“We’ll go home now,” she said.
Candace’s eyes were red and swollen. A bruise had begun to
darken on her cheekbone. She seemed disconnected. Jesse looked at Molly. Molly shook her head.
“Candace,” Jesse said.
The girl looked at him vaguely. Her pupils were large. She had no focus.
“Is there anything you want to say to me?”
Jesse
said.
She looked at her mother.
“We are through here, Candace,” Mrs.
Pennington
said.
The girl looked back at Jesse. Their eyes met and held for a moment. Jesse thought he saw for just a moment a stir of personhood in there. Jesse nodded slightly. The girl didn’t say anything. Then
her mother took her arm and they walked out of the station.
8
“I’m here to cook you
supper,” Jenn said when she
arrived at Jesse’s condo with a large shopping bag.
“Cook?” Jesse said.
“I can cook,” Jenn said.
“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.
“I’ve been taking a course,”
Jenn said and set the shopping bag
down on the counter in Jesse’s kitchen. “Perhaps you could make us
a cocktail?”
“I could,” Jesse said.
Jenn took a small green apron out of the shopping bag and tied it on.
“Serious,” Jesse said.
“Dress for success,” Jenn said and smiled at him.
Jesse made them martinis. Jenn put some grilled shrimp and mango
chutney on a glass plate. They took the drinks and the hors d’oeuvres to the living room and sat on Jesse’s sofa and looked out
the slider over Jesse’s balcony to the harbor beyond.
“It’s pretty here, Jesse.”
“Yes.”
“But it’s so … stark.”
“Stark?”
“You know, the walls are white. The tabletops are bare. There’s
no pictures.”
“There’s Ozzie,” Jesse said.
Jenn looked at the big framed color photograph of Ozzie Smith, in midair, stretched parallel to the ground, catching a baseball.
“You’ve had that since I’ve
known you.”
“Best shortstop I ever saw,” Jesse said.
“You might have been that good, if you hadn’t gotten
hurt.”
Jesse smiled and shook his head.
“I might have made the show,” Jesse said.
“But I wouldn’t have
been Ozzie.”
“Anyway,” Jenn said. “One
picture of a baseball player is not
interior decor.”
“Picture of you in my bedroom,” Jesse said. “On the
table.”
“What do you do with it if you have a sleepover?”
“It stays,” Jesse said.
“Sleepovers have to know about
you.”
“Is that in your best interest?” Jenn said. “Wouldn’t it
discourage sleeping over.”
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
“But not entirely,” Jenn said.
“No,” Jesse said. “Not
entirely.”
They were silent, thinking about it. Jesse got up and made another shaker of martinis.
“What is it they have to know about me?”
Jenn said when he
brought the shaker back.
“That I love you, and, probably, am not going to love
them.”
“Good,” Jenn said.
“Good for who?” Jesse said.
“For me at least,” Jenn said. “I
want you in my
life.”
“Are you sure divorcing me is the best way to show that?”
“I can’t imagine a life without you in it.”
“Old habits die hard,” Jesse said.
“It’s more than a habit, Jesse.
There’s some sort of connection
between us that won’t break.”
“Maybe its because I don’t let it
break,” Jesse
said.
“You don’t,” Jenn said.
“But then here I am.”
“Here you are.”
“I could have been a weather girl in Los Angeles, or Pittsburgh
or San Antonio.”
“But here you are,” Jesse said.
“You’re not the only one hanging
on,” Jenn said.
“What the hell is wrong with us?” Jesse said.
Jenn put her glass out. Jesse freshened her drink.
“Probably a lot more than we know,” Jenn said. “But one thing I
do know: we take it seriously.”
“What?”
“Love, marriage, relationship, each other.”
“Which is why we got divorced and started fucking other people,”
Jesse said. “Or vice versa.”
“I deserve the vice versa,” Jenn said.
“But I don’t keep
deserving it every time we talk.”
“I know,” Jesse said.
“I’m sorry. But if we take it so
seriously, why the hell are we in this mess.”
“Because we wouldn’t let it
slide,” Jenn said. “Because you
wouldn’t accept adultery. Because I wouldn’t accept suffocation.”
“I loved you very intensely,” Jesse said.
There was half a drink left in the shaker. Jesse added it to his
glass.
“You loved your fantasy of me very
intensely,” Jenn said, “and
kept trying to squeeze the real me into that fantasy.”
Jesse stared at the crystalline liquid in his glass. Jenn was still. Below them the harbor master’s launch pulled away from the
town pier and began to weave through the stand of masts going somewhere, and knowing where.
“That you talking or the shrink?” Jesse said.
“It’s a conclusion we reached
together,” Jenn
said.
Jesse hated all the circumlocutions of therapy. He sipped the lucid martini.
“Why do you think I’m so
wonderful?” Jenn said.
“Because I love you.”
Jenn was quiet. She smiled slightly as if she knew something Jesse didn’t know. It annoyed him.
“What the fuck is wrong with that?” he said.
“Think about it,” Jenn said.
“Think about shit,” Jesse said.
“Just because you’re getting
shrunk doesn’t mean you have to shrink me.”
“You think I’m wonderful because you love me?”
“Yes.”
They were both quiet. Jesse stared at her defiantly. Jenn looking faintly quizzical.
After a time, Jenn said, “Not the other way around?”
Jesse nodded slowly as if to himself, then got up and mixed a new martini.
9
Jesse’s hangover was relentless on Monday morning.
He sat behind
his desk sipping bottled water and trying to concentrate on Peter Perkins.
“We spent two days going over that guy’s apartment,” Perkins
said. “We didn’t even find anything
embarrassing.”
“And him a stockbroker,” Jesse said.
“So what do you
know?”
Perkins looked down at his notebook.
“Kenneth Eisley, age thirty-seven, divorced, no children. Works
for Hollingsworth and Whitney in Boston. Parents live in Amherst.
They’ve been notified.”
“You do that?”
“Molly,” Peter Perkins said.
“God bless her,” Jesse said.
“Coroner’s through with him,”
Perkins said. “Parents are coming
tomorrow to claim the body. You want to talk to them?”
“You do it,” Jesse said.
“You pulling rank on me?” Perkins said.
“You bet,” Jesse said. “How
about the ex-wife?”
“She lives in Paradise,” Perkins said.
“On Plum Tree Road.
Probably kept the house when they split.”
“Seen her yet?”
“No. Hasn’t returned our calls.”
“I’ll go over,” Jesse said.
“Swell,” Perkins said. “I get to
question the grieving parents,
you talk to the ex-wife, who is probably delighted.”
“Not if she was getting alimony,” Jesse said.
“That’s cynical,” Peter Perkins
said.
“It is,” Jesse said.
“What’s the ME say?”