“I know these ladies through work,” he corrected himself desperately, not taking his eyes off his wife.
May appeared not to hear him. Her words, when they came, were gentle and held more wonder than reproof: “Who are you?”
“Virginia Howley. I’m from Maine.”
“Are you buying our house?”
“No.”
“Please, May. We’re not selling the house.”
May’s eyes slowly shifted to her husband as if his childish importuning had finally penetrated. “I don’t know why you keep things from me.”
“I don’t.”
May simply looked at him.
“I don’t anymore.”
He watched Pat bring him his coffee.
“I just don’t want you to worry,” he said, although he was still looking at Pat.
“Are you a real estate agent?” May asked her.
“God, no. I would be a terrible real estate agent,” said Pat. “I always say the first thing that comes into my head. I’m a landscaper.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said Karl. “You shouldn’t have come. You’ll tire yourself out.”
“Are you…May?” Pat’s voice soared to its very highest soprano notes as she settled herself perkily on the bench. “I’m Frank Foy’s wife.”
“Frank was in accounting at LinkAge,” said Karl.
“Now he’s in jail,” said Pat brightly.
“I’m sure you remember him.”
May shook her head.
“They want to help us,” added Karl, looking at the Styrofoam cup Pat had placed before him as if he’d never seen anything like it before.
“Let me get you some,” Pat said to May. “I’m afraid it’s not very good, but at least it has caffeine.”
“No!” cried Karl. Catching himself and lowering his voice as if he were confiding in them, he said, “May doesn’t drink coffee.”
“Frank feels terrible about what happened,” said Pat. “And we want to try to make it up to you both. Speaking of landscaping, I can provide you with my services free of charge. You know the bog garden at LinkAge? I did that. LinkAge has let it go terribly. The reeds have taken over. But I could make you a nice perennial garden. All-season interest, that sort of thing. Right now I’m doing one in Rumson. Not that you probably want to hear about it.”
May looked out the window.
“Well, I’m going to give you money, too,” said Pat.
“I think money is a more immediate concern,” said Karl.
“No one is ever interested in a free garden,” sighed Pat.
NAS…RUS…INVESTORS CONFIDENT ONCE AGAIN… ran across the TV above her head. Pat had always been able to keep chattering in high school—no matter what state she was in or whom she was talking to. It was a real gift, although maddening, of course, to a person like Virginia, who was actually paying attention to all the different tensions in the room.
“Did you tell them you took out a second mortgage on the house?” May asked Karl quietly. “And did you tell them why?”
“May, please, it doesn’t matter,” said Karl.
This is when the tawdry secrets would be revealed, secrets that Virginia did not want to know. To preclude any confession, she said, “I lost money, too.” The others turned to her in surprise. She was fleetingly afraid that the Kupmanns were wondering if they could sink to her level: rusty clothes, bad haircut, shabby purse.
May said, “When LinkAge declared bankruptcy, Karl lost his job, his savings, and his health insurance all on the same day.” For the first time she let her bitterness show. “Then…then I got sick. I had two operations. Insurance covered some of the expenses, but not all, and now we pay more than two thousand dollars a month to continue it.”
“It sounds worse than it is,” said Karl. “We’ll get by somehow.”
“Then I had to have a treatment that wasn’t covered, so we took out a home equity loan.”
“How awful!” cried Pat. “What’s wrong?”
May bowed her head. Yes, there was at least one secret, the nature of her illness, but she was not going to reveal it.
“May, please,” said Karl.
“He’s throwing away his future on a lost cause,” said May.
“That’s not true. The doctors say there’s still lots we can do.”
Pat had her checkbook out, and at this point Virginia wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d simply emptied the account for them.
“You think I don’t know what it means when the bank calls,” said May.
“Take this,” said Pat, filling out a check.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Karl said brokenly. He was beyond his earlier desperation and beyond his subsequent suppression of it. There seemed nothing left to suppress. Both Kupmanns stood up, drained, and walked wearily to the door.
“What do you think is wrong with her?” asked Pat. Earlier she’d appeared to be her usual high-strung, speedy self. But her exuberance had turned sour.
“Something awful,” said Virginia.
Pat nodded.
CHAPTER
18
Virginia was puzzled by a van sitting in the middle of the street. Its engine was idling, so it hadn’t broken down. She couldn’t think of any other reason it might have stopped—there was no light, no driveway to turn into—so as Pat passed it in the Touareg, Virginia peered around her and caught sight of the driver resting his forearms on the horizontal steering wheel and eating a sandwich from a white paper bag. Virginia closed her eyes.
This time as Pat unlocked her door, the dogs were accompanied by music swelling from somewhere in the back of the house: strings, horns, war cries. “Will must be home,” said Pat happily. She and Virginia followed the trotting, rippling dogs into a white room dominated by a huge TV as flat as a window. Will was indeed there, lying almost horizontally on the big black leather couch, head propped up so he could see, feet on a large square coffee table. At the same angle lay a girl wearing blue jeans and a plain gray athletic T-shirt as tight as a sausage casing.
