Edited to Death

by Linda Lee Peterson

  Calvin shook his head. “Named for a vice, Maggie. You ought to be up to your neck in sin by now.”

  “That explains everything,” I muttered.

  We hugged and headed our separate ways, me to my suburban-issue Volvo, Calvin to his MG convertible. I watched him push the top back to enjoy the last rays of fall sunshine. And sighed. Oh, to be young again. Or even innocent.

  5

  L’chaim

  It’s the ordinariness of daily life that comforts. Staves off the horrors, the headlines, the famines, the border skirmishes—even Quentin’s death.

  Our dining room looks onto the street through tall, floor-to-ceiling French doors. Makes for lousy privacy from outside, but great people-watching from inside. This time, I was on the outside looking in. Through the French doors, I could see and faintly hear the last moments of pre-prandial hullabaloo.

  From the curb, when I saw all that normalcy—the flower beds, the front walk where Lily had chalked hopscotch, I instantly regretted every moment of longing for a day, never mind a year, of living dangerously. Josh was sitting at the table, engaged in his only significant domestic accomplishment, folding napkins into elaborate, decorative shapes. Zach was watching, napkin in hand, desperately trying to duplicate his older brother’s maneuvers, which transferred the crinkliest Zee into graceful origami. I sympathized with Zach; I couldn’t mimic Josh’s skills either. I was just happy Josh had a place to put all that fretful energy.

  Michael was carving a roast chicken, sneaking nibbles of skin. Anya was pouring milk for the boys. Watching them all, I felt like an intruder, bringing into a clean and ordered place all the wickedness and haphazard cruelty of a world where someone living and breathing could be reduced to a forensic set of facts in a split second. Well, okay, not so clean and ordered. I was, after all, the housekeeper-in-residence.

  The front door was unlocked. I walked in, dropped keys and gloves on the hall table, sidestepped a fielder’s mitt and three in-line skates, and hurried to the dining room. Zach hurled himself at my legs. Michael looked up and smiled. Raider threw himself on my feet and whimpered.

  “Watch out, boys. Mom’s been having an uptown afternoon in the city. She’ll be full of books and gossip. Too rich for the likes of us.” He stopped and caught sight of my face.

  “What’s wrong, cara?”

  I shook my head, lifted Zach’s solid little body and gave him a fierce hug. “Later.”

  Michael’s face darkened.

  “Really, truly, later,” I said over Zach’s sweet-smelling head.

  He shrugged. “Okay. Why don’t you wash up? We’re ready to eat. I’ve got hungry hordes on my hands.”

  By the time I’d returned to the table, everyone was seated. The boys fidgeted for grace to be over and dinner to begin.

  It was Zach’s turn to ask the blessing, a custom we’d evolved in yet another attempt to integrate Michael’s Italian Catholic upbringing with my laissez-faire secular Judaism.

  “Thank you, God, for making it October and Halloween soon, and thanks for chicken because it has two legs and two of us like legs in this house. Amen.”

  Later, the kids bathed, cuddled, and in bed, Anya at her loom in the basement, Michael and I sat in front of the fire in the living room.

  “Okay,” he said. “You didn’t eat. You spilled your wine twice. And cried when you tucked Josh in. Please tell me what the hell is wrong.”

  I told him. I told about finding Quentin and about Madame and Inspector Moon and Calvin. Michael listened without comment, except for a quick intake of breath when I described the sight of Quentin slumped over his desk. Throughout my story, he peeled a red pear carefully, so carefully that the peel came off in one long, burgundy-golden spiral.

  When I finished, he went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of cognac. He handed me one, pulled me up out of my chair and into his lap.

  He touched his glass to mine. “You know what we say at weddings and bar mitzvahs,” he said. “L’chaim.”

  “L’chaim,” I whispered back. “I’m all for drinking to life tonight.” I looked around the living room. We loved this room, both of us. It was the first room we finished when we’d moved in ten years ago. Somehow, in the intervening years, the decorators had caught up to us, and the deep gold walls were now fashionable. But family clutter saved it from serious trendiness—books, games, art projects, whistles, yo-yos, and neglected houseplants. Still, it was a comfort to sit in a room I knew with someone I loved and admire the cats as they watched a pear being peeled in front of the fire.

