by Warren Adler
"You do really want to know?"
She nodded.
"I have that need. Yes." Was it the real reason? Catching her reflection in a wall mirror, she saw an image of determination: jaw jutting upward, eyes narrowed with intensity, and head held high. Who was this creature? she wondered, turning again to face him. He had sagged onto the couch.
"I'd rather forget it," he muttered. He looked up at her like a helpless puppy. "But I can't."
"You see?"
"What's the point?" He shook his head. A burst of mocking laughter hissed out of his throat. "It's like asking someone: How are you? And he tells you the absolute truth. Who wants to know?"
"I want to know. I spent eight years with a man I believed in, someone to whom I was committed for a lifetime, the father of my son. That man betrayed me, and I want to know why."
"No, you don't," Davis said. "You want to know how. You'll never find out why. My dilemma is more of a who. Who the hell was Lily? The person I knew and loved and married and lived with? Or the broken woman on the tray? That's my problem. If I couldn't recognize the person with whom I've had what I thought was the closest possible relationship, then how can I ever judge anything again?"
He appeared surprised at his own outburst. A flush appeared on his cheeks, little round dabs of red that gave his face a doll's look. A shock of hair fell over his eyes, and she resisted the urge to set it right. Yet she could not deny that their common predicament drew them together, nor deny that in his presence she felt attractive again.
"May I call you..." She hesitated, having forgotten his first name.
"Edward. Sure, why not?"
She found herself being deliberately ingratiating. Of course, she told herself, she needed his help. "And I'm Vivien."
"Viv."
"Okay with me. Any way will do. I'm still the same person, not like them.... "If they were sharing these intimacies, she reasoned, exchanging first names would make them less like strangers.
"All right, Viv, but I'm still sorry. I admit I might see the point of knowing, but they're both gone and they haven't left us much to investigate."
"We have these keys," she said, watching him react. "All we need is an address."
"And then?"
"We use the keys..." She hadn't speculated that far ahead. At that point the search seemed an end in itself.
"Pandora's box," he muttered. "God, I don't even want to think about it."
She felt a flash of impatience with his reluctance.
"I don't want to force you to do anything," she said testily.
"It's just that it's too much to think about at the moment."
"You did call me first."
"That may have been stupid. Sometimes when you've been hit in the gut like this, you do strange things." He stood up and came toward her. "Look. I'm sorry. I hadn't intended for this to go beyond our meeting. I just want to forget, to wipe it all out of my mind."
"I have that same hope."
"Then why..."
"Dammit," she cried. "It was you who put the idea in my mind. Last night as I left. You said finding out might ... might put things in perspective."
"It was just an idea that popped into my mind.... I can't explain it."
She had, she remembered, felt the unmistakable magnetism of his urgency and perhaps something else that she could not yet define. Whatever it was, it had lingered and had found ready tinder within her.
"Then you didn't mean it?" she challenged.
"I did," he shot back vehemently. "I did mean it at that time. Then I thought about it. Maybe we should let go now." He paused, obviously confused and uncertain. "Why dwell on it? I have my job. It's very demanding. I just want to clear my mind of it and get back to work. I'm willing to accept the facts. Over and done with. Lily was unfaithful. She lied and cheated. The hell with it."
She saw his anguish. His eyes smoldered with pain and confusion.
"I just don't want to have to relive it."
"You think you can just be reborn again? Without memory?"
"I'd like to try."
"Time won't cure it," she said. "It will always be there."
"We'll see." Despite his outward resolve, he seemed somehow tentative and unsure.
"So you're saying you won't help," she said regretfully.
"I don't know how I can."
"By pooling resources. Finding out."
She resented his planting the idea and then abandoning it. It seemed pointless to argue. She stood up and put on her coat. He had sat down again and seemed lost in thought.
"Even if you won't help, I'm still going ahead. Sooner or later I'll find what I'm looking for."
