The Last Night Out

by Catherine O'Connell

  I grabbed my forehead to keep my head from flying off my shoulders, wondering what in hell had prompted the two cops to show up at my office. Despite my abject terror, I managed to calmly ask her to send them to my office. Meeting them in the lobby was out of the question. Not with a receptionist who made Bewitched’s Mrs Kravitz look like an ostrich with its head in the sand. Besides, it was doubtful my rubber legs would have made it down the hall. Not to mention my bladder.

  A minute later the two detectives were in my office. Their presence was suffocating, causing me to question if there was enough oxygen in the office for the three of us. I shuffled the papers on my desk in an effort to show I really don’t have time for this.

  ‘Sorry we didn’t call first. We were in the area,’ O’Reilly lied.

  ‘You sure seem to be in the area a lot,’ I countered.

  They helped themselves to the two chairs in front of me and got right down to business. ‘There’s something we need to run past you,’ O’Reilly continued without acknowledging my statement. ‘You recall the other day when I asked you if you knew anyone from New Hampshire?’

  Boom. That shoe sure hit the ground hard. I worked my best poker face, my mouth closed as I waited for his next words to fall.

  ‘We spoke with Suzanne Lundgren yesterday, and she told us you girls met someone from New Hampshire in The Overhang the night of Angie’s murder. That you were talking to him.’

  I stalled, staring at O’Reilly for seconds that felt like years. So Suzanne had turned Judas on me. Coughing to buy myself a few more seconds of life as I knew it, I agonized over just how much to reveal to these cops. That’s when O’Reilly made a strategic error that gave me an easy out.

  ‘Do you remember him now?’ he pushed.

  Remember. Thank you for that, detective. With so much of that night a fog, how could he know what was lost to alcohol? Surely he was familiar with that scenario.

  ‘Detective,’ I said sheepishly. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I was pretty drunk that night. I vaguely remember dancing with some guy in The Overhang, but whether he came from New Hampshire or the moon, I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘I never said you were dancing.’

  I flinched, but managed to recover. ‘Oh. Well, I do remember dancing, but that’s about all.’

  O’Reilly’s bloodshot eyes continued evaluating me, searching for the crack in my story. But my face was blank; those late nights of five-card draw in college were paying off. His next words held a sharp edge. ‘You’re saying you don’t remember anything about this guy?’

  I shook my head and shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

  O’Reilly tried some more probing, but was unable to derail my claim of drunken ignorance. Finally, he gave up and they left. I felt like I’d just survived a congressional drilling. As much as I abhorred lying, I had gotten damn good at it. In all truth, if I thought for one moment there was a remote possibility Steven had something to do with Angie’s death, I would have come forward. I truly would have. But what I knew about him and what he was doing when Angie was murdered was no one’s business but mine.

  The rest of the day was a write-off. The dual pressures of work and the wedding were killing me, and worst of all, my period had yet to show, a half-dozen hopeful trips to the bathroom yielding nothing more than pristine white toilet paper. I arrived home that night feeling beyond overwhelmed. With so many deadlines to be met, I really should have worked late, but Flynn was coming over for dinner and I couldn’t put him off yet another time. I’d been treating him poorly enough as it was.

  I was chopping vegetables, enjoying the brainless repetitiveness of it, when the phone rang. I was sorry I answered the moment I heard the voice on the other end. It was my mother. Having endured dinner with her the night before to go over last-minute details, I thought I was off the hook for a while.

  ‘I’m calling to remind you about the final fitting for your dress on Thursday.’

  ‘Mom, didn’t we talk about that last night? It’s on my calendar. Look, I’m trying to get dinner ready. Is there anything else?’

  ‘How are you coming with the thank-you notes from the shower?’

  Getting rid of my mother when she had her mind set on something was more difficult than killing a poinsettia. ‘They’re still in the thought process.’

  ‘I suggest you get them out of the way now. Then you won’t have to worry about them on your honeymoon. And don’t forget to specifically mention the gift.’

