Trail of the Spellmans: Document #5

by Lisa Lutz

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said, disconnecting the call.

  THE CONVERSATION

  I arrived home to the kind of silence that’s usually pierced by crickets. Henry sat on the couch reading a book. No, I don’t know what book. I’ve learned not to ask, in case Henry suggests I read the same book so we have something to talk about over dinner. The problem with the books Henry reads is nothing happens in them. How hard is it to insert a freaking plot into a book? It’s not like I need anyone murdered or anything. Although that does keep things interesting. But I digress.

  Henry was on the couch. A single light lit the living room, and other than the quiet hum of street traffic, the only sounds were of pages turning and my footsteps crossing the room.

  I’d had a bad feeling the moment I walked through the door.

  “Sit down,” Henry said.

  “I was thinking of doing the dishes,” I said, I think for the first time in my life.

  “They’re done.”

  “Do the floors need cleaning? Because I’d be happy to take care of that. Just point me in the direction of the mop. We have a mop, right?”

  “We need to talk,” Henry said.

  One of my least-favorite phrases. Nobody ever says it when they want to talk about something good. “You sure about that?”

  “Please sit down.”

  “Whenever somebody tells you to sit down, it’s always bad. I’m surprised people enjoy sitting considering all the negative connotations.”

  “Isabel,” Henry said in a tone that suggested it was time to be quiet.

  I sat down and remained mute.

  “I’m almost forty-eight years old,” he said.

  “I hear forty-eight is the new thirty-nine,” I replied.

  “I want a family.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want children.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “I mean, have you met any? They’re not all they’re cracked up to be.”

  “What are you saying, Isabel?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “You have to start saying something.”

  I knew how this was going to go down. I suppose it’s why I’d tried to avoid it for so long. In the past eighteen months, there were many things I learned to do in the interest of a peaceful cohabitation. Vacuum, speak in complete sentences, pay compliments, “learn” chess, make beds, not leave dirty towels on the bathroom floor. And those things I could continue to do, and I’m sure there are other compromises I could have made, but that was the easy stuff. I still wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted, but I had a feeling I knew what I didn’t want and it was time to come clean. “I want to say that I need more time.”

  “How much more time?” Henry asked.

  “The problem is that I’m not sure that time will change how I feel. I know it’s not normal, but I don’t think I want the things you want. I know they’re the things most people want but, I can’t picture it. I’m not saying that I’ll always feel this way. But I do now, and I don’t see it changing in the foreseeable future. I might never change. Well, I hope at least a little bit, and you have to admit I’ve come a long way. But you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “If all you wanted to do was get married, I would have said yes.”

  “Small consolation.”

  “There’s no fixing this, is there?”

  “I want children,” Henry said. “And you don’t.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “I don’t think we can negotiate our way out of this one.”

  That was the end of the conversation but not the end of the relationship. When lives are tangled together for years, untangling takes some time. But living under the same roof became unbearable and we untangled that part as quickly as possible.

  I took a few days off to pack up my belongings. I should clarify: I packed, and then Henry unpacked and repacked for me with a cohesive organizational system including labels on the boxes. This was the last chance he would have to create order out of my chaos, and he made the most of it. In fact, as “we” (eventually I just watched) packed, Henry tried one last time to educate me on the benefits of putting things in their rightful place. He tried to estimate how many hours of my life had been erased searching for objects because I didn’t put them where they were supposed to be. While most of Henry’s lessons had fallen on deaf ears, I hadn’t misplaced my keys or wallet in months. Although my rain boots have been missing for weeks.1 Once all my worldly possessions were packed, I had to transport them to their new home.

  Maggie suggested I move (temporarily) into the now-vacated in-law unit. David agreed purely out of sympathy (he was still holding the whole taking-Sydney-on-a-surveillance grudge). Just four days after “the conversation,” David helped me move all the boxes into my new pad. We stacked them against the wall and took a beer break.

  “Déjà vu?” he asked.

  “Totally,” I replied. “I hope I sleep better this time around.”2

  “A clear conscience and paying rent should help. Are you going to unpack?”

  “I think I better keep my stuff in the boxes,” I replied. “This might be the last time that all my worldly possessions are in order.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. But, you know, if you do—”

  “Probably won’t.”

  Later that night, Maggie came downstairs in her pajamas, with a bottle of some of the upstairs booze. “I know you don’t want to talk,” she said, and poured me a drink. Then she turned on the television and cycled through the remote until SpongeBob showed up. “He always makes me feel better,” Maggie said, folding her legs onto the sofa.

  “Me too.”

  I tried to keep the news from breaking for as long as possible. Maggie and David remained mum, but Mom can sniff out a secret from just a few careless words, and when I came into work the next day, she wanted to talk.

  “Sit down,” she said when I entered the office.

  My dad and D were nowhere in sight.

  “I’ll stand, if you don’t mind,” I said. You know how I feel about sitting.

