Goldilocks (24 page)

She shook her head. She had never set foot in the place, but she knew that Harold had occasionally lunched there with men from his department and brought leftovers home in a distinctive doggy bag. Mrs. Whipple seemed to be circling her, floating around her in a scent of Estee Lauder and viewing her from all angles with curiosity and amusement.

“The food’s fabulous. You ought to get that handsome nephew of yours to take you.”

Emma recoiled as if a pin had been pressed into her face. It was not the tone of Mrs. Whipple’s voice, but something in the eyes, an insinuation, as if she, Emma, had a taste for the shameful.

Mrs. Whipple said quickly, “Was there a ruckus around here late last night? Something woke my daughter.”

Emma stood utterly motionless, with no feeling in her face, and chose ambiguity over a lie. She watched Mrs. Whipple bounce a hand over her hair.

“The whole neighborhood’s getting noisier. I suppose it can’t be helped. It’s getting younger, have you noticed?”

“Yes, it’s inevitable,” Emma said in a rush of breath, glad to have said something, proving that she had a voice, a thought, an opinion. That she was more than a widow and a victim. “I must be going,” she said.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Whipple, gazing over at Emma’s house. Henry was in a window, his good hand pressed against a pane as if he meant to push it out. “Your nephew looks impatient.”

With no fear in her face but with a drag to her step, she entered the house through the breezeway and averted her eyes from the mess in the kitchen. Henry confronted her near the bathroom.

“You could have at least told me you were going out.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said.

“I’m burning up, Mrs. Goss.” His voice was a whine. “Feel me,” he pleaded, and she clamped a hand over his brow and felt the heat.

“Good,” she said with her first smile in a long time.

Louise Baker, cruising up the drive, was glad to be home, and she breathed deeply of the air, her eyes soaking up the colors of the flowers and the green of the lawn. “This is where I belong,” she murmured aloud. “No other place.” Her hands, which had been trembling on the wheel, were now steady and firm upon it. She steered toward the khaki figure of Mrs. Mennick’s brother, who was stacking landscaping equipment into the back of his truck. He did not stop his work until she climbed out of the Porsche and declared herself with a bright smile. “Everything looks grand,” she said with a thrilling sense of proprietorship. “You do a good job, Howard.”

“I do my best,” he said in his buttoned-up way.

Louise looked toward the house, manorial in its size and setting. “I should’ve been born to it, Howard. It would’ve been easier.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a slight change of tone that made her glance quickly at him.

“Anything wrong, Howard?”

“I’ll let my sister tell you,” he said.

She entered the house, cool with its clean smells of polish and care, rich in heirlooms that would stir the genitals of any antique dealer. The Persian carpet softened her step. She called her husband’s name and was answered by Mrs. Mennick from the west side of the house, where the late sun was flooding the windows. Mrs. Mennick and Ben were in the room that Ben’s mother had assigned exclusively to herself for writing letters, perusing the better magazines, and taking to the sofa under a goose-down throw during her time of the month. Louise walked by the open door.

“In here,” Mrs. Mennick said.

Louise turned back and looked in. Ben was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in the folds of the throw that might have still borne his mother’s scent. His eyes were squeezed closed as if he were afraid to open them. Mrs. Mennick had her arms around him.

“He’s all right, Mrs. Baker. His teeth were chattering for no reason, but he’s better now. Open your eyes, Mr. Ben.”

He opened them with a grimace as Louise entered the room. Then his face swelled in a wave of emotion, and he gazed at her as he always did, as if she were a flower in a slender vase. “Are you alive, Lou?” Are you really alive?”

“There was an accident on the highway,” Mrs. Mennick explained swiftly. “He thought it was you.”

“I’m quite alive, Ben. Let him be, Mrs. Mennick.”

Mrs. Mennick loosened her embrace and, careful not to disturb him, pulled herself to her feet. “I was afraid to give him a sedative on top of his medication, and I didn’t want to call the doctor either. Only you can make him right, Mrs. Baker.”

“You’ve done fine,” Louise said, a bit short. “You can leave us alone now.”