When he didn't answer, she shrugged and let herself out. In the end you only have yourself, she thought bitterly, trying to force him out of her mind. Unfortunately, like the legacy of Orson, it was taking on a power of its own.
17
Edward sat on the jump seat of the lead limousine. Ahead was the hearse, polished to a bright sheen, carrying Lily's body. A long line of cars followed, all of which contained longtime friends and acquaintances of the Corsini family.
It had not surprised him to see the church completely filled. The Corsini family had deep roots in this part of Baltimore. From a pushcart, Lily's great-grandfather had founded Corsini Produce, a wholesale firm that supplied fruits and vegetables to supermarkets.
Lily's brother Vinnie, a burly, crude bull of a man, ran the business that supported various brothers-in-law, cousins, nieces, nephews, and the sons and daughters of old family friends. Only a handful of Corsini offspring ever left the fold, geographically. Lily was one of them. They never forgave Edward for that. It hardly mattered that he met her after she had left home. They always felt that her sojourn in Washington was only temporary. So they were right after all, he thought.
How he had once envied them their closeness! A fortress, he had called them. Compared to his blood relations, they were a kind of miracle. A long time ago he had had an older brother, Harold, who died in a car crash. All he had left now was a maiden aunt who lived in Seattle, from whom he received a Christmas card once a year.
Vinnie sat in the center of the back seat between his mother and his sister Rose. Beside Edward on the other jump seat was Anna, sniffling, in deep mourning. In the church he had sat beside Lily's mother, barely coherent with grief; her face was hidden behind a black veil, and her arthritic fingers were entwined with rosary beads. Deepening the grief was the fact that Lily had been the baby of the family.
As much as he had prepared himself for the icy reception, it was difficult to endure. He was the ultimate alien, and he felt it.
"You didn't know where she was?" Vinnie had barked at him, refusing to accept his proffered hand. Jowly, chunky, with thick curly hair tumbling over a low forehead, Vinnie's eyes glowed with menacing hatred. "You fuck."
Vinnie's reaction set the tone for the rest of them, imbuing the family with a Mafiosa mentality. Once he had chuckled at the reference. Now his thoughts about it turned morbid. He wondered if they would seek revenge on him for Lily's death.
During the service he perspired profusely. His ears felt stuffed, and he could not understand the priest's eulogy. It was, he decided, the biggest trial of his life. Worse than the death of his brother Harold, worse than the death of each of his parents. In those instances there was no secret to keep, nothing to hold back, nothing for him to test other than the endurance of his own grief. Hell, he thought, he had seen so much of death, it had become nothing more than a natural phenomenon. What he faced now was unnatural. In this company, Lily had been raised to sainthood, and he had become the devil incarnate.
They had let him sit in the lead car for appearance's sake; they had also put him in the front row beside his mother-in-law, who had not even nodded in his direction. Ignore this, he begged himself, and keep your cool. Say nothing. Leave them with their illusions.
"The priest said a nice Mass," Rose whispered, dabbing her eyes.
&n
bsp; "Didn't have to be," Vinnie said.
"Leave it alone, Vinnie," Anna said with a sidelong glance at Edward.
"How can I leave it alone? Look at what he did to Mama."
"It wasn't his fault," Anna pleaded.
"Whose then?" Vinnie said. "A man who doesn't know where his wife is is a scumbag. He has a wife, he takes care of her."
"You couldn't expect anything better," Rose said. Of all the clan she had always been the most vehement about him. Once he had asked her, "Why don't you like me?" And she had answered, "You smell funny." Lily had said Rose had a mean streak.
"If he didn't work for that prick congressman, she would have come back to Baltimore. We could have fixed her up good."
I love them, but I can't stand them, Lily had told him. On his part he wished that they had loved him. Now he suspected they could be right about him. Maybe he had not loved Lily enough. If he had, wouldn't he be forgiving in his heart? Instead, he felt only anger, humiliation, and hatred.
"What are you giving him a hard time for, Vinnie?" Anna asked when Vinnie continued his diatribe in the car as if Edward were invisible. "Not like us. Look at Mama," Rose said.
