The Pocket Wife (5 page)

“So is he around much these days?”

“Not really. Why?”

“I just . . . I was thinking we could all get together, but then I— Sometimes I forget she's gone.”

Dana stares at him, at the way he fidgets with the objects in his hands, his slinky, half-crazed eyes. He's acting very weird, although, really, he always seemed to her a little off. Still, the husband is often a prime suspect in a murder like Celia's. She remembers this from many late-night
Law & Order
reruns, and she reminds herself that stereotypes exist for a reason. She wonders how much Ronald knows about his probable cuckolding. If he's found the photo in the phone, he's also found the almost certain cluster of calls to and from Peter. Has Ronald pushed his fat little thumb down on Peter's name—or possibly a simple “P” for the sake of clandestiny—and reached Peter's answering machine? Has Ronald started putting two and two together? Is he on some sort of mission to avenge his dead wife? Dana looks away. She avoids his eyes, hard and scanning, always scanning—the aisles, her face, scanning, scanning, scanning. He seems out of control. He seems slightly crazy. She studies the contents of her shopping cart, fiddles with her purse strap. “Will there be a service?”

Ronald shakes his head. “We can't do anything until they finish the”—he takes a deep breath—“the autopsy. Here,” he says, and he hands her a business card.

“Thanks.” Dana drops it into her bag. “You'll let me know, then?”

“Sure thing,” he says, which Dana thinks is a totally odd thing
for him to say, all things considered. Or possibly it's the cheery way he says it, the inanely pedophilic items he's sticking on the conveyer belt.

“These yours, ma'am?” The cashier holds up a box of carob-covered animal crackers and a rubber duck.

“Umm . . . no,” Dana says.

“They're mine.” Ronald moves closer. “My stepchildren—” he starts to say, but Dana swipes her debit card, reaches for her receipt, and picks up her bags.

“Ronald,” she says, “do you by any chance have Celia's cell phone with you?”

“What,” he says, “here?”

Dana nods.

“No,” he says. “I left it back in my room. Why? Why do you ask?” He turns toward her, and his face is red in the natural-childbirth lighting of the Root Seller. He looks like someone else for a minute; he looks like a stranger. Confrontational, like a road-rager pulling alongside her on the highway.

“I'd like to look at her photos.”

He scrunches up his face; his eyes are tiny circles, like drills boring. He opens his mouth to answer, but then he snaps it shut, leaving a small, slightly boozy bubble in the air between them. “Do you have my key?”

“Yes. God! Here.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out an overloaded key ring. The colorful braided attachment Jamie made in eighth grade swings madly as she struggles to free Ronald's key. “I forgot I had this,” she says, thrusting it toward him.

He frowns. “You sure about that? I—” But before he can go on, Dana grabs her bags.

“Bye,” she calls out, and disappears through the automatic doors, nearly running across the parking lot. It will push her over the edge if she has to spend another minute with Ronald, who is clearly now an angry, scary man, probably a millisecond
from accusing her of breaking into his house the night Celia died. The bigger issue is how he knows this. Was he inside, squatting by a couch or flattened under a bed as she streaked, clueless, through the house? The thought makes her shiver. From her car she watches him walking through the parking lot, clutching his small cloth bag with
THE ROOT SELLER
lettered in red across the outside, with the duck's bill caught on the top and the rubber face of his purchase peeking out like a tiny spy. As she watches, secure behind sunglasses that cover half her face, Ronald pauses to stare at her car across the sea of asphalt, shaking his head and appearing to point toward her before he aims his key repeatedly in the direction of the already winking taillights of his car.

Dana sits in the Toyota, trying to see the insides of her purse from Ronald's perspective. His purchases
—
the animal crackers and the rubber duck—weren't the sorts of things a desperate man would buy in lieu of bread. So it definitely wasn't money he was after, fumbling through her wallet in the pasta aisle. Pictures, she thinks. Of course. Ronald was looking for a picture of Peter. But why did he stare at her so strangely, push-buttoning his car locks so many times the taillights flashed like Times Square? She jams the Toyota into drive and crawls out of the parking lot. For the first time in several days, she moves slowly, the car's wheels barely turning on the burning black of the asphalt. She wants to put as much distance as possible between her car and Ronald's.

