And I was now pretty damn sure the or was a woman. But who? And when had it started? And why hadn’t I picked up any clues beforehand?
A policeman walked by, then turned and walked back in my direction, sizing me up.
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
I straightened myself up from my slumped position on the bench and put out the cigarette that had burned down to the filter.
“Yeah, sure, Officer, fine,” I said, the words slightly slurry.
“Have you been drinking, ma’am?”
“A little, yes,” I said, sounding sheepish.
“A little?” he asked. “You seem to be somewhat beyond ‘a little.’ Are you driving tonight?”
“No, sir.”
“Then how are you planning to get home?”
“I’m staying at the Hilton Garden Inn.”
“Well, ma’am, I think it might be a good idea if you—”
He stopped and looked at me closely.
“Hang on, aren’t you Mrs. Buchan who teaches English at Nathaniel Hawthorne High?”
Oh, great . . .
“Yes, Officer, that’s me,” I said.
“You taught my son, Jim Parker.”
“I remember Jim,” I said, even though his name swam in front of me. “Nice boy. Class of . . .”
“Ninety-seven. Went to U. Maine in Farmington. He’s a teacher now up in Houlton.”
“Please give him my best.”
“He called me yesterday, asked me if I had seen all the stuff about you in the paper.”
“Is this going to end up in the paper tomorrow too?”
He did not look pleased by this question. Immediately I said, “I’m sorry, Officer. That was stupid . . .”
“I could book you for public intoxication and add to your woes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Please don’t book me, Officer. Things are bad enough as—”
I covered my face, on the verge of some sort of outburst. But I pulled back. When I took my hands away, I saw him looking at me dispassionately, thinking about what his next move would be.
“Please stand up, Mrs. Buchan,” he finally said.
Oh Christ, here we go. I stood up.
“Are you okay to walk?” he asked. I nodded. He asked me to follow him. We turned away from the port toward the main road. I saw his parked cruiser awaiting us. But he touched my arm and directed me to cross the street. Two minutes later, we were in front of the Hilton Garden Inn.
“I want you to promise me that you’ll go upstairs to your room and sleep this off, and that you won’t leave the hotel until morning,” he said.
“I promise,” I said.
“If I find you out here before then, I will book you. Understood?”
I nodded and said, “Thank you, Officer.”
“A piece of advice, Mrs. Buchan—and one which is probably none of my business, but which I’m going to give you anyway. It doesn’t matter if it’s all lies. You should still apologize. Everyone now thinks you’ve done wrong—and until you publicly say you’re sorry, they’re going to shun you.”
Back upstairs, I did as ordered. I got undressed. I got into bed. I ignored the message light on the phone, unplugging it from the wall socket. Vodka-induced sleep quickly arrived. Seven hours later I woke with a jolt to the voice of Ross Wallace venting his anger at me. As soon as he was finished, I plugged the phone back in the wall and hit the message button. There were five—all from Margy, all sounding increasingly anxious about my whereabouts and asking me to call her urgently. Before I did, I rang the hotel front desk and asked them to send up a copy of that morning’s Boston Globe. The interview ran an entire page and included the photograph taken of me yesterday. I looked awful. The article by Paula Houston followed this line of thinking, talking about how I was hiding out from encroaching media in a downtown Portland hotel, how I looked like I hadn’t slept in a week, how my cuticles showed signs of being chewed (takes a nail biter to know a nail biter), and how I really did come across as a woman whose entire world had caved in on her.
It was a well-written piece that maintained a studiously neutral tone, though there were occasional flashes of partisanship toward me. “She is remarkably direct and forthright,” she wrote, “even to the point of admitting that a rift has developed between herself and her son, Jeff, over the strong pro-life views he shares with his wife, Shannon. ‘Though I respect their moral position,’ Ms. Buchan said, ‘I can’t agree with the stridency of the anti-abortion movement and the way they always scream “murderer” if you have different views.’”
She also made the point that I seemed far more concerned with the welfare of my missing daughter than my now-damaged reputation.
As soon as I finished reading it, I phoned Margy. Before she could speak she started coughing violently.
“That sounds bad,” I said.
“Well, I’m calling you from the swish confines of New York Hospital. Yesterday afternoon I started hacking up blood again.”
“Oh God, Margy . . .”
“Hey, don’t write me off yet. They did an MRI and essentially decided that some scar tissue from the tumor was to blame. But they decided to keep me in overnight for observation, just in case I started going stigmatic again. But, believe me, any worries about a little bloody phlegm were way overshadowed by the thought that you had done something drastic. Twice in the middle of the night I was on the verge of calling the night porter at the hotel and telling him to knock on your door and see if you were still alive.”
“I had a bit of bad news last night,” I said, and then explained the little bombshell that Dan had exploded. For one of the few times in her life, Margy was speechless. Finally she said, “I can’t believe he said all that.”
“What’s that old cliché about never really knowing the people closest to you?”
“But Dan has always been Mr. Loyalty, Mr. Reliability, Mr. Solid.”
