The Realm of Last Chances (25 page)

She asked if he could send her a brief account of what had happened. “An e-mail,” she said, “would be fine.”

“Gladly,” he replied. “He’ll be getting the sack, I take it?”

“I don’t have the final decision, but I can’t foresee any other outcome.”

“Well, that’s quite wonderful.”

“Mr. Blatchford—”

“Julian.”

“Julian. Do you have any idea what prompted him to do something so stupid? He seems like an intelligent man. He has a fine education and speaks a number of different languages. He decided to become an academic, but he could just as easily have pursued a career as a translator, a diplomat, I don’t know what else. There had to have been all kinds of options, at least in the beginning.”

He laughed. “Do you ever listen to the country singer Hank Williams?”

“Not really. My husband plays his music sometimes, though.”

“Well, ask him to play ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ Therein lies the answer. Robert simply has the heart of a cheater. Doing things normally would most likely bore him to death, so he becomes a midnight man. But you know Williams’s final word on such behavior, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Sooner or later,” Blatchford said, “ ‘your cheatin’ heart will tell on you.’ ”

She climbed out of bed, stepped into her slippers and shrugged on her robe. She might as well get going. That guy Dave was coming over this morning for another mandolin lesson. Cal had actually begun calling him “my friend,” and while Kristin was happy he’d found one, the phrase sounded so strange on his lips that it made her feel unsettled.

In the kitchen, he was sitting at the table with the
Globe
spread out before him, next to his coffee mug. “Hey,” she said. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you,” he said, “dear.”

He’d begun using the term lately, and it troubled her. Whatever else Cal might be, he wasn’t expressive unless he had an instrument in hand. She walked over to the counter, poured herself a cup of coffee, then split an English muffin and popped it in the toaster. “What’s the news?” she asked.

“The worst thing so far is that somebody in Lawrence murdered his pregnant girlfriend because they disagreed about the baby’s name.” He read her part of the account, in which the Essex County district attorney concluded, “She insisted the name be hyphenated, and he was opposed.”

She lifted the top off the butter dish. “That’s horrific.”

“Well, folks can go crazy over a lot of things. Names being one.” Laying the paper aside, he asked if she had any special plans for the day.

She carried her coffee and her muffin to the table and sat down. They were supposed to have Thanksgiving next door at Vico’s, along with Dave and his wife and another guy, and since she’d agreed to bring dessert she told Cal she thought she’d drive up to the Whole Foods in Andover and do some grocery shopping.

“You’d better get going,” he said. “It’ll be a madhouse later.” She agreed and, once she finished her breakfast, went back upstairs, took a shower and got dressed.

She hadn’t driven much since they moved here. The unmarked streets and aggressive drivers made her reluctant to, but she knew she’d have to adjust to both if they stayed. The Volvo sounded sluggish when she started it, so she sat in the driveway awhile, letting it rev up a little, then finally backed out.

The deli stood at the intersection of East Border Road and Main Street. Waiting at the traffic light, she glanced through the plate glass, hoping to spot Matt, but too many customers were in line. He said you’d be surprised how many people opted for sliced turkey to avoid the trouble of roasting a whole bird.
When she asked if he had plans for Thanksgiving, he told her he’d be spending it at his boss’s home. They invited him every year, he said, but until now he’d turned them down. When she wondered why, he said, “Because I had nothing to be thankful for. Just a lot to regret.”

Both of them had begun talking about the future as if it didn’t preclude their present behavior. In her rational moments, she knew the affair couldn’t continue. Sooner or later, Vico or Dave would see her climbing out of Matt’s car and tell Cal. Or someone else—a caretaker, a policeman—would discover their sanctuary and, in the best scenario, change the locks on Penelope Hill’s house. In the worst case, they might find themselves in jail.

Once Cal learned her secret, what he would do was anybody’s guess. She could imagine him leaving in the middle of the night, disappearing from her life forever, but she could also see him walking down the street, kicking in Matt’s door and beating him to a pulp. Even before he prevented the robbery at the convenience store, she’d known he was capable of violence if pushed far enough. You could just tell he had it in him, and over the years this had given her a sense of security that now seemed perverse.

