Love Gone Mad (12 page)

Wilson walks casually toward the door.

Mulvaney rises and nods to the men on the other side of the one-way mirror.

Mulvaney wonders if sweat stains show beneath his underarms. He feels a droplet slide down his back. He’s wearing a wife beater today, nothing to absorb the sweat. So he decides he’ll keep his arms hanging at his sides till he’s back in his office. Then he’ll turn on that table fan—the little one stowed in the file cabinet—and lean back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head.

The door opens. Two detectives and a uniformed cop stand there.

Wilson says, “Will one of your detectives give me a lift back to New Haven?”

Mulvaney heads back to his office, suddenly aware his clothes feel sodden and heavy, and he smells something. He wonders if it’s his pits, or if it’s the stench of a madman lingering in his nostrils.

“I
don’t like it, Adrian,” Mulvaney says on the telephone. “We had our best guys go at him and we got
nada
.”

“Any idea why he’s back?”

“Not really, but I think Megan should renew the order of protection.”

“Anything else you can do, Patty?”

“I’m afraid not. He hasn’t done anything we can prove. But I’ve talked with a few higher-ups in New Haven. They’ll keep an eye on him, but that won’t do much.”

“At least we know he’s here.”

“Adrian, I’m sure he’s got his eye on
both
of you. Getting’ run off the road was no coincidence. And that break-in … it wasn’t some harmless prank. He was definitely sending you a message. Just be careful. And call us if anything unusual happens.
Anything
. Got it?”

“Sure, Patty. And thanks for everything.” Adrian’s voice sounds foreign to him.

When they hang up, Adrian goes to the refrigerator, pops open a bottle of Bud, and returns to the living room. He settles onto the sofa. Sipping the beer, he thinks about Mulvaney’s words, and a feeling of dread penetrates him like an icicle. It seems so strange to Adrian that three years after they separated and then divorced, a man would travel across the country to stalk his ex-wife, send e-mails and flowers, run her off the road and break into the home of the man she’s now seeing. Adrian is certain from what Megan’s told him that Wilson has no one meaningful in his life. He’s a lone wolf, an introvert, and has no essential core to his existence, no family—no center of being. He’s alone in the world, and he’s on some sick mission.

I’ll be back …

The words thread coldly through Adrian and penetrate his bones. He feels a slight inner shudder. He takes another slug of beer. The carbonation bites his tongue, feels good going down, and seems to bypass his stomach and shoot directly to his head—permeates to his brain. He feels a bit fuzzy. It’s been a long day—complicated surgeries, the trip to the Eastport police station, seeing Conrad Wilson, and then driving back to the cottage.

Adrian’s thoughts meander to Megan, Marlee, Erin, and Bob, to their kids, and the little dog, Sampson. It’s family … warm and loving, caring for one another. That was part of what was so obvious when he was over there—the care and concern they have for one another. Adrian suddenly realizes there are now people in his life with whom he’s made connections. He feels it—deeply—and in a very short period of time. It occurs to him that he really needs a foundation—an emotional nucleus—in his life, that it’s been missing for so long.

God almighty, here I am, forty years old and my only blood tie—my one living and direct genetic link—is Mom
.

Adrian realizes suddenly he forgot to telephone her today. That’s a rarity; in fact, he can’t remember a day over the last few years when he hasn’t called Mom. Adrian usually calls her every evening—the OR schedule permitting—even if they can talk for only a minute or two before the early-bird dinner specials are served at the myriad restaurants catering to the swarms of seniors living on Florida’s Gold Coast.

His mom lives in a white stucco, two-story garden apartment condo on Southeast 10th Street, one block from hibiscus-lined South Ocean Boulevard in Pompano Beach. The place crawls with newly constructed high-rises, condos, co-ops, and the occasional bungalow built forty years ago. The boulevard’s only a short block from the beach and the sparkling blue-green Atlantic waters. Mom moved to Florida to live with the snowbirds after inheriting the place from her spinster sister, who died five years earlier.

Adrian dials. Mom picks up on the first ring. She was probably waiting for him to call.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Adrian, dear, how are you?”

“Fine, Mom. How’s everything?”

