by Jill Kelly
Mona was silent then. Ellie didn’t know what to say next so she just sipped tea from her mug and looked out the window.
Finally Mona asked about the trip to Chama Valley, and Ellie told her of Sofia’s refusal to help her and how she needed to decide what she wanted.
“Doesn’t sound so much like a refusal as a postponement. That happens sometimes. Did her reasoning make sense to you?” Mona asked.
“Yes,” Ellie said and she could hear her own petulance. It made her smile, and Mona smiled too.
“What do you want, Ellie?”
“I want all this not to have happened. I want my life back, my body back—no scars, no rape.”
Mona nodded. “What else do you want that you can’t have?”
“I want to never have met Joel Richardson.”
“I know. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?” When Ellie didn’t respond, she said, “What’s under all this, Ellie? What do you want that’s under all this?”
Ellie looked out at the rich evening light glowing on the street. “I want to feel safe.” She felt five years old.
“We all have a right to that,” said Mona. “A right to feel safe in our bodies, in our homes, in our world. And people—men—have violated that safety for you.”
They sat in silence with that for a few minutes.
Then Mona said, “What do you think it will take to feel safe?”
Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm, I think you do, Ellie. I think in your body, in your soul, you know whom and what you trust.”
“I don’t.”
“The child in you doesn’t perhaps. But the adult self has more skills.”
Ellie felt the petulance wash over her again. Why couldn’t Mona just tell her the answer? Why couldn’t somebody fix this for her?
“Did you trust Joel Richardson when you met him?”
“I didn’t have any reason not to trust him.”
“That wasn’t my question. Think again.”
“Yes … No … I didn’t ever think about it. He looked good. He was charming, witty, intellectual. He had style. We had good conversations. He treated me well.”
“Tell me more about that. What do you mean ‘he treated you well’?”
Ellie hesitated. Her mind wanted to go blank. She wanted Mona to stop pushing her. Finally she said, “There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with how he treated me.”
Mona didn’t say anything, as if she were waiting again for Ellie to go on but she didn’t want to. Wasn’t it time for the session to be over? Ellie glanced at her watch. She’d been there forty-five minutes. Mona wasn’t going to let her off the hook.
“You’re trying to get me to take responsibility for what Joel did to me, aren’t you? Own my part?”
“No, I’m not. Even though that twelve-step idea is often useful, it is not helpful for someone who has been brutalized by another. No one asks for that. What I am suggesting is that you never figured out whether Joel was trustworthy. You didn’t check with your inner wisdom, your intuition, your Higher Self, whatever you’d like to call it.”
“No.” Ellie was surprised at the relief she felt in seeing this. “And I should have.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘should.’ But ‘could have’ seems appropriate. Checking in with yourself is a way to move forward into feeling safe more of the time.”
“How do I that? I don’t have a clue.”
“Oh, but of course you do. Is there any place you feel safe here in Farmington?”
“Well, I feel pretty safe here.” She didn’t know why, but she trusted Mona.
“Good. Where do you feel that in your body? Close your eyes and try to find that feeling.”
Ellie sank back again into the cushions. She closed her eyes and scanned her body. “In my chest,” she said after a few minutes. “Around my heart and in my stomach.”
“That’s it. When we can learn to check in with ourselves about people or situations, we can access our boundaries more easily, choose what is safe for us.”
Mona was quiet then again. After a moment, she said, “We need to stop.”
Ellie opened her eyes and looked at Mona. “What do I do about Al and what the sister-in-law said?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to know what can hurt me.”
“That sounds absolutely right. Then ask him.”
43
With the coming of the equinox, with the first greening of the trees, the famous Paris light brightened and a small piece of hope unveiled itself. Ellie began walking again, long walks that were less exploration of the city than a way to stay out of her apartment. She drank less and less, using the Valium to soften the edges of withdrawal from the months of too much wine and whiskey. She went half-heartedly to a few AA meetings. Nothing clicked, but she remembered there was a way out and she paced herself as best she could with both drugs and drink. Eventually the drinking stopped. The Valium was more complicated, but she cut back. A new tenant was due to arrive in the apartment at Rue des Ciseaux, so on April 1, she headed home.
Ellie was weary as the plane landed in Pittsburgh. It had been noon all day as she crossed the time zones following the sun in its midday arc. It was one-thirty in the afternoon when she got to New York, five-thirty when she got to Pittsburgh. She’d been awake for twenty hours.
As she stood waiting in the aisle, packed in with the others who were impatient to get out of the cramped space, she thought about Hansen. She had emailed him two days earlier with her flight times. “In case you’re around,” she’d written. “I’d like to reconnect.” There had been no answer—they hadn’t communicated at all since December when he had left Paris—but she could hope, couldn’t she?
But he wasn’t there. Sandy was.
Her old friend stood off to one side. She smiled when Ellie caught her eye, but it was a sad smile. Ellie felt guilty. She had been a lousy correspondent while she’d been away. She hadn’t told Sandy about Hansen’s visit, or her relationship with Mario, or any of the long nights of numbing out and searching her soul. She felt she’d aged years, but she didn’t know how to explain all that happened, and she didn’t see how she and Sandy could get back the easy, comfortable friendship they’d had before all this had happened.