“Ruby! Honey!” said Pat. “What are you doing back so soon? How was Washington? Did you pick her up, Will?”
“The last presentation was canceled because of the rain,” said Ruby without taking her eyes off the screen, which, due to its size and place in the room, would not let you be. What Virginia saw from her strange angle near the door was great isolated shapes that seemed to jump from one part of the screen to another: a thick leather vest exposing biceps as rounded as a Poussin, laces crisscrossing arrogant calves, a row of Roman helmets bristling with spikes, a sword drawing a line of blood across pink flesh.
“This is your Aunt Ginny!” said Pat. “Can you believe it? Doesn’t she look great? How was your trip? You definitely look older. People always mature when they travel. The dogs have missed you so. They’ve been disconsolate, you wouldn’t have believed it, but of course they’ve behaved just as badly as ever. What do you make of Washington? It always struck me as one big slab of concrete.”
In the midst of this Ruby said “Hi” with a brief glance in Virginia’s direction. Her eyes were flat and black, but glossy, like stuffed animal eyes. Her cheeks bulged like a cherub’s. Her lace-up suede boots, which wrinkled stylishly at the ankles, must have cost more than three hundred dollars. She wore a braided purple ponytail holder around her wrist.
“You should have called me,” Pat finished up.
“Will gave me a ride.”
“Will has his father’s car here,” Pat told Virginia with odd pride. “It’s sitting in our driveway right now.”
Lemuel Samuel’s car? That would be no ordinary ride. Virginia felt a dreamy stab of memory—or desire. Late teens, an unexpected vehicle. What liberty.
The TV room’s white walls, severe blinds, squared-off black furniture, and industrial gray carpeting set up expectations of a sterile environment. As Virginia moved farther inside, though, a sharp odor became even stronger. Unwashed socks, pheromones, old food, dog. The smell
matched the glistening swagger on the screen.
“Will says…” Ruby was drowned out by some thundering hooves. “Will says that in Roman times you could do all sorts of things when you were thirteen. You could vote in the Senate and drive a chariot. I can’t do anything because I can’t drive.”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” said Will, who was far less relaxed than his posture would initially lead you to believe. His arms made two tense V’s behind his head. His dress shirt was too small for him, and the placket had raised up in three straining waves down his narrow chest.
Dozens of flaming arrows were released into the air.
“In Roman times you could go to war when you were thirteen, right, Will?” said Ruby.
A giant digital soldier staggered, pierced in his swelling breast. Another man, equally large, lost a monumental leg.
“You could do stuff when you were young, yeah,” said Will.
Will’s voice sounded stifled, as if it had got stuck somewhere before making it out into the world. This should have deflected attention, as intended, but it did not. The only real product of the most secret, inner part of a person is his voice. Secretions of other sorts may feel intimate and urgent, but they are not personal. Pat, who’d always been open and generous, had a voice that flowed freely. When Will spoke, you became more aware of the shadowy recesses from which his voice came, and you became more aware of the defensive posture that was protecting this voice: the tucked-in chin, the tilt of the taut, narrow shoulders, the gangly arms ready to spring into action.
“If it were Roman times,” said Ruby, “I could get married.”
Even at this distance, Virginia could feel Will’s embarrassment. “I didn’t say anything about that.” His words, at the end, held a lick of the lash.
“Will,” said Ruby, shocked. “Of course you did. Don’t you remember?”
Pat was unfazed. “I thought we could rent Mallow tonight,” she said. “In honor of Ginny. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
As the camera panned silently over hundreds of hugely sprawling, mangled bodies, you could distinguish the odd hum made by the TV.
“Will hates his father’s books,” said Ruby.
“Really?” said Pat.
When the phone rang, Virginia followed her out of the room. From Pat’s corner office in the kitchen you could hear the automated female voice of the caller ID begin its falling and then rising tones: “Call from in-mah-tah. Call from in-mah-tah.”
“Who’s that?” asked Virginia.
“Inmate,” said Pat, springing for the handset.
“Yes, Frank, yes, it’s all set,” said Pat. “Yes, tomorrow.” Then she started saying “Mmm, mmm, mmm” in a way that made Virginia realize Pat wanted to talk but couldn’t because she wasn’t alone.
Virginia felt as if a heavy net had fallen on her from above. Where should she retreat to? The situation was becoming clear. Pat’s designs on Lemuel had been thwarted, so now she was unconsciously fostering a substitute relationship between her daughter and his son, despite the difference in their ages.
It was still early, but Virginia decided to pour herself some single malt in the living room. She wouldn’t need ice with it, after all. As she sipped, she looked out over her old town. Maybe she would have been better off growing up in a time like this when order and civility seemed to have disappeared. Her childhood misery certainly had not been alleviated by Hart Ridge’s carefully graduated houses, its lawns with crisply edged borders, its hours punctuated by train whistles.
Even now she couldn’t find a place for herself. From her freelance work she knew that jacket copy for mysteries had its own code:
“A delightful puzzle, yet so much more than a mystery, with an unusual depth of characterization” meant that the book was a straightforward whodunit. Characters revealed their keen intelligence through the liberal quoting of poetry the author did not have to know himself because of course he could look it up. All of Lydia Bunting was of this type.
