by Warren Adler
"This is it, the last of it," she told him in the car. As he drove, he watched her. The lines on her face were smooth, betraying no anxiety. When their eyes met, hers turned away. Something strange was happening inside her. At first he had thought it was his own paranoia reacting. Wasn't love a form of paranoia? With that to sustain him, he tried to dismiss his growing concern. Was she drifting away from him on strong but invisible currents? He could not bear such thoughts. Nor could he imagine what life had been or could be without her. By then, Lily had become merely a name, a non-person, someone he had seen in a movie who was briefly engaging but forgettable.
When they got back to the apartment, at first she sat on the bed, trancelike, lost in herself. He puttered in the kitchen, making them coffee. His hands shook. His heart pounded. The sense of menace was pervasive. Last night they had, as always, clung to each other. But something was happening, something ominous.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
"But I feel something, and it frightens me."
"I know."
When he brought the steaming coffee mugs, she waved hers away, and he put it on the floor beside the bed. Watching her, he backed away and sat on the floor against the wall, sipping the hot liquid.
"I'm leaving," she said, drawing in her breath, her eyes moist but alert. The words seemed to break something inside him. His ears buzzed with crashing sounds. He hoped his body would explode. His mind told him to eject his thoughts, to empty itself of everything, to vanish.
"It would always be between us," she whispered, her words crashing into his consciousness like clanging cymbals. Yet he wondered if she had existed outside his imagination.
"But I thought..." he stammered.
"I just can't live with the danger, Edward."
"What danger?"
"That it won't last, that it will go away."
"Then you can't love me, that's why you don't say it."
"And if I said it? What would it mean? They're just words, Edward. Just words."
"What about feelings?"
"I don't trust them. Inside me they will always seem like a lie. I can't live with this fear. It will corrode me. The only certainty I can find is myself, in myself. You see..." The tears bubbled over her lower lids and slid onto her cheeks.
"But I thought we had smashed the past."
"You may have. I can't. There is still one thing left to do."
"Me?"
She nodded.
He continued to sit, paralyzed and inert, unable to find any spark of life in himself, extinguished.
He watched her rise, take out her suitcases, and begin to pack. It was too unbearable to watch, like observing a gaping wound in himself, blood flowing freely, his life slipping away.
When the knock came, he could not relate it to anything outside of himself. When it persisted, he looked at Vivien and saw her fear. There was no escaping its urgency. He crossed the room and opened, the door. It was McCarthy.
"I found it," he said. "I found their place."
34
Outside, it was warmer. The afternoon sun threw shafts of light through the still barren branches of the trees, defining the expanding buds. She could detect the unmistakable signs of the earth's thaw, and it filled her mind with memories of past springs in Vermont.
She had let herself be persuaded, not by words, but by the nagging feeling that she must not leave until all the tangles of her past life had been broken. It had taken every ounce of her courage to make her decision to leave Edward, and there was little left to resist. In her mind it would be a ritual, the final cremation.
It had been an idea that had loomed large between them with its promise of exorcism and revelation. But hadn't she already had her exorcism? Hadn't she faced the ultimate reality of womanhood, exploded the last remaining myth of the necessity of male attachment? What she had concluded was that it was better to be self-contained, better to control her own destiny without the encumbrance of this powerful magnetism that made her dependent on something outside herself. There were signs, too, that the magnetism had fulfilled its purpose, leaving her with its inevitable consequences. That, too, would have to be eliminated.
She sat in the seat beside McCarthy. By silent consent, Edward sat alone in the back.
"It's not far," McCarthy said.
She had disposed of her key but was not surprised when Edward had produced his, confirming what she had intuitively sensed.
Although McCarthy looked ahead impassively as he drove, he spun out a monologue without interruption.
