal vase of white roses, and the wreckage of our life together. “Don’t ask me for permission. You didn’t before.”
He nodded. “The affair is over.”
“Of course it is. She’s dead.”
“It ended a few months ago. It lasted about six months.”
My stomach twisted. “So your father was sleeping with her at the same time? That’s disgusting. That’s
sick
!”
“I didn’t know about that, about him. I broke up with her as soon as I found out.”
So. “Does your father know?”
“No. Never. It was a game for her, just a game.”
“What was it for you?”
He suppressed whatever he was going to say, then looked away. “I was unhappy.”
It hurt inside, his saying it out loud. “You didn’t say so, you dick.”
He winced. “I didn’t know until this happened. I didn’t know why it started or why it ended until it was all over. Then she wanted me to come back to her, she said she was sorry, that it was over with him. That’s when she filed the lawsuit.”
“For sexual harassment?”
“She wanted to prove to me that she didn’t care about him. That she loved me. So I would come back.”
Jesus. “Why didn’t you tell me that? It would have destroyed her case.”
“Tell you? As Dad’s lawyer or as my lover?”
Touché. I sipped some water. “So how did it start?”
“I met her at a sidewalk show. She wanted to know about design, and we talked. She called me later. It just happened. It was wrong. I should have told you I was unhappy.”
“But you didn’t have the balls.”
He looked up sharply. “No. I didn’t know then. I know now. I’m telling you now.”
“Only because I found out.”
“But I want to deal with it. Let’s see what we have left. I can, Rita. Can you?”
Fuck you. I wanted to throw the glass right in his face, but I went one better. “She had other lovers, Paul. A regular United Nations.”
“I know that. I told you, it was all a game with her. She was addicted to it, the excitement. She was self-destructive—”
“What a bunch of crap. You wouldn’t have broken up with her if you hadn’t found out about your father.”
He leaned forward. “When I found out about my father was when I finally understood her. Knew who she really was, what was really happening. When the fantasy was over, what was left was a very empty, very damaged woman. And I wanted you.”
Right. “How did you find out about your father?”
“I saw a photo from our Bermuda trip. Look, Rita, I’m sorry,” he said, raking back his hair in a gesture uncannily like Fiske’s. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear it. I know why it happened. I didn’t have enough of you, of your time. We need more time together.”
“Maybe we should buy a motorcycle.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Listen, you’re always running, going off to work. And then there’s poker. No matter what, you go.”
“Don’t you pin this on me! Take some fucking responsibility, would you? You cheated on me because I play poker? Because I work my ass off? It’s not my fault you were running around!”
“It’s not about fault, Rita.”
“That’s what people always say when it’s their fault!” I saw a blur then, a kind of madness rising in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything else. I stood up. “
You
cheated and it’s
my
fault? Are you crazy? Are you stone fucking
crazy
?”
He rubbed his forehead. “You don’t get it.”
“The hell I don’t. You slept with her, you were living with me at the time. We’re practically engaged—”
“Practically? That’s the whole problem right there in a nutshell. We’re either engaged or we’re not!”
“Thank God I didn’t marry you! Thank God that is one mistake I did not make! Now go pack your bags.”
He looked as if I’d slapped him. “You don’t mean this.”
“I do too. I’ll be back in two hours. Be gone by then. Leave your keys on the table.” I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
“Rita. Rita, wait. Listen,” he said, but I kept walking. One foot in front of the other, out the front door.
My knees buckled slightly when I got outside, but I walked across the dry lawn and didn’t fall, and didn’t cry. My heart was a tight knot at the center of my chest. I strode to the car and got in, careful to close the door gently. I pulled out of the driveway and drove the speed limit to Lancaster Avenue. And I did not drive aimlessly, I knew just where I was going.
On the way I made a phone call to Fiske, whom I hadn’t even called about the murder scene, so preoccupied was I with my personal life. I told him tersely what I’d seen, but not about Patricia’s erotic renderings of the NFL or of his own son. He didn’t have to know about that. And not from me.
I wondered how my father would react to the news, but I figured he’d handle it okay if I didn’t spell out the cheating part. And if I told him about the virus, he’d take his sharpest cleaver and geld the man. I laughed to myself until I thought about what Paul said. About my not being home.
I pointed the car toward the city, and it struck me for the first time how strange it was that I had no friends my own age. No women friends, even close friends among my partners. We used to make lunch dates, but a deposition or trial would come up. Soon I’d stopped penciling anybody in. I realized I was speeding and eased off the gas.
I reached the Italian Market, but a sawhorse blocked Eighth Street about a block from my father’s shop. The traffic was clogged and confused. A siren blared close by, and a blue-shirted Philly cop with a thick gut was waving a line up of overheated drivers down Christian Street. No way was I doing that. It would take me an extra twenty minutes to double back to the butcher shop, then another twenty to find a parking space. How would I get to cry on my father’s shoulder by dinner-time?
I stopped my car in front of the cop and opened the window. “Can’t I get over to Ninth, Officer?”