I reminded myself as I left her: caring for Naomi is pure and good—remember that, Molly. Caring for Ben is necessary and evil. Don’t get the two mixed up.
Only a few more nights, I thought.
No, it would be more than that, it would be months, even with a confession. There would be psychiatric evaluations and if Ben told (of course he would tell) what we had done and were continuing to do, then Stefan would know—psychiatrists are as gossipy and clubby and political as anyone and he had a lot of muscle. They could use it against me to take Naomi away, give her to Harriet.
What had I done?
Ben gathered our foodstuffs, stacking it all on the trays. I sat, stunned and ill, in an armchair facing the television. There was something showing on the screen; my eyes didn’t see the images.
Ben’s put his hand on my thigh and rubbed. “Do you think Nommy knows?” he whispered. He crouched next to the chair, watching the connecting door, which wasn’t completely shut.
I hardly breathed. I shook my head.
“I want you so much. I wish I had seen you naked last night.” He hadn’t because I had quickly stripped off my jeans in the dark and replaced them just as rapidly once we were done. I never removed my top. In the pink light he wouldn’t have seen well anyway. Our encounter was mad, fast, and mixed up; woman to man, man to man, woman to woman—we had no distinct identities.
I said nothing. His hand covered my crotch, not hard, but possessive. “You’re blond, aren’t you?” he whispered.
I didn’t answer.
“I wish I was,” he said. “You know I’m shaved.”
Of course I knew. I had enjoyed the feel of his hairless large boy’s penis, uncorrupted by age and lust.
“Stop it,” I said like a dumb heroine in a pornographic film, pushing his hand away. Only I was sincere. I moved out of the chair. I pretended to be interested in the television, switching channels, seeing nothing. Big faces talked at me; cars smashed into each other; a giant deodorant was launched into space. Time passed. The boxed voices were comforting, especially the laugh track of sitcoms.
“So what’s the story with this Larry?” Ben’s tone was the old one: harassed, suspicious, unpleasant.
“They suspected I was kidnapping her,” I told the television. “She told them I wasn’t her mother and they wanted to make sure she got home safely.”
“You’re lying.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “Why are you lying to me, Molly? I thought we told each other the truth about everything.”
I didn’t answer him. My heart thumped and blood choked me. What did he know? Having confessed and been forgiven, why was he so malevolent? Had he fooled me at the restaurant? Or was he right, should I have told him about B.J.?
“Well…?” he asked very quietly.
“They didn’t believe I was her mother. One of them wanted to take her to a shelter.”
“Come on, Molly. It must have been you who wanted to take her to a shelter. And when they found out you weren’t her mother, they forced you to bring her home.”
Relieved, I turned away from the television and walked over to him. “No, Ben. They thought I was running away with her and they wanted me to go to a shelter. Then they found out I wasn’t her mother and they got very suspicious. One of them followed us most of the way back to make sure I took her home. He disappeared somewhere—evidently he got into an accident. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Naomi, but his friend called to say that his truck turned over on the highway and he’s dead. He wanted to know if I’d seen it happen.” I stood over Ben—he was slouched in the easy chair—triumphant in my array of lying facts.
You see, there is no truth in facts. And if you’re busy making judgments, remember there is no risk to all your fine opinions of the way people should live. Imagine a gun is at your head the next time you make a judgment: imagine that you will be shot for what you believe. Do you still believe it?
“I want to fuck straight,” Ben said without any indication that this was a non sequitur, that he had changed the subject. Maybe, as far as he was concerned, he hadn’t. Perhaps to him all conversations were really about sex. “I’ll take off my glasses.” He smiled as if this were witty. He waited for a response. When I didn’t make one, he took off his glasses and squinted at me. “Can’t grow a beard tonight—I could paint one on.”
I looked at the door to Naomi’s room and shook my head.
“She’s asleep,” he answered my silent objection. “I looked in while you were inspecting the television screen for scratches.” Again, he smiled at his own joke. “I knew she was exhausted from yesterday, that’s why I insisted she go to sleep.”
