Good Intentions (7 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“You already have Debbie staying with you. The last thing you needed was your crazy sister.”

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you that’s what condominiums in Florida are for? Hey, that was a joke. You’re supposed to laugh.”

Kathryn managed a wan smile. “I could really go for a glass of water.”

“Don’t move. I’ll get it.” Renee went immediately to the kitchen, poured Kathryn a large glass of water, then opened the fridge door and peered inside. “Do you want anything to eat?”

“No, thanks. Water is great.”

Renee fumbled with a bag of miniature 3 Musketeers chocolate bars at the back of the refrigerator, popping one quickly into her mouth before returning to the living room. “You should eat,” she told her sister. “You have to keep your strength up.”

“I’m not hungry. Maybe later.” Kathryn’s eyes drifted around the room. “Do you realize that I’ve never been to your apartment before?”

“That’s because you never leave New York.”

“Arnie doesn’t like to travel.”

“So, what do you think?” Renee asked, ignoring her sister’s reference to her husband as if he were still alive. “Like it?”

For a moment, Kathryn said nothing. Renee wondered whether she had heard the question and was about to repeat it when Kathryn spoke. “It doesn’t look like you,” she remarked, as if she were examining a photograph.

“Well, it isn’t. I mean, it is, but it isn’t,” Renee stammered, feeling foolish. “It was Philip’s apartment, but it’s so perfect, we didn’t see any reason to move. It’s right on the ocean and it’s certainly big enough for our needs. There are three bedrooms. It’s perfect,” she repeated.

“It’s so white.”

Renee tried seeing the apartment through Kathryn’s eyes, trying to remember what her first reaction had been when Philip brought her here some six and a half years
ago. “Philip doesn’t like clutter. He says he sees enough of it at the office every day without having to come home to it at night. He likes things neat and clean.”

“And what do you like?”

“What do you mean?”

Kathryn said nothing.

Renee watched her sip gingerly at her water. “I like things exactly the way they are.” She followed Kathryn’s eyes as they swept across the walls of the living room, taking in the museum-like display of modern abstract art. “White surroundings accentuate the art better.”

“You’re happy?” Kathryn asked.

“Very.”

“I’m glad.”

Renee sat down beside her sister, afraid to ask the next question, knowing she had no choice.

“Why did you do it, Kathy? I know how much you loved Arnie but …”

“You don’t know,” Kathryn said, her voice flat.

“What do you mean?” It was the second time she had asked that.

A look of alarm raced through Kathryn’s eyes. “You don’t know how much I loved him,” she said, recovering quickly. “He was my whole life.”

“He was a large part of your life, but he wasn’t everything.”

“He was everything,” Kathryn corrected. “I was barely eighteen years old when I married Arnie. I was a kid. He was almost old enough to be my father. Do you remember how furious Daddy was?”

Renee nodded. Their father’s fury was not easily forgotten.

“Arnie was my whole life. He did everything for me. He took care of everything. I never had to make a decision. I never had to make arrangements. Arnie always made sure that everything was taken care of. And we did everything together. For almost twenty years. Twenty years! And then one night, he got up from the dinner table. I’d made this spicy meat loaf. Arnie didn’t like it because he didn’t like spicy food, but I thought this recipe sounded pretty safe, and so I tried it. And he didn’t like it all that much, but he ate it. And then he stood up, and he suddenly keeled over. That was it. He just dropped to the floor. I screamed. I rushed over to him. At first I thought he was joking, you know, kidding around, because I made the meat loaf too spicy, but then I turned him over and saw his face, and I knew right away that he was dead.”

“Kathy, that was three months ago. We’ve been through all this. I’m not sure it’s good for you to keep dwelling on it.”

“What am I supposed to do, Renee? What else is there for me to do with my life?”

“You have to get on with it. You’re young; you’re beautiful. Life can be so wonderful. You have to give it another chance. It’s what Arnie would have wanted.”

“Arnie would want me with him.”

“No,” Renee said vehemently, grabbing her sister’s hands and watching her wince. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, releasing Kathryn’s hands and feeling them tremble. “But Arnie would not want this. He would want you to be happy and to get as much out of the rest of your life as you can …”

“No.” Kathryn shook her head and closed her eyes.