Sandy too looked older, she thought, and weary. She’d have to ask about that.
The two women hugged, Ellie hanging on an extra moment as if in apology. Then they went to the baggage claim. The conversation stayed light: Ellie chatted about the flight, the marginal food, the snoring priest who’d kept falling onto her shoulder. Sandy laughed; it seemed genuine and Ellie felt hopeful.
The bags were already there and so they trundled them out to the parking lot. Ellie was struck by the heat and humidity, already too high for early April. How could people not believe in global warming? She stripped off her jacket and threw it in the back as Sandy pulled out into traffic and they began the forty-five minutes to Greensburg.
Ellie relaxed. It felt good to see Sandy, to have a woman she could talk to again. She’d been lonely for that. She’d been lonely for everything that was part of a normal life. Maybe they could get some of it back.
“How’s Arlen? I expected he’d drive tonight. Is he working?”
Sandy stared straight ahead at the highway. “I threw him out.” Her voice was small and pinched.
“You threw him out?” Ellie’s mind, tired as it was, began to race. Was there some new development in the case? Had Arlen been there that night after all? She reined herself back in, wanting to be a good friend. “What’s happened?”
“He’s having an affair. With a young blonde with big tits. Such a cliché!”
“Arlen?” Ellie could hear the disbelief in her own voice. “Arlen?”
Sandy shrugged. “The detectives showed me pictures. He has an apartment in the city and I guess he’s living there with her. She can’t be more than thirty.”
“Do you know her?”
&nbs
p; Sandy shook her head. “No. I assume she’s somebody he met through work.”
“I can’t wrap my head around this,” said Ellie. “Arlen just doesn’t seem the type. You guys were so good together.” She didn’t say that Arlen wasn’t the kind of guy that most women found attractive.
“That’s what I thought. I thought he really loved me.”
“Men and their dicks,” Ellie said. “He doesn’t love her. It’s just a sex thing.”
Sandy shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter. He’s been cheating on me and I just couldn’t have that. So I told him to get out.”
“When did this happen?”
“Two weeks ago.”
Ellie touched her friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
Sandy looked over at her and nodded. “It’s been tough without you these past months. Though I know you needed to go. Did it do what you needed it to do?”
Ellie’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Time went by. And nobody there knew or cared.” She thought about Hansen and wondered if she should say something. Later maybe. “Maybe that’s all I can ask for,” she said aloud.
There was silence then for a mile or two. Then Ellie spoke. “Do you think you two can get over this? Maybe counseling?”
“I don’t know. The whole Gettysburg thing was hard for us, too. And Arlen hanging out with Joel. The detectives told me Arlen had been to sex clubs with Joel.”
“You mean like strip joints, like the Bada Bing in The Sopranos?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask for any details. But definitely with hookers.”
“This just gets uglier and uglier, doesn’t it?” Ellie felt sick.
Sandy nodded. They had come to the exit on the turnpike and Ellie saw the familiar streets she had driven the last eight years.
“Are you okay for money?” Ellie asked as they drove past the entrance to the college. “Is Arlen paying his part of your bills?”
“So far. Though I don’t know where he’s getting the money for the apartment.”
“Maybe the blonde is paying for the apartment.” Ellie knew how preposterous that was as she said it. Young blondes didn’t pay for apartments for older men who looked like Arlen.
“Yeah, right,” said Sandy. “But it isn’t coming out of his check. That’s still being direct deposited into our account and Arlen is just taking out spending money. I’ve wondered if Joel left him money in his will.”
“They weren’t those kind of friends.”
Sandy looked over at her with the same sad smile she’d given her at the airport. “Ellie, I don’t think we know what kind of friends they were.”
44
Ellie spent the next weeks focused on Sandy, offering her the companionship and reassurance that Sandy had given to her after Gettysburg. They ate lunch together on campus and spent evenings playing cards, walking in the early spring loveliness of Ellie’s neighborhood, talking. Sandy had seen a lawyer to find out about divorce or a legal separation or whatever would most protect her from what she called “Arlen’s insanity.” Ellie played the sounding board.
Ellie also spent time in her office. She had a cordial welcome home from the dean and was offered an early summer school class to begin mid-May, teaching English grammar to new Korean nursing students. Ellie loved working with the international students and their eagerness to please, so different from the half-hearted interest shown to foreign language by the western Pennsylvania kids. The events of the fall seemed forgotten.
She was glad to be back with her cats. Roger Gerstead had kept the apartment up pretty well, and Sandy had overseen a thorough cleaning including a smudging with sage before she returned, so she felt comfortable there. She began to feel a bit of the normalcy she had wanted when she returned from Paris.
Late on May 10, a Sunday evening, Ellie thought she heard a knock on the door. It was nearly ten and she was brushing her teeth. Sandy had gone home minutes earlier and Ellie wondered if she’d forgotten something.
“Sandy, is that you?”
