To Marlene’s delight and pride, Lucy took this all in without a murmur and, taking Miranda by the hand, proposed playing Barbies in her bossiest tone. Miranda was quick to acquiesce, and the two of them ran off. Marlene got Carrie settled on the couch and put some water on for tea.
“I’m sorry,” said Carrie after a while. “You’ve really been great. I don’t know why I said all that horrible crap to you.” She laughed humorlessly. “I must be going crazy.”
“No, you’re not. It’s normal; forget it! Now, are you ready to listen to my plan? Good. Okay, what we need to have happening now in his twisted little mind is that I become the big barrier to happiness with Carrie. It’s started already, but we want to push it.”
“We do?”
“Yeah, because it takes the pressure off of you. And off the other barrier to happiness.”
“What do you mean, other-”
“Miranda. I don’t think she fits into the fantasy. He was stalking her too, the other day at the school.”
“Oh, Jesus…!” Carrie said in a strangled voice and began to cry again. Marlene ignored this and continued, “What I think is, he’s going to start stalking me. He’s going to try to hurt me in some way, get me to lay off, like he probably did to that boyfriend of yours. But, basically, he won’t be able to.”
“Why not?” asked Lanin, curiosity penetrating through the misery.
“Because I’ll be stalking him,” said Marlene, with rather more confidence than she was feeling.
“I have a thing I have to do tonight” was how Marlene broached her plan to Karp that evening as they put away the dinner dishes together.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m meeting Harry down the street. To talk. You know this guy I told you about? He’s been harassing Carrie Lanin?”
“Yeah, what about him? I thought you had a protect order on him.”
“We did, but he violated it and did a lot of other stuff. He went to arraignment today. Copped to misdemeanors and walked.”
Karp shrugged. “What else is new? How did Carrie take it?”
“Not well. That’s, um, I mean, Harry decided he wanted to check the guy out some more. That’s what we’re going to talk about.”
Karp carefully put down the dish he was drying and gave Marlene a look.
“What?” she complained to the look. “What? Harry’s going to fuck a little with this guy’s head. And I’m going along for the ride. Christ, Butch, the way you’re looking you’d think I never went riding out with a cop before.”
“You were a D.A. It was your job. Now what is it? Your hobby?”
Marlene’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Excuse me, was that a put-down? Was that delivered in a how-silly-you-little-woman-you manner?”
“Oh, come on, Marlene, don’t start-” began Karp, regretting the fatal words.
“Because if it was, if that’s going to be your attitude, then I will no longer inform you about what I’m doing. Is that what you want?”
“No, of course not,” said Karp automatically, “but …”
“But what?”
“It’s just … I’m sorry, I worry about you. It’s natural, isn’t it? It’s in the genes or something. Men worry about their wives when they’re pregnant.”
“Ah, the Pleistocene argument, very good,” snarled Marlene, and then, seeing his expression, she softened and touched his arm. “Okay, you’re worried, but I can take care of myself, as you very well know, and I’ll be with a heavily armed and extremely competent cop. Jeez, Butch, old ladies from the League of Women Voters get to ride with cops nowadays. It’s no big thing.”
Karp nodded, resignedly, and forced his face into a stiff mask that might have been taken as agreeable by anyone other than his wife. “Sure,” he said, and afterward, not being able to help himself, he asked, “Why is Harry doing this? I thought the case was closed. I mean, there’s no investigation …”
“That’s right,” said Marlene cheerfully. “Technically, we’re illegally harassing a citizen. You going to turn us in?”
Karp rolled his eyes and put his hands over his ears and walked out of the kitchen.
Marlene went to the bedroom and pulled a seaman’s sweater over her T-shirt and tied black high-top Converses on her feet. She caught her hair up in a rubber band and pulled a dark blue wool watch cap over it. A short black leather coat completed the outfit.
She went back to the kitchen, searched briefly, and took a bottle out of the grocery cabinet and stuck it in her coat pocket. She checked on Lucy, who was sleeping heavily in her typical running-at-full-tilt position. Marlene pulled the kicked-off pink quilt over the child, kissed her forehead, and went out.
She stuck her head through the living room door. “See you later, Butch,” she said.
Karp looked up from the papers he had spread on his lap and the couch around him, his face lit oddly by the muted television. He took in Marlene’s costume and shook his head. “You forgot the cape,” he said.
She stuck her tongue out at him and left. As soon as she was on the stairs she felt the familiar sense of release, the tingling in her limbs, the expansion of her lungs, that she had felt when, as a proper Catholic schoolgirl in Queens she had climbed out her bedroom window at night to meet bad boys.
Of course, she was not meeting a boy now, or a lover of any age. It would never have occurred to Marlene to violate her marriage vows-well, occurred, yes, but not actually to follow through. And in the old days, what she had been after down the family drainpipe was not precisely sex, although that was fascinating, but risk. And not merely risk, because she had never been one for simple daredevilry. She had no interest in say, skydiving, or motorcycle racing. No, it had to be prohibited risk, risk in the teeth of decent expectations.
It had started, really, at age twelve, she reflected on the stairway, when an aunt had escorted her and a group of cousins to the famous off-Broadway production of Threepenny Opera. By the end of the show, St. Teresa of Avila had been eclipsed by Pirate Jenny as Marlene’s ideal of womanhood. She had purchased the cast recording, and then the German version, and for the next few months she made everyone around her sick of Brecht and Weill. She found herself now humming Jenny’s song about the pirate ship and then, as she reached the last landing, singing the chorus in a loud voice with a fairly accurate Lotte Lenya accent.
She laughed to herself, thinking that it had worked out more literally than she might have liked. She could wear a pirate’s patch for real now, and had the letter bomb that destroyed her eye and maimed her hand been a little more powerful, she might have been sporting an actual hook.
She let the big steel door slam behind her and walked out onto the damp and chilly street. There she paused, sucking in the night through flared nostrils. Marlene had long since given up the hope of leading a life that made conventional sense, settling instead for one with two irreconcilable but complementary modes: the Good Mom Desperado, not, she thought, a character much to be seen in opera. Or life. A woman must have everything-that was also a line from a song, she thought, as it flashed through her head. Joni Mitchell. I’m trying to, she thought.
Marlene made her way up Grand to Paglia’s restaurant. When she had first moved to this neighborhood, the place had on most nights been full of local Italians and cops from the old police headquarters down the street. Now it had become SoHo-ized, like most of the places in the area. There was a maitre d’ and a line of elegant couples waiting for seats. Marlene pushed past these to the bar, where she found Harry Bello waiting, staring blankly at a club soda.
Marlene sat on a stool beside him and ordered the same, wishing, not for the first time, that fetuses enjoyed booze. When it came, she finished it in a few gulps and said, “You up for this?”
Harry ignored the question. “He’s out.”
“Driving?”
“Eating. A Spanish joint on C.”
“You know where his car’s at?”
Harry nodded.