Crazy in Love

by Luanne Rice

  “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” Donald said. “Is she the subject of your latest study?”

  “I’m interested in her, yes. I called her. How do you think she’d sound on the phone?”

  “Weepy,” Honora said.

  “No, quite strong. I was a little surprised.”

  “Women whose husbands cheat on them can find amazing reserves of strength,” Clare said. “You shouldn’t make it out to be the end of the world, Georgie.”

  I watched Honora for her reaction, but there was none. Her hands rested on her lap, palms up. She seemed to be avidly watching Eugene jiggle two ice cubes in his glass of lemonade.

  “Do you think she’ll go to jail?” Clare asked.

  “Doubtful,” Donald said. “Her lawyers will use the classic ‘heat of passion’ line of reasoning. She’ll get off.” Donald had a stiff way of speaking; he always sounded like a lawyer, even within our midst, but after Nick he was the best man I knew.

  “How can you remember that?” Nick asked, coming into the room with Pem’s drink. “I haven’t read a criminal case since law school.”

  “I don’t know anything—I’m just bluffing. Trying to sound like a wise lawyer.”

  “They’ll use the ‘extreme emotional distress’ defense, don’t you think?” I asked. Nick and I had married between his first and second years of law school, and Criminal Law and Evidence had been my favorites of his classes.

  “Why don’t you hang out your shingle?” Honora asked, her eyes sparkling.

  “The mere matter of no law degree,” I answered. “No law degree, no college degree—thank heavens I didn’t decide to snub education until after I’d finished high school.”

  “Why do you say that?” Honora asked, frowning. “What did you need high school for? You’ve always had your eyes open, sweetie.” She turned to Eugene and Casey. “When your auntie was your age she knew more about fish than any kid in Woods Hole. Not to mention birds, seaweed, rocks, and electricity. She could make you a battery right now—out of materials in plain sight in this room.”

  “This morning we saw a scarlet tanager,” Casey said.

  “Now your mother, on the other hand,” Honora continued, smiling at Clare, “was quite different. She got straight A’s in math, English, history, everything. Also, she was a very good sculptor. But she wasn’t so interested in nature.”

  “That’s why she had the time to get two PhDs,” I said. Everyone laughed, and Clare gave me a secret smile. Even with her advanced degrees, I knew she valued knowledge and the task of learning more than diplomas. She had never used her art and biochemistry degrees professionally. In another family that might have been considered a strange waste of time and talent, but Honora had come to understand Clare’s decision to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. We had been taught that learning mattered; it was essential, but whether we wanted to use our accrued knowledge in careers or in the most private way was up to us.

  Still, no matter what Honora now said, she had railed and gnashed her teeth when I had refused to go to college. My decision terrified her. Perhaps she had doubted one could learn without the structure of a university. I glanced at Clare’s small smile and figured she was thinking of Honora’s evolution.

  On Bennison Point, Pem and I represented the unschooled. I tried to get her attention, but she was engaged with her weak martini.

  “You know, Mother,” Clare said, “I was interested in nature, but that was always Georgie’s province. Georgie was the nature lover, I was the bookworm. Georgie was the tomboy, I loved pretty dresses. It’s strange how we attribute different characteristics to each child. Even here,” she said, casting a significant glance at her two sons, playing with drink coasters. “One is the scamp, the other the gentleman.” I thought I saw Eugene, the scamp, sharpen when he heard that, but he continued to play.

  “I think Georgie would be a good lawyer,” Nick said. “She knows a lot of law. She sat through the bar review with me, and I know she could have passed the bar exam. In some states you don’t need a law degree—you serve an apprenticeship, then pass the bar.”

  Honora leaned forward, grinning. “I’m just waiting to see what happens with the Observatory. I think it will put the Swift name on the map.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. For no matter how plain I saw Honora, she was still my mother, and I wanted her to be proud of me.