Edward said nothing. It was important to hold everything in, to control himself. He might drop the kind of information that they would take as vindictiveness and lies. The image of his mutilated body thrown into an open grave floated through his mind, and he shivered with fear. He wished he could cry, show them the kind of grief they needed to see. He couldn't.
"You marry outside," Vinnie hissed, "you get this. My kids marry outside, I'll cut their hearts out. He didn't even become a Catholic. From the beginning no priest blessed them. He completely turned her around."
He was stoking his anger, and Edward expected a blow to land at the back of his head at any moment. If Vinnie touched him, he vowed, he would spit it out at them: Your sister was a cunt, a whore. He would tell them the truth.
"Lucky they didn't have kids," Vinnie said as the cortege drove through the gates of the cemetery.
He stood shivering beside the open grave as they lowered Lily's coffin into the ground, accompanied by the loud wailing of the women. That can't be Lily in there, he told himself, remembering the sight of her broken face. He had been the only one of the crowd to see it. Where had the real Lily gone? he wondered. For a fleeting moment he recalled the words of Mrs. Simpson. Viv. Couldn't be the Orson I knew, she had said. She had had his body burned into ashes, dismissed. Lily was being put underground. Memorialized. Boxed for a slower disintegration. They would bring flowers on her birthday. As he watched the graveside service, he slipped off his marriage ring. When it came time to fling handfuls of dirt into the open grave, he mixed his with the marriage ring and heaved, imagining he could hear the ping on her metal casket.
They got back into the car, and the cars broke ranks as the procession headed home. Life, after all, went on. On a residential street not far from the cemetery, Vinnie asked the driver to stop.
"You can get out now, scumbag," he shouted.
"Vinnie," Anna protested. Mrs. Corsini paid little attention. She rested her head against the side of the car, lost in grief for her dead baby.
"It's all right," Edward whispered. "I understand."
"You understand shit," Vinnie said.
"Let him go," Rose said.
"Come on, Vinnie," Anna pleaded.
"I don't want to see any more of him. As far as I'm concerned, he killed Lily."
"Now that is stupid, really stupid," Anna shouted between convulsive sobs. She started to open the door on her side. "He goes, I go."
Edward turned to her. "It's all right, Anna," he said, opening the door. He put one leg out, then turned to Vinnie. He wanted to say it, but instead he said, "I loved her, the girl I married, your sister. I loved her once. I..." He felt the words jumble in his mind, then lose their meaning.
"You are a bastard, Vinnie," Anna cried, but she did not get out.
Panicked, fearful that he might blurt it out, Edward slammed the door shut and ran from the car, darting into a drugstore. He heard the car drive off.
"Can I help you?" the clerk asked from behind the counter.
He shook his head. No one can help me, he thought. Except ... the image of Vivien surfaced.
He went into the phone booth and called Virginia information, got Vivien's number, and dialed. Her voice sounded familiar, warming after the frosty reception of the day.
"I've thought about what you said, what you wanted to do," he stammered. "Maybe it does make sense."
"It was your idea."
"All I could think of," he said, grateful for her warm response, for her being there at the other end of the connection.
"It's like"—he paused, wanting to express the way he felt—"being alone on a mountain."
"Something like that," she agreed. He could sense her caution.
"She's buried," he blurted. "I'm calling from Baltimore."
"Was it what you expected?"
"Worse," he said. "You can't imagine."
He wanted to tell her more. Who else could possibly understand.
"I'll be back in a few hours. We could meet at Nathan's. Say seven o'clock?" It was a restaurant in Georgetown. The idea sounded ludicrous. Was it to be a kind of celebration?
"I'll be there," Vivien said. She hung up.
"Thank you," he whispered into the dead mouthpiece.
18
They sat at a table in the rear. It was a small restaurant, and business was slow.
"Do you feel funny about this?" he asked. He had ordered duck à l'orange, and she had ordered broiled rockfish. The waiter poured out cold Chablis from a carafe.