"Must have had a practical streak, your wife did, Davis. I traced it through a cash purchase she made at Woodies—a box spring, mattress, sheets, and pillows. Nothing more. Got the employees' discount and had it delivered to J. Smith, Eighteen Twenty-five Parkend Street, Arlington. Had it right about the time frame and distance. J. Smith. If you want to be anonymous, J. Smith is your best shot. More J. Smiths than anything else in the telephone books of the U.S. Actually, I had it a couple of weeks ago, but I held on to it." He paused and cleared his throat. "I ready brooded on it, but coming so soon after that FBI thing, I thought it might be a little too much to take. Lousy, the way they moved in on you like that. Just one more road to take. In this business that's the way it is. You got to admit the logic in it, though, especially..." He took a deep breath but still did not look at either of them. "Hope they didn't shake you up too much. Hell, you two together was a surprise to me, too. I knew you sold the house, Mrs. Simpson. Then, when you settled today, I figured you might be cutting out somewhere. I hope I'm doing the right thing. But somehow I feel that if you don't tie up this one loose end, you'll always have some lingering feeling of mystery. Not knowing, you know, only half knowing, can be a tough thing to live with. Hell, it's none of my business." His eyes darted to the rearview mirror. "You forgive me, Davis? I'm a shit when I'm drunk, although I guess you should have known that ... about the pregnancy. Should have told you at the time. My fault. This is also my fault. Don't try to put it together. Nothing ever happens by accident, even in my business." He laughed suddenly, making a croaking sound. "I never did tell the Feds where it was, being a sneaky bastard. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that they got to the bottom of the crash. Something about the deicing solution not being enough to keep the ice off while the plane waited on the runway. Simple as that. It's the simple things that foul you up every time." He squinted at the windshield and brought down the sun visor to shut off the glare of the slanting sun. "Not far. I didn't go in. As a matter of fact, I'm not going in. This is not for me. It's out of my system now." He pulled up in front of an older garden apartment project, not unlike the one they had chosen themselves.
"Around the back," he said. "Ground floor. I'll wait here."
Edward got out of the back and opened the door for Vivien. She remembered the project. It was one of those they had inspected on the very first day. She speculated on what might have happened if they had stumbled on it. Would it have foreclosed on what had come after? Or was that inevitable?
They did not speak as they walked around the back of the building. The apartment, Number Two, had its own entrance. Like theirs, mature trees blocked off the sunlight. It was also a lower-middle-class community, working people whose lives were played out in constant economic stress. A perfect place for anonymity, she thought: few children, hardworking single people or couples. It was a factor that neither of them had considered, perhaps deliberately.
The door to the apartment showed signs of age and long usage. Multiple paint jobs had made a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to cover the chips and chinks. Below the bell lever was a place for a name card, but none was in it.
Like the name they had chosen, a sense of anonymity pervaded the entrance. With pale, trembling fingers, Edward fumbled with the key, inserting it finally. Before he turned it, he looked up at her.
"Doesn't seem important anymore," he said with sadness. When she did not answer, he turned the key. The lock clicked open, and
he pushed at the door with the palm of his hand.
Feel nothing, she urged herself as she followed him inside. With the single window blocked by the trunk of a close-growing tree and the last fading rays of a winter sun throwing sparse light, the apartment seemed enveloped in a smoky haze. It took some moments for her eyes to focus.
When she was able to see clearly, her gaze swept the room. The walls were painted in a nondescript dingy color. Like theirs, it was a single room with a small Pullman kitchen and a door that led, obviously, to a bathroom. Jutting out from one wall was a mattress on a box spring, neatly dressed in a fitted sheet and two matching pillows. At its foot was a folded pink blanket.
In terms of space alone, the sense of emptiness was pervasive, almost stifling. Her eyes darted toward Edward. Yet she sensed that something existed in this room that transcended the Spartan setting. It might be only fantasy, spun out of her knowledge of what had taken place here, but Orson's presence seemed to rise out at her, enveloping her in a gauze of compelling power—not the shuddering eerie presence of a haunting ghostly spirit bent on vengeance and disruption, but more like the cry of a helpless, vulnerable tragic child, pleading for compassion.
She felt the hate and anger seep out of her.