  IN A WEEK THE weather was clear and fine. I lay on the floor of my workroom, reading old newspapers. The sun had come around the Point and was streaming through the tall windows. It glittered on the bay. Shorebirds appeared in bold relief against the brightness. By their silhouettes I recognized mallards, mergansers, buffleheads, brants, loons, and cormorants. The kingfisher perched on the pier. I found no updates on Mona Tuchman. The phone rang.

  “It’s me,” said Nick.

  “What’s cooking?”

  “Tonight will be very late. I won’t make it home.”

  “I’ll make a reservation,” I said. Whenever Nick had to stay so late that he would miss his flight, I would book a room at the Gregory and take a train into the city.

  “Georgie, are you sure you want to? It’s going to be late, and I mean late.”

  “Don’t ask such a ridiculous question,” I said.

  “Ah, well.” He paused, then said, “Project Broadsword is taking off. A corporate raider is getting into the act.”

  Corporate raider. I thought of the language of tender offers: white knight, golden parachutes, shark repellents, scorched earth, sale of crown jewels. It had a poetry that belied the brash doggedness of the participants. “Don’t tell me the details. Discretion is paramount. Someone might have your phone bugged.”

  “Which train will you take?” Nick asked, ignoring my sarcasm. I couldn’t stand the way he used those phrases, like a boy playing King Arthur or Arabian Nights, playful little phrases that trivialized his work and made too light of the disruption it caused in our lives.

  “The next one. The one that gets in at two-thirty.”

  “I’m sorry about this. It’s just that meetings are scheduled all day, and then I’ll have to turn the agreement around. They need a final version tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We can have a late dinner tonight. Clare gave me a book about New York restaurants open after midnight. There are more than you’d think.”

  Nick laughed. I pictured him leaning back in his brown leather chair, his back to the window facing Trinity Church’s dark spire. I knew exactly which glen plaid suit he had worn that morning, which navy foulard tie, which socks. His white shirts were interchangeable; even I could not tell them apart. The instant a fray appeared, he would give me the shirt to wear on the beach. I found his dislike of frays endearing.

  “Should I call you when I get in?” I asked.

  “Of course. Leave a message with Denise if I can’t come to the phone.”

  “I will. I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  I love you: We said it so often I sometimes expected the words to lose their meaning, but they never did.

  We had a regular room at the Gregory, a small hotel on West Twentieth Street named for Yeats’s Lady Gregory. Before the west-side marshes had been filled in, the hotel had stood at the edge of the Hudson River. Now you couldn’t even see the water from our room on the top floor. A ten-minute walk from the river, and I felt landlocked. The hotel had a genteel shabbiness: faded brocade draperies, mahogany walls and lobby furniture, polished brass lamps, leather chairs at the writing tables, sad-eyed portraits of Lady Gregory. Nick sometimes suggested we stay at a fancy hotel on Central Park, but I liked it here. I felt totally anonymous. The bellman barely greeted me; I carried my own bag upstairs. In the dark shadows of Manhattan, I tried to not feel anger about leaving bright, sparkling Black Hall. Wasn’t it my choice to join Nick? He had never insisted that I come to town; in fact I could not remember him actually suggesting it. He was happy that I wanted to, but the idea was mine.
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  I paced the room for a few minutes. The desk was antique, in need of new brass drawer pulls. I used a plastic pen cap to pry open one drawer, to check whether the previous tenant had left anything behind. Once I had lost four sketches of marine life in that very drawer, but today it was empty. I spread my papers across the desk. My first quarterly report was due in a month.

  I called Nick’s office and left a message with Denise. Then I picked up the Manhattan phone book. I called Mona Tuchman’s number. She answered.

  “Hello, this is Georgiana Swift calling from the Swift Observatory,” I said, expecting her to hang up.

  “Mmmm.”

  “I wondered whether I could interview you.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. What does the Swift Observatory want with me?”

  “To ask you a few questions. Talk to you awhile.”

  “I notice you don’t have the rapid-fire approach. You could have already asked me some questions.”

