And then he saw them, huddled in the far corner. Reva and Andrew, Jean and Willa, Julia and Ryan. Julia cast a glance over her shoulder at him before turning away when she saw Paul looking back. Her husband, Ryan, said something and a couple of the others chuckled. The rest just stood, lips pursed, and nodded at whatever sage bon mot he’d dropped. Whatever he’d uttered, it fell on them with more gravity than levity.
Emerging from the kitchen, Carol went to stand with their friends. She upturned the dregs of her glass of wine before holding it out for one of the assembled tribe to fill. Julia picked up a bottle of something red from a nearby bookshelf and filled the glass practically to the rim. Carol took another big slug off it and excused herself from the group. As she broke away, Ryan laid a hand on her shoulder. Paul read his lips as he said, “We’re here for you.” Carol moved away, weaving slightly as she glided through the space.
Paul put on his best I’m-happy-for-you face and held out his hands, palms up. Carol laid her empty hand in one of his and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. She withdrew from his grip as soon as he let up the pressure. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “You look well.” She flashed a small smile and looked down at her feet and said something about feeling well. He was unconvinced. She took another drink.
“The place is . . . nice.”
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Paul looked over her shoulder at the pack of friends whose houses they used to go to for brunch and cocktails and dinner parties. They all stared at him. He nodded. The two men nodded back. The women just stared. The artist, Glenn, wandered over to them and cocked his head. Jean pointed her weirdly long finger in Paul’s direction. Glenn turned around. From across the room Paul could still see his eyes narrow and his thin, pale lips purse underneath the oh-so-boho hipster beard.
“I just wanted to see you, Carol,” Paul said. “Ironically, I figured the party was my only chance to actually get you alone for a second to talk.” He didn’t add, because I know you’d do anything to avoid me making a scene in front of our friends. He was sure she had gathered that already.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” she said. And she was right. He’d come to the party with a hundred things on his mind. More entreaties to come home, more reminisces about the early, bright days of their courtship. But when he saw her, he knew that it was over. There was nothing he could say that she couldn’t counter with “No.”
Glenn appeared and slid an arm around Carol’s waist in a practiced way like he’d been doing it for years. He had a painterly look, like he spent more time indoors than out, but there was something else beneath it. Paul’s own carefully crafted appearance was meant to belie the indoor softness of his profession—he worked hard to make himself look strong and sun-kissed and vital. But where Paul had cultivated gym muscles and sun-bed tan, there was something primal and savage in Glenn. His eyes were wild like a French fur trapper from a history book. He was pale, but hard-looking. Like stone. He made Paul feel like a pretender.
“How are we doing?” Glenn asked. “Is everything okay?” Although he addressed them both, it was clear he was inquiring only of Carol’s well-being.
She nodded and awkwardly introduced her lover to her husband. Paul held out his hand for Glenn to shake. “Pleased to meet you finally.” The wildman took it and gave a firm, but not overbearing single pump before letting go.
He shakes hands like a lawyer.
Glenn smiled with half his mouth and gestured at the apartment/gallery. “So what do you think?” Paul was uncertain how to respond until Glenn glanced left and right at the paintings on the walls.
“Oh! The show? Very nice. I’ve admired your work for a long time.”
“Glad you could make it then,” Glenn said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to introduce Carol to someone. You can find your own way out, I’m sure.” Paul marveled at how well the artist controlled the situation. He’d appeared courteous, but was firm and gave an order in a way that sounded like small talk. Paul was certain that before the man became a hippie layabout, he’d been in his tribe: a litigator.
“If I could just have one more minute of Carol’s time, I’ll be on my way. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”
The look in the wildman’s eyes said, too late. But after silently consulting Carol he said, “I’m sure you won’t,” instead. He bent down and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips before saying, “Don’t keep us waiting too long.”
Marking his territory.
Carol squeezed Glenn’s hand and let go, allowing him to return to the huddle to observe and whisper with the others. She turned back to Paul and asked what it was he wanted to discuss that couldn’t wait. He tilted his head toward the deck and asked if she’d step outside with him. It was a warm spring, but the nights were cold. No one was standing outside, not even to smoke. She rolled her eyes and led the way.
The sliding glass door jammed halfway and she had to put her shoulder into getting it open enough for them to step through. Paul followed her out and pulled the door shut behind him. The thump of the jamb sliding home pleased him.
“So what is it? What do you want?” she asked.
He reached for her hand but she pulled away. He sighed loudly and said, “I’ll sign the papers. Have your lawyer send them to my office.”
She gave him another expression he recognized—the squint-eyed what’s-your-angle look—and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No bullshit. No fights.” He made another grab for her hand. This time she let him take it. “I can see you have something here. I won’t stand in the way.”
She hugged him, carelessly dribbling wine from her glass down the back of his sport coat. He held her tightly, feeling the softness of her body against him, her breathing, her breasts pressed against his chest.
“I’m sorry. We just grew in different directions,” she said. “It’s not you or me, it’s just . . . us, I guess.”
“Oh no. It’s definitely you,” he breathed into her ear.
