Valley of Ashes

by Cornelia Read

  He was crying, with his free hand over his eyes. “Don’t say that. Please.”

  I watched him hunch forward over the desk.

  What the hell?

  “Dean?”

  He didn’t hear me over the sound of his own ragged breathing.

  “No,” he said.

  Then “No,” again.

  Then another “Please,” the word wrenched out of his throat like it had razor blades all over it.

  “You have to promise me.”

  I felt really, really cold, all of a sudden.

  I was about to reach out to him, put my hands on his back.

  “Setsuko,” he said, sobbing, “I can’t do that. You know I can’t. We’ve talked about this. You know why.”

  I dropped my hands. Colder still.

  “Just, don’t—”

  He listened for a while, hand over his eyes again.

  “All right,” he said finally. “All right. I’ll come over. Promise me you won’t do anything until I get there.”

  He listened again. “No… promise me. Right now.”

  I hugged my arms around my chest. Tight.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes… in twenty minutes. And you won’t do anything until I get there? I have your word? All right then.”

  He put the phone down.

  “No fucking way are you going over to that woman’s house, Dean.”

  He turned around, eyes wide. Hadn’t realized I was standing behind him.

  “Bunny,” he said.

  “Bunny nothing. No fucking way.”

  “She’s threatening to kill herself.”

  Give me a goddamn break.

  “Seppuku, I hope?”

  “This isn’t a joke.”

  “Dean, it’s the oldest trick in the book. Mistress Histrionics One Oh One. She’s full of shit.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re a guy. That’s why this kind of manipulation works.”

  “I have to go there, make sure she’s okay.”

  “Give me your car keys,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “What are you going to do, hide them from me?”

  “No, you fucktard. I’m going to drive over there and talk her down myself. Least I can do for the poor bitch.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It’s so not crazy, you should be kissing my feet right now.”

  “Bunny, she’s expecting me.”

  “Damn right, she is. And she’s going to act all freaked out and fluttery and fucking delicate, telling you how she can’t live without you over and over again until she gets you in bed. And meanwhile I’m going to be sitting here all fucking night knowing exactly what’s going on. No fucking way in the world is that happening, Intrepid Spouse.”

  “Bunny, that doesn’t make any—”

  “It makes perfect sense. Because you know what’s going to happen when she opens her goddamn door and she sees me standing there, instead of you?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “She’s going to stop crying pretty damn fast. Probably before I even step over the threshold. Because I’m a chick, and she’s going to know I’m hip to exactly what she’s doing. Because I am, and she’s full of crap. And if she can get you over there by pulling this little number once, she’s going to do it over and over again. Until even you figure out it’s a crock of shit, Dean. So let’s just skip that whole Ring Cycle, shall we? Give me the fucking car keys. And tell me where she lives.”

  I held my hand out again. “Now, Dean.”

  “You don’t have a driver’s license, Bunny. You can’t drive.”

  I didn’t think this was a good time to mention that I’d already driven the stupid car.

  Especially considering how that turned out.

  I thought of Cary, then. For the first time in a while.

  God, how awful this had all been. I missed him right now, so very much.

  And then I lifted my chin.

  “I used to own a Porsche, Dean. I know perfectly fucking well how to drive a car.”

  He gave me the keys.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Six forty-five.”

  “Mimi’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. Give her the papers. Ask her if she wants a beer. I’ll be home in an hour.”

  “This is a really bad idea.”

  “No. You fucking Setsuko was a really bad idea. This is the only way to remedy the inevitable ramifications of that initial piece of idiocy on your part.”

  “Bunny—”

  “And you might want to remember this moment, the next time you’re tempted to trot your dick out in a bed that’s not ours… Think on it a very long time.”

  “What will you do if it turns out she’s serious?”

  “Slap her.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Look, Dean—I wouldn’t give a shit, frankly, except that I don’t need you haunted by your poor little mistress’s tragic death for the rest of our fucking marriage. So I’ll make sure she doesn’t off herself.”

  He looked totally defeated.

  “Where does she live?” I asked.

  “Creek Gardens Apartments.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Twenty-ninth Street. On the left before you hit Arapahoe. Apartment Four-G, around the back.”

  “Write it down for me.”

  He did. “If you see the Denny’s, you’ve gone too far.”

  Perfect.

  “Her car will be in front of the door,” he said.

  “And what exactly does she drive? A fuzzy-pink-angora Yugo?”

  “Honda Civic. Hatchback.”

  “Color?”

  “Powder blue. With a vanity plate.”

  “Which says what, exactly?”

  He coughed. “K-I-T-T-E-N-1.”

  “Kitten One?”

  He nodded.

  I shook my head. “Men will fuck anything, won’t they?”

  He held out the note with her address on it. “If you’re going to do this, you should go.”

  I grabbed the thing and shoved it into my front pocket. “Mimi’s going to knock on the kitchen door. Don’t forget.”

  51

  Okay, so I had to turn around in the Denny’s parking lot. But that actually worked out, since Twenty-ninth Street had a planted divider down its middle separating the two lanes. I would’ve had to do a U-ey anyway. Better there than Arapahoe.