  As if I had any intention of writing thank-you notes on my honeymoon. I envisioned the beaches of St Bart’s and listening to the surf without a care in the world. ‘OK. I’ll start them tonight. I gotta go. Flynn’s here.’

  I had become such a facile liar, I barely recognized myself any more. Then again, when I thought about it, I hadn’t recognized myself for a long time. Going back even before Angie’s death and my night with Steven Kaufman.

  I put down the knife and took a seat at the table. It was time for a heart to heart with myself. What had happened to that free-spirited youth who was going to travel and write? Where had the teenager who never wanted to live a conventional life gone? I had hidden behind that thirty extra pounds for so long that when I came out from beneath them, I was in my thirties and had given up on my dreams. Now it seemed I was willing to settle for someone else’s.

  Time was flying too quickly. Graduation felt like yesterday. My original plan after college had been to take a year off to backpack around Europe, to collect experiences for a someday book. My mother had quashed that dream from the get-go. ‘Europe will be there for the rest of your life, but if you don’t start your career now, you’ll fall behind everyone else.’ So instead of spending a year discovering new places and people, I did a whistle stop tour of London for a week and Paris for a week and came home to sell advertising space. What allowed me to let my mother control me like that? Why hadn’t I stood up to her and done what I wanted?

  I’ll never forget the way my mother’s eyes lit up the first time I brought Flynn to the house. She couldn’t have been happier had I brought home the Golden Calf. Not long afterwards he offered me the diamond, and I took it. Having grown used to passion being out of my grasp, I assumed that applied to marriage too. Life with Flynn would be comfortable and secure. I needed to accept my good fortune at finding someone like him.

  Then I was seized with the vision of a door that could never open again.

  Steven had awakened in me someone long buried, the person who had been missing since high school and Barry Metter. I’d taken enough psychology in college to know there was a reason I hadn’t emptied the trash basket with Steven’s number in it. In fact, that same scrap of paper with his number had been relocated to my vanity drawer. Though we’d only spent those few drunken hours together, I couldn’t put him out of my mind. I ached to reach out to him, to ask him if he was thinking of me too. Then reality pounded me with a resounding Hello? There is no such thing as true love. That’s all a fairy tale. Like the dreams parents pass on to their children and then take away.

  I read once middle age snuffs out more creativity than war or disease combined. Is that what had happened? Had middle age snuffed me out? Was I marrying Flynn because I loved him or because it seemed like the smartest thing to do?

  Let the unopened doors remain unopened. I capitulated. My future was with Flynn, who would be arriving at any moment. I picked up the knife and went back to chopping vegetables.

  ‘I hope this isn’t a preview of our married life,’ he said of my lackluster kiss at the door. He pulled me close and kissed me fully on the lips. He wasn’t a particularly passionate person, so it took me by surprise when his kiss grew deeper, his tongue probing my mouth as he slipped a smooth hand under my blouse to my breast.

  ‘They feel bigger,’ he said sexily.

  ‘My period’s due,’ I answered, breaking his grasp and turning away.

  ‘No wonder you’re acting so weird.’ He looped his arm around my waist and drew me close again
. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about our little abstinence pact and maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. I mean, it’s not like Saturday’s going to be our first time.’ He kissed my neck and his hand went back to my breast. To my chagrin, I found myself annoyed by his overtures.

  ‘C’mon, Flynn. The abstinence pact was your idea and we’ve gone nearly a month. We should see it through.’ Tossing him a crumb, I gave him a lingering kiss on the lips and went back into the kitchen to see about dinner. Flynn sulked for a while in front of PBS Newshour, but by the time we sat down to eat he had moved beyond his frustration. He talked about work and how the new software would revolutionize things. He talked about the wedding and how flattering it was that nearly all of his Dartmouth buddies were coming in for the occasion.

  ‘Why wouldn’t they come, Flynn? You’re a great guy.’

  ‘That’s what I tell myself every morning,’ he said, only half ironically. ‘But I’m beginning to wonder if you think so.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘You have to ask? You’ve been weird ever since I got back from New York. We’ve barely talked in the last week.’