The traffic on Route 28 wasn’t bad yet, and she reached Andover in just under thirty minutes. The parking lot at Whole Foods was already crowded, but she found a spot near the rear of the store and went inside.

She’d decided to bake a simple apple cake. She could still see the recipe, in Sarah Connulty’s surprisingly elegant script, on an index card; her mother’s best friend had collected these in a three-ring binder and presented them to her before she left for Case Western. What had happened to that little book Kristin no longer knew, but she’d cooked out of it for years, and no one loved the results more than Philip Harrington.

Unlike the Whole Foods she’d shopped at in California, the Andover store was strangely configured. Upon entry, you
stepped straight into the produce department, where tables set against one another at odd angles were bracketed by vegetable coolers. If the goal was to create a massive traffic jam, it was a great success, and it took her several minutes to get close enough to the apples to select four nice-sized organic Granny Smiths. After that she picked up a carton of eggs and, just to be on the safe side, five-pound bags of sugar and flour. Then she bagged eight ounces of chopped walnuts and an equal amount of raisins. Finally, she went to the butcher’s counter and ordered a duck and some grass-fed beef chuck, thinking that on Saturday she might make a pot roast.

All six checkout stands were staffed today, but the line at each was eight or nine customers deep. The store had a café, so even though she didn’t really need another cup of coffee, she decided to have one. If the situation didn’t improve in a few minutes, she’d line up like everyone else. She ordered a latte, then pulled her cart over to the only unoccupied table, sat down and began to sip her drink.

Cal once told her she was unobservant. He didn’t mean it as a criticism, though it sounded like one. He said it when they were driving by a neighbor’s house in California and she noted that the shake roofing had been replaced by tiles. “They did that about five years ago,” he said, then remarked that she often saw things without actually
seeing
them.

The washed-out blonde had been standing in front of the espresso machine for some time, part of the background detail. But to toss her empty paper cup into the trash, Kristin had to walk past her, and that was when she realized it was Gwendolyn Conley.

She paused at the exact instant the barista placed a drink on the counter in front of Conley, who wrapped her hand around the insulating sleeve and turned around, now facing her directly, giving Kristin no chance to get rid of her cup and walk away as fast as she could.

After a few awkward seconds, Kristin asked, “Are your kids here with you?”

Conley’s face was naturally pale. If she’d ever had a California tan, no trace remained. “My kids?” she said. “No. They’re with their father for the holiday. Why do you ask?”

When Kristin dropped her cup into the bin, her hand was shaking. She realized she couldn’t conceal it, so she didn’t bother trying.

erlend withdrew his arm.
He said nothing, and so Kristin walked quietly away and climbed into bed. Her heart thudded hollowly and hard against her ribs. Now and then she cast a glance at her husband. He had turned his back to her, slowly taking off one garment after the other. Then he came over and lay down
.

Kristin waited for him to speak. She waited so long that her heart seemed to stop beating and just stood still, quivering in her breast
.

But Erlend didn’t say a word. And he didn’t take her into his arms
.

At last he hesitantly placed his hand on her breast and pressed his chin against her shoulder so that the stubble of his beard prickled her skin. When he still said nothing, Kristin turned over to face the wall
.

Matt laid the book on the floor next to his recliner. He’d just begun the second volume of
Kristin Lavransdatter
, which from the very start had made him edgy, possibly because of the character’s first name or maybe due to its problematic title,
The Wife
.

He lifted his empty coffee cup and walked into the kitchen. Ten thirty on Thanksgiving morning, and he hadn’t seen her since Tuesday. Usually, all he had to do was get through a weekend, but now he’d embarked on a stretch of six days in which he couldn’t hope for anything more than a random sighting. If he’d gone to work, it might have been easier to pass the time, but Frankie always closed the deli on Thanksgiving and didn’t reopen until the following Monday. He needed those days off, he said, to lie on the couch and watch football.