Up ahead, traffic is nearly stopped, and Dana feels herself lifting off from her front seat to float above the other cars. She feels her arms move out from her sides, allowing her to hover in midair for a moment, looking for the source of trouble on the road ahead. “Stop it,” she mumbles. “Get it together, Dana.” She inhales deeply and switches on the radio. On NPR an author is discussing his new book. “The absolute worst is when everyone else knows but you,”
the author says, and Dana feels a chill go up her spine. She stabs at the radio, pushing the same button over and over in her panic, in her need to stop the voice. “Everybody knows,” the author mumbles as she finds the right button. “It's always best to face what you've done.”

B
e careful on the way back,” Dana says after dinner when the barbecue pit is lined with doused embers and Jamie's Nissan putters in the driveway. Above them dark clouds streak toward Boston. “Take your time.”

Jamie nods. “I will.”

“It looks stormy going north.” She glances at the bag of cookies she's stuck on top of his backpack and a few books Jamie grabbed from his bedroom. She'll tell him later when he calls. “Take a look on top of your bag,” she'll tell him. “I left something there for you. Your favorite—oatmeal chocolate chip!” She's done this ever since the summer he was nine and traveled to Nebraska with Peter's sister; it's become a tradition. “I'm planning to have a brunch this coming Sunday,” she says, “for the neighbors. For Ashby Lane,” an idea that has only now popped into her head. “I'd love it if you came.”

“I don't think so. Thanks, though,” Jamie says, and he adjusts the rearview mirror but doesn't leave. He motions her closer, and when she leans over the car window, bending her ear to his lips, he whispers, “Are you sure you're all right, Mom? You seem a little—”

“Tense,” she says, backing away a step or two. “It's just the . . . killing happening so close to us, to someone I—”

“Maybe you should go see that doctor in Manhattan.”

“I know,” she says. “Maybe I'll go this week,” and Jamie nods.

They stay that way for a minute, motionless, the car idling on the hot pavement until finally Peter thumps the roof of the Nissan with the flat of his hand. “Drive safely, son,” he says. “Call us when you get into Boston.” The car slides back toward the street, and Dana looks up at the dark gray of the clouds, sweeping like hair across the sky. “I love you!” she yells as the car bumps off the driveway onto Ashby Lane, and Jamie waves. “I love you,” she says quietly as he takes off down the road and Peter slinks inside like the enigma he's become, already reaching into his pocket for his cell phone. Dana stares at Jamie's car until it disappears, wondering how to glue back all the splintered pieces of her marriage, wondering if she even deserves a husband at this point—if she even wants one.

Has he heard her, this man who was her little boy such a short time ago?
Blink and they're gone,
people used to tell her.
They grow up so fast.
But she never believed it. She thought Jamie would always be little, jumping out from behind a chair to surprise her or creeping into their bed at night when he had a bad dream. “I love you,” she says to the air.

Peter's in the bathroom with the door closed. He's nearly whispering, but lately Dana can hear anything. She can hear everything. She can hear pins dropping. Sometimes the chirping of a bird in the next-door neighbor's yard or the barking of a dog blocks away keeps her awake, drives her to the bathroom for bits of cotton to stuff inside her ears. It isn't only sounds; she sees things far more clearly than before. Sometimes she sees the outlines of things, the ghosts of things, not only the bones.

“. . . need to see you,” Peter's saying, and Dana stops in the hallway to listen. The bathroom is such a silly place to go for privacy,
she thinks. There's such an echo in the tiled, hard room, so many walls and corners for a voice to ricochet. “It's important,” he says. “I really need to see— . . . I know. Crazy, huh? Right down the street from— . . . My wife is—Dana is—even putting on a goddamn brunch to try to figure out who. She thought she saw somebody in the trees in our back— . . . Right. Probably. Ghosts. . . . Listen,” he says after a pause. “Call me on my cell. Or no.” He stops, and Dana hears a swishing sound, as if he's turning toward the bathroom door, as if he senses her there, her new bionic self, picking up every single sound. “I'm turning off my phone, so leave me a message. Let me know when we can get toge— . . . Like I said, I really need to see—” There's another pause, and then he says, as Dana moves so close her ear is nearly on the door, “Make it soon.” He stops again. “You, too,” he says, and his voice is lower suddenly, soft. Loving. Dana feels as if he's slapped her across the face.

