The Coach House (16 page)
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t remember her.”
How can he not remember her? She was a foot taller than her husband, and based on the conflicting way they were dressed, they didn’t look like they belonged together.
Richard was about to start the car when he said, “I forgot my hat in the restaurant. Wait here.” Marie didn’t remember him leaving the house with a hat. After ten minutes, she walked to the other side of the car where she could see the entrance of the restaurant. There was Richard, talking to Guido. She stood in the nighttime shadows of the parking lot and watched them talk, their gesticulations signifying a lively discussion. She slipped back into their car when Richard headed her way.
“No hat?”
“No, it was gone when I got there. They’re going to call me if it shows up.”
“What did Guido have to say?”
He shot her a glance. “Nothing important. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Is that his real name?”
“Guido? I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was laced with irritation. “Why the sudden interest in Guido?”
“Nothing really. I was just…”
“Well, I suggest you stop worrying about nothing…dear.”
They drove the rest of the way home in silence. Marie went to their bedroom to change into her nightgown. When she came out, Richard’s office door was closed, but light streamed out from underneath it. She tried not to let his work at home bother her, but it did.
After watching Kraft Television Theater alone, a program she and Richard had discussed watching together, Marie climbed the stairs to their bedroom. The light was still on in Richard’s office.
“So what time did you come to bed last night?” she asked him the next morning.
“Late. Why?”
She continued with making her breakfast without looking up. “Busy working?”
“Right.”
“Well, you missed a good movie. I think we’re going to like these Kraft shows.”
“Yeah? What was it about?”
“It was about this woman who didn’t want this other woman to marry her brother, so she locked her in their…”
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said halfway out of the kitchen.
Marie finished breakfast alone.
Marie turned twenty-two in New York. It was June, and the weather was perfect, seventy-four degrees, sunny, and calm. She and Richard strolled up and down Fifth Avenue, holding hands, stopping in stores along the way. They were eating lunch when he told her he had made a spa appointment for her at their hotel.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Shop for your present, of course!”
He had ordered the works for her—massage, manicure, pedicure, steam bath, hair wash, and style. It was close to dinnertime when she returned to the hotel room. Soon there was a knock at the door. “Who is it?”
“Room service, madam.”
The waiter rolled in a cart with cheese, fruit, and champagne. She was about to have some cheese when she remembered she had taken off her earrings in the beauty salon and had forgotten them there. She left the room and headed toward the salon, walking through the corridor overlooking the interior of the hotel and peering over the railing at the splendor of the lobby from five floors up. She leaned over the railing to get a better look.
Is that Richard?
He was talking to another man at the far edge of the lobby. Then he shook hands with the man and walked in her direction. Not wanting him to know she saw him, she dashed back to the room.
Or maybe I should let him know I saw him so I can hear another one of his cooked-up stories.
Wanting to believe it was just someone he knew that he bumped into, she kept quiet.
Richard entered their room just as she was hanging up the phone. “Who was that?”
“I left my earrings at the salon. They’re going to bring them to the front desk so I can pick them up on our way out tonight.”
They broke open the champagne and nibbled on cheese and fruit before going to the Ritz Carlton for dinner. When they returned to the hotel room, Richard presented her with a familiar blue box. She opened it, and finding it empty, looked up at him in surprise.
“I spent hours at Tiffany’s. I must have looked at everything they had in the store and just couldn’t decide. We’ll go back there tomorrow before the show, and you can pick something out.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Is that okay, sweetheart?”
“Sure.” He never had any trouble buying her things from there before.
The next day, Richard ordered room service for breakfast, and they stayed in the room all morning. In the early afternoon, they walked to Tiffany’s to buy her present. It didn’t take her long to pick out a diamond XOXO bracelet set in platinum, one she had admired in the past. Given Richard’s excellent memory, she was surprised he hadn’t picked it out for her earlier when he shopped.
That is, if he really did spend hours in Tiffany’s looking for my gift.
That evening, they saw
Finian’s Rainbow,
an entertaining musical filled with Irish ballads, gospel, and political satire.
Richard hummed the music while they walked back to their room.
How are things in Glocca Morra?
Is that little brook still leaping there?
Does it still run down to Donny cove?
Through Killybegs, Kilkerry and Kildare?
“Did you enjoy your birthday, Mrs. Marchetti?” he asked her in bed later that night.
“Mm-hm.”
“And how are things in Glocca Morra this fine day?” he asked her in a pathetic Irish accent. He rolled toward her and ran his fingers quickly down the curves of her body. The feel of his nakedness against hers was electric. Her body swelled with his touch, silently begging for more.
“You tell me, Mr. Marchetti.” Her whisper-soft moan she let escape signaled she was ready for him.
