Skin Deep

by Gary Braver

  It was a turning point for him, too. When he learned that she had told Dana everything, Steve drove to Sylvia’s place. He had been drinking, and in a moment of rage he slapped her across the face, accusing her of trying to destroy his marriage. She shot back that he had made the move on her, and he counteraccused her of leading him on for months. None of that was important. But what pecked at his conscience was the knowledge that he had crossed a barrier—that in a weird half-conscious angry-drunk moment he had struck a woman. For weeks following that he had had disturbing dreams of violence—sometimes against Sylvia, sometimes against Dana. Dreams that mixed up nightmare details, leaching in from his casework. Dreams that had sent him to his doctor for stronger meds.

  He had apologized to Sylvia.

  He had apologized to Dana: “I feel rotten about it.”

  “You mean you can’t live with the guilt.”

  “Yeah, and I’m very sorry. It was stupid and wrong.”

  “And vengeful.”

  “Vengeful? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t go brain-dead on me. Vengeful because I want kids, and you can’t commit. So to get back for my pushing, you hop into bed with the first available bimbo.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit. You couldn’t commit to getting engaged. Then you couldn’t commit to getting married. And when you finally gave in, you declared you wanted to hold off on kids. Well, I’ve been holding off long enough. I told you it’s now or never. So, instead, you shack up with Sylvia Nevins because you don’t like ultimatums.”

  “Stop throwing that up to my face.”

  “And stop telling me you’re working on it. It’s been twelve goddamn years. Just how much longer do I have to wait?”

  “You know the reasons.”

  “Yeah, I know the reasons. Your parents had a rotten marriage and divorce was rampant in your family, blah, blah, blah. Well, I can’t change that, Stephen, nor the fact that I’m thirty-eight years old and want a family.”

  “I’m sorry.” He had wanted to say more. He knew he should say more, but he couldn’t. And he heard the protest die in his throat because she was right—about all of it.

  “I wish she had never told me,” she had said.

  Yeah, me, too, he had thought. As he looked back, he was still amazed that he had the restraint to stop at a slap.

  “Christ!” Dana had flared. “She’s nearly half your age.”

  “Dana, she means nothing to me. She’s out of my life and moved to Florida.”

  That was their exchange months ago, and since then Sylvia Nevins had taken a job in Pensacola and the last he had heard she was engaged to be married. But that was irrelevant. Dana could not forgive him despite his apologies and the fact that it was the first time in their twelve years of marriage that he had cheated on her.

  Over the months he looked back on that night a thousand times and hated what he had done. Because friends and colleagues were at the party, he had been discreet for most of the evening, making beer talk with Sylvia. But when no one was looking, he arranged to meet later at her place, where he spent the night in boozy sex. Deep down he knew that their tryst had not arisen out of a bottle or Sylvia’s seductive wiles. Steve had let it happen on his own volition, driven by despair and mortal sadness that his life with Dana was at the edge because he could not bring himself to fulfill her ultimatum. About his love for her he was not uncertain. It was about his capacity to be a father that had created a blockage. She was right: out of desperation, he had acted upon a stupid, spiteful impulse to get back at Dana for his own failings. The old blame-the-victim shtick he heard all the time in interrogations.

  Steve moved to the refrigerator and removed his service revolver from the overhead cabinet. He strapped it on as she walked him to the front door, trying to repress the anger. “Sorry about the job.”

  “I’ll get over it.”

  “Something else will come along.”

  “Maybe.”

  He looked at her across the kitchen. “Can we give this another chance?”

  “I think we’re out of chances. We are who we are and that’s not going to change.”

  The tired resignation in her manner caused a blister of petulance to rise. She was closing the door on him the way his parents had when he was a kid—abandoning him physically, mentally, emotionally, and every other goddamn way because they were too caught up in their own tormented egos to be a source of comfort and understanding. Too adamant to care enough.

  “I can change,” he said. “So this need not be forever, right?”

  “I just want to be on my own for a while.”

  He nodded. And his eyes fell to her neck and the fine hairs that made a phosphorescent haze in the light. In a flash his head filled with distended blue-black tendons at the end of the stocking noose.

  “Stephen, I want children. I want what my sister has, what our friends have. I want to have a family.” She opened the door.

  The black air was thick with humidity.

  She looked at him. “You get it, don’t you?”

  “I do.” He stepped into the night, his wedding vows echoing through the fog in his head.

  5

  DERRY, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  SUMMER 1970

  It started the morning his mother nearly killed him.

  He was nine years old at the time—an age when young boys are beginning to realize that they are autonomous, self-contained creatures capable of independence but who still take refuge in the bosom of those who love them.

  Lila was driving the new, big, gold 1970 Chrysler Newport convertible that looked like a small aircraft carrier on wheels. It was brand-new, a gift from his father Kirk on the fourth anniversary of their marriage. The top was down and the radio was blaring Creedence Clearwater Revival. Lila always drove with the top down and rock music blaring, unless it was pouring rain or below forty degrees. She wanted people to see her. She wanted them to take in the young sultry beauty in the big fancy convertible with the wind flowing through her fiery mane. She wanted people to envy her, to wish they were she.

