The Prisoner's Wife (2 page)

Breaking free of Cody's grip, Shawn entered the meeting room. Around its walls were taped messages directing troubled souls toward some higher power. HP, for short. On a central table were books, variations on the 12-step gospel.

Shawn guessed there were twenty people, twenty recovering souls, in the room that night. Around that number: In low light it was hard to see. One or two he recalled, without pleasure; the rest were new to him.

In that comfortless room, the addicts sat on plastic chairs, watching a young Anglo-Indian woman perch on the edge of a table at the front of the room. Shawn saw her eyes flick to him, as he took his seat. They'd met before, at one of these redemptive gatherings. He almost recalled her name.

She told the audience, “My name's Anita. I'm an alcoholic.”

A ragged chorus from the plastic-seated gathering: “Hi, Anita.”

The loudest voice belonged to a bulky guy with a mustache, wild off-white hair, and a jogging suit. Heart sinking, Shawn recalled the guy. Cedric Something. A man who craved attention and paraded his addictions. Both times Shawn had attended, Cedric had recounted an episode—maybe the same episode—in his long-running battle with addiction. Beat the demons one day at a time: That was Cedric's mantra.

“I'm clean,” said Anita. She spoke slowly, tranced. “I mean, what I mean is, I was clean, like three months. Three months, four days. Five days. This time around I was, you know, counting. Marked them on the calendar, even. The days I was clean. I was just so happy.” She paused. “Then what happens? I get a call from my ex. The things he said—I mean—I'm not perfect, I'm not an evil person—he was so—he was so—the things he said—like threatening—said he knows where I live and—he talked about—” She stopped, then said, “I was so, I was like so upset. Afraid. When I get that way, what I do—always—”

There were tissues on the table.

An older white woman in a floral dress, near the front of the group, said, “Anita, okay. Really. It's okay.”

“Bullshit,” said Shawn, to himself. “No way is it okay.”

Shawn remembered this woman, the older woman. She'd shared in the first meeting he'd attended. Escaping, she said, the grip of prescription drugs. Watching her, Shawn believed the addiction. Wasn't so sure about the recovery.

“What I did,” Anita said, “I'm so ashamed, I drove out to the country, found a pub on a back road, never been there before.” She paused, then said, “I mean, no one knew me. Really, no one. Had log fires, this pub. I was going to have just one drink, just the one, make it last, you know? Eat some food, come home—”

Someone in the group—Shawn guessed it was Cedric—laughed, then turned a furious face to those who hushed him.

“I never know,” Anita said. “Never know what it is. Happens every time. I never learn. Minute I have alcohol, somehow, I send out some kind of signal—I don't know, it's like turning up a thermostat. The heat. I don't know, I conjure up guys, wouldn't look at me if I was on the street, shopping, walking, whatever.” She rubbed her eyes. “I know I wouldn't look at them. I had this double vodka, straight, rocks, that's the one I allow myself, I'm just sitting there in a dark corner, hiding away, not checking out anyone, this guy appears from nowhere. I mean, he wasn't even
in
the bar when I got to the place, don't think he was.”

Shawn could see it right there. He knew the scene well. Tribeca, Georgetown, Sussex—same sexual dance, same sad seductions. Now Anita. Even sober, even in go-to-work clothes, she had a darkness, a subterranean sexuality that got his attention every time. He'd spent years on that scent.

*   *   *

It was basic with AA meetings, rule one, they weren't pickup places. Shawn had never hit on Anita, or any other woman in the rooms. Then again, he was new to this recovery gig. He'd thought about a pickup. Of course he had. Down the line, maybe—but tonight?

Anita was weeping now. The room was quiet. “We were drinking,” she said. “This guy. I took him home. I—we—I mean—” She stood, pushing herself up off the table. “And I'd worked so hard. Like, I'd been clean for months.” Someone slid toward her the half-empty box of man-sized tissues. “That's, I mean, that's all, that's all I want to say right now, but thank you for—”

Another ragged chorus: “Thank you, Anita. Thank you for your chair”—an expression that had puzzled Shawn the first time he came to one of these coffee-bar meetings. Her
chair
?

Cedric, the man who'd laughed, stood on tiptoe, mouth open, ready to speak.

Instead Anita, her breathing slower, pointed at Shawn. “I'd like Shawn to share.”

