Dream Lover (18 page)
Marie got the creeps thinking about him or any man moving in with her. That was where she had waited for Jack night after night. Plus, she was used to being alone. There was that old escape thing; she could leave his place if she had to but how would she get him out of hers if it didn’t work out? No, she wouldn’t get rid of her apartment.
“Look, I don’t want to decide my fate on the street. Can we go back to the city and discuss this?” Marie asked. “Maybe I spoke too soon. It seems like there are a lot of issues that need to be worked out.” She didn’t add,
I’m not sure I really want to make a commitment to you.
“Let’s get going. I’ll meet you at your place, okay? I can look around and see if it suits me,” she said smiling at him. They parted ways, she going back to her rental car. He wanted her to follow him but that made her too nervous. She hung back on purpose, letting him go ahead of her. Just the thought of living with him suddenly frightened her.
The next day, Marie went back to work. She wasn’t prepared for what Carolyn Zimmerman, her new right hand, had waiting for her. Carolyn was one of the employees who’d arrived with Steve as part of a company merger. Marie had trusted her with a file that came from Jack’s office. Marie had procrastinated working on it all summer, so when Carolyn needed something to do, Marie immediately thought of Jack’s file.
Carolyn had worked on the file diligently for weeks, and when she was finally finished with it, taking a look through the box that had contained all the documents, she found one last item. It was a thick sheath of paper with a list of names. Mostly women’s names. She had intended to give the list to Marie the following day, but Marie didn’t come in. The list sat in her top drawer until Marie returned to the office and called her in for a review of what had happened while she was out.
“Oh! I almost forgot. This was in the file box.” She produced the pile of papers and handed them to Marie.
“What are they?” She thumbed through the papers and in the next moment, knew.
Oh great. Jack’s girlfriends. It had to be.
She felt the heat spreading through her body. “Okay, thanks Carolyn. Let’s wrap up this thing and I’ll take it over to Lang today,” she said, referring to the project that had been Jack’s. “They’ve probably forgotten all about it. This will pay both of our salaries this year.”
She stood up and turned her back, reaching for her purse, dismissing Carolyn. What the hell was she going to do with these names? Not wanting to lose her train of thought, she folded the papers up and stuffed them into her purse. She had a lot of work to catch up on after her exodus earlier in the week. She and Steve had decided to do nothing about their relationship until the weekend; they would avoid each other at work but he wanted to see her tonight and she was looking forward to it. Right now, he was on his way to his doctor’s office to get a blood test. She prayed it would be negative. He had joked to her that morning, “If it’s positive, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.” She wouldn’t be so flip about it, knowing the responsibility she had if his HIV test turned out to be positive.
T
he next morning, Pam decided to forgo the gym and grocery store and putter around her house. She put on capri pants and a sleeveless top that showed off her buff arms and calves. After grabbing a bucket and a pair of gardening gloves, she put her straw hat on and went to the back of the house to pull weeds. She had landscaped the yard herself, deciding where each plant would go, and over the years, selecting them at the garden center in town and hauling them home in the back of her pristine SUV. Every time she went, she imagined Jack coming with her on a Saturday, the two of them wandering around the aisles of plants like other middle-aged couples did.
She never asked him to go, however, because he always planned his weekends to the last second. During the summer months, he golfed and played tennis, or horsed around on the beach with Marie and the kids. During the winter when the garden centers were closed, he would make himself available to her from time to time. What did she do then to engage him? She thought about how year after year he came home to the same silly wife who expected him to enjoy sitting around their house, playing board games and cards with their children. He was probably bored to tears.
But he never said he needed more from her, so how was she to know that change was in order? She thought the same thing she had been thinking for months now: he chose her because she would make it easy for him to continue his bachelor behavior. She wished there was someone who knew the real Jack, someone who could confirm that she hadn’t had anything to do with the way he’d acted. She knew it in theory, but needed that validation from someone who could say,
Jack was born like that
.
Soon her bucket was full of weeds and debris that had blown in from the beach. She went around to the front of the house to dump it in the trashcan. Just as she opened the lid, Detective Andrews pulled up in his unmarked car. Her heart did a little flip-flop. He was here to rescue her from an afternoon of depression, of thinking about Jack the Infidel.
“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” he said cheerfully as he walked from the car to the sidewalk. “Am I interrupting anything?” He held his hands up, palms out, and said, “I know I am supposed to leave you alone, but I couldn’t just drive by and not stop and say hi, could I?” He stopped on the sidewalk, not wanting to infringe on her territory, not sure if she was angry with his decision. She was difficult to read.
Pam stood there for less than a minute, seconds actually, and pictures of Tom and Sandra flew through her mind, and then of Steve Marks humping away on her sister, which brought a giggle to her throat, and then of Nelda and Bernice arguing over a card game. In her imagination, she saw Andy Andrews walking through the local garden center with her, interested in her choices, and then coming back to the house and helping her plant them.
“No you couldn’t just drive by. I would have been hurt. I know I’m not the friendliest woman around, but I do have feelings.” She walked toward him and held out her hand to take his, and the changed her mind. Right there in front of the whole world, she hugged him. He bent down to kiss her, but she backed away. “Before we do that, you need to come in and listen to something I need to tell you. Do you have time now?”
Pam had made the split-second decision that she was going to tell Andy about the AIDS. Let him decide if he wanted any more involvement with her or not. She was finished denying herself love because it had only been months since Jack died. She had evidently died for him a long time ago.
“I can come in. Are you okay?” He held her at arm’s length, looking into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She took his hand and led him through her garage and he chuckled as he looked around. “I hope you don’t expect my garage to look this organized,” he said. Hers was as perfect as the inside of the house—everything in its place, no clutter or junk piled up.