  And sitting in the passenger seat, he could feel the pleasure she radiated, tapping the steering wheel to the music, singing along with him, chewing gum, checking herself in the mirror, with her new red-frame Ray-Ban sunglasses and the black chiffon scarf trailing from her long swan neck. At stoplights she always posed so that other drivers could take her in. She was happiest at moments like this because her life looked like one of her commercials. A red-hot model on her way to becoming a Hollywood star.

  And he was proud to be seen with her because she was so cool. They went everywhere together—to beaches, amusement parks, movies, Red Sox games. She even took him once to a street in Manchester where they were shooting a scene from a movie in which she had a part. He waited behind the cameras with the production people while she did her lines. It was a small walk-on, but it was fun. And when it was over, she introduced him to the stars and the director. All the cool things he did with her, never his dad.

  Even though she was his stepmother and he called her Mom, Lila was more like his big sister—thirty-six years old and still young at heart, she would say. She dressed in tight hip-hugger jeans and miniskirts, funky stockings and tops, hair scarves, funny hats. Or she wore cutoffs, T-shirts, and sandals. Almost every week they went to a movie. She once said her favorite of all time was a French film called Jules et Jim, which was about two guys in love with the same woman. Nothing he’d be interested in at his age.

  Lila had been in his life since she began dating his father, Kirk, five years ago. His own mother had died of cancer when he was four. Because Kirk was an airline pilot and away from home more days than he wasn’t, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Fremont, New Hampshire, about fifteen miles away. It was only when Kirk married Lila that he moved back home to Derry. He had taken to Lila immediately. She was the mother he had never really known. And for a while his best friend.

&nbs
p; It was a beautiful late summer morning, and the air was warm and clear, the sky a radiant blue with scrappy clouds scudding toward the horizon. It was a little before eight o’clock, and they were on U.S. Route 1 where Lila was taking him to day camp on the New Hampshire shore just north of Hampton Beach. Then she would drive to Portsmouth to do a photo shoot.

  “Hey, do I look okay?” she asked, glancing at him full face. She made an exaggerated smile to show all her even white teeth.

  “Yeah. You look fine.”

  “Well, you’re my best critic, so you can tell me the truth.” She fluffed up her hair.

  “So, what’ll you be doing at the shoot?” He liked using such language.

  She turned the radio down in the middle of “Bad Moon Rising.” “Would you believe, they’re going to have me polishing a car.”

  “Polishing a car?”

  “It’s for a car wax, Simoniz. Nothing too fancy, but it should be fun.”

  “But you’ll get all dirty.”

  She laughed. “No, I’m going to change. And I won’t really be polishing the car, just posing with a rag.”

  “What’ll you wear?”

  “I think they’re planning on having me in a bathing suit. Probably a bikini.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A two-piece bathing suit. Kind of silly, if you ask me, but I guess it sells car wax.”

  At home they had several photo albums full of magazine ads she had done for clothing and laundry detergent. Several were in bathing suits. She also had secret albums she once showed him of artists’ sketches in charcoal and pen when she used to pose in the nude. Another of photographs in black-and-white. He once overheard his father claim in a heated moment that Lila would “lift her skirt for every Tom, Dick, or Harry.”

  “Your father thinks I’m crazy, but it pays well. Besides, maybe somebody in the movies will see it and like what they see.”

  He had also overheard Kirk say that she should stick to local plays and summer stock, that chasing after every little ad was crazy. He had used that word several times. Crazy. Sometimes psycho. Once he said that she “wasn’t dealing with a full deck.”

  “When you going to be in a movie again?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Soon I hope.”

  It was a subject that always made her a little anxious. More than anything else she wanted “the big break” as she called it. She even had a New York talent agent named Harry Dobbs she talked to a lot on the phone.

  “Can I be in movies someday?”

  “Maybe,” she said, and glanced at him. “You’re sure pretty enough, Beauty Boy.”

  She then turned her face back to the rearview mirror to fix her eye shadow with her finger. At the same time the truck in the right lane cut in front of her to avoid something in the road.

  The next moment passed in a long loud blur. The truck screeched as it braked hard and his vision filled with red taillights as their car rushed full speed into its rear. Lila screamed before the horrible impact and his body lurched forward, sending his head into the windshield.

  Three days later he woke up in a hospital bed.

  As he emerged from unconsciousness, he noticed three things: the whiteness of the hospital room, Lila’s crying, and the horrible pain that throbbed at the front of his head.

  “Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus!” Lila said, and kissed the large gold crucifix that she wore, then leaned over and smothered his chest and neck with kisses, saying, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  His face was bruised and his eyes were puffy. A dressing covered his forehead where he had smashed into the windshield. His hands were also bandaged from glass cuts. Lila had had her seat belt on and had sustained only minor injuries. Tormented with guilt, she sobbed with apologies that she had nearly killed him. But when the nurses left to call Kirk with the good news that his son had woken up, she asked him, “Wasn’t it scary how that big truck pulled in front of us like that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We were just driving along minding our own business, both hands on the wheel, all eyes on the road, and suddenly he’s right there in front of us and no signal light on. Remember? What an idiot!”