  “What now?” asked Michael.

  “I don’t know. Now that the shock is wearing off, I’m feeling—bewildered. This happens in books, not in real life.”

  Michael sighed. “It’s awful, Maggie, and terrible that you found him. It happens in real life every day. One of the joys of urban living.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s drugs and crime and domestic violence. That’s what happens in the papers.”

  “So it’s understandable in a book? In the papers? But not in your life? Maggie, listen to what you’re saying. You think we live behind some invisible, magic shield?”

  I remembered watching my family through the window. “I guess I do think that, or at least I did.”

  Michael sliced a piece of pear and offered it to me from the side of the knife.

  “Guess again, cara.”

  I waved the pear away. “Fine, there’s no shield. It’s a dangerous world. But that still doesn’t answer a lot of questions.”

  “Like?”

  “Who could possibly want Quentin dead? And just where the hell was Stuart when this awful thing was happening in the flat? And here’s the really petty, unattractive, narcissistic part. Already, I’m wondering, what about Small Town? And what about my great breakthrough story?”

  Michael grinned at me. “You do get yourself into a dither, don’t you?”

  “And another thing,” I said. “How come you never told me you played hockey with a homicide cop?”

  He shrugged. “We don’t talk about work much,” he said. “I mean, I know John’s with the police, but most of the time we’re either out on the ice or talking about the game.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what does he play?”

  “Front line, left wing. He’s very aggressive, very fast. Hard guy to check. You don’t want to get in his way.”

  “He seemed so reserved, so gentlemanly,” I said.

  “Everybody changes on the ice,” said Michael. “That’s what you always say to me.” I rearranged myself on his lap, draping my legs over the arm of the chair.

  “I wonder,” he said, stroking my hair, “what about right now? What do you feel like doing?”

  I looked at him, at this kind, funny man who could peel a pear flawlessly. I managed a smile back.

  “Are you suggesting that on the evening of Quentin’s death I could be consoled by earthly pleasures?”

  “Yep. And I’m just the man for consoling.”

  “Got anything special in mind?”

  “Here’s what Dr. Michael orders: Let’s take these glasses up to bed, smoke a little of that exceptional Belize breeze Quentin gave us, and fuck our brains out.”

  A part of me felt sick and tired, wondering what had happened, and skirting one terrible speculation—that Quentin’s death had something to do with me. In the face of that, and with the sight of Quentin’s body still fresh whenever I closed my eyes, Michael’s suggestion sounded blasphemous, trivial, and escapist to me.

  But that’s exactly what we did.

  6

  The People in the Mirror

  The phone rang early the next morning. Michael rolled over with a groan and handed it across to me.

  It was Stuart. He sounded tight and controlled and very ragged around the edges.

  “Maggie. The cops say you found Quent.”

  “I did, Stuart. God, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too—also pissed as hell and scare
d to death.”

  I could hear Stuart’s breathing, uneven and hoarse, on the other end of the line.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing, I guess. I don’t know—just come sit with me at the service.”

  By the time I’d finished with Stuart, Michael was up and rattling around the bathroom.

  “Well,” he said, “where was the lovely Stuart when Quentin was being done in?”

  “Michael! I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet the cops asked him.”

  “I’m sure they did,” I said. I remembered the exhausting conversation I’d had with one of Inspector Moon’s investigators yesterday afternoon. Under her persistent questioning, I had explained and re-explained how I knew Quentin, what our lunch date was about, why I’d met him at the flat instead of the office, how Small Town wasn’t exactly the kind of magazine to earn the editor serious enemies. “Unless it was for a really, really bad restaurant review,” I’d joked nervously. “Only then, wouldn’t you expect to find him with a vegetable parer to the heart?” The investigator looked up from her notes, jolted by my wisecrack, and then we stopped to watch Quentin’s body, zipped into a bag stenciled “SF Coroner,” carried out the door. It was my last joke of the afternoon.

