She remembered a year ago, going to see a film purportedly about a group of young friends not much different from herself. Recent grads of a good school, making their way in the world, anchored by a perfect-seeming couple, a pair of college sweethearts. But the man was cheating on the woman. “What about your extracurricular love life,” she snapped at him, at last, each syllable as sharp and hard as a little karate chop. A year ago, Rachel had found the whole thing hilarious. There were no such people. Now she was living it. She may have said those very words to Marc: What about your extracurricular love life?
Really, one could argue that watching soap operas was downright redundant at this point. But how could she live with a cheater and a liar?
Her parents-that had been different. Her mother never confronted her father, not to Rachel’s knowledge. But then, her mother was trapped. Three kids. No work experience, no college degree. She, at least, could have expected alimony. No prenups in her mother’s day; wives still got alimony. They didn’t have to negotiate for what they deserved-
The doorbell roused her from the couch, from the land of Luke and Laura. She couldn’t imagine who would be coming by. Almost everyone she knew was at the ocean, even Linda, with her sweet new baby boy, Noah. Rachel wasn’t ready to be a mom, not yet, not given her circumstances. But holding Noah, seeing Linda’s love for him-she hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long.
“Hello,” said Julie Saxony. “Is your mother at home?”
She was perfectly dressed. At a time when hair was big and skirts voluminous, Julie wore a throwback of an outfit, a pink linen shift with a matching bolero-style jacket over it. The dress looked like one that was stowed in Rachel’s memory. My mother had a dress like that. Her going-away dress, the night of her wedding, purchased for the trip to Bermuda. There was a photograph of her in it, somewhere in this very house. And, possibly, in her father’s office, although her father had never allowed his wife or children into that part of his life.
The only false note was the overlarge purse, which looked cheap and plastic, a very bad imitation of an old-style cosmetic bag.
“She’s away,” Rachel said, aware of her baggy shorts and stained T-shirt. But at least her T-shirt said BROWN on it.
“Oh. Will she be back soon?”
“She won’t be back at all. And if you’re here to make good on what I asked last week, it’s too late. I took care of it. We don’t need your money. Our money, I guess I should say.”
Julie pushed past her, as if she didn’t take Rachel at her word. She took in the hallway, the living room beyond it. Out of date, but still pretty and comfortable. Bambi had longed for more modern furnishings, but Felix had argued that they wouldn’t work. He believed in comfort, anyway, found the seventies-style furniture too low-slung. The living room looked like a lounge in a country club, but an unstuffy one, a place to sit and smoke, although no one had smoked in this house for ten years.
“I always thought it would be… nicer,” Julie said. “I’m sorry,” she added, as if embarrassed by her own rudeness. “It’s just that I thought a lot. About where you lived. But I never got to see the inside.”
“That’s because there was no reason for you to.”
“Are you sure your mother won’t be back today? It’s very urgent that I speak to her.”
“No, she won’t be back today. And I can’t imagine you have anything urgent to discuss with her.”
Julie looked disappointed, almost the way a child would. She shifted on her feet, looked around. “I can’t stay. But I want her to know-Felix sent for me. For me.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I’d tell you more-the arrangements made, where I’m going-but, of course, I’ve been asked not to. He sent for me. He loves me.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Rachel grasped for something to say, something hurtful and scarring. “You’re just a whore with no life. A thief, too. When my father finds that out, he won’t want anything to do with you.”
“You said he already knew. So I guess you’re the liar, after all.”
Julie lifted her chin, the proper lady, and began to walk out, making a grand gesture. A line from a movie, an old one, popped into Rachel’s head: You’re much too short for that gesture. But it wasn’t even true. Julie was tall and slim, five-eight or so, taller than their father. Rachel was the shorter of the two, a twenty-four-year-old woman who had just agreed to divorce a man she still loved because that was the only way to get the money she needed to save her mother. And for what? What had she done? Preserved this stupid life, this frozen life, like something out of a fairy tale, where everyone was suspended, waiting, waiting, waiting for the man who never came, never called, never did anything to prove he truly cared for them.
Rachel had been going into high school the year that Felix disappeared. As a cost-saving measure, her mother had petitioned to enter her in Western High School’s A-course that fall by using her parents’ city address, assuring Rachel it would be only for one semester, that the financial situation would work out and it wasn’t fair to pull out Linda, who was a senior. Rachel’s freshman year at Western had actually lasted less than a week. She had been jumped at the bus stop by another girl for reasons that she could never discern. Jumped from behind in a hair-pulling, kicking, scratching melee that had lasted all of a minute but that felt like an eternity. It was the only physical encounter of her life. Until now.
She sprang at Julie Saxony’s back as her onetime combatant had pounced on her, swinging wildly at the woman’s head, arms flailing, intent on bringing her to the ground. Rachel’s only thought was to make sure the other woman didn’t look so damn perfect when she got off the plane wherever she was going. To run her hose, to scuff her shoes.
She hadn’t planned to actually bloody her, but when that happened-well, it happened.
March 27, 2012
9:00 A.M.
Sandy actually felt bad locking Bambi Brewer up overnight. But what else could he do? She was lying her head off, and if he let her go home, she was going to brief whoever she was protecting. The only choice was to isolate her, lock her up too late to get before a judge-and get to the one daughter as quickly as possible.
And, yeah, he felt like a bum, going to see a woman whose daughter had surgery the day before. But it wasn’t life-threatening, according to her mom. The kid had already been discharged.
Rachel Brewer lived maybe a mile, as the crow flies, from where Bambi Brewer had grown up, but a crow would cover a lot of distance in that mile between the once-grand homes of Forest Park and these modest brick rowhouses on Purnell Drive. Sandy found it interesting that she was the kind of person who didn’t mind being in the minority. Hard to know, but he would guess that this stretch of houses was mostly African American. Middle-class, solid citizens, but it wasn’t a situation that most white people he knew sought out. Not that Sandy could ever decide if he was white. Sure, he looked white and Cubanos were technically Caucasian, but did that make him white? Coming up, before there were so many Latinos in Baltimore, the world had basically been black-white-Asian, and Sandy was white. But now, although he had not changed, he would be called “Latino,” a word that meant nothing to him.
It was the July fourth thing that had done it. Not impossible. But it made no sense. Where had Julie Saxony been for twenty-four hours in that case? Not driving, based on her car’s odometer. Not at home, not checked into any motel or hotel uncovered by detectives, or ferreted out by the reward money dangled by the Havre de Grace Merchants Association. So Bambi was lying about that. But why? And also lying about sending the daughter to do her bidding, based on what Susie recalled of the conversation. The daughter had said explicitly that her mother didn’t know she was there. Okay, Susie’s memory could be wrong on that point, or the daughter could have been lying to gain some perceived advantage. But the mother was definitely lying, and the daughter was the one person who could contradict her.