  “Are you sure, Isabel?”

  “Yes, it’s more comfortable this way.”

  “I mean about you and Henry. Are you sure?”

  “No, Mom. I’m not sure about anything.”

  “This could be a mistake.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first one.”

  “Sweetie, men like that don’t fall out of trees.”

  “What kind of men do?”

  “You’re not as young as you used to be.”

  “Did you just purchase a cliché dictionary? If so, I already know the one about how it’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man and that’s bullshit.”

  “At the rate you’re going, Izzy, you won’t be marrying anyone.”

  “Mom, hate to break it to you, but that’s never been my life’s mission.”

  “I understand that, dear. But if you spend your whole life pushing people away, eventually they’ll stop coming back.”

  “You’re not making me feel any better, Mom.”

  “Sometimes making you feel better isn’t my priority.”

  Just then my cell phone buzzed and I got a text from Mrs. Slayter requesting a last-minute surveillance. I had never been more pleased to hear from that awful woman.

  “I got to go,” I said, grabbing my coat.

  “I’m always here if you need me,” Mom said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  LOST IN TRANSLATION

  I commenced surveillance on Edward Slayter at two fifteen in the afternoon. There was a chill in the air and an unpredictable breeze. I tucked my scarf into my jacket and shoved my hands in my pockets, but it was impossible to get warm—a common phenomenon in San Francisco. Unless you carry luggage with you at all times, you’ll
never be appropriately attired. I prayed that Slayter would be on the move so I could warm up. I paced back and forth, clocking Slayter’s building on the return.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” a familiar voice said to my back.

  I turned around to face Charlie Black. He was carrying his chess set and brown bag, which I assumed contained his lunch. “Hi, Charlie. How are you?”

  “I’m very good, Jane. How are you?”

  “Cold.”

  “You’ll feel better when the wind dies down.”

  “When will that happen?”

  “In forty-five minutes.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I took an online meteorology class.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said. Then he took out his chessboard and began setting the pieces. “Can I interest you in a game?”

  Just then my phone buzzed with a text from Margaret Slayter: Cancel surveillance. Ed will be in office all day.

  OK, I replied.

  Here’s the thing: The point of surveillance is that you don’t believe the person is where he says he will be. Once again, Margaret was confirming all of my suspicions.

  “I think I’ll be heading home, Charlie.”

  “You’re not seeing your friend today?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Charlie was setting up the chessboard in a particular pattern. “Since you’ve got the free time, sure you don’t want to play?”

  “No, thanks. I better go.”

  “You need to be taught young. It helps. I was five when I first learned to play,” Charlie said.

  “Five? Wow. That is young. I bet the five-year-old you could beat the thirty-four-year-old me.”

  “Probably,” Charlie replied. “But it was in our blood. My father was a Russian grand master. He used to tutor people when he came to this country.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Your father’s Russian?”

  “So is my mother.”

  “Do you speak?”

  “I’m a little rusty these days. I can only practice with my sister.”

  I shuffled through my bag, searching for my digital recorder with my mother’s Russian quiz. While I now believed she was taking the class, what I really wanted to know was how seriously she was taking it. “Would you mind translating a few things for me?” I asked, pulling out the recorder.

  “Okay,” Charlie replied.

  I played the digital file for Charlie; Final score: Russian 3, Mom 1.1

  “Russian is extremely difficult for Americans to learn,” Charlie said in her defense.

  “She’s supposedly taking a class twice a week. What are the odds of that?” I asked.

  “Her pronunciation is pretty good. It just sounds like she might be sleeping through the lessons and picking up random phrases and remembering them phonetically.”

  “That’s an excellent deduction, Charlie. I like the way you think.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie replied. Then he pointed in the distance behind me. “I see your friend.”

  I turned around and saw Mr. Slayter walking toward the corner of Market and First. While I was officially off the job, it seemed wise to resume the surveillance since Edward wasn’t at the office as he claimed to be.

  I followed him south down Market Street to Post, where he took a right, walked a few blocks, and entered a medical building. I waited in a coffee shop across the street for forty-five minutes until he left and returned to his office. Honestly, I had no idea what the interrupted surveillance and Slayter’s secret doctor’s appointment meant. But I figured at some point the pieces would fit together.

  I returned to an empty office and found a package of Twinkies and Ho Hos on my desk, along with a condolence card:

  Sorry for your loss. Love, Rae.

  I ate the Twinkies with a glass of milk and wallowed while I had a moment of privacy. Then I busied myself organizing a series of background reports for Zylor Corp., one of our major paperwork clients. This involved collating and stapling, a blissfully mind-numbing task. Until, of course, your stapler runs out and you can’t find any staples in your desk. Dad’s usually the office-supply hoarder, but his entire workspace was under lock and key these days. Mom’s drawers were so packed with her hobby debris, it was like finding a staple in a haystack. So I turned to D’s desk.

