Sweet Karoline (7 page)

I
picked up the bottle of white wine that Karoline and Daniel had been sharing and shook it, peering inside as though I could see mysterious contents lurking.

"
Okay, Daniel, what did you put in this bottle?"

Early
the next morning, after the guests were long gone, the dishes cleared, the chairs back on their exact spots, Karoline appeared in my bedroom. I rolled over to blink up at her hovering over me, her lank hair damp and wild, her eyes round discs of a drug called madness. It was not a Karoline I recognized.

"
You'll be sorry, Anne," she whispered. "Sorry about everything."

She
staggered off to her room, her shawl clinging to her rounded, old-woman shoulders. I heard her bed shift as she flung her weight onto it, heard those sounds for the first time, the invectives and taunts that would eventually, literally, put us both over the edge.

Dear Diary,

I
have always believed that friends are far easier to love than family. The saying that 'you can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends' has always rung true for me. What I don't understand is how they could betray me like this. For years I have been the one to guide them. Without me, they would be nothing! They never had any self-discipline or logical sense. They could never make decisions, or budgets, or career plans, or even figure out what they should eat for optimal health. I loved them, provided for them, and gave them everything. And this is how they repay me?

Chapter
8

For a very long time after that night, I tried to ignore the changed world in which I now lived. I did immediately realize that I had no one in whom to confide. No Giulio, of course. I would have felt too guilty talking to Parris about Karoline. My mother and I had never acquired the kind of relationship that fostered discourse of any kind, let alone 'girl talk'. She maintained a distance, a motherly stance that she thought was appropriate for our difference in age and role.

Karoline
had been my sole confidante for so many years and now she was the one I wanted to discuss.

Alone,
I didn't have the tools to fix Karoline. So I pretended I didn't notice her increasingly sleepless nights. I ignored the fact that she suddenly began smoking. That she'd sit on the balcony for hours staring at nothing. That she no longer asked me questions or appeared to be listening to my rants. She refused to answer me when I asked her what was wrong.

Slowly,
like scum forming on a pond, the dancing, theaters, clubbing, parties and dinners faded away under a film of unease. For a time I chattered on. For a while I bought tickets for the movies, said yes to outings and openings. I marched forward, Karoline muttering beside or behind me, unkempt and disinterested.

Instinctively,
I avoided parties and dinners. There were no more discussions around our beautiful wooden dining table. Soon there were only nights of mumbling from the balcony.

I
didn't know what Daniel thought because I didn't ask. Of course I didn't invite Parris home again. We went to lunches and business affairs, dinners with our clients and bosses. My wall of cheerfulness and everything-is-okay remained intact and solid.

One
Friday night Karoline didn't show up at the parking lot. I had the keys, but I didn't want to leave without her. I went back into my office and tried her office phone over and over. I left frantic messages on our answering machine. Where was she?

It
was dark by the time I finally decided to drive home without her. I wasn't particularly quiet as I entered our apartment. Nor was I a bit shy about heading straight in to push open her bedroom door, which was slightly ajar, to demand an explanation. For a few moments I stood astonished, frozen to the spot.

Karoline
lay on her back while a man moved slowly and languorously above her, his hips and buttocks smooth and black in the semi-darkness. He was moaning softly, whispering fuck me, Karoline, over and over, his voice husky with desire. I could smell the musky, moist fragrance of their bodies and the saltiness of sweat. I watched as he began to pump harder, his hands on both sides of her, his face dipped to her breasts, sucking and moaning, faster and more abandoned with each thrust.

At
that moment Karoline opened her eyes and looked at me. She stared with disdain as I heard him tell her that he was coming inside her. She began to chant fuck me, fuck me, her eyes never leaving mine.

I
closed the door.

So
began a six-week sojourn with Glenn Simpson. On our couch when we came home, eating from a barrel of ice cream. Shouting at the television as basketball players streaked across the floor. Smoking with Karoline on the balcony. Beer bottles piled in the kitchen. Coffee cups in the sink. Frying pans with sticky grease spots sitting on the stove. Behavior that Karoline had never before allowed in our apartment.

