Crazy in Love (12 page)

“I’m so sorry,” I said, wanting to hold her hand.

“I know. It only happened two weeks ago. They caught the man right away, even before he was out of the parking garage. A guard heard the gunshot and then heard him running. His name was Warren Castile, but you’ve probably read that already. My lawyer says he has a long record of robbery and assault, and if anything will help my case, that will. I really want to get out of here.”

Although I didn’t feel capable of judging Caroline Orne, I thought the chances were good that she was just where she should be, for that moment: in a psychiatric ward. “Do you know why you did it?” I asked.

She smiled. “Everyone asks it that way: ‘Do you know why you did it?’ Instead of ‘Why did you do it?’ I wonder why.”

“Maybe in order to give you the chance to stand back from it. To give you an escape hatch.”

“Escape from what? My mother was murdered, and I hate her murderer so much, I shot him. Now he’s dead, and I guess I’m glad.” Her voice shook a little, and she clasped her hands tightly; otherwise she seemed calm. “Here’s what I did: I took my father’s gun out of the gun case. I didn’t know anything about loading it or shooting it, so I had to read the brochure. The night before, two police detectives came to our house to tell us the news. My father hadn’t gotten home from work yet, and I was doing lesson plans. They told me, and I had to tell my brothers and sister and later my father. It was the worst thing in the world. I thought about that guy all night, sitting in a nice warm jail, then I thought of my mother in the morgue. I thought, That’s where he should be. So the next day I took my father’s gun to the jail, and I shot him.”

“You wouldn’t have felt any satisfaction to see the court convict him of murder and sentence him to prison?”

“No. The best thing I ever did was pull the trigger. You know, I never expected to get past the guards. But the metal detector was broken. Can you believe that? They had a little handheld thing that they waved over all the visitors, but I snuck through in a crowd of patrolmen. I told them my name was Cathy Lake, and they let me see him.”

“An eye for an eye?”

She shook her head, and for the first time since I’d met her, Caroline Orne started to cry. “I don’t see it that way at all. An eye for an eye? I found out that he had killed another woman twelve years ago. I’ll bet her kids are happy about what I did.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, and then I walked away. On my way out I told the nurse that she should look in on Caroline, because when I left her she was sitting in her chair, gripping her ankles, head dropped down, rocking back and forth.

I HAD A HYPOTHESIS
I wanted to test: did everyone who lost someone in a terrible way, through treachery or violence—someone they loved, a member of their family—want revenge? I returned to my hotel and searched my meager two-day supply of newspapers for any reference to Warren Castile’s family. Two papers ran the same picture of him, his mug shot; it showed a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, staring blankly at the camera. It might have been a photo of his ghost. The accompanying article mentioned his wife, Dora, and their two children. The Chicago telephone directory listed one Warren Castile, and I dialed the number. A woman answered.

“Mrs. Castile?” I asked.

“Yes?” she answered suspiciously.

“Are you the widow of Warren Castile?”

“I’m his mother. She doesn’t live here. You’ve got the wrong number.”

“Could you please tell me her number? I don’t see any other listings for Warren Castile.”

“That’s because they don’t have a phone. Are you a reporter?”

“No,” I said, feeling vaguely like a liar because I wanted the same information a reporter would.

“Then give me your name and number, and I’ll have her call you. I’ll be seeing her around suppertime.”

“Thank you,” I said, gave her the information, and hung up.

I could have asked his mother about the desire for vengeance, but that question belonged to his wife. Why did every situation, no matter how far off the path of normal life, make me think of me and Nick? I thought of the revenge I would seek if someone hurt him. If someone tracked him down with her father’s gun, the way Caroline Orne had done, I could imagine wanting to kill that person. But of course Nick was no murderer; the two men were not comparable. But perhaps the feelings of their wives could be.

Many hours passed; I spent that sunny afternoon in the air-conditioned hotel room, afraid that if I went out I would miss a telephone call. I told myself the call I feared missing was from Mrs. Castile, but in fact I hoped to hear from Nick. Sitting at the blond wood desk, I wrote pages about Caroline Orne on my portable typewriter. My trip to Chicago, and the discoveries I made about Caroline Orne and Dora Castile, would comprise my second quarterly report. I actually looked forward to submitting it to the Avery Foundation. I especially wanted Helen to see it. Although it wasn’t due until September, I would send it as soon as possible.

At five o’clock, eleven o’clock Greenwich Mean Time, my telephone rang, and it was Nick. I sighed at the sound of his voice. Why? With the relief of knowing that he was alive? Knowing that at that instant he belonged to me? I lay on the bed, my head against two soft pillows, and closed my eyes.

“I miss you so much,” he said. “Last night was terrible. The meeting broke up earlier than we expected, and everyone went to Simpson’s for dinner.”

“Did you have roast beef?”

“Of course. I kept looking over at the table we had last time, but there was another couple sitting there. It made me jealous to look at them.”

“Did everyone go?”

“Just John, Jean, and I. Tonight, if we ever get out of the office, we’re having Italian food at some place John knows in Chelsea. I feel like ordering a sandwich from room service, to tell you the truth.”

“I miss you like crazy,” I said.

“But everything is fine? You’re enjoying yourself in Chicago?”

“I’m not sure ‘enjoying’ is the right word,” I said, and told him about my sad session with Caroline Orne. “She really seemed around the bend, Nick. I felt so sorry for her.”