I shook my head.
“We’ll lock the connecting door. I really want to see your blond pussy.” He reached around to the back of my skirt for the zipper. “I love talking about sex without bullshit. Wendy couldn’t stand to just say it and hear it. She thought sex was dirty.”
My skirt fell to the floor. He peered at my panties and took a deep breath.
“Look at your stomach. It’s beautiful.”
“Ben, you’re treating me like I’m a prostitute.”
He lifted his face and I was shocked by what I saw: he was devastated by my comment. His eyes—wide with blindness anyway—floated, lost in their sockets; his cheeks sagged with hurt and his mouth drooped petulantly. “Molly,” he complained.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, idiotically.
“I’m just loving your body. I never got to be with someone so beautiful in my life. I’m really grateful.” He pleaded this to me—that is, to my face—but his eyes trailed down, glistening with greed, skimming over my stomach, pelvis, and thighs.
On a visit to my mother when I was seventeen I dressed in tight white shorts and a black Polo top, also very tight. I was very proud of my tall figure and what one prep school boy called my “arrogant tits,” which had finally blossomed after a worrisome delay. I looked great and I enjoyed it. In fact, I would have considered becoming a model if not for fidelity to Naomi’s feminism. I entered their trailer full of myself. Mother kissed me and made no comment except that I had color in my cheeks. My father took one look at nubile me and said, “Sorry, dearie, it’s against the law for me to fuck ya. I’ll get Gordie to come over if you want.” He laughed hoarsely at his joke. Gordie was, as they called it, “slow,” and a slob covered with oil; he had dirt from before the dinosaurs under his nails. After that I tried not to arouse men even though Dr. Reynolds pointed out why this episode was traumatic and its consequence crippling. But I did go back to exercising and dressing well and was civil to the men I took to bed, actually having breakfast with a few of them. Then I married Stefan and killed that issue, I thought
“I want to love normally. I want to be human again,” Ben said, looking meek. “I thought that’s what you promised if I told the truth.” There was no implied threat in his words or tone; I wish there had been: I could have resisted threats.
We locked the connecting door. He asked me to take off my clothes. I did and moved to get in the bed.
“No, please,” he moaned. “Stand up.”
He inspected me as if I were cattle—no, a slave ready for auction. He practically checked my gums for disease. He pushed me onto the bed. I fell over stiffly, like a mannequin. He lost himself in my neck, my shoulders, my underarms, my stomach, my thighs, my calves, my feet, and finally my genitals—he licked and bit and sucked and I felt nothing. Eventually his hairless cock plunged in.
But he didn’t ejaculate. He stopped humping after a while and it was still hard.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“You aren’t responding,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’m having a good time,” I lied, wanting to be polite.
“That doesn’t make sense. If you’re having a good time you’d respond. You feel almost dry.”
“Go ahead,” I said, and bucked a little, sliding his penis in and out. I was dry, it hurt.
He
tried again. No orgasm. Eventually, he got soft.
He lay next to me staring at the ceiling for a long time. I dressed, covered him up, opened the connecting door (Naomi was sound asleep; her breathing was so deep she almost hummed), and put our food tray outside the door. When I returned to his side, he said, in a choked, hoarse, sad voice: “I guess I’d better not grow a beard.”
When I didn’t respond to that he said, “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you love me?” When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “I love you, Molly.”
I felt the pressure rolling over from his side, a heavy rock of sadness, crushing me.
“I love you too, Ben,” I said.
I INSISTED BEN SLEEP IN THE OTHER ROOM WITH NAOMI. Strange, looking back on it, that I didn’t go myself, since I worried about him turning to her for sex. I guess I was so desperate for solitude. It may be a damning judgment of my marriage to Stefan, but I had never felt the lack of being alone. Stefan was small in my bed, like a stuffed animal that happened to move occasionally. Yes, you’re right, I really am a bad person. All those years Wendy must have buoyed me above the depths. I made many protestations of sisterhood and love, and yet I needed her more than I knew. Without her I was drowning.