Snap. She remembered his name.

Cedric, put out, sat slowly down. Shawn bent his head. This was a moment he'd hoped to avoid. The three English meetings he'd been to, he'd listened to others tell their histories—alcohol, drugs, sex—all, it seemed, in miniature, scaled down for England. This odd little island.

He hadn't yet spoken, and hoped he'd never have to. Now they watched him. Waiting.

Anita found a seat at the end of his row. “Go,” she said.

Shawn wouldn't, couldn't, stand. He said, “My name's Shawn. I'm American. I guess you hear that. Born in Alabama. Been living in England a while. Unemployed.” That was the easy part.

Another chorus: “Hi, Shawn.”

“I'm an alcoholic.” Silence. Waiting. “I'm not what you call clean. I'm still drinking. Less than I did. Still, too much. You know what they say—eases the pain.”

Again, silence, in which Shawn felt undercurrents of feeling. Among the saved, a soul impenitent; a man without strength.

“I'm also a sex addict.”

In the shadows, someone sighed.

“I didn't know that term,” Shawn said. “If I'd heard it a couple of years back, I would've laughed. I mean, I thought that's what you did. Like, excuse the language—I thought, if you're a man—survival of the fittest—you go tomcatting around, grab whatever tail's out there. Meet someone hot, a girl gets your attention, hey, do your damnedest, get her into bed.” He paused, then said, “Actually, with me, not that simple. Looking back a couple of years, I'm telling myself, whoa, boy, enough already. I'd gotten married to a woman I always wanted to be married to. Took me twenty-some years to do it. When I put a ring on her finger, I figured she was all I'd need—why'n hell would I go chasing some other broad? But we're addicts here, you know how it is. I didn't stop. I slowed down, didn't stop. I guess—someone told me—that's what addiction is. You want to stop, and you don't stop. It's not easy. You do it that one last time, and it's never the last time.” He was quiet awhile, then said, “Now, my wife's gone. I can't tell her I'm sorry.” He stopped, took a breath. “I think that's all I want to say.”

A momentary pause, then the chorus: “Thank you, Shawn. Thank you for sharing.”

Cedric was on his feet, taking his chance, telling the group he'd been eleven months clean. Shawn stood. Moving quietly, he left the room. He hoped no one would notice. As he crossed the darkened coffee bar he saw Anita had followed him out.

She said, “It's okay, getting out. Really. I know how you feel. Stupid Cedric—we call him One Year Clean—”

“Why's that?”

“New Year's Day,” Anita said, “he relapses. Starts over. I hear that one more time, I swear, I'll physically—you know.” She waited a moment, then said, “I'm glad you shared.”

“Me, too.”

“Must have been hard.”

Shawn shrugged. “I guess, like lots of things. First time's the worst.”

Anita was standing close to him. He could smell her perfume. No alcohol tonight. Patchouli, at a guess. His first wife, Lala, wore patchouli. At times, at home, it was all she wore.

“You were good,” Anita said. “You know what they say—that's what helps. Speaking up.”

He took her hands in his. “Works if you work it.”

She said, “Can I buy you a coffee? Some place that's not here?”

Shawn thought it over. Considered the temptation. Knew how it would end.

After a few moments, he said, “Rain check?”

She nodded yes.

He felt a need to apologize. “I live—it's this, you know, village out on the hills—”

“Felbourne.”

So she'd checked his address.

“—kind of a long drive back home. Cat to feed.”

Eight bedrooms, all empty.

“Shawn,” she said, “it's all right. It's okay. Another time.”

Sober, single, sad, Shawn thought later, as he steered Martha's little Merc down unlit country lanes toward an empty rectory in an English hamlet. That's what he'd come to.

There were times—and this was one—when he wondered if that was all he had left.

 

3

WEST SUSSEX, MIDDAY, 18 MAY 2004

On a late spring afternoon in West Sussex, a chauffeur, a Scot whose graying sideburns matched his skin, slowed his master's Lexus to avoid a flock of guinea fowl. Farther up the single lane of pitted blacktop he passed a sheepdog, three bantams, two cock pheasants bred to be shot, a skein of moorhen chicks, and islets of horse dung. He was not a man at ease with country roads.

The chauffeur parked on a verge outside the churchyard of St. Perpetua, where Shawn's wife and the village gamekeeper were recently buried.