  I opened the top right-hand drawer and lo and behold, there was a box of staples. And Scotch tape. And paper clips. And thumbtacks. And scissors. And Post-it notes. And drugs. Well, pill bottles. But drugs were inside of them. Perhaps at this point you think I should have grabbed a train of staples and closed the drawer. But I didn’t. I gathered the pill bottles and read the prescription labels. All in the name of D. Merriweather. Of course, just as I was jotting down the names of the specific medications, D entered the office.

  “I was looking for staples,” I said.

  “Did you find them?” D asked.

  “Yes. Thank you,” I replied, returning the bottles to his desk and shoving the drawer shut with my hip.

  I took a seat behind my desk and began moving stacks of papers around, trying to look occupied.

  “Did you find anything else?” D asked.

  “I found some drugs. Not the good kind. I wasn’t snooping. Look, my stapler is all out.” I opened the mouth of the stapler to provide an alibi.

  “I believe you,” D replied.

  I waited a moment to see whether D was going to offer an explanation. I didn’t see one coming, and like most things, I couldn’t just let it slide.

  “Those pills are mostly . . . are you depressed?” I asked.

  “I was in prison for fifteen years.”

  “But now you’re out.”

  “Isabel, don’t get me wrong, being out is . . . great. I thank the Lord every day.

  “He had nothing to do with it.”

  “We will agree to disagree.”

  “Whatever,” I replied. “Go on.”

  “Did you think when I got sprung I was going to be as good as new?”

  “I figured you’d have a few convict habits to break, like guarding your food and eating super fast—you don’t really do that, do you . . . but . . . yeah. I guess that’s what I thought.”

  “Even freedom takes some getting used to.”

  D woke his computer and returned to work. I waited an awkward moment before I spoke.

  “Um, D—”

  “Isabel, I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “I understand. But, um, I’m still out of staples.”

  BERNIEGATE

  Thad labored for hours amassing evidence against Bernie. And, if I do say so myself, my work on this case was well above par. As I painted the finishing touches of what I came to call Berniegate, I began to think of it as a parting gift to Henry.

  Unfortunately it was a gift he would never see.

  The next afternoon I waited until Bernie was at the bar and then phoned Gerty to see if she would meet me for lunch.

  After we were seated at a corner table, we had to dispense with the elephant in the restaurant.

  “Henry told me,” she said.

  “I figured,” I replied.

  “You were good for him. I worry sometimes. He’s so much like his father. Everything has to be just so.”

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t—I don’t know why.”

  “That’s not the kind of thing you apologize for. Only you know what’s going on in that head of yours. No one else can tell you what to want.”

  “It goes against nature, doesn’t it? Not wanting to procreate?”

  “The unfortunate tattoo I have on my ass goes against nature,” Gerty said. “Modern medicine, electricity, cars, cell phones, four-inch heels, fake tits, Botox, hair color, all go against nature. And there are a lot of natural things that I wouldn’t abide. Like an overgrowth of nose hairs or foot fungus. We have an infinite number of choices in front of us. All you can do is make the choice that’s ri
ght for you. Of course, I wouldn’t give this same speech to a serial killer, but I think you get my drift.”

  I did. I got her drift. And midspeech, I realized she wasn’t just talking about me and Henry. She was also explaining—not justifying—her relationship with Bernie. That inch-thick file folder I had been carrying around with me for a week? I shoved it back in my bag and decided then and there that Gerty would never see it. Only she could know what was going on in that head of hers.

  We finished lunch and stepped out into your typical foggy San Francisco day. She gave me a warm embrace and said, “You would have been a great daughter-in-law.” Gerty caught a cab and told me that she was spending the afternoon at MOMA. I took my file and drove to the Philosopher’s Club. While Gerty would never see my investigative masterpiece, I couldn’t let all that hard work go to waste.

  When Bernie saw me enter the bar, he turned to his collection of clean pint glasses and started shining them again as if they were champagne flutes in a swanky hotel. He refused to make eye contact, but when I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, he obliged.

  He served me a pint in the cleanest glass. I tried to pay him, but Bernie slid my money away.

  “On the house.”

  “Why?”

  “We used to be friends,” Bernie said. “Remember those days?”

  “I don’t remember them the same way you do.”

  That statement could not have been truer.

  “What happened to us?” Bernie asked.

  “You know what happened,” I replied.

  “Let it be, Izzy. Gerty and I are just two old ships who collided in the night. It’s romantic, if you think about it,” he said.

  “Your phrasing isn’t,” I replied.

  “How long are you going to hold this grudge against me?”

  “I’m done. You can stop looking over your shoulder.”

  “You’re giving us your blessing?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. But be good to her, Bernie. I know that woman very well. You get up to any of your old tricks and she’ll leave you in a flash.”

  “She makes me want to be a better man,” Bernie said.

  “Lame movie quotes won’t get you anywhere with her,” I said.