The Deep End (38 page)

“Maybe she should have the hysterectomy,” Joanne ventures.

“What? Why?”

“Maybe it’s what she needs.”

“Nobody needs unnecessary surgery.”

“Maybe once you get her into the hospital, you can persuade her to see the staff psychiatrist …” Joanne is aware that she is thinking out loud. “And if the miscarriage
is
the source of her anxieties, well then, maybe once the problem area is removed, the rest of her problems will disappear as well.”

“That’s taking a pretty big risk, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Maybe I will have that cup of coffee, if you don’t mind,” Brian tells her. Joanne moves to the coffee machine, hoping that her face doesn’t register the annoyance she feels at his request.

What does he want coffee for anyway? she grouses. He already had two cups with his pie. Why did he come here? Why doesn’t he go home? She is worried about Eve, about all of them. How easy it is to lose control, she thinks, recalling her discussion with the frightened young mother at the hospital. How little control we actually have.

“Have you seen Paul lately?” Brian asks as she brings his mug of hot coffee to the table.

“Last weekend,” she tells him, her voice flat, her eyes downcast. “We visited the girls at camp.”

“Sounds promising.”

Joanne says nothing.

“Any progress?” Brian asks.

“Not really.” She doesn’t want to talk about this. She wants him to finish his coffee quickly and go back to his own house.

“I can’t believe Paul would be foolish enough to let you get away,” Brian is telling her.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Where is this conversation headed?

“Are you dating?” he asks.

Joanne stares at him in surprise. She has never known Brian to be so loquacious. What is he getting at? “No,” she says quickly.

“What about that tennis instructor?”

“What about him?”

“I thought …”

“He was here for dinner one night,” Joanne replies testily. “He left early.”

“Not of his own volition, I’m sure.”

Joanne’s eyes narrow. What is Brian trying to say?

“Eve’s right about one thing,” he says. “You’re looking wonderful these days.”

“I feel like shit,” Joanne says simply, the words fitting her tongue exactly. “Nothing like a good dose of misery, I guess, to make you look your best.”

“How are you managing?” He has put down his mug, is walking around the table to where she is sitting.

“Well, I’ve learned where the fuse box is located. I can change a light bulb all by myself. And I canceled our subscription to
Sports Illustrated.”

His arms are on her shoulders.

“I guess I’m managing okay,” she continues, feeling the warmth of his fingers through her thin sweater.

“Are you?” he asks again. “It must be hard alone after all these years …”

Joanne pushes her chair back, forcing Brian to release his grip on her shoulders. She rises to her feet. “Men aren’t all they’re cracked up to be,” she tells him. “Do you want more coffee?”

“No,” he says, moving toward her.

Joanne feels the counter top at her back. “Brian,” she begins, but it is too late. He is only inches from her mouth, his arms around her waist, pulling her close to him, his lips pressing down on hers. What the hell is she supposed to do now? Joanne wonders. Why are all these things happening to her? A tennis instructor twelve years her junior, her crazy friend’s husband, some lunatic who wants to spank her before he kills her … what is the secret of her strange appeal?

She glares at the phone as Brian’s mouth crushes down on her own. Why don’t you call me now, you bastard? she screams silently as Brian’s tongue searches for hers.

“Brian …”

“Don’t stop me, Joanne. I need you.”

“Brian …”

“You need me.”

Joanne manages to extricate herself from his arms. “I don’t need any of this!” she yells. “What I need is a little sanity in my life. What I need is to be left alone.” Whenever I want to talk to an intelligent person …”Why didn’t you ask Lieutenant Fox to have a patrol car watch my house?” she demands suddenly, surprising them both.

“What?”

“You said you would.”

“Joanne, what are you talking about?”

“You said that you’d ask your lieutenant to have a patrol car watch my house.”

His eyes register remembrance. “I did ask him,” he tells her.

“No you didn’t. I’ve spoken to your Lieutenant Fox. He didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”

“Joanne …”

She is moving angrily away from him, relieved she has something to throw between them. “Why didn’t you ask him?”

There is a long pause. “I couldn’t,” he finally admits.

“Why? Don’t you believe me either? Do you think I’m imagining the phone calls?”

