"Can you tell me if the people behind Land Management are aware of the condition their tenants live under?"
"I'm sure they are, son. What's this all about?"
"I have spoken with a woman who claims to have repeatedly contacted Aurora Development about repairs on her apartment, and they’ve not been completed. Do you have any knowledge of this?"
"Why would I? That's an administrative issue for Aurora."
"I spoke to someone there this morning who would not reveal their names or his supervisor's names. Isn't that a little odd?"
"Some people are just uncomfortable dealing with you media types."
"So as far as you know, your clients maintain healthy, safe rental properties for their tenants."
"Absolutely. That's all I have to say." The phone went dead in my ear.
There was no way in hell Rathke would reveal to me who was behind Land Management Ltd.—at least not without a subpoena. Still, I had Rathke's name. I could run with that. Let him take the heat for his client's mistakes. That's what he's being paid for.
* * *
On Friday, I spent too much money on flowers and too little on wine, but I was as expectant as any hormone-driven teenage boy as I took Kay's front steps two at a time. The August humidity was receding, but sweat still hung in beads across my forehead. The doorbell echoed through the cavernous foyer.
"Oh my God, Marcus, what happened to you!" Kay's eyes shone as she opened the door. Her red hair was loose, and she held a heavy wooden hairbrush.
"It's nothing. I come bearing gifts, as any proper gentleman caller should."
"Thank you so much! But who hit you? When? Where?"
"You're welcome. I don't know. A day or so ago. Aurora Development.” I tried to keep a straight face, which really wasn't too hard since every time I smiled, my swollen lip felt like it was being stretched across a rack. "I could really use a drink, though."
"My goodness! When did you start being proper?" A mischievous sparkle shot through her eyes, and I began to see her icy demeanor giving way to the old Kay I once knew. "Sure. C'mon in." She led me into the living room and, leaning the wine into the corner of a wing chair, set the flowers in a vase on the mantle.
"There are wine glasses on the kitchen table," she continued. "As you can see, I'm not quite together, so if you'll pour yourself a drink, I'll go upstairs and finish up."
"Where are the kids?"
"At Mother's. She decided to be a real grandmother and keep them overnight."
Kay turned to go. Impulsively, I clasped her warm shoulders and pulled her close, till the smell of her sweet perfume filled my head.
"Mmmm."
Her body relaxed against me, not the reaction I expected. No fight, no protest. Spooked, I quickly kissed the back of her neck and let her go.
"Couldn't help myself," I shrugged, with a crooked smile.
She smiled sadly. "I know." She shook her head (Was it regret or was it pity?), and then she disappeared up the stairs, as my confused silence filled the room.
In a few moments, she was back with her riotous hair pinned carefully in place, a picture of perfect composure. My hand shook, as I handed her a glass of wine.
"Did this happen at Aurora Development?" She reached up and touched my eye. I winced and turned away.
"It wasn't the Welcome Wagon. Let's just leave it at that. Why did you say that, before you went upstairs?"
She stepped closer, her upturned face close to mine. "Don't get your hopes up, cowboy. Let's go eat."
I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her again. "I've always loved you, Kay."
Something within her gave way, tears filling her eyes as the barriers between us crumbled. There was no pretense between us, no games. Our years apart were gone instantly, as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me.
"I love you, too," she whispered. "I've always loved you."
Our lips searched for each other, until they met in perfect union and her tongue slid into my battered mouth mingling the taste of toothpaste and blood together. Time ceased to flow, as sweet memories of her touch came flooding back. She made a small gasp, and her back arched as I pressed her hips against mine, grasping hungry handfuls of the sweet, soft flesh I never thought I’d touch again. I slid the zipper of her dress down to the small of her back and, as it fell to the floor, found myself sinking to my knees in a primal search down her breasts and taut belly through the satin of her slip. Grasping her buttocks, I buried my face in the small shimmering valley between her thighs. Kay shuddered and moaned.
This time, nothing could come between us. This time, I would never let her go.
We were upstairs, pairing violently in her big four-poster bed, silently, greedily devouring each other as if speech would break the spell. In the hot, sticky darkness, I clung to her until my need for her exploded, her nails drawing lines of blood down my back as the echoes of our satisfaction resounded through the room. She was mine again.
The major's wife was mine.
As we rolled apart, warmth and exhaustion enveloped me. I couldn't help it. I fell asleep.
What a pig.