  And I was liking the Galant even more. Still not a Porsche, of course, but it had decent pickup and a nice butch growl to it. Kind of like driving a filing cabinet.

  I pulled in behind the back of the building. Blue shingles and lumpy white stucco, in that really odious sixties-Mansard format.

  I parked right next to KITTEN1.

  Gag, gag, gag.

  Her windows were lined with vertical blinds, tiny slivers of light shining through.

  I rang the bell, happy there wasn’t a little view-hole lens in the slab door. She’d think I was Dean and open right up.

  There you go, twitching the blinds open—and here’s the Galant, right out front.

  I heard a chain being pulled out of its clasp, then the click of a deadbolt.

  “Oh my dearest…, ” she sobbed. But of course stopped short when she realized it was me.

  Yeah, bitch stopped crying immediately. Surprise, sur-fucking-prise.

  She squinted at me. Tough little face, when she wasn’t happy about something. And boy was she not happy about finding me on her doorstep.

  She was wearing a mint-green satin bathrobe, over something slinky. Full makeup. No bra. And her hair was perfectly curled.

  “Suicidal” my ass.

  She seemed to resent my dismissive take on her tits and gripped the robe closed with her free hand. Way up high on her neck.

  “Why are you here?” she said. “Where’s Dean?”

  “He’s busy taking care of our children,” I said, shrugging. “Aren’t you going to invite
me in?”

  She didn’t want to, but she took two steps back and opened the door wider.

  “Please,” she said, ducking her head a little.

  “Tayo agay detekoy,” I replied, under my breath.

  Her face got kind of squinchy. “I beg your pardon?”

  I coughed into my hand, stepping over the threshold. “I’m probably coming down with a little something.”

  There was a row of shoes just inside the doorway, and looking at them, I had a whole lot of simultaneous epiphany shit happen in my head.

  First: I had a choice whether or not to take off my shoes here. Respect her culture, the sanctity of her household aesthetic—or, literally, walk all over it.

  Second: Although she didn’t know it yet, I’d already won this battle. My husband had not only told her he was breaking off the affair, he’d taken concrete steps to keep himself—and all of us, me and the girls as much as Setsuko—geographically separated from any temptation to resume it.

  He’d gone out and found himself a distant job, and he’d done so even before I knew there was something to break off. Which meant a lot, as far as I was concerned. And I had an inkling she didn’t know about the cross-country-move part of the equation, yet.

  Third: Or maybe she did, and that was the impetus behind her obviously bullshit suicide threat. Either way, this was a desperate gambit on her part. You sure as shit don’t threaten to off yourself over a guy if you believe you’re securely ensconced in his affections.

  You don’t have many strategic options if the threat doesn’t work, in the chess of the heart.

  I mean, sure, you can actually go through with it, but that’s not exactly a ticket to requited love.

  So, fourth: There was the row of fucking shoes, still. And much as I wanted to deck the skanky-slag-bitch-ho-creepy-nemesis-suckbag trollop, then and there—I knew in my tiny black heart of hearts that it would fuck with her way worse if I just niced her around the goddamn mulberry bush, instead.

  Like, get all totally patronizingly chilly and correct and to-the-manor-born and brimming-with-sympathy-for-you-my-poor-dear Grace fucking Kelly ice princess (but of course thoroughly evil under what we’d both know was the paper-thin patina of my faux-compassion and devastatingly Zen-Debutante-wah charm) on her sorry-jilted-insipid-woebegone ass.

  Because, hey, in those rare moments—of which this happens to be one—that I am actually suffused with my own mojo, said mojo is a goddamn exquisitely luminous vanquishing June-14-1940 Panzerkorps of offhand casual superiority. So you might want to lie down and make like the Champs-Élysées, bitch, as I prefer my triumphal invasion boulevards straight, flat, and tree-lined.

  Which is to say that I kicked off my sneakers and squatted down to align them neatly at the end of her existing row.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Standing up, I smiled at her. “I used to live in Hawaii. When I was little. Removing one’s shoes at the front door was the custom there, as well, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be impolite or disrespectful in your house. That’s not at all why I’m here tonight.”

  Setsuko and I allowed my unspoken comma, you cunt coda to hang in the air for a moment.

  “Please,” she said, “come into the living room. We’ll sit down.”

  Dude, you so wanted to bow right then. And I so would have bowed deeper.

  “Thank you for agreeing to talk with me, Setsuko. I appreciate it very much. I know this wasn’t what you were expecting, but I thought it might be better for everyone if the two of us were to have a conversation.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Would you like a drink? Wine cooler, or soda?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. But do please get something for yourself if you’d like.”

  We were in the living room proper now. Big cream-colored leather furniture, the kind with pillows for arms. Sofa, love seat, one chair. Cheap repro Louis-the-Umpteenth side and coffee tables. Two fat pink lamps with swoopy flowers splashed across their pleated shades.

  She’d hung a framed poster over the gas-powered fireplace’s ersatz-white-brick mantel: waterfall, out of focus, with some kind of poem written over it in loose white script.

  On the wall to my left was one of a couple walking along a sunset beach. More poetry. Fifty bucks it was Kahlil Gibran.

  G-g-g-gag.