She hears the sound of his cell being tossed onto the back of the john. She hears him rearrange his clothes. She hears his hand on the doorknob, but by the time he steps into the hall, she's already in the kitchen, swiping a dish towel over the counter and staring at the pile of plates and glasses. She watches Peter cross the hall and lower himself onto the sofa in front of the wide-screen TV he purchased last Christmas. “For us,” he'd said, but she rarely watches it. It seems so upsetting, all the noise and colors and laughter. Dana has already decided that when she divorces him, she will gladly give Peter the TV.

“Who was that on the phone?” she calls out from the kitchen. “Who were you talking to?”

“Oh,” he says, “Ted Johnston from our office. I was trying to get some inside information on Celia,” he says. “Being a lawyer comes in handy sometimes.”

“So why were you hiding in the bathroom?”

“I wasn't hiding.”

“Yes,” she says. “You were. Call him back, then. Call him now.”

“Who?”

“Ted
Johnston
!”

He shrugs. “You really need to get yourself in to see that shrink.”

She bends over the sink, plunging her arms up to the elbows in hot water, and wonders why she even cares what Peter does. Tears burn her eyes, and she tells herself she's crying because Jamie's left, and partly it's true, but mostly it isn't. Mostly it's Peter, even though she knows what he's done—what he's
doing
—is hardly an anomaly. Husbands leave their wives all the time for younger, bouncier, rosier-cheeked women with perkier breasts. It happened to Josie from book club. She'd sobbed out all the sordid details in the middle of a
Map of Tulsa
discussion, and there's poor Wanda across the street who lost her nitwit of a husband to a twenty-something who served him coffee every morning at a local diner. Still, Dana hadn't seen this coming.

In part she blames herself; she blames her mood swings, her indiscretions, her general fucked-up-ness that changed who Peter was, who they both were all those years ago, locking fingers on the subway as the train lurched down the track, running up four flights of stairs to their apartment, undressing as they fell across the bed. She knows that no one has ever loved her quite as much as Peter, and she wonders if it simply ran out at some point, like water spilling from a large, bright cup, leaving them little more than strangers, their marriage only picked-clean bones.

Thunder rumbles somewhere far away, a low hum in the distance. The wind picks up, whistling through the leaves, and something scrapes ominously against the back of the house. Maybe the althea plant, climbing like a beanstalk toward the bedroom window. She takes a deep breath; she wipes her eyes on the back of her arm and squints outside a kitchen window thick with thermal glass. She stares into the dying gray of dusk, scrutinizing every foot of the yard, taking in the plant beside the bedroom window as
it creaks and bends inside the wind. On the surface everything looks the same—no hoodied creatures peering out from the brush behind the house—but Dana feels exposed as she gazes out at the backyard; she feels a pair of eyes observing her, hidden beneath the surface.

“I think Ronald was stalking me at the Root Seller,” she announces, standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded across her chest. Her hands drip soapy water on the tiled floor.

“Why would Ronald be . . . ?” Peter sighs and pushes the
MUTE
button on the remote. The Giants game shrinks back inside the wide-screen TV.

“I don't know, Peter. What do
you
think?”

“I don't. I don't think of Ronald at all. I didn't even know his name until a few days ago, and I have absolutely no opinion on why the widower of our dead neighbor would be stalking you at the Root Seller. Perhaps the bigger question is why that would even cross your mind. And, again, you really need to get some help.”

“He was buying a rubber duck.”

“So?”

“So no one shops at the Root Seller for a rubber duck, never mind the fact his stepsons are teenagers.”

“So what's your point?”

“He wasn't there to buy anything. He was there to confront me.”

“And did he?”

“Actually,” she says. “He asked a bunch of questions about you. Why would that
be,
Peter?”

It's dark, suddenly, in the living room. Storm clouds cover what's left of the light outside. Peter shakes his head and glances back at the TV screen, where players race at each other across bright green Astroturf.

She looks away. Sometimes she thinks he can see inside her brain, and she's suddenly afraid of what he might see now, in the gloom, where the muted football game sparks like a strobe in the
darkened room and lightning brightens the sky over the highway. She's afraid he might see guilt welling up behind her eyes, might sense it the way a dog smells fear. And there is that, too. Fear of her own husband.