  ‘So we have to have this conversation again,’ I said, falling back on my list of excuses. ‘Angie’s death. Work. The wedding plans. My mother. When it’s all over, I’ll be better. I swear.’

  I forced myself to be talkative through the rest of the meal, clowning about the women at the lingerie shower and telling him about the sexy teddy his mother had given me. We ate pasta and salad and Flynn drank most of the bottle of Chianti. When we finished dinner, instead of hanging around to watch a movie on the VCR, like he normally would, Flynn opted to leave.

  ‘You better get some rest, Mags. You’re really not yourself.’ He hesitated and added, ‘You’re not getting cold feet, are you?’ I wanted to hug him and say, Yes I am and thanks for understanding. But the question was meant to be rhetorical. The thought would never occur to him that I would be anything other than thrilled to be his wife. And rightfully so. He was a great guy. He wrapped a warm arm around me, and I found comfort in the embrace, but it was the sort of comfort found in a good friend or the brother I’d never had. ‘Don’t worry so much. In five days, you’ll be Mrs Flynn Rogers Hamilton III. In seven days, we’ll be sipping mojitos on the beach. And when we come back we’ve got the new house, and then we can get on with starting a family.’

  He winked at me and headed down the steps. I stood on the landing, watching his blond head recede until the entry door closed behind him, thinking that he was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me, that I was a Jekyll and Hyde. How stupid I was to risk loss of him with someone like Steven Kaufman. My mind fixated briefly on the carpenter’s hands and their strong touch, but I pushed the thought back.

  As I did the dishes, my mind seesawed back and forth, wondering why I hadn’t just let Flynn make love to me. It would have covered for me if I were indeed pregnant. But thank god I still had some integrity left. That was one lie I could never live through.

  I prayed. Please God, just let me get my period, and I promise I will never deceive him again.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Carol Anne

  The girls were at day camp and the baby taking a mid-morning nap, leaving Carol Anne alone in her kitchen. While her cookbook was opened to ‘Chicken Piccata’, her focus was on a robin building a nest in the crabapple tree outside the window. As she watched the bird’s busy beak fix twigs into place, creating a secure nest to lay her eggs and hatch her chicks, she was reminded of herself. Her sole purpose in life was keeping the nest safe for her family.

  She worried that her nest was threatened. She worried about it from her first conscious moment until she gave way to sleep. Not that worrying was something new for Carol Anne. She had always been a chronic worrier, the type who assumed the worst when someone didn’t show up on time or answer the phone. That there had been a car accident or a heart attack or a plane crash. She stayed one step ahead of disaster with transistor radios and flashlights stashed strategically throughout the house, a month’s supply of bottled water in the basement, rope ladders beneath all the upstairs beds in the event of a fire. But her latest worry had grown so overwhelming it squeezed out all the others.

  Michael was acting stranger than ever. The night before, he kept hovering behind her and clearing his throat as if preparing to say something. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, something innocuous would come out like, ‘What’s for dinner?’ or ‘How was your day?’ Carol Anne knew him well enough to know he was waiting for the right moment to spring something on her; he’d done a similar dance a few years ago when he was pushing to buy the Dermabrasion. But her sixth sense told her this time it was something far more serious than a boat.

  There was only one thing to resort to when she was this unstrung. She needed a smoke. After rooting around in the towel drawer, her fist closed like a crane around a rock on the cellophane-wrapped pack she kept hidden beneath the terrycloth dishtowels. She brought it to her nose and sniffed the tobacco right through the seal. Smoking was reserved for emergencies and no time qualified like the present. She lit a cigarette off the gas burner and took a deep puff. The nicotine hit her nervous system immediately, delivering a much appreciated calm. She looked upward and thanked God for small favors.