She mentions a movie she saw with her friends and how they enjoyed it and then talks about her weekly bridge game, some renovation issues with the condo board (she’s the treasurer), and the ever-present Florida topic—the strange weather patterns and hurricane alerts. After a brief pause, she says, “So, Adrian, how’s your woman friend, Megan?”

“She’s fine, Mom,” he says, knowing exactly where she’ll take this conversation.

“What’s happening with you two?”

“We’re getting serious.”

“Getting serious … so quickly?”

“You know, Mom, we’re not kids; we know what we want.”

“She sounds lovely, Adrian. But do you really want to get involved in that kind of thing?”

“What kind of
thing
, Mom?” He tries not to let his irritation percolate through. Adrian could kick himself in the ass for letting her steer the conversation in this direction.

“You know … another man’s child …”

“The father’s not around,” Adrian says, as a prickly current ripples through him. He feels his thighs tighten, and that hollow feeling forms in his stomach. “The father hasn’t been in Marlee’s life since she was two. She wouldn’t recognize him if he walked in the door.” Adrian knows he sounds defensive.

“Adrian, a child’s father is
always
around. It’s
his
flesh and blood, not yours.”

A shiver begins at the back of his neck; something frigid slithers down his spine.

“I have a great relationship with Marlee.”

“But, Adrian dear, she’s another man’s daughter.”

There’s a pause; Adrian knows Mom’s getting emotional.

“Listen, Adrian, you’re not a father, so it may be hard for you to understand, but a child forms a permanent link between a man and a woman—and also between the child and her father. It’s the natural order of things, and no matter how you feel about this little girl, there’s a connection between the child and her father—it’s a biological thing—and you can never be part of it.”

“I’m not so sure, Mom.”

“And, Adrian, you know this woman for only a few weeks.”

“How about you and Dad way back when? It was three months, right?”

“Yes, but times were different then, dear, and we weren’t young, either,” Mom says with a quaking voice.

Adrian is about to protest that he and Megan aren’t young or inexperienced in life’s affairs, and he regrets even more deeply allowing himself to be sucked into this dialogue. It’s discouragingly the same—each time—and he seems powerless to alter it. He knows he should’ve diverted the subject to something less charged.

Mom’s breathing sounds choked, and he thinks she’s sobbing, though she’s doing her best to stifle it. A twinge of sadness stabs at him. He hears her Swiss chalet cuckoo clock strike the hour—the clock that telescopes time because he’s heard it as far back as he can remember, the clock on the kitchen wall of their brick-faced attached house in Queens, where he lived until he left for college at Ithaca. Now it’s a Florida cuckoo.

How time can telescope on itself. Things from years ago can come back in a split second … and can have incredible emotional pulling power
.

Silence on the line until the clock finishes its last cuckoo.

“I still miss him … so much,” Mom says in a strangled whisper.

“I do too, Mom,” he says, as a mammoth lump fills his throat. The conversation’s gone south; it’s in the tar pits of his memory, of times long gone, but it’s part of the matrix of their lives. Adrian knows that talking with Mom can bring on a bone-deep ache as ugly images of that night assault him.

He was nearly six years old. They were at a Chinese restaurant—he recalls the festive ambience, the aroma of garlic and ginger, the egg rolls and steaming wonton soup with sliced shallots and pork-filled wontons steeping in the broth—when midway through the meal, Dad clutched his chest. His face turned chalk white and then sagged, as though life suddenly washed out of it. Dad keeled over, the table tilted, and dishes clattered. Adrian recalls the horror of seeing Dad inert on the floor, hearing Mom scream, seeing the tumult of patrons, then the ambulance, the ride to the hospital, the medics working on Dad—the oxygen mask and the frantic pumping on his chest—and then they stopped. He recalls his father’s open shirt, the limp body, his slackened face, the clouded, blank look in his still-open eyes, and his own terrified disbelief that Dad was gone.

It’s still difficult for him to feel comfortable in a Chinese restaurant—especially a Cantonese place. The decor alone makes his stomach lurch—fantail goldfish in a tank, the butterfly and flower wall fans, chopsticks and cylindrical paper lanterns—it’s too evocative of that night and brings it all back in an instant. He’s never eaten wonton soup again. Even the sight of it in a bowl would sicken him.