  Her crochet bag sat up straight at the end of the sofa. And she was apparently a fan of light jazz. It was all rather reminiscent of the waiting area at a nail salon. Complete with tabletop fountain.

  “Please,” she said, motioning to the love seat, “sit.”

  I did, and she took a seat across from me. Knees primly together, holding the neck of her robe closed.

  I coughed into my hand again. “Setsuko, I know that you care very much about Dean. You and I both do, of course—I hope you won’t think it indelicate of me to say so.”

  She bobbed her head, conceding me that.

  “And I’m very sorry for you, the way things turned out. I know you must be sad. And I imagine you didn’t set out to be in this situation.”

  She looked down at her lap.

  “My goodness,” I said. “People fall in love with one another. They just do. We don’t get to choose when that happens, or with whom it happens. Believe me—I understand that, I really do. I don’t blame you for what occurred, all right?”

  Like hell.

  She looked up at me, curious now.

  “It’s just…” I didn’t quite know how to phrase the next part.

  Don’t want to chew the scenery, but perhaps just a touch of hand-wringing? Mmmm, perfect: making sure my engagement ring twinkles, catching the light.

  “Oh, Setsuko”—poignant catch in my voice—“Dean told me what you said to him on the phone tonight. And I’m”—pause for effect, thoughtful—“so very sorry that you’re in this much pain. My heart goes out to you, you poor thing. I mean that most sincerely.”

  And, okay, at that moment I kind of did mean it, too.

  I mean, I was rather fond of Dean myself.

  And only by the grace of whomever had I managed not to fuck anybody married, during the course my own long history of round-heeledness. More because the husbands in question had been menschier than my own than because it hadn’t ever occurred to me.

  Especially when I was in my teens.

  I mean, hello—daddy issues? all-girl boarding school? Please. I would’ve flipped up my kilt and balled the bejesus out of any dick-bearing dorm parent willing to hold still for longer than a goddamn heartbeat.

  And I bet they all knew it, too.

  Had to admire their restraint, in retrospect—though it pissed me right off at the time.

  “Setsuko,” I continued, “I don’t know how to say this, exactly… You’re a very beautiful young woman. And I can tell that you’re kind. I know you’re smart… Can I just be blunt here? I don’t know how else to do this.”

  “Yes. Please go ahead.”

  “Don’t kill yourself, okay? This is going to be a tiny piece of your life. You are lovely, and I actually envy you quite a bit.”

  She didn’t believe that.

  The little table fountain was annoying. They always made me feel like I had to pee.

  “Everything is ahead of you,” I said. “Your whole life. Everyone else you’re going to know, meet, love. This part is not important.”

  “It feels important. To me.”

  “Of course it does. I’m not trying to say you don’t feel this, and very deeply. I’m just sorry that you have to feel hurt. I am sorry about that, please believe me. I know what it feels like. And I’m very sad, too. We’re in love with the same man—how could I not understand what you’re feeling? He’s caused us both a great deal of pain. And he cares about us both. I know that.”

  She didn’t say anything, mulling all of it over.

  I sat there listening to the stupid fountain.

  Oh, for chrissake.

  “Setsuko, I’m embarrassed to ask you this, but may
I please use your bathroom?”

  “Of course,” she said, rising to her feet.

  “Down the hallway,” she said, swaying gracefully in front of me. Small steps, long legs.

  I followed her past the kitchenette, then she stepped aside and gestured down the hallway’s white-carpeted length.

  “It’s the door on the right,” she said. “The light switch is outside.”

  “Thank you,” I said, walking past her.

  There was a samurai sword set hanging on the wall. I wondered if she was as tacky in her native decorative taste as in her sorry attempts at the expatriate version.

  Probably.

  I admit I was expecting pink accessories in Setsuko’s powder room. I hated the term “powder room,” but for this it was fitting.

  There wasn’t anything pink, though. She’d gone for lavender: toilet seat cover, bath rug, towels. Even her toothbrush in its silvery holder.

  I turned the water on before sitting, not particularly keen on her hearing me piss.

  Then stood up to wash my hands, after flushing.

  And, okay, I spat on her candy-ass purple toothbrush, hoping I really was coming down with something. I swear that was my only petty moment.

  I mean, hey, I could’ve wiped my ass with it, but I exercised restraint.

  I also didn’t bother looking into the mirror above the sink, just opened the door softly and stepped back out into her thickly carpeted hallway.

  You couldn’t see into the living room, really, from where I was now standing.

  All I could hear was the tinkle of that fucking fountain.

  I turned off the bathroom light, but didn’t move forward.

  The door across from me was open. I hadn’t noticed that on my way into the bathroom.

  Across the threshold I could see that her bed had an elaborate brass headboard, the soft light of a table lamp beside it playing along its golden curves.

  I tried closing my eyes, but that didn’t get rid of the image of Dean and Setsuko rolling around on those sheets, in ecstasy.

  God, Madeline, just leave already. She’s not going to off herself, your work here is done, so get in your fucking car and drive home.

  I didn’t, though. I felt like I was being pulled into that bedroom by a tractor beam, half its magnetism composed of my self-loathing, half of morbid fascination.