  When the cigarette burned down to the filter, she lit a fresh one and pondered the ironies of life. People sure weren’t what they appeared to be, especially when it came to happiness. She thought of her best friend, on the cusp of a dream marriage, threatening to destroy it all because of a one-nighter. And Kelly still trying to fill the void left by her mother’s death. Suzanne all alone in her sky palace. Natasha living with her control freak husband Arthur. Was anyone truly happy?

  Her mother had appeared to be happy when she was raising Carol Anne and her two sisters. So it was a complete shock when her parents divorced after her youngest sister graduated high school. How long had they endured each other for the benefit of their kids? Carol Anne didn’t know the answer to that question, but she knew her own happiness hinged entirely on her family, on Michael and their children. As long as they were together, there was no problem that couldn’t be worked out.

  She ground out the second cigarette and was contemplating a third when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. In his usual stealthy way, Michael had crept in unannounced. He would be angry with her for smoking – like any doctor he was vehemently opposed to it. But when she turned to face him he didn’t even mention the cigarettes, didn’t appear to have even noticed them. He wore the face of a stranger.

  ‘What’s wrong? What are you doing home? Are you all right?’ Her questions were rapid fire, her voice peppered with wifely concern.

  ‘Carol Anne, we have to talk.’

  The taste of the nicotine on her tongue turned nauseating. His tone forewarned of something ominous. She had anticipated this moment, fretted over it. Now that it was upon her, she was so frightened she wanted to turn and run. But she held her ground.

  ‘Is this about Angie?’ she whispered.

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  ‘Did you kill her?’

  ‘God, no. Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, his face breaking into his easy grin, and for that moment he was her Michael again. Then the opaque veil reappeared, heavy and unfamiliar. ‘This is not easy for me.’

  Oh my God, he wants a divorce, she thought. She barely drew breath as she studied his pain-twisted face. An extended silence was broken by the sound of the icemaker dropping ice. She waited with wretched patience, straining not to scream tell me.

  ‘Do you remember the first time we made love?’ he asked casually, working to tease the smile back onto his face.

  Could she ever forget? It was at Tower Beach on a blanket she’d smuggled from her bedroom and couldn’t return afterwards because of all the sand in it. Her mother looked for that blanket for years. Carol Anne had been afraid the police would come along and catch them in t
he act, but Michael had calmed her fears, telling her that people in love deserved to share it. Afterwards, she knew they were locked together forever. She was sixteen.

  ‘Of course, I remember. And I’ve never made love to anyone else.’

  He turned his back to her, unable to face her with what he had to say. ‘I have.’

  The verbal slap left her cheeks numb. So her suspicions were true. He was having an affair. No longer caring about his disapproval, she reached for another cigarette and lit it, waiting for him to continue.

  ‘This is going to hurt,’ he admitted, ‘but I’ve got to tell you the whole truth. It’s the least you deserve. For a long time, there’s been something different about me. Actually, it’s been for my whole life.

  ‘But it came to a head a year or so after I finished medical school. I started having these intense sexual dreams, wet dreams that woke me in the night. I hid them from you. Then Cara was born. And Eva, and they went away for a while. But I kept having troubling thoughts, and I missed the dreams. Then one day a person entered my life who forced me to face my fears, someone who understood my internal discord.

  ‘This person said, “I know what’s bothering you.” And we talked, and when the truth came out, and I felt light, like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders, like suddenly life was something to be celebrated. We ended up having an affair.’

  Tears swelled Carol Anne’s eyes as the entire bottom fell out of her world. ‘Was it Angie?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Angie. It was an intern at the hospital.’

  ‘Are you still having an affair with her?’

  ‘No.’ Michael bent his head back and stared at the ceiling. His next words were barely audible. ‘My affair with him ended a long time ago.’

  The words slammed her like a hurricane. She wanted to correct him, to say, ‘You mean her,’ but in her heart she knew there had been no mistake. He was telling her something she may have suspected, but had seemed so reprehensible she had buried it away with things she didn’t want to think about. Now there was no denying it. Now the world made sense. It explained why they lived as best friends, practically brother and sister. And suddenly, the young men in the boat on Sunday made sense too.