“No.”

“Then why? You don’t think my concerns are legitimate? You were just trying to humor me?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because I’m afraid,” Brian mumbles, turning away from her angry eyes.

The word is not one Joanne is expecting.

“Afraid? Afraid of what?”

There is another long pause. “Afraid that Eve might be the one who’s been phoning you,” he confesses, his voice barely audible.

Joanne says nothing. His words are only an echo of her own thoughts, after all.

“You’re not saying that you think that Eve might be the Suburban Strangler, are you?” Joanne whispers incredulously, after all the ramifications of his words have sunk in.

He shakes his head vigorously, his incongruous laugh once again filling the air. “Oh God, no!” He obviously
finds this thought very amusing. His laugh takes a long while to fade. “But then I don’t think that whoever’s been phoning you is the killer either. I don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other.” He smiles at Joanne sadly. “I think we should pull back a bit. We all seem to be going a little crazy.” He lifts the palms of his hands into the air. “What can I say? I’m sorry, Joanne. About everything. About not talking to Fox, about what happened over at my house earlier, about what happened here a few minutes ago …”

The phone rings.

“Do you want me to answer it?” Brian offers. “I’d recognize Eve’s voice no matter how hard she tried to disguise it. You must have a phone in your bedroom,” he continues before Joanne has a chance to respond, already on his way up the stairs. “Give me a minute before you answer it. Let it ring three more times. Pick it up after the third ring from now.”

The ringing continues as Joanne hears Brian’s footsteps overhead. At the end of the third ring, she slowly reaches over and picks up the receiver, listening dully as the voice on the other end makes its terse announcement.

Brian returns instantly to her side. “I’m sorry, Joanne,” he says, his hands gesturing helplessly between them, having forfeited their power to comfort.

“It had to happen sooner or later,” Joanne tells him. “He was ninety-five.”

J
oanne stares around the room at the small collection of mourners. Counting herself, there are six people present. Her brother, Warren, and his wife, Gloria, flew in from California two days earlier, and are now sitting on either side of her, their hands intertwined. Directly behind her is her boss, Dr. Ronald Gold. Across the aisle, on the other side of the small chapel, sit Joanne’s husband, Paul, and Eve’s mother. Eve is not here, being too sick; nor is Brian, being too busy. Joanne was surprised when she first saw Eve’s mother; now she is grateful. She smiles in the older woman’s direction. Paul smiles back.

Their daughters are not here. Joanne decided that there was no point in making the two girls return from camp, even though Paul offered to drive up and get them. She is not being protective, she realizes, satisfied with the decision she has made. She is being practical. And, to a certain degree, selfish. Right now, she neither wants nor needs the responsibility of two more mouths to feed, two more egos to cater to. She wants to think of no one but herself, to hear no one’s voice but her own. She wants, as Greta Garbo is often reported to have said, to be alone,
and she is strangely grateful that her brother and sister-in-law will be departing for California shortly after the funeral. She feels comfortable with her solitude. At least she knows what to expect.

Gloria squeezes Joanne’s hand. “That’s the sad thing about living so long,” she says quietly. “You outlive all your friends. And most of your family,” she adds, leaning her head against Joanne’s.

Joanne nods. She had forgotten how pretty Gloria is. A typical California girl, her hair blond, her skin bronzed, she appears younger than her thirty-five years. Only her voice is old. It has a vaguely guttural, almost masculine, quality, a quality which serves her well in the voice work she does for radio and television commercials. Like most of her friends, Gloria once confessed, all she ever wanted from life was to be an actress and marry a doctor. Unlike most of her friends, however, she actually managed to carve out something of a career for herself in the peripheries of show business, and her marriage had proved both durable and successful. Her daughters are healthy, beautiful, and a reflection of the times: they want to be models and marry rock stars. Living in California, they fully expect to get what they want. Which they probably will, Joanne thinks.

“It’s so hard to believe he’s really dead,” Warren says, staring at the open coffin at the front of the chapel. “I always thought that he’d be around forever.”

“He was,” Gloria reminds him gently.