I woke with a jerk, sitting bolt upright in bed.
"Welcome back." Kay caressed my arm with one hand, her eyes half closed.
"God, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I could be such a jerk."
"C'mon Marcus, it's not like I've never seen this movie before." She sat up and kissed my forehead, her face suffused with an unprotected glow. "There are some things old lovers don't forget."
Curling into my arms, she moved to brush a stray curl out of her eyes. The flash of her wedding ring brought me back to reality. "I want you to know you're the first married woman I've ever violated," I tried to joke.
"Thank you for sharing that with the class, Marcus." She sat up. "It's not something I make a habit of either."
"Violating married women?"
"Adultery in general."
"What do you suggest we do the next time?"
Kay slid back down into the blankets and back into my arms. "That depends. How many chances do you get in life?"
"This is one more than I ever thought possible."
* * *
Later that night, we called out for Chinese. In her seersucker bathrobe, Kay was an expert at eating with chopsticks, while I silently chased a water chestnut around my plate with my fork.
"Can I ask you a question?" I finally asked.
"Sure."
"When did things go wrong? With you and the major, I mean."
"He’s always bought into that fighter-pilot-as-God thing they fill them with at pilot training. I don’t know if he was ever faithful to me. But I finally had enough the day I found out he a fling the last time we were in Korea and fathered a child."
"You mentioned that before."
"Yeah. There was a letter for Paul with a Korea postmark that I steamed open one day. It had a picture of this little boy and a handful of won—Korean dollars—in it. This woman was sending him the money she saved for the house he promised to buy her here in the States."
"Jesus."
"It was pretty bad. But I’d known for a while that things weren't right anyway."
"Really?" This from the woman I saw fall so hard for the wild blue yonder.
"I was trying to fit into the mold Paul wanted me in, and it didn't work." Kay fiddled with her chopsticks, refusing to look at me.
"What mold?"
"The perfect officer's wife mold, the one who sacrifices all to help her husband climb that all-important promotion ladder. I was actually shocked when I learned that other wives don't get sucked into the game like I did."
"I know you moved around a lot."
"Oh, I loved the travel!" She looked up, and a smile broke across her face. "I was being strangled to death here in Jubilant Falls. I've seen people and places I never would have any other way! But that's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"It's not the moving, or the willingness to move, but being completely absorbed into his identity. I'm Mrs. Major, Paul's wife, Andrew's mother, Lillian's mother, just like I was here, when I was Marian James's daughter. But I pushed Paul into a mold he didn't fit into either."
"Oh?"
"I was in love with his lifestyle, his rank, and his job. After being beat around by Grant, I wanted a hero."
"I never did fit that bill, did I?"
She reached across the table and took my hand, sadness mirrored in her eyes. "Marcus, I was stupid, just young and stupid. By the time I realized that, I was married to someone who had feet of clay, just like mine."
"So, is it completely over between you two?"
Kay sighed. "Honestly, I don't know. It's all so complicated. I don't want to live every day with the reminder my husband was unfaithful, but I don't want to be a two-time loser, either."
"How can you say that? That day I saw you in the grocery all those years ago, you looked like the poster child for domestic violence! You even said so yourself!"
"But Marcus, I never failed at anything before either!"
"How can you call getting out of an abusive relationship failure?"
"Maybe it's part of that savior complex Mother's always accusing me of having. I don't know. I've got to teach the world to read, I've got to feed the hungry, I've—"
"—got to buy the world a Coke," I sang, sarcastically.
Kay laughed. "No. But you know women who feel they have to somehow change their men once they're married to them."
I nodded.
"I just thought that if I loved Grant enough, or did whatever it was he wanted, he wouldn't beat me. Of course, it didn't work that way. At the shelter, they told me it seldom does. In a way, I did the same thing with Paul. If I were the perfect wife, if I loved him enough, everything would be fine. But it wasn't."
"The major never struck you, did he?"
"No. I was looking for a hero, a romance novel hero. And they simply don't exist."
"What about us? I'm not giving you up this time without a fight."
Kay was silent.
"You said you loved me," I persisted.
"I do, Marcus, I do. I won't lie to you, though. I made a commitment to this man and this marriage, and I have children to think about, too. I need to see this year through, to see what happens."
"I won't push."
And so, we began again. Late night phone calls filled with whispered endearments, sweet stolen moments, and the occasional night together when Kay could get her mother to take Andy and Lillian. The ring she still wore on her finger meant that our moments together were borrowed and illicit. Still, the major was half a world away and I was here.