She pulled back to look into his eyes, screwing up her face in frustration at his need to have the last stab at whatever piercing game of emotional pain they played. Like always. She let go and backed up to the wooden railing of the deck, wavering slightly. “You should go. I’ll make sure you get the papers.” The wine in her hand seemed to have an equal chance of slipping from her fingers and toppling over the edge as it did being raised to her lips.
He thought about what it would be like to fall over the side—the sensation of slipping through the cool night air. That last moment of quiet, pure panic right before hard ruin on the concrete below.
He nodded and reached for the door. Struggling with it, he banged and clattered the door in its track.
“Ugh! Let me get that. There’s a trick.” She balanced her wine glass on the edge of the rail and staggered over to him.
“I got it,” he said, yanking hard. The door jerked open to the sticking point. His hand slipped off the handle and he jammed his elbow into her. She gasped and staggered backward clutching at her breast. He cried out, lurching at her. She slammed up against the rail and toppled over. He snatched at her, catching her wrist. Her weight jerked him down and he thought for a second that she might pull him off the platform after her. But they both hung there suspended in air for a moment, the rail between them folding him in half, holding him in place. The wine glass shattered on the concrete below in a soft tinkle of devastation.
He barely registered the sound of people behind him screaming and rushing for the deck.
Carol looked up, pleading with him to haul her back up. She looked at him with shadowed eyes and said, “Paul?” Her face was a distorted mask of panic and need. And then wide-eyed fear. “Paul!”
He reached down with his other hand and firmly grasped her gauzy sleeve before letting go of her wrist. The cheap peasant frock tore, leaving him holding a length of rent cloth. He watched as she disappeared into the darkness below. The sound of her landing wit
h a whump and the snap of breaking bones against denting steel, more shattering glass, and then a hollow crack against the pavement like a gunshot carried up and over the screams of the other guests as they arrived behind him on the deck. He turned, holding up the sleeve by way of explanation.
“I had her. I had her!” he said.
The rest of the evening was a blur. Shrieks and shouts, threats and recriminations, the police and paramedics . . . the ambulance ride.
And then the hospital.
Paul informed the staff that he was Carol’s husband—a lawyer at Tinder, Gibson and Parry LLC. They led him right past the velvet rope. All access. Glenn arrived directly behind, but since he was only a “friend,” the responsibility to make decisions fell to Paul. He still held her power of attorney. Glenn was exiled.
She moved from emergency into surgery and then recovery. Once she stabilized, Paul was allowed into the room to see her. And from that moment on, he never left her side. Watching. Waiting for the movements of her eyes beneath the lids to develop into a flutter. And then wakefulness. And he’d be the first person she saw. Not Glenn. Him.
And then what? She’d realize that she still loved him, have a change of heart? She’d feel let down and betrayed that her artist wildman wasn’t waiting to immortalize her in yet another half-formed series of haphazard paint streaks?
No.
She’d ask where Glenn was. Paul would explain about hospital policy and the power of attorney and that she needed someone to care for her and that it had been him. It had always been him. He’d pour his heart out and still she’d be unmoved. Because that was Carol. She couldn’t remember the good times.
He stood up from the chair beside the bed and stretched his back. It was stiff from that damned new-father’s chair. He grabbed his wallet from the radiator sill below the window and looked out again at his beloved city. The city across the river. The home she’d not returned to since betraying him and moving across the Charles like it was some clear line demarking one life traded for another. An impassible barrier between the past and her future.
But he’d crossed it. For her.
It was all for her.
Paul pulled the sheer curtains closed and walked out of the room into the hall to buy a bottle of water from the vending machine in the lobby. “Mr. Goddard,” a nurse called out to him. “Mr. Goddard, stop!” He turned to face her, hands on hips. She stared at him with a look of mild annoyance. “Mr. Goddard, you have to put your shoes on. We’re allowing you to sleep here, but this is still a hospital.” He looked down at his stocking feet. Thin black work socks that he hadn’t changed since Carol had been admitted forty-eight hours ago stood in stark contrast to the white tile beneath them.
“Oh my god, I didn’t even realize.”
The nurse huffed and grabbed his elbow to lead him back to the room like he was the patient who needed her healing touch. “It’s okay, Mr. Goddard.” She patted his hand. “She’ll come through it. But when she does wake up, you need to be strong enough for the both of you.” She spoke as if his shoelessness was physical a symptom of the psychological trauma that a good husband must be feeling in such circumstances. Of course, he’d forgotten to slip into his shoes due to worry over his wife.
The woman turned him toward her and looked soulfully into his eyes as if stage positioning enhanced the sincerity of her delivery. “She’s lucky to be alive. Carol is going to need a lot of help adjusting to her new life after the surgeons are through. She’s lucky to have a husband as devoted as you.”
“And I’m lucky to still have her.”
“Yes you are.” She smiled at him. The nurse wasn’t ugly. Just not quite pretty either. Nothing that would inspire anyone to paint.
Not like his wife.
His wife, who when she awoke would tell what had really happened out in the cold night on the deck.