“He looks so small,” Warren marvels. “He was always such a big man. I don’t know if you remember him, Gloria …”

“How could I forget him?” Gloria’s husky voice fills the small room. “He was master of ceremonies at our wedding,
for God’s sake. When he introduced me as your ‘lover,’ I thought my parents were going to expire on the spot.”

“I think he’d had a few drinks,” Joanne chuckles, remembering the scene.

“And then he couldn’t get my name straight. He kept calling me Glynis.”

“He always liked the name Glynis,” Warren remarks, and suddenly both Warren and Joanne are laughing.

“Sounds like
my
grandfather,” Ron Gold interjects, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the back of their bench. “He was nearly blind and quite senile by the time I got married. As my future wife and I were approaching the judge, my grandfather, who was sitting in the front row, yelled out, ‘Who is that nice-looking young couple?’” He joins in the laughter.

“Your grandfather always said exactly what was on his mind,” Eve’s mother says to Joanne, moving from Paul’s side to sit next to Ron Gold. “I phoned your house one night, interrupting a big family dinner, to ask where Eve was, and your grandfather answered the phone and told me to mind my own business. I told him that Eve
was
my business, and he said, ‘Quite right. But she’s not ours, and she’s not here.’ And he hung up on me!” She, too, starts to laugh.

Joanne remembers the occasion, recalls the look of bemused horror that crossed her mother’s face. How could you say that to her, Pa? she can hear her mother asking, watching her grandfather shrug his massive shoulders mischievously in reply.

Joanne’s eyes steal over in Paul’s direction. He sits alone, his posture indicative of an internal debate about whether to stay where he is or to join the rest of the small
group. For an instant, Joanne is tempted to make the decision for him, to walk over and lead him back to the others. A familiar song drifts into her mind: We-are-a-family, it sings. No, she decides, cutting the silent impromptu concert short, We-
were
-a-family! The past tense was Paul’s decision. The man has legs of his own. They have led him to exactly where he wants to be—apart. Her eyes return to the front of the chapel.

The ceremony is brief. A psalm is recited, a few necessary words are spoken. It is over.

“I won’t come to the cemetery,” Eve’s mother is saying, reaching over to take Joanne’s hands in her own.

“It was so thoughtful of you to come to the ceremony,” Joanne says sincerely.

“I always admired your grandfather. I wanted you to know that.”

“Thank you.”

“Eve would have been here except …”

“I know …”

“I tried to persuade her to come with me …”

“Really, it’s all right …”

“She was in so much pain …”

“Please, Mrs. Cameron, it’s all right. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I’m trying.”

“Stand by her, Joanne,” Eve’s mother urges. “Don’t give up on her. She needs you. You’re the only one she’s ever listened to.”

“You have things backward, Mrs. Cameron,” Joanne tells her gently. “I’m the one who always did everything Eve said, not the other way around. Eve was the strong one.”

“No,” Eve’s mother forcefully corrects her. “Eve was the
noisy
one.
You
were the strong one.”

“What was all that about?” Gloria asks, touching Joanne’s elbow.

“I’m not sure,” Joanne admits.

“Are you ready to go to the cemetery?”

“I’d like a few minutes alone with my grandfather,” Joanne says, looking toward the coffin.

“We’ll be outside,” Warren tells her. Joanne watches as her brother and his wife disappear up the center aisle behind Paul and Ron, who exchange curt nods in one another’s direction.

Slowly, Joanne advances toward the front of the chapel.

They have selected a plain pine box. Her grandfather’s body lies inside it, dressed in a dark blue suit, his eyes closed, his cheeks slightly rouged. “You were right, Grampa,” Joanne whispers, confident her grandfather will hear her. “Thank you.”

Joanne reaches into her purse and slowly pulls out the crumpled Sherlock Holmes hat she had given him on his eighty-fifth birthday.

“You’ve got to take a hat with you,” she smiles, puffing up the cap with surprisingly steady fists and laying it gently on top of her grandfather’s folded hands. “That’s better,” she says, feeling her grandfather agree, almost seeing the still lips smile. Joanne bends forward and kisses the kind old face, the touch of his skin cold against her lips. “I love you, Grampa,” she whispers for the last time.