  Even though it was a tight fit in our bathroom, I wedged in behind Michael to survey him in the mirror.

  I don’t know how marriage survives modern housing. Two sinks in up market master bathrooms mean you don’t have to duck and weave around each other in order to shave or put on eyeliner. During years of living in ancient houses, Michael and I had evolved a morning sink-time gavotte to cope with closet-size bathrooms. He shaved while I did non-mirror activities like tooth brushing. He combed his hair by feel while I put in my contacts. We have some of our liveliest talks over the sink.

  “I’m going to wear a hat to the funeral, Michael,” I said.

  He stirred up shaving soap with his brush and didn’t say anything.

  “You know, I’ll bet Quentin really was the last man who liked women in hats.”

  Michael was silent.

  “Don’t you think that’s true?”

  Michael clicked a new blade in his razor. “I think he was the last man who loved women in hats.”

  Michael’s voice sounded cool and impersonal. I felt a little prickle on the back of my neck.

  “What do you mean?”

  Michael’s eyes met mine in the mirror. He held his cheek taut and began to shave. “He loved you, Maggie. And you loved him.”

  “That’s true, I did. He was a wonderful editor, and a wonderful friend.”

  Michael rinsed his razor. “Was he a wonderful lover, too?”

  I could hear the boys downstairs, squabbling over whose turn it was to feed the pets. But they sounded miles away. I felt light-headed and leaned against the shower.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Michael splashed water on his face and turned to me, dripping. His eyes were contemptuous. “I knew, Maggie. I knew all about it.”

  He looked steadily at me.

  “It’s okay. I could have killed you for it—or Quentin, for that matter. But I didn’t. I’m trying to get over it. I hope to hell you do, too.”

  I thought about his tireless lovemaking the night before. Just before I’d fallen asleep, he’d pulled me close and begun all over again. I thought he was trying to comfort me, to block out what I had seen. Suddenly, it seemed less loving, more territorial, as if he’d been trying to block out some tape in his head—or trying to brand me.

  “Michael,” I faltered.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it. I never wanted to talk about it. I’m bringing it up now because I want you to do me the enormous favor of thinking twice about speaking so fucking well about the dead in the next few days. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I can do that.”

  “Thank you. I’ll go help Anya with breakfast.” The razor clattered into the mug. And he was gone.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Still me, still there, and still wondering who that woman was who betrayed her husband.

  Couldn’t have been me. I’m the good girl. “A real good girl,” I said to the reflection. “Just swell.” And turned on the shower—very hot.

  Saturday morning meant “Vintage Sounds” on our local public radio station. While I scrubbed I listened to Fats Waller sing, “There’ll be some changes made.” I began to cry when I cut my leg with Michael’s razor, and watched the blood mix with the shampoo and the soap. I thought about Quentin and I thought about Michael and I wished I were still a good girl.

  With the hot water sluicing over me, I leaned against the shower and felt my insides go cold with memory. Actually, I had two versions of memory. One was hopelessly self-deluded and quite romantic: Dashing, enigmatic editor sweeps impressionable young writer off her feet.

  The other, more truthful, more painful, was that I was not so young and not so swept—just a little restless, curious, and flattered that I’d stirred something in so cool a customer as Quentin.

  If I were on the stand, I could testify to an eyelash how it happened, just eighteen months ago.

  Quentin had invited me to cover the Junior League model tryouts at Saks. “Come watch with me,” he said. “I promised Claire I’d send someone and you’re my revenge. You’ll write something vicious and she’ll never ask me for coverage again.”

  So we went. And after two hours of watching what lots of time and attention can do to the affluent female form, I wasn’t feeling vicious. I was depressed. I looked at the back of my un-pampered hands and imagined I could see liver spots forming in front of my very eyes. “Is this how it starts?” I asked Quentin. “One day you’re a hot chick, the next day it’s stretch marks and station wagons.”