A gurgle of response started in her throat, but she remained silent. Behind her, she could feel the faint rustle of Edward's movements, his breath shallow and steady. Was it a sign? Did he feel what she was experiencing? As she turned toward him, her sweeping vision caught the glint of crystal, probably from the last single ray of declining light. Beside the mattress, at first hidden from her view, was a small bud vase. In it were the remains of a single sweetheart rose, its dry petals resting sadly on a weary wizened stem. Only then did a sound rise from her lips—not a stifled cry of repressed pain, but more like a bleat of a young lamb saved from slaughter.
"We must forgive them," she whispered. He turned, hesitant at first, then let himself rush into her waiting arms.
"Of course."
In the sweet silence between them, she heard her words. Uncertainty, too, had vanished.
"I love you," she whispered.
"And me you ... for always."
"At least for now," she said.
35
When they came back to the car, McCarthy looked at them with questioning eyes. None of my business, he had told them earlier. But he had made it his business, Edward thought, for reasons unknown except to himself.
They came back to the car with arms around each other's waists. Through the engorging fullness of his happiness, Edward could still observe the detective's sense of surprise and curiosity. He considered the man's dilemma with wry amusement and resolved to toss him some tiny crumb of knowledge. But when he searched himself, his knowledge was confused, his understanding murky. Instead of the burst of sunlight, the explosion of understanding that is supposed to accompany an epiphany, he felt numb, drained of insight. What had changed inside Vivien was as womanly and, therefore, as mysterious as ever. His love, need, attraction for Vivien had been quite clear and uncomplicated for some time now. Memories of Lily were as thin as dust, and strong gusts were swiftly blowing even the tiniest particles from his mind and memory.
He decided not to exhaust himself with any further explorations. It was enough to believe that he had captured some lost part of himself, however the process was labeled.
"We must forgive them," she had whispered, illustrating the full depth of a woman's journey to obliterate scorn. Was she able now to trust his love? His loyalty? His commitment? He would spend his lifetime proving that she could.
They slid into the rear seat, embracing, touching, silently conveying their urgent relevancy to each other. Looking up, he saw McCarthy's eyes observing them in the rearview mirror. Offering a broad smile, McCarthy's gaze swept back to the road.
"Please stop," Vivien said suddenly. "There." She was pointing at an outside telephone booth in a filling station. Without comment, McCarthy pulled in front of it while Vivien fished in her handbag for change.
"Here," McCarthy said, leaning over and offering a handful of change.
She took it, looked up into McCarthy's eyes, and thanked him.
"I have to call my parents and speak to Ben," she said as she slid out of the car. She looked back at them briefly, her eyes glistening, her smile fuller than he had ever seen it. A serene, happy face, Edward thought as she entered the booth and began to punch the numbers.
"Satisfied?" McCarthy's voice was calm, his inquiry gentle.
Edward nodded.
"They're all sisters, aren't they?" McCarthy said.
"In a way."
"Never understand how they hook us, reel us in. Hook hurts going in, hurts going out. Doesn't it?"
"Maybe someone should ask the fish."
"All right, I'm asking."
Edward felt the brief bite at wisdom, a nibble at the edge of insight.
"People fall in love," Edward said. "Can't be helped. Like the fish. Right place. Right time. Right bait. Makes them crazy. Don't try to figure it out."
"Love," McCarthy sighed. "They probably invented it. Think it excuses everything."
"Doesn't it?"
"Maybe so." He rubbed his chin in contemplation. "They may know something we don't. It was Eve who ate the apple." They laughed, and were still laughing when Vivien came back to the car.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," Edward replied and gave McCarthy a knowing wink.
Vivien looked at each of them in turn, and seemed perplexed, but shrugged it off and said, "Ben's fine. I said I'd be there tomorrow night. First I have to pick up Hamster. I told them all to be prepared for some surprises." She turned toward him and took both his hands in hers. "Okay?"
"Never gonna let you outa my sight," Edward sang softly.
She looked back at him mischievously, then moved her lips to his ear.
"I hope he's exactly like you," she said.
"Who?"
"Our baby."
His heart lurched, and he turned to face her.
"Mother Nature has spoken. She could be fooling, but I don't think so."
"I'll take her word for it," Edward said. "She usually knows what she's doing." Vivien moved into his embrace.
"Especially now."
"Especially now," he agreed.