Glenn
was a huge, flabby man whose skin was so dark it looked purple. His rounded cheeks pushed his eyes back into his head, making his black orbs little pinpoints of malice. He wore enormous sports shirts and jeans that rode on his ample hips, often displaying his disgusting butt crack. Whenever he bent over, a shiver of revulsion raced through me. He was at least ten years older than we were, but he acted like a spoiled teenager.

He
used the kind of speech patterns that I detest. In my opinion, it was a throwback to slave talk. He had been born in New York City to a middle-class family and had a university degree, this much I knew. Yet he behaved as though he'd just been released, ill used and uneducated, from the shackles of a cruel white master.

"
I been done work" was an oft-repeated phrase. He'd decided, he boasted, to live off the system for as long as he could. Showing up in L.A. with his paltry experience in New York amateur theater, Glenn had expected the film industry to immediately embrace his unusual, dramatic looks, his shiny bald head and sneering mouth. I didn't know how he could expect that they would. There were thousands of his type getting off the bus at Hollywood and Vine every single day.

Not
only that, he criticized me constantly for not properly embracing my black roots. My experience had been so different that I refused to engage with him. I thought I knew far more than he did about the true American dream. What was his version? That he ought to be handed whatever he wanted just because he was black and thought he was unique? He was like teenagers who all dressed the same yet proclaimed to be different. And when the 'Jew film moguls' didn't adore him after all, he decided he would just play the system for as long as he could get away with it.

I
began to quarrel with him but they were senseless arguments that sounded like children squabbling. Karoline would not participate. She'd give a wan smile or simply take him into her bedroom.

"
Get your bloody shorts off the coffee table, asshole," I'd say. "Why don't you get a job? Aren't you ashamed to be a useless prick?"

"
Listen up, asshat, you can't be dissin' me," he'd say, or "You a hemorrhoid," he'd reply, then proceed to explain his remark, sometimes betraying his Black English. "See, an asshole or a prick has its uses, whereas a hemorrhoid…"

"
Karoline, why are you putting up with this bastard's bad manners?"

A
shrug and a thin-lipped smile.

"
I can't stand this anymore. Get him out of here or else."

A
look. Or else what?

A
question I was unwilling to answer.

I
began to go in early and stay late at work. To have dinner with Parris. To take the unreliable transit, several buses and even the subway rather than travel with them by car. By the end of the six weeks, I rarely saw the couple who ostensibly lived with me. When I came home they would be in the bedroom, or out somewhere unknown. I spent most of my time in my room, as did they. The living room was a deserted wasteland, the kitchen a dump, the dining room an echo of a recent past.

When
I think of Glenn Simpson now, I am unable to separate him from that final destructive act. The last straw after an accumulation of straws of which Glenn was only one. The explosion after the long wick was ignited.

I
remember those weeks as living in two worlds, two polar opposites, two planes that I would never have believed possible if anyone had foretold it. On the one hand, there was my life with Karoline and her man, which had become a tense battle of wills. On the other there was my satisfying career and my friendship with Parris. The dissonance ate away at my sanity.

Long after the funeral, on those insufferable commuter drives alone, I slowly began to unravel. The only way I can describe it is that I had no narrative left. There were no voices in my head to guide me. I no longer had Karoline's steady, confident opinion about the minutiae of daily living or the bigger pictures of worldly decisions. Self-assured, arrogant, sarcastic Anne was gone, too, replaced by a hum of confusion and guilt. Hesitant, unglued, vulnerable Anne walked through Los Angeles and prowled our apartment in a daze of denial and indecision.

The
progression is fairly easy to see in retrospect. I had no choice but to face my state of mind once I wrecked our car. Apparently I was not cooperative after the accident. I can't tell you exactly how I behaved, since I have no memory of that incident. I don't remember driving over the embankment, which luckily headed uphill instead of down. I don't remember the police arriving at the scene.