Across the lane was a long-windowed mansion, its facade thick with jasmine and rambling rose. A weathered sign on its northern wall read
FELBOURNE OLD RECTORY
.

After exchanging words with the veiled woman in the car's backseat, a Pakistani businessman named Ayub Abbasi stepped delicately into the lane. Though the thoroughfare was empty, Abbasi looked to his left and his right, then back at the graveyard.

Middle-aged and plump, conscious of his appearance, he wore a dark Italian suit and Italian shoes, free of metalwork.

Down the lane stood the gamekeeper's daughter, watching. She whistled beneath her breath. Posh people.

Carrying a crocodile-skin valise, Abbasi entered the garden of the rectory opposite. There he paused, checking his watch, a Patek Philippe. His father, the high court judge, had once told him Rolex was for gangsters.

He inhaled a heavy scent that he recognized, with pleasure, as summer jasmine.

Moments later, the chauffeur heard, close at hand, first one rifle shot, then a second. By the time he was out of the car, looking into the garden, his employer was nowhere to be seen.

Within the grounds of the rectory, Ayub Abbasi pushed open a loosely hinged wooden door on which blue paint was peeling. He entered a walled garden and stood, his back to sun-warmed bricks, watching a tall American level a laser-sighted M-24 U.S. Army–issue sniper rifle. He aimed at a pear tree espaliered against the garden's far wall. His first shot had atomized a wasp-bitten pear on the left side of the tree, above the level of the wall.

Abbasi applauded discreetly. Though he himself carried no weapons, he appreciated expertise, in any field.

“Mr. Maguire,” he said.

Shawn emptied a round from the rifle's chamber and came across the garden. He wondered, as he often did these days, if his visitor wore a wire.

“Abbasi,” he said. “You found me.”

Without speaking, Ayub Abbasi crossed the lawn to a slate-roofed summerhouse. He opened his valise and placed two bundles of hundred-dollar bills in the center of a cast-iron table, weighing them down with a chrome-plated garden trowel. “Down payment.”

“For what, exactly?” Shawn asked.

“Don't spend it all in one place,” Abbasi said. “I heard that somewhere.”

“I won't be spending it anyplace, except the bank,” Shawn said. He raised a level hand. “Debts up to here.”

Abbasi surveyed the estate. “An odd place for a man from Alabama. A rectory. Last time we met, you were out of D.C., were you not? Manhattan maybe. Nowhere like this.”

Shawn glanced at the money on the table, estimating its amount. It should clear some of his overdraft. It was like that all through the marriage. Martha had money; Shawn had debts.

He made a comprehensive gesture, taking in the rectory and its land. “Martha bought it. Came a time she wanted old England, not New England. A place in the country.” He pointed. “Her grandmother was born down that lane. So she said. Poacher's kid.”

Abbasi still considered the house. “Your wife lived here—she died here?” Shawn nodded. “I am sorry. You remember, I met her. Intriguing woman. Married to someone else at the time, was she not?”

“We both were.”

“She was buried in Boston?”

Shawn pointed across the lane, beyond the Lexus, to the tree-shaded churchyard. “Martha's there.”

For a time Abbasi was silent. Then he asked, “If it is not an awkward question, did your wife understand the business you were in? If she knew, did she approve?”

“Yes to the first,” Shawn said. “No to the second. She never came out with it, but she hated the work. Spying, interrogation, all that shit. Made me rethink some things.”

“She knew about, what do they call it? Terminations?”

“Not a place I want to go,” Shawn said. “Put it this way. I have regrets.”

Looking across to the churchyard, Shawn recalled Martha's energy. She was full of surprises. In Manhattan, he'd come home to find her ready to Rollerblade in the park or head for a gallery down among the meatpackers. She threw surprise parties for Shawn's daughter, Juanita, until Juanita was reborn, in a Berkeley church, as a Taoist of the seventh life. Juanita visited with her father and his new wife. She apologized for evil thoughts she might have directed toward them; she said there were many. She promised she would never, in this incarnation, trouble them again.

Martha had laughed and cried, driven her stepdaughter to Newark Airport, and kissed her good-bye. This was years back. Still hard for Shawn to believe that all Martha's energy—her laughter and her tears—was buried there, in the shadowy churchyard of St. Perpetua.