* * *
On October 5, 1947, President Truman made the first televised presidential address from the White House. “Being president is like riding a tiger. You have to keep on riding or be swallowed,” he said in his speech. He talked about the continuing post-war economic conditions and the hostile international environment.
As Marie drove to work, she thought about Truman’s remarks. She, too, had to keep riding the tiger. She thought back to the previous night, the reason she was so tired.
Richard was in Milwaukee. She had gotten up to use the bathroom and was distracted by a loud thud coming from across the street. She looked out the window at Brian Murphy, their cop neighbor, lifting a large black bag from the back end of a pickup truck. She watched him drag it down his driveway to the back of his house. When he reappeared in front, he walked to the long black limo that had just pulled up. He stooped down to speak with whoever was in the back seat, and then signaled the driver of the pickup truck to move on. The limo followed, and the cop retreated into his house.
Not able to make any sense out of the cop’s actions, Marie retreated to her bedroom where she casually looked out the back window. A dark figure walked through the shadows of their backyard. She jumped out of view and waited a few seconds before peeking out again. Whoever it was, was gone.
She suspected the two incidents were related, and she suspected Richard was either involved or at least knew what was going on. She didn’t mention either one to Richard when he returned. Instead, she decided to test him.
“Someone came to our front door last night, but I was just getting out of the shower and couldn’t answer it in time. But I did see the man walking away from our house with a large black sack of some kind go to Brian’s house.”
Richard didn’t say anything.
“So when I saw Brian outside his house this morning, I walked over to him and asked him he had accepted a delivery for us. He said he didn’t, which seemed odd.” When Richard still didn’t say anything, she took it further. “But he did introduce me to his girlfriend, and he mentioned that you guys talked about the four of us spending a weekend up at his cottage next month.”
There had, in fact, been no such conversation, and she didn’t know if Brian even had a girlfriend or a cottage for that matter.
“Uh…yeah. Weird about the package. Maybe the deliveryman realized he had the wrong address.” He started to leave the room.
“So what about Brian’s cottage?”
“Um…we did talk about that come to think about it. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it to you. Is that something you’d like to do?”
Her stomach lurched. “Sure.” She turned away to hide her face, which suddenly felt flushed.
He lied when he didn’t have to. Why would he do that? Force of habit? Why would you go along with something that made no seme?
It was one thing to withhold things from her, but lying took it to another level in Marie’s mind.
Marie debated with herself whether to confront Richard about the lie. She wondered why he hadn’t confronted
her
about it. Certainly he had talked to Brian in the days that followed and discovered she made the whole thing up, but that didn’t happen, and that made her even more nervous.
Attempting to put the incident behind her, she looked forward to getting together with her co-workers after work for a baby shower. Right before noon, she realized she had left the shower gift on the kitchen counter and went home on her lunch hour to retrieve it. She parked her car in front of their house and let herself in the front door.
Richard, Brian from across the street, and two men in dark suits and slicked-back hair were sitting in their living room. One of them reached to his side when she opened the front door and then kept his hand hidden beneath his jacket. There were three stacks of bills on the coffee table and several small packages wrapped in brown paper. The room reeked of cigar smoke and even thicker disquietude.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
Before she could say or see any more, Richard rushed to her side. He took her firmly by the arm and whisked her into the kitchen.
“Richard, let go of me. You’re hurting my arm.”
He ignored her plea and gently pushed her up against the counter. The veins in his neck bulged out. “Can’t you see I’m doing business here, sweetheart?” he said in a low soft voice barely moving his lips.
“What are you doing?”
He gave her a slight shove. “Stay put.”
As she sunk down in one of the kitchen chairs, she heard him apologize for his wife’s unexpected appearance and suggest they break for lunch and reconvene in an hour. The three men left the apartment laughing.
When he returned to the kitchen, she had her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.
“What are
you
upset about?” he shouted. “It’s
me
who should be upset. You’ve not only embarrassed me, but you may have jeopardized a very important meeting!”
Marie raised her head slowly and looked directly at him. Her words were calm, slow, and deliberate. “Richard, I just came home to pick up something I forgot this morning. I didn’t know you were holding a business meeting, if that’s what you want to call it. And being this is my home as well, I would like to know what exactly is in all those packages on our coffee…”
“That’s none of your business. Look, next time you decide to come home in the middle of the goddamn day, call me first.” With that, he left the kitchen.
Marie sat rigid in the chair, mindlessly staring straight ahead, the baby shower gift sitting on the counter three feet in front of her a complete blur. She took in a deep breath, grabbed the gift, and quietly slipped out the side door. She felt his eyes boring into her as she got into her car and pulled away.
She watched the road and surroundings as though seeing it through someone else’s eyes as she drove, almost losing her bearings several times along the way. She knew she had to do something in response to the incident but wasn’t sure what. She couldn’t let him get away with his secret activities any more, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to treat her the way he just did.