  “I thought we could meet. You could come to my hotel, or I could go to you. Whichever you prefer.” I could hardly believe I was arranging a meeting with Mona Tuchman. After our last conversation I had been steeled for an attack.

  “You might as well come here,” she said. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, already planning my subway route.

  She lived in a big building on the Upper West Side where stone gargoyles, angels, and rams leered from rooftops and lintels. A brilliant green patch of Central Park was visible around the corner. A terra-cotta planter of begonias stood outside the entrance. The doorman directed me to the eighth floor.

  She was waiting in the foyer. I had been right about the dark hair; short and curly, it framed her round face. She wore tortoiseshell glasses. Gentle lines indicated that her face was accustomed to smiling, but it was at that moment expressionless. She wore a full green corduroy jumper over a nylon turtleneck. I wondered whether she was pregnant.

  “Entrez,” she said, preceding me into the apartment. We introduced ourselves.

  “What is the Swift Observatory?” she asked, gesturing at a brick-red wing chair. I sat, watching her settle herself onto a straight-backed desk chair. The decor was vaguely colonial. Patchwork quilts hung on two walls.

  “It’s an organization that studies human nature.”

  “Yikes. What kind of human nature are you after here? Human nature. I don’t know, I thought this was going to be an ordinary interview.”

  “It is. I don’t want to intimidate you,” I stammered. I felt intimidated myself, and pompous at the same time. “Actually, I am the Swift Observatory—I’m all there is. I needed a name for my work because it’s funded, you see.” As Clare had said, the foundation would be more likely to give grant money to the Swift Observatory than “Georgie Swift, Nosy Bitch.”

  “I never planned to kill Celeste Stone. My hand was stabbing her, then all of a sudden I realized what I was doing and stopped. In one instant I ruined my life. Well, not an instant exactly. I was hitting her for about thirty seconds, we think.”

  “We?”

  “Celeste and I. We haven’t spoken to each other, but we communicate through our lawyers. I’ve already been told that I probably won’t go to jail, but I’ll go on probation and lose custody of my children. Celeste says she doesn’t want me to go to jail. She’s being very big about this. She’s lying in a hospital bed at this very moment. They’re letting her out tomorrow.” Mona looked out the window as she spoke. Her voice lilted slightly, betraying no emotional connection to the words.

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Very well. We met at the nursery school. The mothers take turns volunteering, and she and I usually had the same day. Her husband is a doctor too. A dermatologist. Dick’s an eye surgeon.”

  “And the couples became friendly.”

  “That’s right. We took ski trips together.” She looked at me for the first time. “I don’t want to talk about the romance.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll just say that I knew but I didn’t know. In other words, I now realize that subconsciously I knew something was going on, but I refused to recognize it. Then someone told me about it—my mother, in fact—and I went crazy.”

  “Your mother told you your husband was having an affair?”

  “Yes. Isn’t that unbelievable? I feel ashamed that she knows anything about it. She saw them . . . kissing . . . outside a restaurant. She told me, then everything became clear. Everything I had known but not known. Dick had just left town for a conference, so I couldn’t confront him. I went crazy and headed to Celeste’s. I’m a great believer in the subconscious. I think I chose a butter knife because I didn’t really want to kill her. This is the most ridiculous thing to be talking about. I hardly believe I did it—I know I did, but I still can’t believe it. I’m not the type to stab someone.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  She looked away again. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she said.

  I had the feeling she wasn’t being totally sincere, that she was using me a little. I could hardly blame her. She would benefit from sympathetic news stories.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Tuchman,” I said. “I should tell you that my account of your story will probably not be published.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.” She sounded upset.

  “Did your lawyer tell you to give interviews?”

  “Yes, but hardly anyone seems interested. Last week they were, but I wasn’t ready. Too much time has passed or something, and they’re on to a new story.” Her voice shook and tears glazed her eyes. “He thought I’d stand a better chance if the public liked me. He said if they identified with me instead of Celeste, I’d get off easy and maybe get to keep my kids. Oh, God, that’s the worst part,” she said, really sobbing now. “What are they going to think of me?”