Mrs. Mennick lingered. “The man from the chicken farm told me and Howard about the accident. It was terrible, terrible. Would you like to hear?”

Louise tossed up a deferring hand. “Is it something that affects my life?”

“No,” Mrs. Mennick said, slightly put out. “Not your life.”

“Then tell me about it later.”

Left alone with him, Louise stared at her husband with a critical eye. He was waiting for a kiss, but she could not bring herself to give him one. Her stomach was churning too emphatically, and her head was hot.

“Do you have to have that thing around you?” she said.

“I’m cold,” he said, his eyes verging on tears. “You shouldn’t have stayed away so long. You know how I get.”

Her eye turned harder. “Was this your mother’s room, Ben?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not your mother, am I?”

“No,” he said. “You’re not. You’re my wife.”

“How old are you?”

He smiled. “You know.”

“I want you to tell me. Say it out loud.”

“I’m fifty-one.”

“How many feet do you have?”

He smiled. “Two.”

“Good,” she said. “Stand on them!”

Later he followed her upstairs to her bedroom, but she shut him out. She took a long hot bath in the luxury of the sunken tub, her head thrown back, her legs stretched to the limit. With a prodigious effort of will, she cleared her mind of the day’s events and thought only of distant things. The times she and Barney Cole had made out in the back row of the Central Theater, their mouths sore at the movie’s end. The week she had labored to teach him to dance so that he could take her to the senior prom. The Sunday evenings spent watching television in his living room, his father treating her like a princess. She remembered elevating his father to a man of means despite the inevitable hole in the heel of his sock.

The gauze pad taped below her collarbone tore loose in the water and floated up in front of her. She plucked it from the suds and flung it over the side, then traced an exploratory finger over the wound, no more than a round puckering, ugly in its colors and intriguing in its symmetry.

Clad in a gown of thin flannel, she propped king-size pillows and slipped under the covers to await supper in bed. Mrs. Mennick came in presently with a tray bearing lentil soup, crackers, a slice of buttered French bread, and a pot of herbal tea. “Are you sure that’ll be enough?” Mrs. Mennick asked, her feelings still bruised.

“Plenty,” Louise said, glancing up. “I’m sorry I was short with you, but I’ve had a hard day.”

“Not just you, Mrs. Baker. I’ve had a hard time too. All the while you were away he was needing constant care. I even had to have Howard help me.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“You don’t know what he’s like when you’re gone.”

Louise looked at her sharply. “Who do you think keeps this ship afloat?”

“Truth be known, Mrs. Baker? We both do.”

As Mrs. Mennick left with the air of someone vastly unappreciated, Louise made a mental note to amend matters later. She rearranged the tray closer to her and crushed crackers into the soup. With no appetite, she ate for the nourishment. Chewing on bread, she felt a coolness in the air and then heard the light fall of rain, which she thought was fitting. A cleansing. She was drinking her tea when Ben looked in.

“May I?” he asked, and advanced into the room like a puppy that had been punished and partially forgiven. His hair was wet-combed, and she suspected Mrs. Mennick had done it. His expression was contrite.

“You were right to talk to me that way.”

“I’m glad you understand,” she said, and patted the bed for him to sit, not too close because of the tray. “You’ll never be a complete person unless you understand a lot of things, especially about yourself.”

He sat on the bed’s edge and looked at her full in the face. “I’m never going to be right, Lou. I know that. It’s my chemistry. Nothing to do with my mother or anybody else. I know that too.”

“With medication you can function. Do you also know
that
?”

He nodded, his eyes humid but clear. His neat mustache was darker, the probability strong that Mrs. Mennick had applied eye shadow.

“Then why don’t you take it like you should?”

“I try, Lou, honest, but it drains the strength out of me. It makes me feel less, like somebody else is in charge, and I don’t have any say in my life.”

“What happens if you don’t take it?”

He glanced away. “I do silly things.”

“So you have to take it. You have no choice.” She put her teacup down and used a napkin. “I’m tired, Ben. Would you take the tray away?”

“You want me to go,” he said, springing up. The tray rattled in his grip. “Have a good night’s sleep, Lou. I won’t bother you.”