Renee felt momentarily as she had earlier in the afternoon when talking to Lynn Schuster, as if there were parts of the conversation missing, key facts being withheld. “Kathryn,” she said slowly, “is there something you’re not telling me?”

Kathryn opened her eyes, a look of fear passing quickly through them. “No, of course not.”

“Why are you badgering her?” came a voice from behind them. Kathryn’s body snapped to immediate attention, turning toward the sound. Renee remained slumped forward on the sofa. She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

“Kathryn,” she said quietly, “this is Philip’s daughter, Debbie. Debbie, my sister, Kathryn.”

“We won’t shake hands,” Debbie said, walking into the center of the room and motioning toward Kathryn’s bandages.

“I didn’t think anybody was home. I called out when we came in. I guess you didn’t hear me.”

“I heard you. I didn’t realize it was a summons.”

“Of course it wasn’t a summons,” Renee began, then stopped. What was the point?

“So, how does it feel to slit your wrists?” Debbie asked.

“Debbie!”

“No, that’s all right,” Kathryn said quickly. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

“She wants to talk about it,” Debbie said defiantly, dropping down into the middle of the white carpet between the white sofa and the white chair, and folding her legs under her. “How did it feel?”

“It hurt.” Kathryn stared at the bandages as if she could see through them. “It hurt a lot. That’s probably
why I didn’t cut very deep.”

“Was there a lot of blood?”

“Oh, for God’s sake …”

“Yes,” Kathryn answered, ignoring her sister’s exclamation. “I looked like I was taking a bath in tomato juice.”

Debbie giggled, and surprisingly Kathryn joined her.

“Which way did you make the cuts?” Debbie asked, leaning forward.

“Like this.” Kathryn ran a trembling finger across the short width of her wrist.

“If you want to kill yourself, you’re supposed to slice lengthwise,” Debbie explained dispassionately. “I saw that in a movie once. They said that if you only want to go to the hospital, you cut widthwise. If you really want to die, you cut the same way your vein runs. That way nobody can sew you up again. Of course, the fastest way is probably with a gun. My dad has a gun. He keeps it in the night table beside his bed.”

“Can we please talk about something else?” Renee begged, her queasiness returning.

“I think this is interesting,” Debbie told her stepmother.

“That was not a request,” Renee informed her curtly, deciding to move the gun elsewhere at the earliest opportunity. She’d always objected to its presence, in any event. Why had Debbie even mentioned it? Did the girl have no sense at all?

Debbie’s hand formed a brisk salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Renee turned toward her sister. “I just think that we could find something else to talk about.”

“My mother tried to kill herself once,” Debbie announced. “Did you know that, Renée?”

“No, I didn’t,” Renee admitted, too stunned to say anything else.

“She was a mess after my father left. Of course, I was just a kid at the time but I guess she must have felt a lot like you feel now.” Debbie smiled at Kathryn, who was watching her intently. “She started drinking and taking sleeping pills to get her through the night. One night she had too many drinks and too many pills. We rushed her to the hospital. They had to pump her stomach. It was pretty gross.”

“Excuse me.” Renee hurried into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, drinking it quickly before reaching into the fridge and tearing another chocolate bar out of its plastic bag, swallowing it in three quick bites. In the living room, she heard Debbie rattling on about her mother, telling Kathryn how beautiful she was, how thin she was, very much like Kathryn, she was saying. Nothing at all like Renée.

It was true. Renee had seen pictures of Philip’s former wife, Wendy. She was beautiful. And thin. And unbalanced as all get-out. Renee couldn’t think of Debbie’s mother without recalling the story that Philip had confided in her early in their relationship. Apparently, she’d once provoked a fight while they were getting ready for bed, and when Philip had insisted that he would spend the night in a hotel rather than listen to any more of her ravings, she had actually run down the street after his car, totally naked. Running after his car like a dog, he had said tearfully, then confessed that he’d never told that story to another living soul, he’d been so ashamed.

“I think that Kathryn should probably lie down now,” Renee said, reentering the living room to find Debbie on the sofa next to her sister, Kathryn wrapped gently in Debbie’s arms, her eyes closed in sleep.