Adrian recalls the funeral: it was a dreary day with his aunts and uncles crying at the chapel. He remembers his mother hunched over the coffin, her shoulders shaking in disbelief and despair. They wouldn’t let him look in the casket.

“No … No … the boy shouldn’t see this,” Uncle Al said.

“Not even a last look?” asked Aunt Bea.

“No, he’s too young.”

At the cemetery—a mammoth expanse of granite tombstones near the Long Island Expressway with the Manhattan skyline looming beneath a sickly steel-wool-gray sky and stacks of gray-black, even greenish clouds—his relatives shielded him from seeing the coffin lowered. Dad sank slowly into the grave, never to be seen again or be part of his life.

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore
.”

The men shoveled dirt, and Adrian remembers the smell of freshly turned earth, the sound of soil thumping heavily onto the coffin lid, the grave filling quickly, Mom pressing him close, and her grief-stricken shuddering while her tears dripped onto him. God, the horror of it all was overwhelming, and Adrian recalls the feelings—the shattering upheaval in a boy’s life.

He felt so lost, so empty and bereft—as though life cheated him of his father—he was upended in the world. Adrian knows he felt cheated of what they could have shared; it was stolen from him. His dad would have been so proud of him at Cornell—his grades, the varsity baseball team, the honor society.

Adrian knows that losing a father so early does something to a boy. Megan could be right: maybe now—doing heart surgery—he
is
trying to fix God’s mistakes.

And Megan: working with newborns—
newbies
as she calls them—wanted and unwanted, is she trying to redo her own past?

But in this life there are no do-overs. What’s done is done and can’t be made whole again.

He recalls saying to Megan a few evenings ago, “I think injury brings us to our work,” and she’d nodded.

“They’re deep wounds, and they lead us to what we’ve become,” she said.

He knew then that Megan has a certain emotional savvy—an affliction-induced wisdom. And now, on the telephone with Mom, he’s reminded of what Megan said that same evening: “Life is so fragile. Everything we are and all we know can be gone in a moment.”

When Mom talks this way, it all comes back to him—the hollowness of loss, feeling dispossessed—feeling wanting and deprived.

“Oh, Adrian, just be sure you know what you’re getting into.”

“I will, Mom. I will,” Adrian says, feeling sadness so deep, he fears his heart will burst.

M
egan throws her Ford Fiesta into park, kills the engine, and steps out of the car. The parking lot in front of the Stop & Shop is clogged with cars and SUVs this sunny autumn afternoon, and she angles between them toward the store.

Then she sees it; her heart feels like it’ll burst through her chest.

A black, muscular-looking pickup sits two rows over from where she’s parked. Darkened windows; she can’t see inside the thing. A huge silver toolbox sits behind the cab and a row of amber-colored lights sits atop the cab. She wonders if it has Colorado plates. But she can’t tell from this angle. The engine is running—gray-white exhaust fumes billow from dual tailpipes. The air shimmers where the vapors pour out the back of the thing. The parking lot is brilliantly bright; chrome and glass glare in the low afternoon sun in a whitish sky. Megan suddenly feels light-headed; her knees begin buckling and she nearly trips. She angles herself to get a rear view of the truck.

It has Connecticut plates. It’s not him. Or is it possible that by now he’s registered the truck in Connecticut? She recalls her conversation with Chief Mulvaney. He said there was no DMV record of Conrad Wilson registering a vehicle in Connecticut. But that was a few days ago. She walks toward the store entrance, exquisitely aware of that eerie feeling of eyes boring into her. The skin at the back of her neck prickles, and she suddenly feels like prey.

Ann Johnson was right, Megan thinks as she grabs a shopping cart and moves past the automatic doors. She could be bobbing in the ocean, adrift in the inky darkness of a watery night with no stars or moon above. She’s treading water and her feet dangle … just like in
Jaws
.

A cold swell rises beneath her.

Girl, you’ve got to stop thinking about movies. It never helps
.

Entering the store, she passes the floral section; a faintly sweet scent fills her nostrils—it reminds her of the gladioli. Queasiness seeps through her and drops to her legs, turning them to jelly. It’s the same feeling she gets when she’s looking down from a great height. A sickly sensation invades her belly. She’s had these feelings before. She knows what it is: pure nerves, that queasy, on-edge, heart-fluttering sensation—the skin-crawling edginess of anxiety.