  “They’ll understand,” I said calmly. “They’ll understand that you wanted to keep the family together.”

  “That’s it,” she said, sounding bewildered.

  “Tell me about that,” I said.

  “It’s so simple. I love Dick. We have a wonderful family—two girls and a boy. I’m his wife, he’s their father, they’re our kids, we’re parents, they’re sisters and a brother. We’re a family. That’s exactly it,” she said, as if the thought had occurred to her for the first time. “We belong together.”

  “That’s what I figured the moment I read that article about you.”

  “What makes you so interested in my story?” Mona asked me, frowning, cleaning her glasses with the hem of her dress.

  “Because I think I understand exactly how you felt,” I said.

  “No one has said that to me. I realize that most people wouldn’t actually have done it, but I thought they might understand how I felt. My neighbor shuddered when she saw me. Even the people who really know us, know how close Dick and I are, can’t understand how it happened. I haven’t seen my kids yet, but I’ve seen Dick. He looks like he’s in shock. He says there’s been a problem between us for a long time, but he doesn’t love Celeste.”

  “Why did you decide to confront her?”

  “Good question. I have no idea. I was standing in my kitchen, talking to my mother. She told me about seeing them. After she left I was sitting there thinking. I didn’t feel sad or hurt exactly. Just rage—I felt as though a cyclone was inside me, whirling me over to Celeste’s apartment. I have this picture of myself running down the park, flailing like a rag doll.”

  “Then what happened?” I asked. I could see her exactly, floppy with fury.

  “She was in the kitchen. She was wearing a checkered apron, standing at her butcher block island, peeling the skin off partridge breasts. She’s a fabulous cook.” Mona sighed.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Oh, just remembering some of the dinners we had at her house. Anyway, I said, ‘I just heard the news’ or something like that. She said ‘What news?’ with a terribly bright expression and a happy voice, as if I
were going to tell her the Bolshoi was coming to town. I mean, what other news could it possibly be? That made me even angrier. I guess I screamed something about her and Dick, and then I just grabbed the butter knife off the butter dish and began hitting her with it. That’s how I think of it—hitting her. I hate the thought of stabbing. I hate it.”

  “But the papers said you drew blood.”

  “I gave her a bloody nose.” She paused. “I did hurt her with the butter knife, though. I heard her rib crack. She doubled over, and she looked like Lee Harvey Oswald in that picture where Ruby shoots him. It was horrible. See, when I think about it I remember quite a lot. I’ll always remember that look on her face.”

  “When I called the other day you said you were trying to get on with business.”

  “I am. I think that’s important. I’ve sort of given myself an assignment: get up, make coffee, do my work. It’s the only way to get through this.”

  I wanted to ask what she imagined her future would be, but the question was too cruel. Here she was, talking about making a good start each day.

  “I expected this interview to be different,” she said. “I thought I could portray myself in a certain way, and you would print it. Instead we’ve just talked. I’ve enjoyed it.”

  “So have I. I wish I could help your cause. I should go now, but I’ll leave my number just in case—” I wrote down my numbers at the Gregory and in Black Hall. Then I stood to leave and we shook hands. She followed me to the elevator. She gestured at a closed door.

  “That’s Dick’s office. He’s in there right now, seeing patients. Unless he’s at the hospital,” she said, frowning, as if she were unused to not knowing his where-abouts. “One of us will obviously have to move. God, before this happened I could call one of my friends to talk. You’ve got me in the mood to talk, but I don’t know who to call. Everyone is afraid I’ll bring up the event. They don’t know how to react—they’re afraid they’ll sound too sympathetic or approving.” Suddenly I couldn’t wait for the elevator doors to close. How terrible it seemed, for a woman who was used to the company of friends and, especially, her husband and children, suddenly to be left alone. She didn’t even feel free to make a phone call. It seemed like the worst punishment on earth.