He walked into the room and shut the door behind him. Running the tap in the sink at the far end of the suite, he let the water fall over his finger until it felt lukewarm. He filled the pink plastic pitcher another friendly nurse had brought in the night before. Returning to his side of the bed he sat and stripped off his socks and dunked them in the water. After a minute or two of swirling them around, he pulled them out and wrung the cloudy water back into the pitcher. He repeated the process. When he was satisfied with his tea, he stood and peeled back the dressing covering the wounds she’d received in the fall and then in the operating theater. He tilted the pitcher, drizzling warm water along the length her wounds, soaking the points of penetration of the pins and screws and wires holding Carol’s legs together. When the wounds were glistening wet, and dried blood in between folds of cut flesh looked newly tacky and soft, he replaced the gauze as well as he could so the stains of pus and blood lined up with her wounds. He daubed the scrapes on her face and wiped around her ventilation tube before taking the damp socks into the bathroom to wring out thoroughly in the sink. Wrapping them up in a ball, he dropped them into a plastic grocery bag, tied it off, and dropped it into the gym bag full of clean clothes he’d made his secretary drop off. Sitting down on the lid of the toilet, he pulled a fresh, dry pair of clean white socks out of the bag. He pulled them on and slipped his feet into his tasseled loafers.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Paul walked out of the room to go get breakfast and a cup of coffee. And to throw out his trash. He made sure to cleanse his hands at the sanitizer station right outside the room before he went. MRSA. It’s all over places like nursing homes and hospitals. Staph infections are usually nothing to worry about. Unless they invade deeper into your body, getting into your lungs or bloodstream or bones. He chose not to think about it, instead reflecting on the good times as he stepped out into the sun.
Those thoughts lasted until he found Carol’s boyfriend in the parking lot leaning against his car.
Paul’s step stuttered and he hesitated a second before resuming his stride. Wildman appearance or not, Paul had taken Krav Maga classes. He wasn’t going to let this hipster shithead intimidate him.
Glenn took a deep drag, the red ember of the cigarette burning hot in the shade of the covered lot before fading again. His face darkened as the ember cooled and he blew the smoke out, waiting a moment, steadying himself. The man looked like his muscles were made of inch-thick coiled spring. He took a breath before speaking. “I brought you something. A little piece of art I thought you might like to see before it goes on public display.”
“I don’t want any more of your paintings in my house.”
Glenn reached into his messenger bag. Paul’s stomach tensed as he waited for the artist to pull a gun. He tensed up, ready to dive at the man’s midsection. He wasn’t going to just stand there and let the asshole shoot him. When the wildman pulled a silver disk in a white paper sleeve out of the bag, he half-relaxed.
“What’s that?”
“It’s for you, Goddard. A video installation piece.”
“I don’t get it.”
Glenn’s mouth turned up on one side in a kind of humorless smile. “You ever go to a museum and walk into a room where they’re playing a looped video of a rotting peach or a man in drag changing a truck tire? That’s a video installation. I have a friend who does them.”
Paul stepped up to Glenn, held up his key and said, “Not interested. Now get off my car so I can go change my clothes before Carol wakes up.” His head was beginning to ache and he wanted nothing more than to be back in his apartment taking a hot shower while his socks turned to ash in the building incinerator.
The wildman persisted. “You’re going to be interested in this. Believe me. My friend, the video artist, he has this thing about ‘outsider perspective’.”
Paul wanted to throw a punch through the air quotes Glenn fingered on either side of his face. He stood still and waited the man out. No sense getting arrested for fighting with the contents of the bag on him.
“He likes to film intimate situations at a distance. You know, dinners, quiet night
s cuddling on the couch . . . parties. He climbs up telephone poles and ties these little tiny cameras to them so he can film through windows from across the street. If he didn’t show the videos in museums, he’d just be a peeping Tom. But it’s art when he does it. Oh, and he gets permission. If you’d shown up to the party with everyone else, you’d have gotten a copy of the likeness rights waiver. Still, we didn’t want you to be unaware what you’d gotten into. I thought you should have a look-see before the big premiere.”
“I told you, I’m not interested.”
“On the news.”
Paul’s stomach tightened again and he found himself taking a step back from the man and his unmarked DVD.
“Finally piqued your curiosity, huh?” He dropped the disk on the ground and lit a fresh cigarette. “Watch it or don’t. It’ll be on at six and probably again at eleven. I’d try to catch it on your player though. You might not get another opportunity.”
“Fuck you.”
Glenn the wildman laughed a single explosive syllable before pushing off the side of Paul’s BMW. “Our girl told me about your dark side, but I didn’t let it sink in all the way. You know how people talk about their exes. That’s on me. This,” he said, spitting on the paper envelope. “This is all on you.” He walked into the shadows of the parking garage, smoke drifting lazily in his wake. Paul thought about leaving the disc on the ground, but at the last minute snatched it and jumped into his car. He drove through the city in a daze, glancing from time to time at the DVD glinting on the passenger seat.
In his condo, he stood with the Blu-ray remote in hand, afraid to press PLAY. His phone started ringing not long after he arrived home. He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at the blank screen as if it was a black hole that might suck him in if he woke it.
13 Views of the Suicide Woods Page 18