Matt stood the cup in the sink alongside dirty dishes from last night’s dinner. The deli had stayed open until eight to fill
special orders, so it was almost ten when he finally got home and made
pasta alla puttanesca
, using a recipe Carla had taught him. Though it was something he loved having at least a couple times a month, by then his appetite had deserted him.

He’d tried to read after giving up on dinner, but every few minutes he kept walking over to the window, pulling the curtain aside and peeking out. The lights in Kristin’s bedroom were still on at eleven thirty, but a little before midnight the room went dark. When that happened, he turned his own light off and pressed his face against the cold pane. Then he turned the light back on, whipped out his cell and wrote text messages to both of his daughters, wishing them a happy Thanksgiving and saying he looked forward to seeing them on Saturday. In reality, he all but wished they weren’t coming. After their previous visit they’d told their mom that he seemed a lot happier than he’d been in ages, that the house was clean and he’d fixed the shower faucet, and this prompted her to stun him with the first e-mail she’d sent him since marrying Nowicki.
Sounds like your life has taken a turn for the better. I can only guess what that might mean. But I’m happy for you, Matt. Clue me in when the time comes?
This weekend, he’d probably act so gloomy that Angie and Lexa would go home and tell Carla he was as miserable as ever.

He had a hard time understanding what had happened to him. During those afternoons at the bar in North Reading, when he and Kristin drank their martinis and talked, he’d sometimes felt a tightness in his chest. It wasn’t pleasant, nor was it exactly unpleasant. He knew perfectly well what it meant: a new feeling existed where none had for a long time, and it needed a little space. When that opened up, and then got filled up, his chest could go back to feeling normal. If he’d been forced to bestow a name on this new sensation, it would not have been “love,” though that’s what he called it when he wrote Kristin that long e-mail.

The first time they went to bed together at Penny Hill’s, he’d expected reticence from her, even embarrassment. Yet after drawing the curtains shut, she felt for the light switch and flipped it on. While he stood there shivering in his underwear, the sweats in a ball at his feet, she pulled her top off, reached around behind herself and unhooked her bra. It fell to the floor and then she stepped out of the pants, and to his amazement she wore nothing underneath. The whole time she held his gaze. “Well,” she said, her arms at her sides, her long, slim fingers grazing her thighs, “what do you think?”

His voice failed. He knew he ought to say something, but he couldn’t find any words. She turned sideways, letting him study her profile. Her breasts were still firm and full, and she had only the trace of a belly. “I’m asking,” she said, “because I would guess this is the first time you’ve ever seen a fifty-year-old woman naked.”

He stepped out of his underwear, then moved toward her and wrapped his arms around her from behind, his fingers locking just above her navel. He smelled a hint of fragrance. “I haven’t made love in a long time,” he said.

“I haven’t either,” she told him. “All I’ve done is have sex. But very little of it.”

He’d thought that was what they were going to do that night, that two people who liked each other would share pleasure in a bed belonging to the city of Montvale. Maybe it would happen once, even twice, maybe ten times or more. As long as it was nice and they didn’t get caught, what was the harm?

He flicked off the light and held her hand as they stepped toward the canopied four-poster. The coverlet was dusty—when he pulled it back, she sneezed. She crawled in first, then he lay down beside her and tugged the sheet over their shoulders. “You might think I’ve done this before,” he said, “but I haven’t.”

“It’s patently clear that you haven’t.”

She said nothing else, leaving room for the obvious question, so even though he already knew the answer, he asked it. “What about you?”

“This is the one thing I always promised myself I would never do.”

“So we’re both rookies. We’ll probably botch it.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, then reached between his legs and began to stroke him.

That this had happened only six weeks ago now seemed impossible. Or that he’d make it through Thanksgiving at Frankie’s, then somehow survive tomorrow when almost everyone else would either be watching college football or using pepper spray on one another in the crush at Best Buy. And that on Saturday and Sunday he’d be playing father to his daughters, looking for a movie to take them to before ushering them into LA Fitness on guest passes, followed by dinner at Montvale Pizza—trying the whole time to convince them of his newfound contentment, so they wouldn’t have to worry about their dad. It felt like Monday was years away, not just four days.