Her voice faltered, and she grew quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I had never asked the kinds of concrete questions Anna was asking now. They’d scarcely even occurred to me. The details weren’t what mattered to me. It was inconceivable that anyone could do such a thing to herself, that it was even possible at all. I pointed this out to Anna, realizing my voice sounded a bit tense, maybe even disapproving, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“She doesn’t seem normal.”
“What do you mean?”
Then she picked up the other note in my voice. She put her hand on my chest and looked me in the eyes, very seriously.
“She’s capable of anything, your wife.”
“Oh, this all happened a long time ago. She was practically a kid still.”
“She was twenty-one,” Anna said. “That’s an adult in my book.”
I was forced to break the eye contact. The intimacy was a little too intense. I wanted to believe that what my wife did back then didn’t have anything to do with who she was now. I wanted to believe that it could be categorized as youthful folly. I wanted to believe that but didn’t succeed. That was the reason we found ourselves here in the first place, Anna and I.
We lay in silence for a bit. Anna had snuggled up to me again, and her skin stuck to mine.
“Should I be worried?” she suddenly asked.
I turned my head and furrowed my brow at her.
“Worried about what?”
“That she’ll come look me up?”
“She doesn’t know who you are.”
Anna rolled over onto her back, taking the hand that had been on my chest with her. That was the wrong answer, apparently. I rolled onto my side, propping myself up on my elbow on the mattress and resting my head in the palm of my hand. There was no mistaking the displeasure in her face.
“She’s not out to hurt you.”
Anna chewed on her lower lip.
“Or me,” I added.
Then she turned to face me again. We looked at each other for a long time. Then she scooted closer and put her arm around me.
“Hold me tight,” she whispered.
When I did as she asked, I could feel how she was trembling.
I’m having a hard time falling asleep. There’s something weird in the air tonight. As has become the norm for her, my wife is lying still in a fetal position with her back to me. It’s impossible to decide whether she’s awake.
It can’t go on like this, I think to myself. We have to break this deadlock, get out of this situation. I don’t know what I want, can’t make any guarantees, but we can’t go on like this. We need to get away somewhere, need a neutral environment where we can talk through everything together, openly and without any preconceived ideas. We can’t do that here at home.
I close my eyes and feel sleep finally coming. It will work out runs through my mind. We will resolve this. But who is “we”? Is it my wife and me or Anna and me? Before I have a chance to contemplate that any further, I’m asleep.
33
Going downtown, waiting outside Philip Storm’s office and then asking for him in the lobby, walking into the restaurant where he was sitting with the redhead, and walking past their table. Why did I do all that? I wonder. Hardly for the reason I convinced myself of on the way there. I didn’t have to do that, didn’t do it for Philip Storm’s sake. I did it for my own sake.
My pulse has finally settled, but it took quite a while. I’m back home in the kitchen, sitting on my usual chair with my computer open on the table in front of me. My eyes stray between the screen and the yard outside. I still feel shaky and off-kilter. It didn’t pan out. I didn’t step forward and communicate my misgivings to Philip Storm. I didn’t warn him not to go off alone with his wife. And maybe that wasn’t my intention, either. Maybe deep down inside I wanted something else. Maybe I just wanted to see him and the redhead together one more time, confirm that my intuition was correct. The fragments of their conversation that I overheard are still ringing in my ears.
…each drive separately… you wait for me… and meet there so she won’t…
…so close now… really looking forward to it. The cabin… so wonderful.
I look at the text I’ve been working on, on and off for the last week. It’s a story about a seemingly happy couple, the kind of couple that from the outside seems to have it all. I write about their love, which she has taken for granted and which he betrays by having sex with another woman. I write about the darkness, which dwells somewhere within her and slowly, increasingly takes over. But is this only my text, letters and sentences, that exist here in my computer, or is there something more? Does it affect other people in any way, determine their actions and fates? No, that’s impossible. That’s a bizarre thought. But then what’s the explanation for the increasingly clear connection between what I’m writing and the family living across from me?
I look up at the Storms’ kitchen. The lights are off. That incident with the roses was the starting shot. Veronica’s scissors rampage, the way she’d hacked and slashed that beautiful bouquet apart over there, got me to start writing again. Suddenly she was just holding the scissors in her hand. A moment later, the flowers had been abused and shredded and strewn across the floor.
Since that night, I’ve kept working on my text—which was fragmentary to begin with but in the last few days has become more focused—with the ambition of connecting the pieces into one integral, contiguous story, darker than any of my previous manuscripts. After the woman in the story finds out about her husband’s infidelity at an intimate dinner for two, at first she becomes paralyzed, but then she decides to take revenge.
Suddenly she knew, with a conviction that cut through everything else, that whatever happened from now on, under no circumstances could she allow him to keep on living as if nothing had happened. She couldn’t allow him to live at all.
Despite the intense emotional storms inside her, the woman decides not to behave irrationally or impulsively. She starts working out to strengthen her body and researches how to get away with murder. She’s planning something—planning not to leave anything to chance, planning not to get caught.
Make it look like an accident.
Veronica’s tears during her dinner with Philip, the drawn curtains upstairs, Leo’s words about his mother moving into the darkness again, her secret high-impact workouts at the gym, and the book Getting Away with Murder. Everything has its equivalent in my text. The frightening parallels that at first I brushed aside as coincidences have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Something isn’t right, or more like: Something is too right.
Most unsettling is the slippage in the relationship between cause and effect. It was simple with the roses. I saw something, then I wrote. But after that, something happened. It’s like what I write has repercussions in what takes place in the Storm house. As if I know what’s going to happen before it actually happens. As if I… as if I am influencing the sequence of events. Influencing or controlling?
I visualize Philip and the redhead, see their faces close together. I blink and see her kick off her shoes, caress the inside of his thigh with her leg under the table. The images glide together and glide apart, reality blending with imagination. What did I see, again? Actually? I shove the computer away, turn the screen in a new direction, and rub my face. I can’t take it anymore, but what can’t I take? The thought of what my writing is about to do to the Storm family or my own increasing confusion?