Sweet Karoline

by Catherine Astolfo

  Chapter 8

  For a very long time after that night, I tried to ignore the changed world in which I now lived. I did immediately realize that I had no one in whom to confide. No Giulio, of course. I would have felt too guilty talking to Parris about Karoline. My mother and I had never acquired the kind of relationship that fostered discourse of any kind, let alone 'girl talk'. She maintained a distance, a motherly stance that she thought was appropriate for our difference in age and role.

  Karoline had been my sole confidante for so many years and now she was the one I wanted to discuss.

  Alone, I didn't have the tools to fix Karoline. So I pretended I didn't notice her increasingly sleepless nights. I ignored the fact that she suddenly began smoking. That she'd sit on the balcony for hours staring at nothing. That she no longer asked me questions or appeared to be listening to my rants. She refused to answer me when I asked her what was wrong.

  Slowly, like scum forming on a pond, the dancing, theaters, clubbing, parties and dinners faded away under a film of unease. For a time I chattered on. For a while I bought tickets for the movies, said yes to outings and openings. I marched forward, Karoline muttering beside or behind me, unkempt and disinterested.

  Instinctively, I avoided parties and dinners. There were no more discussions around our beautiful wooden dining table. Soon there were only nights of mumbling from the balcony.

  I didn't know what Daniel thought because I didn't ask. Of course I didn't invite Parris home again. We went to lunches and business affairs, dinners with our clients and bosses. My wall of cheerfulness and everything-is-okay remained intact and solid.

  One Friday night Karoline didn't show up at the parking lot. I had the keys, but I didn't want to leave without her. I went back into my office and tried her office phone over and over. I left frantic messages on our answering machine. Where was she?

  It was dark by the time I finally decided to drive home without her. I wasn't particularly quiet as I entered our apartment. Nor was I a bit shy about heading straight in to push open her bedroom door, which was slightly ajar, to demand an explanation. For a few moments I stood astonished, frozen to the spot.

  Karoline lay on her back while a man moved slowly and languorously above her, his hips and buttocks smooth and black in the semi-darkness. He was moaning softly, whispering fuck me, Karoline, over and over, his voice husky with desire. I could smell the musky, moist fragrance of their bodies and the saltiness of sweat. I watched as he began to pump harder, his hands on both sides of her, his face dipped to her breasts, sucking and moaning, faster and more abandoned with each thrust.

  At that moment Karoline opened her eyes and looked at me. She stared with disdain as I heard him tell her that he was coming inside her. She began to chant fuck me, fuck me, her eyes never leaving mine.

  I closed the door.

  So began a six-week sojourn with Glenn Simpson. On our couch when we came home, eating from a barrel of ice cream. Shouting at the television as basketball players streaked across the floor. Smoking with Karoline on the balcony. Beer bottles piled in the kitchen. Coffee cups in the sink. Frying pans with sticky grease spots sitting on the stove. Behavior that Karoline had never before allowed in our apartment.

  Glenn was a huge, flabby man whose skin was so dark it looked purple. His rounded cheeks pushed his eyes back into his head, making his black orbs little pinpoints of malice. He wore enormous sports shirts and jeans that rode on his ample hips, often displaying his disgusting butt crack. Whenever he bent over, a shiver of revulsion raced through me. He was at least ten years older than we were, but he acted like a spoiled teenager.

  He used the kind of speech patterns that I detest. In my opinion, it was a throwback to slave talk. He had been born in New York City to a middle-class family and had a university degree, this much I knew. Yet he behaved as though he'd just been released, ill used and uneducated, from the shackles of a cruel white master.

  "I been done work" was an oft-repeated phrase. He'd decided, he boasted, to live off the system for as long as he could. Showing up in L.A. with his paltry experience in New York amateur theater, Glenn had expected the film industry to immediately embrace his unusual, dramatic looks, his shiny bald head and sneering mouth. I didn't know how he could expect that they would. There were thousands of his type getting off the bus at Hollywood and Vine every single day.