  He nodded.

  And she hugged him and gave him a big kiss. “My poor Beauty Boy. I’ll take care of you.”

  When Kirk showed up, the nurses and doctors came in to witness the reunion. Kirk was all smiles and gave his son a hug and laid a package on his belly. “So, how you feeling, big guy?”

  “Pretty good, but my head hurts.”

  “We can live with that.”

  He looked over to Lila, and instantly he could see how anxious she was about Kirk’s presence, fearing he’d know it was her fault. She took the package and helped him unwrap it because his hands were bandaged.

  “Oh, neat,” he said. It was a model airplane kit.

  “What is it?” one of the nurses asked.

  “Boeing 747,” Kirk said. The plane he piloted.

  Standing there at the side of the bed, he went on to explain how it was a new generation of jumbo jets, the fastest commercial airliner in the sky, traveling at 575 miles per hour, and how it had a wingspan of 210 feet and was 230 feet long and 63 feet high and could carry upwards of four hundred passengers.

  While Kirk held forth, he could see Lila getting fidgety, casting nervous glances at him in bed. When Kirk finished, he turned to his son again. “So, you remember how it happened?” And he sat at the edge of the bed and looked down at him for a response.

  “A little.”

  Kirk nodded and waited.

  “Well, we were just driving along minding our own business and the stupid truck turned right in front of us and slammed on his brakes and we couldn’t help it, and we crashed right into it. The idiot.”

  Lila looked at him and he felt her approval. It was their first secret. And Kirk bought it.

  “Well, we’re just glad you’re alive.” As an afterthought, he looked at Lila and said, “Both of you.”

  When he looked the other way, Lila gave her stepson a secret wink.

  Over the next few days the doctors had done a lot of tests and decided that his memory was intact, as were his reasoning powers. For his cuts and bruises, they gave Lila some ointments and pills. For the swelling, she said she had her own Georgia home remedy—a bag of frozen peas to use as a cold compress. Because Kirk was flying that week, Lila brought him home on the morning of the third day following his emergence from the coma.

  That’s when the headaches began. That’s also when Lila said he should sleep with her.

  6

  “Let’s talk strangulation.”

  Dr. Paul Ottoman, chief medical examiner assistant, was a thickset man in his fifties with an exuberant rubber face, thick graying hair, and the demeanor of a professor addressing students in a medical lecture rather than standing with Steve and Neil in the autopsy room, the woeful cadaver of Terry Farina laid out before them.

  It was a little before nine the next morning, an hour after Steve received the call from the D.A.’s office that the M.E. had confirmed Steve’s suspicions that Terry Farina did not die by accident. The autopsy room was a clean well-lighted place in white porcelain and stainless steel. A butcher’s scale hung above the cadaver table.

  Out of respect, a drape had been folded across Terry Farina’s waist. Her skin looked like gray Naugahyde and her face was still swollen and blue, her mouth opened as if in mid-sentence, her neck ringed with purple from the ligature. The large Y incision from the shoulders down across the sternum to the pubis had been roughly sewn up. It was not cosmetic surgery, merely stitching to hold in her organs. An incision transecting her throat had been made and stitched closed. She looked less like a human being than something assembled from a Halloween kit.

  Steve had to look away. That sensation was back—like a half-glimpsed memory or afterimage of an old TV set that’s been turned off. But it eluded him again.

  From their few interludes during coffee breaks, h
e had found Terry pleasant, bright, and attractive. Because he had begun to think of himself as a man at the end of his marriage, the thought had flitted across his mind that she was the kind of woman he could be interested in if he and Dana did not make it—more of a survival impulse than a plan. So maybe it was something she had said or a mannerism of hers or some vague association. Whatever, some memory would flutter like a night bird out of the shadows, then at the last moment it would flick back before he could clap his eyes on it.

  “Strangulation occurs with the compression of the jugular veins and/ or the carotid arteries, which leads to a reduction of oxygen to the brain, the loss of consciousness, and, if sustained longer than three minutes, death.”

  Neil flashed Steve a look. “I think we know that.” He was holding a Styrofoam magnum of coffee, the stirrer clenched in his molars. The sight of Terry’s body had affected him also. Like combat soldiers, homicide cops were exposed to some of the worst images in life. Images that they’d rather not have in their heads—bodies in various stages of decomposition, the reduction of someone’s face to raw meat and bone, teenagers lying dead in the street in a pool of blood. Autopsies. Images like mental land mines you were required to negotiate and still remain sane. You did your best to be detached and stoical, throwing yourself into cool dry stuff like reports, paper chases, and lab analyses to help distance yourself from both victim and victimizer. But this was different. They knew Terry Farina.

  “I’m sure, but you may not know that the time interval from compression to loss of consciousness is about ten seconds if both carotid arteries are compressed. And that’s what I believe we have here, which leaves us with three possibilities, at the top of which is suicide.”