Anyway, they slept soundly—I know because I stayed awake until five, once again going around and around all these events in a hopeless search for a way out.
Ben’s sexual disappointment in me had an immediate consequence: beginning with breakfast he was hostile to Naomi.
Naomi took one look at the hotel’s buffet and was dismayed by the long row of heated trays of pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon; beyond that was another row of cold cereals, fruits, juices, bagels, sliced salmon. The killed and displayed food beckoned like a dare: eat me and see if you survive. “I don’t know what to have,” she said.
“Don’t go in for a big production, Nommy. Just pick something out,” Ben grumbled. “You don’t like what you pick, get something else.” He stalked off toward the bagels.
I helped her: she was sweet and docile and hungry. I was delighted by her appetite. Her vitality encouraged me.
We sat and ate and chatted for more than forty minutes; we left him alone. Ben said nothing. He scooped clumps of cream cheese on two bagels, slapping on red slabs of salmon, devouring them with wide toothful bites. Bits of the salmon stayed wedged between his teeth and they looked like bloody fangs.
“Can we go swimming after breakfast?” she asked.
“For God’s sake, I said we could.” Ben’s tone was low, but the words scraped against each other with irritation. “Stop bothering me or I won’t take you at all.”
“Ben!” I complained, and turned to Naomi, my tone excessively sweet. “I’ll take you swimming now.”
“Okay,” she said happily, tossed her napkin down, and got to her feet, bouncing on tiptoes.
I had an awful memory, a sickening memory: Wendy doing the same thing, a plaintive scolding to her husband, a compensating indulgence to her daughter.
The water was tepid and chlorinated. I longed for the cold transparency of Maine’s waters—shatter your bones, sure, but it wakens you from the boredom of comfort.
Naomi’s skinny body undulated through the water, a swimming snake. Her head, narrowed by wet hair, pushed up in front of me, eyes puffy and red from the chemical.
“See?” she said.
“You’re terrific,” I praised her, and I remembered vividly how that triumph had felt for me. Maybe such moments are our happiest—commonplace achievements done for the first time. How thrilling it must have been for Wendy to see Naomi do them, knowing that she had made Naomi out of herself, nurtured her from a speck to this full-blown creature of skills and desire.
Ben had robbed my friend of that pleasure.
Because she wouldn’t allow him his pleasure.
We were still in the water when Ben appeared. Naomi broke off from our tag game to ask her father to watch her swim across the pool.
“This one is even longer,” she gave as an incentive.
“Sure, honey.” He seemed to have cheered up.
She performed for him, thrilled with herself.
“That’s good, honey. But you’re bending your knees. They should be locked.” He pantomimed with his arms. “You kick with your hips.”
She swam again.
He wasn’t satisfied. When she got the hips right, he fussed over her breathing, that she lifted her head out of the water too much. She tried again; he found more faults. The cycle ended with Naomi in tears.
Ben, affecting innocence, opened his hands and pleaded: “What did I do? I’m just trying to help you learn how to swim.”
“I know how!” She stamped her foot and stood by the side of the pool, wet and weeping.
“Okay,” I said, gesturing for him to move away. “Cut it out.”
“She doesn’t know how to take criticism,” he said as if this were very unfortunate. He spoke loud enough for her to hear, but said it to me—adult to adult—and that made it seem more grave and damning, a heartless judgment.
“You spoiled her fun,” I said. “That’s what you did.”
“Molly!” Ben came up to me. He squeezed my arm and whispered furiously in my ear. “Don’t undermine me. She’s my daughter. Do you understand?”
There were plenty of people around us—mostly wives of Honda dealers, I assumed—lying in sun chairs even though there was nothing but pale blue light coming through the panels in the ceiling. They all seemed to look at us (what other view did they have?), intrigued by our quarreling. I was humiliated. This too, Wendy. I remembered this also happening to you.