  “Chick?” he said. “My, my, how un-feminist, how politically incorrect.” Then he steered me downstairs to millinery. “Cheer up, Margaret,” he said. “Let me spend some money on you. You’ll feel better straightaway.”

  Under the amused eye of a millinery saleswoman, all in black from head to toe, I tried on hat after hat. Quentin sat on a stool, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, and shook his head. Finally, she brought out a fawn-colored cloche. It hugged the back of my head perfectly. I looked in the mirror and caught Quentin’s eye. “That’s it,” he said. He slipped off the stool, came close and turned me around. “Let me fix the veil. Don’t fidget.” I stood as still as I could while he gently tugged the veil into place.

  He put one hand on my cheek. “You are one beautiful chick, Margaret.” I felt beautiful. Impulsively, I pulled his hand to my mouth and kissed it. A smile I’d never seen drifted across his mouth. Quentin handed the saleswoman his credit card. “Thank you,” he said. “You can put this on my account.”

  Then Quentin took me by the arm and led me past the elevator into the stairwell. When the door closed, he took me by the other arm, pulled me to him and gave me the kind of kiss I thought detached, distant men of fiftysomething didn’t have in them.

  He stopped before I did. “Do you want lunch first, Margaret,” he said, “Or shall we go directly to bed?”

  “Are we going to talk about it over lunch?” I asked. My voice echoed in the hallway.

  “No,” he said.

  “I think I want lunch, anyway,” I said. “I have to show off my new hat.” I was trying to buy some time to think, of course, but wouldn’t say so. That was me, the Queen of Bravado.

  So we had lunch and wine and very good coffee. I called Anya and asked her to preside over dinner and tell Michael I was having dinner with an out-of-town writer. The lies came easily. Years of coming up with creative leads on tight deadlines served me very well.

  After lunch, we stood in the Sutter-Stockton Garage and Quentin watched me look for my keys.

  “Aha!” I held them up. My hand was trembling.

  Quentin took the keys, ushered me into the passenger side,
settled up with the garage attendant, and headed my station wagon up the hill.

  “Tell me,” I quavered, “have you ever had a mistress who drove a station wagon before?”

  Quentin smiled. “I don’t have one now,” he said, without taking his eyes off the road. “I have a very good friend who suddenly looks quite delicious to me. And do you know how I think I look to her?”

  “How?”

  “Dangerous and interesting. You look at me the way children look at boa constrictors in the snake house. You’re fascinated and you’re horrified.”

  He was right. So we didn’t talk anymore.

  I’d never really given much thought to adultery before. But when I had, I’d always assumed the appropriate setting was a cut-rate motel room. I had hazy fantasies about people ripping each other’s clothes off, heaving and panting, sobbing in remorse, and driving home their separate ways—till the next week. Sort of a low-rent Same Time, Next Year.

  Quentin’s version of adultery was civilized. At his apartment, he took my coat and hung it up in the closet, taking time to button the top three buttons so it sat squarely on the hanger. He poured me a glass of Beaujolais, escorted me into the bedroom, and left the door wide open.

  When you’ve been married for years and years, you begin to think there’s only one way to make love. Michael makes love as he does everything else—easily, casually, playfully, cheerfully oblivious to phones ringing, dog or cats scratching to get in or out of the bedroom, books piled on the bed.

  Over the next several months, I learned that Quentin knew other ways. He knew about complete, silent concentration on the task at hand. And he knew about context. He knew about eating smoked oysters on water biscuits and doing Double Crostics in bed, in ink. He knew about listening to scratchy recordings of Richard Burton reading John Donne’s love poetry. He loved to brush my hair. Sometimes, he’d stand at the foot of the bed with his tenor saxophone and play. Naked. “Listen to this, Margaret,” he’d say, and I’d hear almost anything; blues, jazz, and his own improvisations on Bach and Scarlatti.

  Quentin was too cool for me by half. Though he liked Michael, it never seemed to occur to him to feel guilty. It was clear, however, that he took some pleasure in stirring things up. At a summer barbecue at the home of Glen Fox, Small Town’s managing editor, Quentin followed me into the bathroom and unbuttoned my sundress.