When he shut the door behind him, she closed her eyes and sank deep under the covers. Fatigue took hold of every part of her body except her brain, which stayed lit, leaving her with little confidence that she would fall asleep easily. More than an hour later, the room dark, she was still awake. She groped for the phone and rang up Barney Cole’s number. Within moments, he was on the line. She had caught him at a bad time, which she disregarded. Dropping her head back, she said, “Just talk to me.”

“I’m not alone,” he said.

“Say something sweet, please.”

“There’s an outside chance the feds have bugged my line.”

“I don’t give a damn. Say something sweet!”

For the first time ever, he hung up on her.

TWELVE

“Y
OU
SHOULDN’T
have done that,” Kit Fletcher said after he clamped the receiver down. “Maybe it was a matter of life and death.”

“You have no idea what the conversation was about.”

“I know it was from your friend. That’s all I need to know.”

“Sometimes she’s too much.”

“Never, Barney, not if she’s a real friend.” Kit’s hand glided over the stereo. The telephone had rung during a Simon and Garfunkel song, and she had lowered the sound. Now she turned it off. “Your mother and father are both dead, aren’t they? They were the only people on earth who would’ve forgiven you anything, who would’ve kept on loving you no matter what horrid thing you might’ve done. Who do you have now? Me? Would I be that forgiving?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Cole said.

“You’re right, Barney, not me. I’m not put together that way. But how about her, your friend? That’s something to think about, isn’t it?”

Cole looked at her askance. “You send mixed signals.”

“Granted, I’m jealous, but that doesn’t fuddle my thinking.”

“It fuddles mine. Louise is trouble, and you’ve made it clear you don’t want any.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to involve me,” she said, moving to a window and gazing out at the dark. She had on a green blouse and denim skirt that made her look more Andover than Boston, more Indian Ridge Country Club than the Ritz. “Loads of fireflies out there, Barney.”

“Little taillights,” Cole said. “Like traffic.”

“But no pollution.”

“None.”

She turned with a half smile. “What was that business about your line being bugged?”

“I was joking.”

“No, I can tell when you’re joking and when you’re not. Should I be concerned about calling out?”

“I’d use discretion.”

“How much?”

“All you’ve got.” He smiled. “I really am joking.”

“No, you’re not.”

A little later they undressed for bed and read together under twin flexible reading lamps, their feet casually tangling and untangling far under the covers. Without her telling him, he knew she was leaving in the morning, and he asked when she thought she might be back. “The weekend,” she replied without looking up from the page of the Joan Didion novel she had plucked from a bargain table at Barnes & Noble. She turned the page. “In the interval, maybe you could zip in and take me to dinner.”

“It’s a possibility,” he said, doubtful that she expected or wanted him to take her up on it. Near the house trees shifted their shadows and sent in drafts of cool air. He put aside his magazine and switched off his lamp. “Do you want me to stay?”

“For a bit,” she said, closing her book. When he stretched past her to extinguish the light on her side, she traced her fingertips along his rib cage and produced a shiver. “Those are my fingers,” she whispered, “not your friend’s.”

“Glad you told me.”

“Some other things I’d like to tell you, but I don’t think you’d understand.”

“Try me.”

“Another time,” she said and settled into his arms.

It was nearly midnight when he eased his legs over the side of the bed, slipped on his undershorts, and stood listening to the depth of her breathing and the nighttime chorus of peepers. He made his way by touch through the dark to the kitchen, where he put on the stove light and looked up Louise Baker’s number in his private phone book. She was obviously asleep, for several rings went unanswered. When she finally came on the line she sounded drugged. “What?” she said. “Who?”

“Barney,” he repeated.

Her voice came awake. “Some nerve, Barney, you hang up on me and then call back at this hour. How did you know my husband and I sleep in separate rooms?”

“Guessed.”

“Have you forgiven me about that little thing in the parking lot? It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, you surely know that.”

“It’s forgotten,” he said. “Have you forgiven me for hanging up?”

“Nothing to forgive. I knew you’d call back. I know what’s in you.”

He stood silently looking down at his bare toes and listening to June bugs bashing their brains out against the lit screen in the window over the sink.