“My husband liked it like this, so I tried to make him happy by keeping it neat. Now I find out that no matter what I did, it wouldn’t have been enough.”
Andy followed her into the house, allowing her to talk without commenting.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the stools around the counter. “I’ll make coffee. I’m sorry about everything, about shutting you out. It’s been a rough summer.” She poured the water into the coffee maker and got the filters and ground coffee out of the cupboard. She wanted to explain herself to him without making excuses for Jack. Or making him look like an evil person. But wasn’t he? She was tired of her loyalty to him. Or maybe it was foolish pride. She was embarrassed about him because of what his behavior said about her. She slid onto a stool next to Andy and looked at him. What should she say that would give her an edge? She would be so sad if he fled the house.
“I’m going to come right out and say it. I have AIDS. My husband gave it to me. They found out when I was in the hospital; evidently, in New York they can test you without your consent if they have reason.” She hadn’t said those words aloud since she had told her sister and her mother about having AIDS. It wasn’t cathartic at all. Her throat hurt, the way it did when she wanted to cry and held it back. She felt awful. She should have told him right away, weeks ago rather than pushing him away from her. “So! There you have it! My dirty little secret. Wow! I feel so much better! I’m glad I don’t have a gun I could put to my head.” Pam got up to go through the motions of making coffee for them both. Andy hadn’t said a word yet; she didn’t know what to expect of him. She stood with her back to him, taking the water pitcher from the fridge and filling the coffee maker with it.
“Pam, I think I’m going to go.” Andy Andrews pushed back from the counter and stood up.
Pam turned around to look at him, her eyes big and round. She was stunned. He was going to leave! She’d spilled her guts and he was leaving.
“I need to think about this for a while. I’ll call you later.” He picked up his keys off the table and walked to her, kissing her on top of her head. “Okay?”
He looked down at her expecting—what? She nodded. Okay.
D
uring times of crisis, people often forget their normal routines and leave what is important behind them. When Pam walked in on Marie and Steve after hearing moaning coming from her bedroom, Steve had just ejaculated. But the surprise of Pam catching them having sex made his erection disappear and his condom full of semen fall off in the bed. Neither one of them had thought to dispose of it; they’d had getting dressed on their minds.
After Andy left, Pam got back to work. She was numb from her confession and the cold reception she’d gotten. She had expected it in theory, but she’d put hope out there instead. Why did she expect him to rally the way Tom and Steve had? There were two ways this could go: she could get into bed and never get out again, or she could go on with her life.
Work was what she needed, physical activity. She went into Marie’s bedroom to take a four pack of toilet paper into her bathroom and scour the tub. That’s when she saw the unmade bed.
“Now that’s just nasty,” she said aloud to no one. She pulled back the bedspread to strip the sheets off the mattress and saw the condom filled with congealed sperm. “Oh my God!” She even jumped back slightly. “What the heck?” She stomped into her pantry and got rubber gloves and plastic grocery bags and went back for the retrieval. She thought of all the allowances she had made for her sister, one thing after another that she had tolerated and forgiven, over and over and over again. But for some reason, this oversight was in the realm of the unforgivable. It was more than gross; it was disrespectful and disgusting. Marie may have crossed a line; she had placed the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Pam was on a rampage. A used condom had pushed her over the edge. Nothing that anyone had done to her so far had made her as angry as this slight. She got rid of the condom, finished stripping the bed, and put clean sheets on it. Not that Marie would be welcomed back. Pam was going to call her after five. With luck, Marie would be home and Pam would have it out with her sister over the phone.
Pam decided to go to the gym to work off some of her aggression so that when she called Marie, the conversation wouldn’t deteriorate. While she was running on the treadmill, she planned what she would say. Telling Marie anything positive never worked. She was so self-absorbed that she felt entitled to that sort of stroking. Pam would try to stick to facts and her feelings and not go off the deep end and comment about her sister’s character, which was nonexistent as far as she was concerned. The longer Pam ran, the angrier she got. Where did Marie get off having that strange guy in the house, anyway? Did Marie think that since she wasn’t screwing Jack in his house, she could do it with other men? This was the kind of talk she would avoid when she confronted Marie.
After she finished at the gym, she went home, had a shower, and got dressed for the evening. She definitely wanted to call Marie and get that off her chest first. She poured herself a glass of wine and went out to the veranda to drink it. She rarely drank anymore, but tonight would be an exception. The sun was just creeping down behind the house. In a few weeks, it would be setting by dinnertime. Time was moving so quickly, and there was nothing anyone could do to slow it down.
Pam finished her wine and went into the house to get her phone. She decided to call Marie from the bedroom. It was cool and shaded in there, and if she sat on her chaise lounge, it would relax her and promote peace. She poured another glass of wine and then did something that she rarely succumbed to; up on the top shelf of the china closet in her dining room, she fished out an ancient pack of Kool menthols. They belonged to Jack, but she was not above sneaking one during times of stress. She was going to light up while she told her sister off. She’d have a good buzz from the smoke and the wine. She took her cigarettes and a vintage plate that she used for an ashtray and went back to her bedroom, locking the door on the remote chance that someone came home.
Who? There is no one,
she reminded herself.
Okay,
she said,
in case her mother made a surprise visit from Manhattan.
She was feeling a little tipsy. It would give her an edge talking to Marie, who could be brutal and hurtful at the drop of a hat. With the cigarette lit and a full wine glass at her side, she dialed her sister’s cell phone number. Marie answered on the first ring.