  Not only that, he criticized me constantly for not properly embracing my black roots. My experience had been so different that I refused to engage with him. I thought I knew far more than he did about the true American dream. What was his version? That he ought to be handed whatever he wanted just because he was black and thought he was unique? He was like teenagers who all dressed the same yet proclaimed to be different. And when the 'Jew film moguls' didn't adore him after all, he decided he would just play the system for as long as he could get away with it.

  I began to quarrel with him but they were senseless arguments that sounded like children squabbling. Karoline would not participate. She'd give a wan smile or simply take him into her bedroom.

  "Get your bloody shorts off the coffee table, asshole," I'd say. "Why don't you get a job? Aren't you ashamed to be a useless prick?"

  "Listen up, asshat, you can't be dissin' me," he'd say, or "You a hemorrhoid," he'd reply, then proceed to explain his remark, sometimes betraying his Black English. "See, an asshole or a prick has its uses, whereas a hemorrhoid…"

  "Karoline, why are you putting up with this bastard's bad manners?"

  A shrug and a thin-lipped smile.

  "I can't stand this anymore. Get him out of here or else."

  A look. Or else what?

  A question I was unwilling to answer.

  I began to go in early and stay late at work. To have dinner with Parris. To take the unreliable transit, several buses and even the subway rather than travel with them by car. By the end of the six weeks, I rarely saw the couple who ostensibly lived with me. When I came home they would be in the bedroom, or out somewhere unknown. I spent most of my time in my room, as did they. The living room was a deserted wasteland, the kitchen a dump, the dining room an echo of a recent past.

  When I think of Glenn Simpson now, I am unable to separate him from that final destructive act. The last straw after an accumulation of straws of which Glenn was only one. The explosion after the long wick was ignited.

  I remember those weeks as living in two worlds, two polar opposites, two planes that I would never have believed possible if anyone had foretold it. On the one hand, there was my life with Karoline and her man, which had become a tense battle of wills. On the other there was my satisfying career and my friendship with Parris. The dissonance ate away at my sanity.

  Long after the funeral, on those insufferable commuter drives alone, I slowly began to unravel. The only way I can describe it is that I had no narrative left. There were no voices in my head to guide me. I no longer had Karoline's steady, confident opinion about the minutiae of daily living or the bigger pictures of worldly decisions. Self-assured, arrogant, sarcastic Anne was gone, too, replaced by a hum of confusion and guilt. Hesitant, unglued, vulnerable Anne walked through Los Angeles and prowled our apartment in a daze of denial and indecision.

  The progression is fairly easy to see in retrospect. I had no choice but to face my state of mind once I wrecked our car. Apparently I was not cooperative after the accident. I can't tell you exactly how I behaved, since I have no memory of that incident. I don't remember driving over the embankment, which luckily headed uphill instead of down. I don't remember the police arriving at the scene.

  What I do recall is sitting in the back seat of the police car. Its roof light languidly painted the night red. I sat staring straight ahead, listening to garbled messages on the radio. Up front the two policemen whispered to each other, spoke into a microphone and waited. Within a few minutes, an unmarked car pulled up and the officers got out. After a brief conference I was transferred to another vehicle.

/>   "No problem, sir," the young male policeman responded to someone outside as he opened my door and helped me out.

  He was speaking to Ethan, who reached for my hand and gently tucked me into the front seat of his car. The warmth inside, the soft silk of the leather seats, the scent of his aftershave, made me hunch over in tears.

  When he got behind the wheel, he placed an enormous yet gentle hand on my shoulder.

  "It's all right, Ms. Williams," he said. "I'm glad you asked for me."

  I have no memory of asking for him, but something inside me responded to the comforting tones in his voice. I folded into his side. He put his arm around me and let me cry.

  We reached my apartment some time later. The moment I opened the door, I was embarrassed by the odor of mustiness and disuse. This apartment that was so accustomed to laughter, discussion and song lay dusty and ignored.

