Behind me I heard Elise say, ‘Oh, God.’
I went over to her and sat down. ‘Everything all right?’
‘You— That was so touching. Robert and I haven’t had a moment like that in years.’
‘Young love, I guess.’
‘You really care for her, Dev. You have to be manly and make a joke of it.’
‘All right, Mom. I like her quite a bit. Is that enough?’
She had that fragile smile. ‘It is for now.’ Then she put her head back. Her neck was a masterpiece. ‘I shouldn’t drink. I’ve got a headache already. But maybe I’ll sleep better tonight. I’ve started having dreams again about Gretchen Cain. I was up every two hours. I’m so sick of the sleeping pills I take — I’m always so groggy the next day — that I didn’t take them yesterday, and so last night it was good old Gretchen again. And I suppose it will be again tonight. You remember Gretchen, of course.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You should. Robert made you tell me about her.’
‘That’s a little overstated. I just said that Robert had confided in me that he’d done something stupid.’
She yawned and that brought her head down. The wan child in her looked at me through a rainy March window. ‘You did his dirty work. I’m naïve sometimes but rarely outright dumb, Dev. When you said he’d been “stupid,” I knew what you were really saying. That there’d been a woman. What else could it have been? And in this case it was Gretchen Cain. Her husband and I commiserated. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘We even talked about sleeping together to pay them back. There’s a term for that.’
‘Grudge fucking.’
‘Oh, right. We got very drunk one night and made out like ninth graders but then gave it up.’ Mischief in her smile. ‘He was a very good kisser, I might add. I shouldn’t say this but he was a much better kisser than Robert, and I would appreciate it if you’d never tell Robert that.’
I drew an imaginary zipper across my mouth.
‘But she still comes back to me, Gretchen does. I always catch them in bed. Our bed. I can even smell her somehow. She wore the most God-awful cologne. I thought she did, anyway. We had several dinners with them. That’s how it started. I plead with her to leave him alone but she just sits up in my bed covering herself with my sheets and smirking at me. Robert, at least, is nice enough to look embarrassed. But she’s very blunt. She speaks for him — for them. She says that Robert will be moving out — that in fact he’ll go with her tonight and he’ll send for some of his clothes in the morning. And by then I’m sobbing and pleading. And by the time I wake up I’m afraid they’ll put me back in the psych hospital again. I hate it there so much, Dev. I can’t tell you.’
No tears. Just talk. Just sorrow and fear.
The sound of my cell phone affected Elise physically. She frowned as if it were a person who’d interrupted us.
‘Excuse me, Elise.’ Then, ‘Hello.’
‘Do you know where my bedroom is?’ Maddy. Sounding sober now.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m out on the little porch. I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here now.’
‘All right.’
‘Anything serious?’ Elise said.
‘My office telling me to check out an internal poll they just sent me. Excuse me. I think I’ll go in the kitchen and have a cup of coffee while I read it. Bring you back anything?’
‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for listening to me. You’re not only less expensive than a shrink, you’re a lot better.’ She squeezed my hand.
Maddy’s bedroom was next to the guest room in which I’d spent some restless nights. I generally didn’t stay over unless there was trouble. It was such a comfortable and decorous room I wanted to stay in it once when I could enjoy it.
When I opened Maddy’s door I wished I’d worn my snowsuit with the snowmen and Santa Clauses decorating it. Given the winds tonight and that the door leading to the tiny porch was wide open, the room was cold enough to make snowballs out of gin.
‘You like it a little nippy, huh?’ I said, shivering for effect.
‘I thought it would help get me sober faster.’ She’d made no concession to the temperature. No extra sweater, no jacket, no hat. Then, ‘Hardy pioneer stock.’
‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said. ‘Brr.’
She hadn’t faced me yet. She stared out at the forest and the glowing half-moon above it. You could taste and feel and smell the snow that would soon be here. Her small hands were wrapped tight around the black iron porch railing. The only item on the porch was a rattan chair.
And it was kind of funny. As soon as she started talking I no longer noticed how plugged-up I was already feeling. I was too engrossed.
‘The afternoon before she was killed I rode my bike to the cabin. I had no idea anybody would be there. I recognized her right away. I asked her as politely as I could — which probably wasn’t all that politely, I’ll admit — how she’d gotten in and exactly what she was doing there. She said she was a friend of my dad’s. But the way she said it — very smirky. You know, implying they were a lot more than friends. And I got mad and I started yelling at her. All I could think of was how my mother would react if she knew that bitch was at our family’s cabin.
‘She started yelling right back at me. Told me to grow up. I told her to leave but she said she was there at my father’s invitation and didn’t care whether I liked it or not. I was so angry I decided the best thing to do was get out of there, find my father and confront him about this. So I left.
‘But I wasn’t able to find Dad until after dinner, and even then I had to wait until late because we were never alone. When we finally had our talk he told me everything and told me how sorry he was and assured me that there had been nothing between them. And then, when the news came about her being found dead, he was afraid the police would bring my name into it and I’d be implicated. He begged me not to tell anybody. But I think you deserve to know.’
So this was what Robert had been hiding from me.
She raised her head, looked up at the stingy moon and laughed abruptly. ‘I just kept thinking how intimidated I would be if I were in her position. But she wasn’t at all. She was just such a bitch...’
And then she went on to give me another example of Cabot’s nastiness, and in so doing reminded me of somebody I should have been thinking about all along.
Ben and Robert came charging in excited as two teenage boys on their first drunken spree. Robert grabbed the remote and shouted with grand and outright glee, ‘I hope he’s still on!’ Ben and Robert stood in front of the giant plasma screen as if they were worshipping a false god.
The first image on the screen was of a plutocrat who’d once accused our sitting president of secretly planning for another 9/11 just so his numbers would go up when he got his best chance to ‘look presidential.’
But the plutocrat’s words tonight surprised me. ‘Susan, Susan, all we know is that at worst all Senator Logan did was maybe have a brief fling. And even that hasn’t been established for sure. I say that as someone who despises everything Logan and his socialist cohorts stand for. But I think it’s time that we let the law do its work before we make any judgments about his guilt or innocence.’
It was Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July afternoon simultaneously, and this was Empire News channel, for God’s sake. The way Ben and Robert dove for the bar foretold just how hammered they planned to get tonight.
Jane pulled herself up into a sitting position and sleepily rubbed a small hand across her right eye. I went over and she said, ‘This is really embarrassing. God, did I snore?’