* * *
Things with Elizabeth's apartment never went any further. Half of this business is about getting lied to; the other half is getting crucified.
On the last day of August, I returned to Suite 340 to pay another visit. Three-dimensional letters now hung on the previously blank door announcing a new occupant, Cardinal Insurance.
Inside, a lithesome young blonde with legs I thought would never end puckered her pretty brow, but could remember no one who resembled the goon who rearranged my face.
Likewise, the bushy-browed security officer could recall no one fitting that description occupying that same suite.
"It's been policy for a while now that residential tenants mail their rent payment in," he said, avoiding my eyes. "To a post office box."
"How long? What's the box number?"
The guard studied his black Reeboks. "A while now. I don't know the address."
"What if they have a complaint? What are they supposed to do then?"
The guard shrugged. "I dunno."
The goon and his boiler room operation had vanished into thin air.
Within hours, I had a photographer at Elizabeth's place and was overrun with other tenants with the same complaints she had. Once again, Rathke refused all comments about Land Management Ltd. or who the stockholders were.
The next morning, I had a banner headline, above the fold. This was it; I was on my way back. Even my co-workers in the newsroom complimented me on the story, stopping by my desk to shake my hand or pat my shoulder.
“God job, old man, good job,” Jess grinned on one side of his mouth, as he snapped the paper in front of him. “I knew you could do it.”
Chapter 5 Kay
What we were doing was wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I had a husband to think about; I had two kids. I just couldn't throw it all away over some half-baked idea that I could rekindle an old romance. Somebody had to take the moral high ground here. Just because Paul had affairs throughout our marriage, and fathered a child, for Christ's sake, didn't mean that I had carte blanche to take up with someone. Did it?
I agonized over it, every moment Marcus and I weren't together—and we were together as often as I could work it out. But when we weren't, I sat staring at the photos of Paul and me together, wondering where it was my marriage went wrong.
I had to make my marriage work for the kids, didn't I? I couldn't throw the whole seven years away, simply because he couldn't keep his pants on, could I? And wasn't what I was doing no better than what Paul had done?
I could lose my kids over this if he found out. I could lose the two most precious things in my life, if this got out. Even Mother would turn against me.
"If you do anything to ruin this marriage, there's something wrong with you."
"Kay, you couldn't have done better, even if I chosen him myself."
But he's not a god, he's a man!
My mind screamed in answer to Mother's old words. He puts his pants on the same way as anyone else. He's wounded me terribly, and I can't forgive him.
Damn that living room wall—all his accomplishments, every shining moment in his illustrious career. It's the door to his ego, the zipper to his fly. For every photograph and every medal, had there been a woman? What about every time he had deployed? And who was it? Meaningless one night stands? Or the wives of his squadron mates? What about this woman who had his child? Had she been his great love? Or had it been a cheap tryst with some whore down in Songtan City after too much Korean beer?
The anger ran fire and ice through my veins, and it was then my stolen moments with Marcus seemed as much an act of revenge as an act of grace.
Marcus was my solace, my soul mate. I could share my dreams for the literacy center with him, and he never asked, ‘But what about my career?’
I wanted a clinic in there for indigent care; I wanted prenatal classes for pregnant teens and hot lunches through the summer for the kids.
I wanted exercise classes for senior citizens, and I wanted midnight basketball leagues for the young teenagers like what Elizabeth's son, Aaron. He would soon be like so many young men now roamed the street in search of drugs or sex or violence through all hours of the night if someone didn’t step in.
I wanted the center to become the focal point of the South Side community, a way for them to learn, to grow and make their difference in the world, much as I was trying to do. Not just a place to learn to read.
And Marcus supported that. Within a few weeks, he had put me in touch with every freelance grant-writer and federally funded agency Jubilant Falls had to offer.
Together, we would make it grow. He promised me. Just you and me.
And I believed him. Damn my foolish heart; I believed him
.
After Marcus's story ran, the next few days were hectic. Even Jess congratulated him with a dour good job.
That night, after the kids were in bed, we held a quiet celebration in the kitchen.
"You deserve some credit in this, too," Marcus said, lifting a champagne glass in a congratulatory toast. "You brought Elizabeth to me."
"Dear Elizabeth." The champagne gave me a warm, tingling feeling inside. "A speech therapist called the office today to donate her services for her. The staff said they’d help paint the place, and other people, folks who read your story, Marcus, called the center to donate clothes and toys. We've done what we set out to do. We made a difference."