  I led him into my bedroom. He lay down beside me as though this was a natural position that we'd experienced with one another a hundred times before. I told Ethan everything about Karoline and me. From our meeting in childhood to our life in L.A. I told him everything except the end. He used the word suicide, the official word for her death, and commiserated about that terrible experience.

  That first night he left me sleeping, but reappeared the next morning armed with muffins and coffee.

  "I want you to know that I've never done this before," he said. "I mean, become friends with someone involved in one of my investigations. If you are uncomfortable with my being your friend, just tell me."

  But I didn't feel uncomfortable. I felt the opposite. His use of the word friend filled me with a feeling that I recognized as hope.

  Later that morning I reluctantly called Joseph and Vicki to ask about a leave of absence.

  "I know you've been…struggling since Karoline died," Joseph said. "We've been worried, as you know."

  Had I known? Had I seen myself, this fourth-dimensional shimmering of the previous me, at first behaving just slightly off balance, then seeping more fully into the other world? The day Karoline died, the life I knew, the 'me' I knew, went over that balcony with her. I no longer got up from bed eager to start the day. Ultimately, I might no longer have a job.

  Slowly I chased away my parents and most of my acquaintances. My looking glass, heretofore the perfect Magic Mirror, reflected a dazed uncertain face. I stumbled in a fog, unwilling to admit that I was lost. Not until I'd wrecked my car. Not until I'd been publicly humiliated and frightened by my own loss of control.

  "But you're our family, kiddo." This time it was Vicki's soothing voice, thick with emotions that I'd never before heard displayed. "You take as long as you need. Your job will always be here."

  "We'll come see you when you're ready." Joseph had taken the receiver again.

  All I could do in response was weep, a sound they'd never heard from me, the calm and steady one, the fixer, now unable to fix myself.

  Thanks to Karoline's management skills I saved a great deal of money and invested wisely. I now owned the apartment outright, in large part because of Boosha. In a move that both shocked me and compiled my guilt, Karoline bequeathed the place to me in her will. I knew I could live at least a year without working, but I was comforted by the fact that Grace Productions would welcome me back.

  These days I feel as though I am traipsing unprepared through a foreign country. I haven't packed. I don't know the language. I don't have the appropriate skills or any of the requisite equipment, but I'm on the journey nevertheless. Not to mention that I have no one at whom I can rage. I am the one who got on the ship and sailed away to unknown shores.

  As the weeks go by, I get to know Ethan Byrne. He exudes a charm and quiet confidence that are captivating. He is completely unaware of his physical shortcomings. Quickly I begin to see the finer side. The layers of color in his eyes. The lopsided grin when he is about to tell a joke. The gracefulness of his hands.

  Soon I don't notice the crooked nose, the unruly hair, the shaggy brows or the too-square chin. Protected by his athletic prowess, the beauty of his eyes, the tenor of his voice and the generosity of his spirit, Ethan grew up knowing that his looks really don't matter. For the first time, oddly enough, I begin a relationship with someone for whom the outside is unimportant. He doesn't fall in love with the long legs, perfect breasts, gorgeous hair and dark eyes. He falls in love with me.

  How he sees the real me through the weeks of sleeping, cleaning and shopping, I will never know. The person who was folded in a dark cave slowly emerges, changed and exhausted. I tell him I will always be grateful that he sees a future me, a goodness in me.

  Dear Diary,

  I have always thought of her as a false goddess. So charming on the outside, so inept and incapable within. She has none of the ability to rule over herself, let alone be a deity for anyone else.

  Chapter 9

  After a time I almost believe in Ethan's vision of Anne. As long as I never think about the night Karoline died, as long as I vow never to tell him my truths. Ironically, I trade a superficial lifestyle for an introspective one, as long as the layers I inspect never touch my deepest sin.

  Ethan tells me all about his move from Dublin to Los Angeles when he was thirteen. His story so closely mimics the Kennedy legend that I know Karoline would have been proud. Irish parents loaded with determination and intelligence land in Hollywood and make a fortune. His family owned several textile plants back home and around England, but Ethan's father has taken the company to where the sidewalks are paved with gold and multiplied its profits beyond any of their ancestors' dreams. Edward and Teresa Byrne became so well connected and famous, that Karoline and I had heard about them long before I met Ethan. Who knew that the gangly, ugly detective at our door would turn out to be their son?