"It's fine," he said, tasting it. He repeated the question.
"Funny?"
"I mean inappropriate."
"No. I don't feel inappropriate."
He sipped the wine. It felt tart on his tongue but smooth going down. In the soft light he noted the angles of her face—deepset eyes that peered over high cheekbones. Her nostrils, flared, making her nose seem flatter from a frontal view. Her lips were full with a wide angel's bow, which she had darkened with lipstick, giving her a different appearance than before. More confident, perhaps. He wasn't sure.
Her small, pale, tapered fingers played with the stem of her wineglass. Although he had observed them yesterday, he was surprised that her hands were so small. Lily's hands were long and thin, the fingers delicate but bony, the wrists thin with a large nob rising on the outside.
"I'm glad that's over," he said, pulling his gaze away from her, looking instead into the bowl of the wineglass. "Her brother accused me of being Lily's killer."
"Nice people."
"Just sick at heart," he said gently, although it belied what he really felt. They had been cruel. He told her other details about the funeral.
"I wanted to look grief-stricken," he said. "I guess I wasn't as good an actor as I thought."
"I know what you mean."
He felt no compulsion to press the point. Instead, he fished in his pocket and brought out the key.
"I brought it," he said, holding it up. Her eyes widened as she looked at it.
"Now we need to find the lock. I checked a locksmith. If it's a Medeco, it's registered and numbered. Ours is a Yale. Very common."
Ours. The possessive pronoun was disconcerting. But she did not correct herself, and he let it pass.
"I tore the house apart looking for an address. I didn't even know what to look for." She took a deep drink of the wine. "I tossed out everything that belonged to Orson, the physical things. I kept the pictures, though. They're for Ben. Mementoes of a father. Just for him." Her eyes glazed, as if masking some inner anguish. After a moment they cleared.
"I haven't yet been able to summon the courage to go through her things."
"But you must," she said. "Somewhere there is a clue. Somewhere..."
Her entreaty had not lost any of its urgency.
"Yes. I'll try tonight."
He had deliberately avoided opening her closets, looking through her drawers, touching her makeup and toiletries. Too painful? Too overwhelming? He was not sure.
"If you'd like, I'll help," she said haltingly, lowering her eyes.
"It didn't bother you ... to go through his things?"
She looked up at him.
"It bothered me not to find what I was looking for."
"You didn't feel..." He groped for the word. "Funny?"
"I felt like a searcher. Nothing more."
"His things..." Again he hesitated. Was the image he sought sentimental or unclean?
Her eyes narrowed as she inspected him. No mistaking her purpose, he thought. She knew what she wanted.
"I told you, Edward." Her tongue lingered over his name. "You don't have to go along."
"But I want to," he said quickly. Her eyelids flickered, and she turned away. "I'm really committed," he said. "It was my idea, remember?"
"I remember."
He had used the word committed, and he was, he told himself, but he was frankly frightened by what it suggested. Commitment carried the implication of entanglement. He felt sticky-handed, caught in an increasingly intricate web; he wondered who was spinning the strands. To mask his bewilderment he poured more wine into their glasses. Lifting his, his hand shook.
"Look at me," he said. "That damned funeral. It unnerved me." He felt compelled suddenly to dredge up his reactions as though she had been a lifelong friend.
"When Vinnie, Lily's brother, accused me of being her killer, I half-believed it, as if something I did flung her into the arms of another man." Looking up, their eyes met.
"That's what they want. For us to feel guilty."
Us! There it was again. This time it referred to him. Was she confusing him with Orson?
"For a moment I actually did feel that way."
"That's why we've got to find the holy grail," she whispered.
The waiter came with their food. They ate little and without relish. Silent for a long while, they occasionally gazed at each other warily, their eyes locking momentarily.
"Why?" he asked boldly. "He didn't seem the least bit short-changed." His gaze washed over her face briefly, then lowered. Her body suggested a completeness Lily's had lacked.