“Let go of me.” I squeezed the words out through my rage, though shame kept my volume low.
He did let go, instead shaking a thick finger in my face. “Don’t ever do that again.” He waved at Naomi, miserable in a towel now, head down, staring at the wet tiles. “Come on, you’re shivering. We’re going to the room.”
We trailed him. Naomi trembled in her towel all the way. I tried to rub her, but he wouldn’t stop his pace.
“Hurry up,” he snapped.
He entered our rooms ahead of us, walked up to the coffee table, and kicked it over. “I can’t do anything right with you two! I’m always in the wrong!”
“Okay, that’s it!” I shouted, my heart pounding, rushing past him going toward Naomi’s room. “We’re going home!” I got my suitcase from the closet, opened it on the bed, pulled the dresser drawers free, and dumped their contents in. We’re going home? Where’s home? I thought to myself.
Ravaging the room helped: my breathing slowed, my thumping heart calmed. I became aware of Naomi and Ben, both in the doorway, watching. When I had filled the suitcase I shut it and looked up at them.
Ben’s hand rested on Naomi’s head, thoughtlessly, propping himself up. She was downcast; Ben seemed curious.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Looks to me like I’m packing,” I said.
“If you want to go, that’s fine. Nommy and I are staying. So don’t pack our clothes.” He had strength in him—where had it come from? He was determined, he was resolved, he was unafraid.
And he should fear me: I could go to the lieutenant and repeat Ben’s confession, including the detail about what he used to strike the fatal blow. Along with everything else that would certainly convict him. And then I could lie and say he told me he has sexual desires for Naomi—maybe that would be enough to obtain custody.
Instead I asked: “How will you get home?”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked.
“If I take the car,” I spoke slowly, exasperated, “How will you get home?”
“We’ll rent one, asshole.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” I pushed the suitcase off the bed. It slumped to the floor. I kicked it.
“Okay,” he said, and laughed, his hands up in surrender. He bent down and said in
Naomi’s ear, “Tough lady, huh?”
She shrugged him off and ran off into the other room.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” I whispered to him in a fury.
“Don’t boss me around,” he said mildly. “I’m doing what you want. What’s your problem?”
“I want you to talk to Varney right now.” That was the answer. I couldn’t stand things being so unresolved. I even picked up the phone, a visual aide, and said: “Here. Call Varney now and tell him. Let’s get some idea of the legal consequences, what he thinks he can bargain for.”
Ben shook his head. “That’s not what we agreed,” he said quietly. He stepped back into the other room and began to shut the door behind him. Before he was obscured, he said: “When you’re fit for human company let us know.”
It was almost as if I had been sent to my room for being bad.
I wanted to kill him. No, I don’t mean revenge. I mean kill him for himself, for his endless selfishness, for which he had so many faces, so many voices, so many threats, and—worst of all—so many talented lawyers, the firm of Fliess & Fliess & Fliess & Sons, all making pitiful pleas. Even when he admitted he was wrong, he somehow ended up a winner. How could he have failed in business? He must have destroyed himself—no one could defeat him.
I admitted to my vanity that I had never won an argument with him. Despite my superior brain, despite my moral high ground, despite any advantage you can name, he got his way, always, and then somehow managed to make me apologize to him for his victory, which he then quickly transformed into a burden.
Well, I would kill him. That’s what I decided. If he did not—for whatever reason, even if he whined and begged and cried—if he did not confess when we returned to New York, then I would kill him.
No, nothing less would do. You might still think there is another solution, but I had finally learned my lesson. If he wriggled free once more, he was dead.
I fixed the room, replacing clothes and drawers, remaking the bed, and rejoined them in the other room.
Naomi, dried off and wearing clothes, was on the couch watching a cartoon show. She didn’t turn her head.
The Murderer Next Door Page 30