"Not quite yet," he cautioned. "The apartment hasn't been repaired. The city housing authorities told me they’d hold a hearing on the situation tomorrow. My guess is they'll give the company another thirty days to complete repairs, then the courts will take over."
"That old sleaze bag Rathke represented me in my divorce from Grant."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"At Mother's insistence, of course. He handles all her affairs, too."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Be nice. She's been very good about watching the kids on our occasional weekends and buying my hokey stories about old college roommates."
"Do you think she knows?"
"We don't go anyplace in town. You park your car two blocks away when you come over. Unless she's having me followed, I don't think she has any idea."
"What about the kids?"
I sighed. "They scare me more than Mother. Both of them love their father so much, it would crush them to find out about everything that's going on."
Marcus twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers. "Will they ever? You told them that we’re working together. You think they really buy that?"
"It can't be a secret forever, can it?" I leaned across the table and kissed his cheek.
My lips moved from his cheek to his lips, tasting warm and sweet from the champagne. We stood to embrace; his warm arms wrapped around me, and I felt safe, confident, and strong.
"Oh Kay, you mean so much to me," he whispered into my hair.
I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, how much his love had healed me, but I couldn't. My eyes caught a quick glance of a photo of Paul hanging on the corner of his ‘I Love Me’ wall in the next room, and I felt suffused with guilt.
Suddenly, there was the sound of screeching tires on the street. Footsteps sounded on the front walk. There was a thump and a groan, as someone jumped the iron fence.
"What the hell is that?" Marcus asked, as we pulled from our embrace. We ran to the living room, as the glass from the front window exploded across the floor. Upstairs, I heard Lillian begin to cry, and from Andrew's bedroom at the back of the second floor I heard feet hit the floor.
"Mommy! What's that? What happened?" he called from the top of the stairs, his eyes big with fear.
"Stay upstairs! Don't move!" I shot back.
I moved cautiously into the living room, as Marcus yanked the door open and ran into the front yard. There was the sound of screeching wheels, as the car carrying whoever shattered my window pulled away.
"God damn it! I couldn't get a good look at him, but he was a big guy. I only saw his back," Marcus panted, as he ran back up the steps and into the house. "You gotta call the police! Now!"
Amidst the glass fragments lay a brick with a piece of yellow legal paper wrapped around it fastened with a thick, rubber band. I reached for the brick.
"Don't touch it! You'll disturb the fingerprints." Marcus cried.
Trembling with fear, I ignored him and picked up the brick anyway, pulling off the rubber band and the paper.
In heavy black, felt-tip marker, someone from my past, someone I hoped never to see again, had written,
Bitch, I’m watching you. Remember that. Always.
I knew immediately who sent that evil message. I crumpled the note in my hand and tossed it into the fireplace.
"What are you doing?" Marcus cried.
I took a match from the mantel and lit it, tossing it onto the note. The paper ignited and burned quickly; the glowing cinders were sucked up the flue.
"You're destroying evidence! What did that note say?"
I turned to Marcus. "Nothing important. Nothing that the police need to know. "
"And I'm the Goddamn pope! Kay, who threatened you?"
"Nobody threatened me. I don't know who that note was directed toward, but it wasn't important."
"Why don't you let the police decide what's important?"
"This is my house. I'll make those decisions."
"Kay, you could be making a big mistake here."
I looked up at the stair landing into my son's terrified eyes. My children didn't know I’d been married before their father. It had been a small stupid mistake, and there was no need to tell them, even when he left such a cruel calling card. It would only serve to scare them and insert doubt into a situation already filled with uncertainty.
How did he know I was back in town? After all these years why did he still hate me so? It didn't make sense, but I wasn't going to scare the hell out of my kids by making it into a bigger deal than it needed to be.
"No, I'm not. Hand me the phone, and I'll call the police. Nobody, but nobody says anything about the note."
* * *
Within the week, I had a new pane of glass put in the living room window. Although Marcus wanted to say more he wisely kept his mouth shut.
The housing authority acted as he had expected: Aurora had thirty days to fix the place, or it would go to the courts. Members of the literacy center staff and others gathered together clothes, food, and cash donations for the family. We wanted to use the cash to repair the plumbing, but felt doing so would get Aurora development off the hook. So instead we bought food.