“And now I’ve done something that has given him the excuse to rebel against all those labels—which, so he implied, he’s been wanting to do for years.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“He won’t say—and he all but denied there was someone else.”
“There is definitely someone else,” Margy said. “Because though Dan might be having a postadolescent rebellion against a lifetime of being so straight, he wouldn’t be dumping you for a life by himself.”
“Believe me, I know that better than anyone. Dan isn’t that kind of independent guy. He needs someone to come home to.”
“Any candidates?”
“I bet it’s some damn nurse at the hospital—or maybe one of the women radiographers. There’s one over at Maine Medical who’s had her eye on him for years. It was a running gag between us—how he’d one day run off with Shirley-Rose Hoggart . . .”
“She’s really called Shirley-Rose?”
“I’m afraid so. But he always used to say that she was this side of dull. Surely he couldn’t have decided . . .”
“Maybe he’ll get sense . . .”
“After what he said yesterday, I think it will be very hard for him to come back. He drove our marriage right off the edge of the cliff.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Wonderfully, especially as Dan also told me yesterday I should expect to be arrested at any moment.”
“That was another part of my message. Some Justice Department spokesman made an announcement yesterday that they were now moving toward the idea of prosecution, but they still haven’t come out and definitely said that they’ll be picking you up.”
“Aren’t they giving me the chance to flee the country?”
“My lawyer guy thinks they’re reacting to all the publicity. Having said that, he also told me to advise you to get a criminal lawyer pronto. Do you know any in Portland?”
“Hardly, but I’ll ask around.”
“I’ll get back to my guy here in New York and see if he has a suggestion or two. Now what are you up
to this morning?”
“Hon, if you ask me to do a new interview today, I’m going to turn you down.”
“I won’t ask you to do another interview. In fact, after the Globe piece this morning—which I’ve just read online and think is pretty terrific—I’m going to be keeping you, PR-wise, under wraps. What I want now is some big television thing . . .”
“Please, Margy, I don’t think I could handle—”
“Hear me out. The only way you’ll be able to win the public relations side of this shitty business is by continuing to make your side of the case. Especially as Judson is booked today to appear on The Rush Limbaugh Show and on NPR’s All Things Considered. He’s just loving all the attention—and it’s doing wonders for his book. It’s already at number thirty on the extended New York Times best seller list—and no, I don’t think he’s going to give you a cut of his royalties.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a classic Margy ploy—a wisecrack to chink the bleakness of the moment.
“Do me a favor. Get on home and try to get some rest, and keep your cell phone turned on, because I definitely will need you. Tell anyone from the press who calls to speak to my office. Even if they try to trick you by saying, ‘We’re just looking for a simple one-line quote,’ tell them, ‘No sale.’ Understood?”
“Understood.”
“One last thing: don’t read today’s Portland Press Herald. There’s an editorial calling for your dismissal from the school.”
“What else does it say?”
“What you’d expect it to say, ‘Sets a bad example for the good young people of Maine . . . betrayed not just her husband, but her community . . . the fact that she has refused to apologize shows great arrogance . . . ,’ that kind of predictable small-town horseshit.”
“Maybe I should apologize,” I said, and told her about the incident with the cop last night.
“Maybe you shouldn’t appear on the streets again drunk,” Margy said.
“There were extenuating circumstances.”
“Hey, I’m not saying I don’t understand why you got smashed. I’m just saying: thank God that cop had a big streak of decency in him. And I’m telling you: lay low now. We’ll think about whether a nuanced apology might help things during the course of the day.”
There were around nine messages on my cell phone—largely from Margy, but also from assorted journalists asking for interviews and one from my dad, telling me that he’d read the Globe piece and was very proud of my “dignified defiance.”
I tried to ring Dad back, but there was no answer. So I left a simple message: “Hi, it’s me. You need to know that Dan walked out on our marriage last night. Please call me asap.” Then I had a fast shower, packed my bag, and—not wanting to have to show my face at the front desk, especially after that editorial in today’s local paper—used the on-screen television checkout service to settle the hotel bill. Business completed, I took the elevator straight down to the basement parking lot, retrieved my car, and drove home.
When I reached Falmouth, I stopped at the general store right near our house. I walked in. Mr. Ames—the proprietor of the place for as long as we’d been living here—looked up as I came in. But instead of his usual “Hey, Hannah” greeting, he looked away. I picked up a basket and filled it with some basic necessities. When I got to the counter and put my basket up by the cash register, he picked it up and put it behind the counter.
“From now on, you’re going to have to do your shopping elsewhere.”
“But why?” I asked.
“If you have to ask that question . . .”
“Mr. Ames, there are two sides to—”
“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want a lawbreaker as a customer.”
“I am not a ‘lawbreaker.’”
“Well, that’s your opinion. You can buy your groceries elsewhere.”
“Mr. Ames, I’ve been a customer here since—”
“I know how long you’ve been shopping here. If I were your husband, I’d have you run out of town. Now if you wouldn’t mind . . .”
He nodded toward the door.