“Don’t worry about Kathryn,” Debbie said sweetly. “I’ll take care of her.”

“That’s very nice of you, Debbie,” Renee said, softening, feeling grateful all of a sudden for her stepdaughter’s presence.

“And then I’ll take care of you,” Debbie said, and turned to stare serenely out at the ocean.

T
he phone had been ringing all morning. Lynn Schuster glanced up from her paper-strewn desk at the well-groomed young woman who stood in the doorway to her small, tidy office. “For you. Line one,” her secretary said, her hands buried beneath a neat stack of files. “I’m going to run these reports down the hall.”

Lynn nodded and picked up the phone, thinking that she hated Fridays. They were always the worst. People seemed to be most desperate just before the weekend, something she had never really understood until Gary left her. Until then, Friday was always a day to look forward to because it meant that—in theory anyway—the family could spend the next two days relaxing and being together. In practice, Gary was more often working than not, the kids were somewhere playing with friends or home fighting with each other, and she was struggling to finish off work which never seemed to meet its deadline. Still, the illusion was there. The possibilities existed. When Gary walked out six months ago, he had taken the possibilities with him. Lynn no longer looked forward to the weekends, which only served to underline
the unhappy statistic she had become. “Lynn Schuster,” she announced into the phone.

“Marc Cameron,” came the immediate reply. “And before you hang up on me,” he continued—in fact, the thought had not occurred to her— “I’d like to apologize for my behavior the other night.”

“Apology accepted,” Lynn replied briskly. “Thank you for calling.”

“Don’t hang up,” he said again, this time as she was about to.

Lynn glanced nervously toward her office door. Her secretary was down the hall delivering files. That was good for at least a couple of minutes. “What can I do for you, Mr. Cameron?”

“For starters, you can call me Marc. Then you can have dinner with me tonight.”

Lynn took a deep breath, slowly expelling the air in her lungs and inadvertently blowing several sheets of paper off the top of her desk. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” she said, watching the papers float toward the beige carpet at her feet.

“Why not?” His voice was stubborn, provocative.

“I would think that’s obvious.”

“Because of what I said?”

“Because of what you are.”

“A writer?”

She laughed. “Suzette’s husband.”

“Can’t we just forget who we are? Correction,” he said immediately. “Who we
were.”

Lynn’s fingers moved nervously to the thick gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand. “I think that might prove difficult.”

“Not if we don’t let it.”

“I’m busy tonight,” she said, then continued when he said nothing. “My father and his wife are coming over for dinner. Really.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“I can’t.”

“Your father again?”

“My better judgment. I’m sorry. I just don’t think it would be a very good idea.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I’m really sorry that we had to meet under these circumstances …”

“Sounds like something you say at a funeral.” He laughed. “Hell, I’m a writer. I’m used to rejection. Look, will you do me a favor?”

“If I can.”

“Get a piece of paper,” he instructed. Lynn reached for her notebook as her secretary reappeared in the doorway. “Write this down.” He dictated a number and Lynn dutifully copied it, repeating it aloud when he asked her to. “My phone number,” he explained. “I’m renting an apartment until all this is settled. If you change your mind about seeing me again, as I sincerely hope you will, give me a call.”

“I’ll do that,” Lynn said, motioning for her secretary to come in and sit down. “Thank you for calling.”

“A pleasure, as always,” he said, and was gone. Lynn replaced the receiver, smiling perhaps a little too hard at the blonde, ponytailed young woman who sat before her.

“Something wrong?” her secretary asked, bending forward to indicate her willingness to listen. “You look like you’re in pain,” she continued, and Lynn forced her
mouth to relax. Her secretary, whose name was Arlene and who was somewhere in her late twenties, lifted a slim file folder from her lap and reached it across the top of the desk toward Lynn.

“What’s this?” Lynn pushed Marc Cameron into the back corners of her mind, concentrating on the file her secretary dropped into her hands.

“It’s from McVee,” Arlene said, standing up, about to return to her own desk just outside Lynn’s office door. “Suspected child abuse. He wants it handled very carefully. All files are to be kept in his office. Strictly confidential. Apparently we might be treading on some very big toes. Check out the address.”