As word of the renovation spread, other Aurora tenants began to show up at the literacy center and the newspaper, until Marcus and I were fairly overrun with stories from other south side residents that paralleled Elizabeth's.
"I can't believe this, Marcus," I said, tossing another stack of letters across my desk at him. "These people have been so brutally treated. They're completely cut off from the rest of the world!"
"What I want to know is why none of them went to the prosecutors or the housing authority? It's a fairly routine complaint to file. Why hasn't anyone acted before now?" Marcus thumbed through the stack of letters. "I can't get Rathke to comment on who’s behind Land Management Limited. And, from what I can gather without a subpoena, it's a pretty involved tangle of sham corporations from out of state."
"Yes. Who wants to be recognized as a slumlord anyway? We can't fix up every one of these houses through donations, Marcus."
"I know."
Still, as that summer began to wind down, we tried. There were clothing drives and canned-goods collections from church groups who had read Marcus's story. But after a while, even they fizzled out after no single owner could be found who would claim to own that tangle of buildings.
And, as the August heat continued to swelter, we waited for repairs to be made. Who ever was behind Aurora Development didn’t care that this woman and other South Side residents just like her were living in squalor. That disgusted me most of all.
* * *
It was late August, just about a week before school started. I was surprised, when my secretary, Barbara, showed Mother into my office. Clutching her purse tightly under her arm, Mother looked nervously at her surroundings.
The center wasn't the Trump Tower; it had been reincarnated at various times as an elementary school, a settlement house, a Holiness church, and a mattress warehouse. The scars of its many lives showed throughout the interior, and only the surrounding neighborhood poverty made a fresh coat of exterior latex look like urban renewal. I could only hope that I would be here long enough to do some measurable good; I had made such a small start so far.
"Surprise, surprise! What brings you here?" I stepped from behind my battered, metal desk to hug her.
"Be careful, dear. I just had my hair done. Is the Mercedes safe outside?"
"Mother, just because people here are poor doesn't automatically make them thieves, too. Have a seat." I gestured toward a padded, metal chair in front of my desk.
Mother wrinkled her nose in disdain. "I don't think so. How can you stand—"
"Don't start."
"Oh, all right. I only stopped by to take you to lunch. Can you join me? I’ve got a little surprise for you."
"Sure. I guess so.” Surprises from my mother usually didn’t involve good things, at least to my way of thinking, but she’d come down here to see me. How could I say no? Calling out my plans to Barbara, I grabbed my purse and followed Mother out the door.
"There is something very important we need to talk about, Kay," Mother began, as she put the Mercedes in gear and pulled away from the curb.
"Oh?" I held my breath and pretended to arrange the shoulders of my suit jacket.
She knows about Marcus and me.
"I have been asked by more than one person—" She steered the big car into traffic.
Here it comes.
"And not just Lovey, mind you."
Shit.
"—Whether or not you are going to put Andrew into Walshingham Academy this fall. I have it on very good authority that they have only a few spots left in their second grade program, and it would give Andrew the very best start on his education."
Air rushed from my lungs, and I began to laugh.
"Kay, I'm serious! You can't possibly consider placing my grandson in Jubilant Falls public schools!"
"For God sake, the schools here aren't that bad. You didn't have any problem sending me."
"That was before busing and drugs."
"Drugs came in with a court order as well?" I teased, giddy Marcus and I had not been a topic of country club conversation.
"Kay, be serious. The public schools still provided an education back then. And, besides, Jubilant didn't have any private schools at that time."
"Almost. We just had all the upper-class white kids at my school and all the lower orders as you like to call them going to school down here on the South Side." I shook my head. "No wonder the courts brought in busing."
Mother harrumphed and pulled the Mercedes into Hawk's parking garage. "The Colonial Cafe is all right, I trust? Or is that too far above your egalitarian tastes?"
"It's fine, Mother."
Inside the restaurant, she became oddly silent until the waitress took our order.
"I'll have the diet plate and a cup of coffee, please." Mother slapped her menu closed and glared at me.
"Burger and fries, please." I handed the menu to our waitress. "Mother, what is with you?"
"I think you are doing your children a grave disservice."
"I can't afford private school. Not with Paul's expenses in Korea right now." I remembered my first lunch here with Marcus and felt guilty just saying Paul's name. It had been over a month since I had even spoken to my husband. He had written the kids a few times, and they had answered his letters, but I had never bothered to put pen to paper.