“Maybe you should treat yourself to a really nice dinner and a movie tonight,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, thinking of how characteristic it was of Nick to say that, of how cheered he always was by small pleasures.

“Do you know when you’ll be in Black Hall?” he asked.

I had planned to stay in Chicago another night, to spend tonight listening to music under the stars at Ravinia, to see tomorrow’s game between the White Sox and Boston, then make a quick visit to the Art Institute and the Chagall mosaic, but talking to Nick across half the continent and an ocean made me want to go home.

“I wish I were there now, Nick,” I said. “With you.” I hesitated, then said what was on my mind. “I hate thinking of you in London with Jean.”

“Why did you have to say that, Georgie? God.” He sounded disgusted or discouraged. “Do you trust me or don’t you?”

“I do,” I said, but then there was a commotion in the background, someone calling his name, and he had to get back to work. We hung up. I was frowning at my reflection in the mirror when the phone rang again.

“Hello, this is Dora Castile,” came the tired voice, and I nearly told her I had to go, had to catch a plane. But instead I sat on the edge of the bed, facing my reflection in the mirror.

“This is Georgie Symonds,” I said, needing to link myself with Nick, if only by name. I explained my work for the Swift Observatory, and she listened without interrupting. “Will you talk to me?” I asked.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you want to tell me,” I said, thinking that her choice of topic would be interesting.

“Warren was bad news. Everyone knows that, everyone tells me that. My mother-in-law feeds my kids every night because Warren put no food on their plates. Ever. From day one. But there’s no saying what makes you love a man.”

“You loved Warren?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sad he’s dead?” I asked, knowing the question was abrupt and rude, but I was thinking about getting to the airport.

“Yes, very sad.”

“Even though he killed the mother of the woman who shot him?”

“Oh, you’ve been appointed Judge of the Land? I didn’t hear one word about a trial. I didn’t hear one word about that.”

“How do you feel about his assailant, Caroline Orne?”

“I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel like she’s a murderer. That’s because she is one. She confessed, but she didn’t even have to do that, because the jail has every second of her crime on videotape. Warren never got a chance to confess, and there’s no one except the dead lady’s friend to say he did it.”

“What about the gun he fired? I’ve read he had it in his pocket. I’ve read he shot Dr. Orne with no provocation whatsoever.”

“Maybe he found that gun in the garage. I don’t know about that.”

“Mrs. Castile,” I said, feeling nothing good for the woman on the other end of the line, “do you want revenge against Caroline Orne? Do you want harm to come to her?”

“Yes, I do. I want that spoiled brat to rot in the nuthouse, and I want to sue the living shit out of her for the pain and suffering she has caused me and my children.” She delivered her speech with grace and emphasis.

“Thank you, Mrs. Castile,” I said. I hung up the phone, thinking of how she was proving a point I had never set out to make. Probably no one, even the wife of a murderer, could help hating the person who hurt their beloved. Did it matter to Dora Castile that Warren Castile was a criminal and Dr. Orne a loving mother, wife, and healer?

I lay down for a second, and I fell into a deep sleep. When I wakened it was dark, and I lay there for a moment, reliving my dream. Caroline Orne and her entire family were in a prison, and some of us—me, Nick, Honora, Pem, maybe Eugene and Casey—were in the next cell. Our jailors, Jean Snizort and Warren Castile, laughed maliciously. My father was nearby, in solitary confinement. Clare and Donald were nowhere close, and that made me uneasy, because I was unsure of whether I should be happy because they had escaped or scared because they were facing worse punishment.

Slowly I sat up. I faced my reflection in the mirror. My posture straight, I looked very young, like a child quite frightened of being alone. I wore one of Nick’s cast-off oxford shirts over khaki shorts. My legs looked bony, and I identified scratches I had gotten while playing wiffle ball with Eugene and Casey, the bruise from bumping into the stove one night while rushing around the kitchen, and my scar. It was the only scar I had. When I was small I had jumped into a pile of leaves my father had been raking, and gashed my leg on the rake he had left buried there. I remembered that day exactly: the blue October sky, the smell of burning branches, the happiness I felt when my father lifted me out of the leaves and hugged me close to him. “Oh, honey, oh, honey,” he kept saying. My blood stained his wool jacket as he ran with me to the car, Clare following as fast as she could, calling, “Will she be all right?” At the hospital the doctor numbed my leg with novocaine, and my father held my hand, telling me a story about the time he and my mother hiked to the top of Mount Hawk one Thanksgiving Day when the weather was warm as August and the air so clear they could see five states. Staring at my scar in the mirror brought back happy memories and made me sad for the Ornes. Everything, even a scar, brought me back to the family. It would be the same for Caroline Orne. All through her life she would see a baby and think of the babies her mother had healed, see a horn and hear the symphonies her father had played. I felt tired enough for more sleep, but first I dialed Nick at the Savoy.

“Hello?” came his sleepy voice after the fifth ring.

“Hi, Nick. I’m sorry about what I said before.”

“What’s wrong, Georgie? Why do you have to sound so suspicious?”

“It was thinking about you in London with Jean.”

He was silent for so long, I thought he had fallen asleep. “It’s late here,” he said finally. “We’ve been working all day and most of the night, and I’m jet-lagged. It’s hard to talk about this over the phone.”

“That’s it,” I said, desperately wanting to end the conversation on a normal note, as if nothing were or ever had been wrong. “You’d better sleep now. Sweet dreams, I love you.”

“And I love you, if you’d only believe me.”

Nick hung up before I could say I do I do I do I do believe you. I do.