  They were not happy when Ethan became a police officer, but Ted and Teresa have not abandoned him. Probably because they know he wouldn't really mind if they did disown him, at least from a financial point of view. Money definitely does not matter to Ethan. He does care, however, about his parents as people.

  Another disappointment for Ted and Teresa is that Ethan has never married, though he came close a couple of times. His sister Marianne is a wife and mother of three and she's a year his junior. Of course Marianne wed a millionaire film producer, someone whose credentials have even more weight than her own family's.

  However, Ted and Teresa aren't very happy with me as a potential daughter-in-law. They are appalled that Ethan has become involved with someone from a case. Not to mention I am obviously unwell, jittery and odd, unable sometimes to form a coherent sentence. I cling to their son. He is my life raft and it's noticeable.

  He's not simply my savior, though. Ethan is a gift that I unwrap, layers of surprises, complex yet simple. A man with ribbons of feelings, intellect, insights and generosity. A man infinitely interested in Anne the complicated woman. Not surface Anne, but someone who has depth. We both become prospectors of Anne's other self.

  Over time Ethan wakes me up, takes me out of the apartment and my grief over Karoline. Slowly I begin to smile, then laugh again. Energy seeps back. I stop talking to myself or to my dead friend. I no longer shop, sleep or wash dishes obsessively. I clean up the Picassos. I begin to make decisions.

  I rearrange the furniture in the living room. Cover the couch with a soft green throw. Put a lacey tablecloth over the wooden surface that needs too much polish. Except for the CoJon and a few other treasures that I love, I put or give away most of our souvenirs. I am able to occupy the space. I even open Karoline's bedroom door, though I haven't yet disposed of her belongings.

  Halina took a few items, but she doesn't want to deal with her daughter's clothing or other things. Halina has left that up to me. Anne, the best friend, the sister Karoline never had. The beneficiary of her apartment. Halina seems oblivious to that last detail. Perhaps she assumes that we paid for the place as equal partners. Certainly she will never know about Boosha. Not if I can help it
.

  I have dinners with Parris. We go to movies. Wander around parks and the zoo. Slow, quiet activities that she senses will allow me to heal. She invites, never pushes and always accepts when I need to be alone. Her big open smile has become a source of joy. Her arms are a comfort zone. I am astonished by her generosity, her easy-going ways. She models for me that friendship doesn't have to smother.

  I am alarmed that former Anne still reemerges occasionally. I walk around with two selves, the one I am discovering and the one who now and then whispers nasty things in my ear. She sets me off balance. I thought she was gone.

  I often feel as though I am acting without a script. I am bereft and confused. One Anne is the same haughty selfish bitch that she's always been. The only people that I'd ever really allowed into my head and heart were Karoline and Giulio.

  The other personality is soft and weepy and vulnerable.

  I am not certain which of these personas is the real me. I am not certain I like either of them.

  Dear Diary,

  I have begun my strategy. Wheels in motion, as they say. They will both learn the hard way, but they've left me no choice. Neither of them will survive this war intact. Maybe then they'll obey. They'll look and see the real Queen and say, yes your majesty. Ha ha ha. Seriously, though, it's all for their benefit.

  Chapter 10

  Ethan and I make love after many months of exploration. Hours and hours of conversation, dinners and outings, handholding as we walk the beach. His lips are always soft and full, promising, but I don't allow the shiver to extend to my toes. I've never held out this long, never thought too much about jumping into bed with someone I fancied. With Ethan it's as though I am a romantic and must wait until everything is perfect.

  Jesus, you are turning into a maudlin asshole, Ice Queen Anne whispers, but I fling her aside. As time goes on, I dare to think that the best side of me is becoming stronger. Perhaps Ice Queen Anne is suddenly afraid and tries to take over now and again. I vow not to let her, but I know I have a lot of work ahead in order to bury her.