What
I do recall is sitting in the back seat of the police car. Its roof light languidly painted the night red. I sat staring straight ahead, listening to garbled messages on the radio. Up front the two policemen whispered to each other, spoke into a microphone and waited. Within a few minutes, an unmarked car pulled up and the officers got out. After a brief conference I was transferred to another vehicle.

"
No problem, sir," the young male policeman responded to someone outside as he opened my door and helped me out.

He
was speaking to Ethan, who reached for my hand and gently tucked me into the front seat of his car. The warmth inside, the soft silk of the leather seats, the scent of his aftershave, made me hunch over in tears.

When
he got behind the wheel, he placed an enormous yet gentle hand on my shoulder.

"
It's all right, Ms. Williams," he said. "I'm glad you asked for me."

I
have no memory of asking for him, but something inside me responded to the comforting tones in his voice. I folded into his side. He put his arm around me and let me cry.

We
reached my apartment some time later. The moment I opened the door, I was embarrassed by the odor of mustiness and disuse. This apartment that was so accustomed to laughter, discussion and song lay dusty and ignored.

I
led him into my bedroom. He lay down beside me as though this was a natural position that we'd experienced with one another a hundred times before. I told Ethan everything about Karoline and me. From our meeting in childhood to our life in L.A. I told him everything except the end. He used the word suicide, the official word for her death, and commiserated about that terrible experience.

That
first night he left me sleeping, but reappeared the next morning armed with muffins and coffee.

"
I want you to know that I've never done this before," he said. "I mean, become friends with someone involved in one of my investigations. If you are uncomfortable with my being your friend, just tell me."

But
I didn't feel uncomfortable. I felt the opposite. His use of the word friend filled me with a feeling that I recognized as hope.

Later
that morning I reluctantly called Joseph and Vicki to ask about a leave of absence.

"
I know you've been…struggling since Karoline died," Joseph said. "We've been worried, as you know."

Had
I known? Had I seen myself, this fourth-dimensional shimmering of the previous me, at first behaving just slightly off balance, then seeping more fully into the other world? The day Karoline died, the life I knew, the 'me' I knew, went over that balcony with her. I no longer got up from bed eager to start the day. Ultimately, I might no longer have a job.

Slowly
I chased away my parents and most of my acquaintances. My looking glass, heretofore the perfect Magic Mirror, reflected a dazed uncertain face. I stumbled in a fog, unwilling to admit that I was lost. Not until I'd wrecked my car. Not until I'd been publicly humiliated and frightened by my own loss of control.

"
But you're our family, kiddo." This time it was Vicki's soothing voice, thick with emotions that I'd never before heard displayed. "You take as long as you need. Your job will always be here."

"
We'll come see you when you're ready." Joseph had taken the receiver again.

All
I could do in response was weep, a sound they'd never heard from me, the calm and steady one, the fixer, now unable to fix myself.

Thanks
to Karoline's management skills I saved a great deal of money and invested wisely. I now owned the apartment outright, in large part because of Boosha. In a move that both shocked me and compiled my guilt, Karoline bequeathed the place to me in her will. I knew I could live at least a year without working, but I was comforted by the fact that Grace Productions would welcome me back.

These days I feel as though I am traipsing unprepared through a foreign country. I haven't packed. I don't know the language. I don't have the appropriate skills or any of the requisite equipment, but I'm on the journey nevertheless. Not to mention that I have no one at whom I can rage. I am the one who got on the ship and sailed away to unknown shores.

As
the weeks go by, I get to know Ethan Byrne. He exudes a charm and quiet confidence that are captivating. He is completely unaware of his physical shortcomings. Quickly I begin to see the finer side. The layers of color in his eyes. The lopsided grin when he is about to tell a joke. The gracefulness of his hands.

Soon
I don't notice the crooked nose, the unruly hair, the shaggy brows or the too-square chin. Protected by his athletic prowess, the beauty of his eyes, the tenor of his voice and the generosity of his spirit, Ethan grew up knowing that his looks really don't matter. For the first time, oddly enough, I begin a relationship with someone for whom the outside is unimportant. He doesn't fall in love with the long legs, perfect breasts, gorgeous hair and dark eyes. He falls in love with me.