There was no answer but the knock came again, louder now, so she went down the four stairs to the landing and opened the door as far as the chain would allow. Doug Hansen stood there.
Ellie’s heart leapt, just a little. She smiled and closed the door, undid the chain, and opened the door wide. But he didn’t smile and he didn’t take her in his arms. He didn’t even make a move to come in. She suddenly felt cold and afraid.
“Ellie,” he said. “Is Sandy Gerstead here?”
She shook her head. “She just left. Maybe five minutes ago. Has something happened?”
He nodded. “Her husband’s body was found this evening.”
Fear washed over her. “Was it an accident?”
He shook his head.
“She didn’t do it. She couldn’t have. She was with me all afternoon.”
He moved in closer to her on the landing and touched her shoulder. “Ellie, we don’t suspect her. We need to notify her.”
She moved toward him then and he held her, but she felt little comfort even in the familiarity of his arms.
After a moment, he followed her up into the kitchen. She said nothing, held up the kettle, and looked at him.
He shook his head. “Would she have gone straight home?”
“Yes,” Ellie said, “of course. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Ellie, relax. I know this is hard.”
She stopped and turned around and looked at him. She took a deep breath and blew it out. “You’re right. I just thought that this was starting to be over. I just wanted it to be over.”
He nodded at her, sympathy written plain on his face. “How has it been to be back?”
“Okay,” she said. “I start teaching again next month. Summer school. One of my favorite classes. I’m ready for things to be normal, every day. Why can’t it just be over?”
Hansen shrugged. “Things don’t always work that way. I’m sorry.”
She turned back to the counter, gripped the edge. “I wanted you to come to the airport.” She didn’t turn around.
“I know. It didn’t seem like the right idea.”
“Too late, isn’t it?” She turned then and looked at him.
He looked back at her. “It’s not that exactly.” He paused and in those few seconds his phone rang. He saw who it was and stepped out on the landing. When he came back, his expression was grim. “She’s there now—at her house. Do you want to come and be with her?”
“Yes, of course.” Ellie went into the bedroom and got dressed.
Capriano and his partner Jackson were waiting in their car outside the house. Capriano nodded at Ellie and at Hansen and the three of then went to the door. The house was dark downstairs, though lights were on in two of the windows of the upper story. It took Sandy Gerstead several minutes to answer the doorbell.
She stood there, the entry light on behind her. She was still dressed—jeans and a soft white blouse. Her face was pink and she smelled of soap and toothpaste.
“Something’s happened to Arlen,” she said when she saw the detectives. Her voice was flat, dead almost.
Ellie moved straight to her and wrapped her in a hug.
Somehow over the next few minutes, they settled into the living room. The two detectives in easy chairs, Ellie and Sandy on the couch across the coffee table from them. Ellie had brought in a tray of glasses filled with water although no one touched them.
Capriano spoke directly to the new widow. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband is dead. His body was found a couple of hours ago.”
Sandy nodded, looked at her hands, then across at the mantle where her wedding picture stood.
“Was she with him? That blonde. Is she dead, too?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Capriano and he looked at Hansen. “They’re both dead.”
“Was it an overdose?” Sandy asked. “Bad drugs? I knew his job would get him into trouble.”
“No,” said Capriano. “We’
re not sure, but we don’t think it was drugs, not specifically.”
Hansen saw the murder scene in his mind and he shivered. Gettysburg again, down to the last detail. The blonde call-girl, for that’s what she was, tied to the bed with gold cords. Another cord around her neck, twisted so tight it bit into her flesh. The body streaked with welts and burns. Gerstead in a wingback chair, his head tipped back, the needle in his arm. He wore a white physician’s jacket and clipped to the pocket was Joel Richardson’s hospital ID. There was no sign of struggle.
Hansen hoped Capriano wouldn’t share these details. He didn’t want Ellie to hear any of this.
Capriano didn’t. He went through the usual interview questions. When had Sandy last heard from her husband? What had the women done all day? Had they separated for any length of time? Had either of whom talked to Arlen over the course of the day? Did they know who he might have been meeting?
The two women weren’t any more helpful than Hansen expected. Sandy said she hadn’t talked to Gerstead in three days. They’d been separated for several weeks. He’d taken all his clothes and effects, she assumed to the apartment. He’d called her at work on Thursday to ask if he could come by and get his tools and some of his music. She didn’t know if he’d been there; she hadn’t bothered to check if the things were gone.
“Can you add anything, Dr. McKay?” Capriano had been intently watching Sandy Gerstead. Now he looked at Ellie for the first time.
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen Arlen since last fall. I’m sure he knew better than to call me. He knew I’d side with Sandy in this mess.”
Hansen knew that that was true, and he could see that both women were reeling from the information. He also remembered that Ellie didn’t know that this was the third incident. She would still be believing her experience was the only one. He stood. “Any more questions for right now, Larry? I’m sure Mrs. Gerstead has calls she needs to make.”
“We’ll need someone to verify identification of the body,” Capriano said.
“Sandy doesn’t need to do that,” said Ellie. “One of his sons can do it.”
