“What’s the name of it?”
“See for yourself.” She turned the manila envelope so he could read the letters, printed on the front: B. J. PHOTOGRAPHS. CERTIFICATES, ET CETERA. “Let’s just call it B. J., for short.”
“And the rules?”
“We make them up as we go along... Did Smedler tell you about B. J.?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
“Charity mentioned him.”
“I have to watch you, you really are evasive. What did she say?”
“That he was your first husband, B. J. Lockwood, and that he was long gone.”
“Long gone. Yes, he’s long gone,” she repeated, almost as if she were tasting the words to identify their flavor. Spinach soufflé? Peanut butter sandwiches? Sour grapes? It was impossible for an observer to judge from her expression. “Eight years, to be precise. We’d been married five years and things were going along fine. Maybe not storybook peachy keen — we weren’t kids, he’d been married before and I’d been around here and there — but certainly a whole lot better than average. At least, I thought so.”
“What changed your mind?”
“He did. He took off with one of the servants, a Mexican girl no more than fifteen years old. She was pregnant. B. J. always wanted a child and I refused for a number of reasons. His family had a history of diabetes and frankly my side of it wasn’t too hot either. Besides, you don’t start having kids when you’re in your late thirties, not unless your maternal instincts are a hell of a lot stronger than mine.”
“What was the girl’s name?”
“Tula Lopez. Whether B. J. was the father of her child or not, she persuaded him he was and he did the honorable thing. B. J. always did honorable things, impulsive, stupid, absurd, but honorable. So off the two of them rode into the sunset. It was what they rode in that burns me up — the brand-new motor home I’d just bought for us to go on a vacation to British Columbia. I was crazy about that thing. Dreamboat, I called it. On the first night it was delivered here to the house B. J. and I actually slept in it, and the next morning I made our breakfast in the little kitchen, orange juice and Grapenuts. A week later it was goodbye Dreamboat, B. J., Tula and the rest of the box of Grapenuts.”
“What do you want me to do, get back the rest of the Grapenuts?”
She didn’t smile. She merely looked pensive as if she was seriously considering the proposition. “It’s hard for me to make you understand the position I’m in. How can you? — You’re young, you have choices ahead of you, alternatives. Nothing’s final. You get sick, you get well again. You lose a job or a girl, okay, you find another job, another girl. Right?”
“In a general way, yes.”
“Well, I’m fifty. That’s not very old, of course, but it cuts down on your alternatives, narrows your choices. There are more goodbyes and not so many hellos. Too many of the goodbyes are final. And the hellos — well, they’ve become more and more casual... I’ve lost one husband and I’m about to lose another. I’m depressed, scared, sitting in that room with Marco, listening to his breathing and waiting for it to stop. When it does stop, I’ll be alone. Alone, period. I have no relatives and no friends I haven’t bought.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Good. It will help motivate you.”
“To do what?”
She ran her fingers across the letters on the manila envelope as if it had turned into a Ouija board and she were receiving a message. “I’d like to see B. J. again. I think — I have this strong feeling he’d like to see me, too.”
“And my job is to go looking for him?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
“No.”
“Or whether he’d want to contact you if he is alive.”
“No.”
“He and the girl, Tula, may in fact be living happily ever after with half a dozen kids.”
“No.” She moved her head back and forth, slowly, as if her neck had suddenly become stiff. “They only had one, a boy. He was born crippled.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“B. J. wrote me a letter five years ago.”
“Do you still have it?”
“It’s in here.”
She opened the envelope and shook out the contents on the table, snapshots, photographs, newspaper clippings, notarized documents, a bunch of letters tied together, a single one by itself.
The largest photograph was that of a bride and groom: Gilly, in a white lace gown and veil, carrying a tiny bouquet of lilies of the valley. Her expression was mischievous and girlish, as if the photographer had caught her between giggles. B. J., in morning coat and striped trousers, seemed to be sharing the joke and trying hard to keep from laughing. He had a small round face, very red, as though the strain of suppressing his laughter had sent the blood rushing to his head and the tight collar had trapped it there. He looked like a kind man who wished other people well and expected nothing but kindness from them in return. Aragon wondered how often he’d been surprised.
Gilly stared at the photograph for a long time. “We were very happy.”
“I can see you were.”
“Naturally he won’t look like that anymore. The picture was taken thirteen years ago when he was forty-one. Maybe we’ve both changed so much we wouldn’t even recognize each other.”
“You haven’t changed much — some loss of weight, hair not so brown, laugh lines a little deeper.”
“Those aren’t laugh lines, Aragon, they’re cry lines. And they’re deeper, all right. They’re etched all the way through to the back of my head... Well, anyway, I wanted to show you a picture of him as he was in his prime. I thought he was simply beautiful. I see now, of course, that he wasn’t. In the cold light of an eight-year separation he may even look a little silly, don’t you think?”
“No.”
“No, neither do I, really.” The pitch of her voice altered like an instrument suddenly gone flat. “I was crazy about him. I’m not the kind of woman who attracts men without any effort. I’m not pretty enough or tactful enough or whatever enough. I had to fight like hell to land B. J. He was married when I met him. So was Marco. I often wonder if it isn’t some kind of retribution that I should lose them both.”
“I don’t believe in retribution.”
“You haven’t met Violet Smith.” She put the wedding portrait back in the manila envelope, her hands trembling slightly. “You’ll need some pictures of him with you when you go.”
“Exactly where and when am I going?”
“When is as soon as you can get ready and we can agree on terms. Where I’m not sure... There are several good snapshots of B. J. Here’s the last one. I took it myself. And I know it’s the last because by the time the negative was developed and returned to me, B. J. was gone.”
The snapshot showed B. J. behind the wheel of an elaborate new motor home. The fancy gold script across the door identified it as Dreamboat.
B. J. needed no identification. He hadn’t changed much in the five years since the wedding portrait was taken. His face was still plump and ruddy, and he wore a placid smile as if nothing whatever was bothering him, least of all the fact that he was about to run away with a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl. Obviously B. J. was expecting pleasant things ahead. He may have been imagining himself in the new role of father, helping his son learn to walk, taking him to parks and zoos, teaching him to play ball, swim, sail a boat, telling him about the birds and the bees and how a little sister would be arriving, or a little brother... They didn’t live happily ever after with half a dozen kids. They only had one, a boy. He was born crippled.