She won't confront him now about his involvement with the Tart and, clearly, Celia. She has enough on her plate, having to deal with that detective in a couple of days, the appointment she's discussed with no one. When he called to ask her to come in, she hadn't allowed herself to think about it. “Sure,” she'd said, almost casually, as if she and Wanda were planning a last-minute lunch in town. “See you at ten.” She hopes she can pull it off, that her guilt won't leak through and spill across his desk, painting her as the ideal murderess. She plays with the rip in the blue chair; she pokes at the ugly, dirty yellow of the cotton batting. Her hand looks strange there on the chair arm. It looks old.

She didn't know Peter when she was a sophomore at NYU. She'd not yet met him when she squatted at the edge of a roof near Tompkins Square and tried to fly. She's told him only bits and pieces of her stays at Bellevue, her lost scholarship, the pages of her manuscript scattered over Avenue D, her stitched and bandaged wrist. The girl who tried to fly had been expunged when she took a job in Peter's office, typing briefs for Mr. Glynniss or Mr. Hudgens or the other senior law partner whose name she no longer remembers. Peter thought she was beautiful then; he told her he was enchanted by her, by her long light hair, her eyes, her thin fingers on the keyboard. He loved her fragility, he said. And she loved him. Not the same way she loved the Poet—not that desperate, passionate, aching love that nearly killed her. It was different with Peter;
she
was different with Peter—capable and steady, her heels clicking across the glossy, ancient floors.

When they started going out, their conversations were mostly
about work, both of them floundering in the day-to-day routine of a law firm older than they were. They helped each other. In time Peter settled into his niche, sipping bourbons in expensive bars after hours with one or the other of the senior attorneys, sharing celebratory cigars with the now long-dead third partner in the heavy mahogany of his office. Their relationship shifted from empathy to lust and finally love, climaxing in a traditional wedding in an old Episcopalian church not far from the office. Dana wore a long white gown from Saks and booked an uptown hotel for the reception; their wedding cake was three-tiered, delicate with yellow roses; her mother wept behind her hand, and bridesmaids tossed birdseed as the newlyweds ran from the churchyard to the car.

But she eventually came back, the girl Dana thought she'd buried long before, the student with her scattered words—the broken girl from NYU came back when Jamie was a few months old. She lost her baby weight and several more pounds, shrinking down to skin and bones. She didn't sleep; she didn't eat; she roamed through the apartment, checking endlessly on Jamie as he lay dreaming in his crib; she drank coffee and chain-smoked outside on the street.

One night Peter found her curled up in fetal position on the floor in the baby's room in the dark, her eyes riveted on the monitor beside the crib, her hair uncombed, her body smelling of sweat and fear. He called a neighbor from downstairs to baby-sit, trundled his young wife, frail and vacant-eyed, to the hospital a short cab ride away, where an intern told them that hormone fluctuations had most likely triggered a manic episode. The intern peered at Dana's thin form in the tiny cubicle. He gave her shots and pills and sent her home with names of counselors and doctors for therapy and follow-ups and tests, with prescriptions scribbled across small white papers.

She stayed on lithium for several months, and eventually the
sadness went away. The skinny, frantic girl from Bellevue tucked herself back into the past, and Dana soldiered on. But something integral was changed between them; something irretrievable was lost. She sensed that Peter would never love her with quite the abandon he had before her breakdown—that he would never trust her with his child, his house, their lives, exactly as he had before. And if, in the long, black nights that followed, he rolled up on one elbow to kiss her softly on the cheek, it wasn't passion that propelled him but curiosity or fear, the need to take stock of his unstable wife, to gauge her ability to stand upright inside their wobbly house of cards.

Peter could have left her many times throughout their marriage, when her energy became a raw and frightening thing, when she drove to the city in the middle of the night and stayed away, leaving him to explain the inexplicable to Jamie—to placate this child who cried for a mother who sparkled and shined and burned out like a shooting star—who came home shrunken, crying in a darkened bedroom. She came back a broken thing, so broken even Jamie couldn't fix her with his poignant, frantic offerings over the years—the clay handprint from preschool, the crayon drawing of the three of them together, Dana a small stick figure between the two of them, a cheerful sun shining down from the corner of the page.