“You are not being fair,” I said.
“Too bad,” he said, and turned his back to me.
I went home, passing by the house once without stopping, just to give the place the once-over and make certain there were no journalists lurking. I swung back around. But as I headed up the driveway, I saw something that made me hit the brakes—an instinctual reaction that had nothing to do with anything in my immediate path. Rather, it was the sight of my front door that provoked that sudden stop. It had been attacked by someone with a brush and a can of red paint. One word—TRAITOR—had been daubed across the entire width of the door.
I sat in the car, blinking with shock. For a moment or two I thought my brain was playing games with me, that this was some phantasmagorical extension of the ongoing nightmare. Then I got out and noticed that one of the windows near the door had been smashed. I hurried over to the door and opened it, fully expecting to find the house trashed. But in the living room all I found was a brick with a note attached to it, courtesy of a rubber band. I removed it. I stared down at a message scrawled in black crayon:
If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to Canada again and stay this time?
I was about to head to the phone and call the police, but thought better of it. If I involved the law, this incident would make the papers. If it made the papers, it would just augment my newfound atrocious reputation. So I walked through every room of the house (just to make certain there weren’t any other broken windows I had missed), and came to an abrupt halt when I reached our bedroom and found Dan’s closet door open and half his clothes gone. He’d also cleared out his chest of drawers, as well most of his shoes. I went immediately downstairs to the basement. His computer was gone. Ditto most of his DVDs and his precious titanium golf clubs. The rest of his stuff had been packed away in boxes, awaiting collection.
Moving out was no mere knee-jerk act of anger. He’d been planning this for a while—and judging by the amount of stuff he had taken, he hadn’t checked into a hotel while searching for a new place to live. He’d headed to a preplanned destination—somewhere big enough to absorb all his things.
I picked up the telephone on Dan’s desk and punched in the code for our voice mail. There were over twenty messages—the bulk of which were from journalists asking for interviews, and clearly ignoring the message I’d left, telling them to call Margy’s office. I scrolled through them, stopping when I heard the voice of my daughter-in-law, sounding nervous yet stern.
“This is Shannon. Jeff asked me to call you, and to say that, given your appalling comments about us in today’s Boston Globe and the way you made it very clear that, to your mind, we are fanatics because of our pro-life stance—we want nothing to do with you anymore. I won’t even get into the revulsion I feel at what you’ve done to your husband, let alone your criminal activities—or the fact that you now refuse to apologize for such venal actions. All I will say is: you are not to contact us, or our children, again. Do not call. Do not write. If you do, we will simply hang up on you or delete your emails or tear up your letters. This is a decision that Jeff and I made in tandem. You’re dead to us both now.”
I hit the delete button on the voice mail and scrolled on to the next message—from Carl Andrews at Nathaniel Hawthorne High. “The school board met last night and unanimously voted for your dismissal. Personally, I tried to argue that we shouldn’t be firing you until the Justice Department has decided whether or not to charge you with a criminal offense. But sentiment in the room was running pretty damn high, and I’m afraid even I couldn’t stop the witch hunt atmosphere. Whatever your past actions, or whether or not you’ve committed a crime, I am a believer in due process, innocent until proven guilty, and other such quaint ideas. The only small bit of good news I can give you in all this is that I did force the board to agree to let you keep your pension, which, I know, isn’t
much after fifteen years of service, but is better than nothing, I suppose.”
Strangely, neither of these calls threw me, because I was expecting bad news. And when you get what you expect . . .
Just what I was up against locally, however, was made clear to me when I phoned our local glazier in Falmouth to get him to repair the smashed window. Phil Post was also the local carpenter and had been doing work for us for years. But when he heard my voice on the phone, he turned distant, saying that he was far too busy today to do the job.
“Well, how about tomorrow?” I asked.
“Busy tomorrow too,” he said.
“The day after tomorrow?”
“The truth is, Mrs. Buchan, I don’t really need the work right now.”
“You mean, you don’t really need the work from me,” I said.
“Something like that, yes,” he said, then added, “Gotta go,” and hung up.
I used the Yellow Pages and called a mobile glazier who was free this morning, and didn’t seem to hesitate when I gave him my name and address. Maybe he didn’t read the papers, or only listened to the sort of classic rock stations that didn’t have news broadcasts. When I asked him if he knew anyone who was a house decorator, as my front door also needed to be repainted, he said he did that sort of work too.
“One-stop shopping,” he said with a laugh. “See you in about two hours.”
Now I needed to speak with someone nearby who could be counted on as a friend. So I rang Alice Armstrong on her cell phone.
“Oh hi,” she said, sounding very nervous.
“It’s great to hear your voice. You don’t know the half of what is going on right now.”
“Well, I do read the papers,” she said. “And I did see you on the television news.”
“Did you also hear that Dan has walked out on me? And that I’ve been dismissed from Nathaniel Hawthorne High? Or have the jungle drums not started rumbling on—”
“You know, Hannah, this is a really bad moment right now. Could I call you later?”
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 157