“Not a puzzle, but an exploration of the underside of society” meant that any grade school student could guess the murderer and instead of suspense you got lots of pornographic videos, drug dealers speaking a far-fetched vernacular, and exploited child prostitutes in need of rescue from men in sleazy suits. Lemuel Samuel’s Fleabag Massacre was a good example.
“A far-reaching novel that does not sacrifice the satisfactions of the genre” meant who knew what the hell was going on, but it wasn’t pursuit or deduction in the usual sense. Not many of these were published, and fewer were bought. That was what appeared on the dust jacket of Virginia’s first book. She seemed doomed to this inscrutable noncategory.
“So,” said Pat, “here you are. Don’t you think Will is wonderful with Ruby?”
“Oh, dear,” said Virginia.
Pat sat down and secured a bottle of wine between her knees. “So what horrible thing is going to happen to the Kupmanns?” she asked.
“They could spend the whole amount on quack remedies,” said Virginia. “They’re so desperate they could be prey to any huckster that comes along.”
“Wow,” said Pat. She started to thread a corkscrew through the top. “Wouldn’t that be terrible.”
Her apparent naïveté sent Virginia’s mind spinning. How much money had Pat’s checks been for? Had Frank’s secretary made specific suggestions? Could Pat afford this? She’d never had a very firm grasp of financial matters.
“How well do you know this Ellen Kloda?” asked Virginia.
“Pretty well,” said Pat. “She’s not the most exciting person in the world.”
“But what is she like? I mean, was she really angry about her loss?”
“No more than anyone, I guess.”
Virginia tried a different tack. “Are we seeing anyone tomorrow?”
Pat sighed. She popped out the cork. She poured a glass of wine. Finally she said, “I’m going to Rumson.”
“Rumson? Why?”
Pat glanced at Virginia uneasily. Her smile was in place, but her head swiveled from side to side. “Long before Frank was arrested, I agreed to do a garden for Neil Culp’s wife, Yolande,” she said. “It was a weird arrangement, I suppose. I designed a garden for her, and in return Frank got a big bonus from LinkAge. In effect the project has already been paid for. But it fell through when Neil abandoned Frank. Yolande left a message telling me not to come. Now suddenly she is pestering me to start up work again. It makes you think.”
“Wait a minute,” said Virginia. “You’re going to go see the Culps?”
“I told you that Frank has gotten sort of strange,” said Pat. “Well, he’s completely obsessed with Neil.”
For a moment the house around them had no sound, no smell, no temperature. Virginia drained her Scotch.
“He insists I go down there. I think he expects me to stare at them balefully and make all sorts of accusations,” said Pat. “You know how unhinged I’m supposed to be.”
Of course she wasn’t serious, but then, with Pat, you could never be sure.
“Why?”
“Maybe I could trick them into confessing,” said Pat. “Wear a wire.”
“Everyone already knows they did it,” said Virginia.
“Frank thinks something’s going to happen if I actually see the Culps,” said Pat. “Like on TV, when the good people get to yell at the bad people at the end of the show. Or get to shoot them. He’s convinced that if I go down to Rumson, I’ll see Neil as well as Yolande. That’s the first questionable assumption. The second questionable assumption is that there will be some big change in the world or in Neil’s situation or maybe even Frank’s as a result. I don’t see it, but I agreed to go down and talk to Yolande. It’s the least I can do.”
Virginia just shook her head.
“Look,” said Pat. “I can’t pass up the chance. Why did Yolande call me out of nowhere? Just to get the free garden? She can’t be that cheap. Well, she could, I guess, but that would be interesting, too. She�
��s going to have to say something to me when I’m there. Will she pretend that her husband is some poor innocent? Will she pretend that he didn’t double-cross Frank? Will she pretend that Frank didn’t then help the feds with the LinkAge books? It’s not like I expect an apology. That really would be a shock. More?”
Pat replenished Virginia’s glass.
“It’s going to be fascinating,” she said. “Neil is a wizard. And an escape artist, too, I guess. I can’t even imagine what he’s pulled. The stock market, the telecommunications industry, the whole business world, they’re all shady. It’s a known fact. But so what? Are we supposed to go off to a South Sea island? It wouldn’t be any better there.”
“I don’t know,” said Virginia slowly. She eased herself into one of the huge green couches and lay her head against its back. “Sometimes I toy with the idea of escape. There was an American in New Zealand who staged at least two fake deaths, both of them drownings. He was ‘rescued’ the first time. He was gone for years after the second. Eventually he was caught and sent to prison for insurance fraud. When he got out, he disappeared once more.”
“This is a real person?” said Pat.
“Yes,” said Virginia. “He was never found again.”
“Why did he do that?” Pat was disapproving.
“For money,” said Virginia. “But was that all? Sometimes at night I try to imagine where he is now.”
“He’s dead,” said Pat with alarm.
“Probably,” said Virginia. “Not necessarily.”
Not many people knew that Virginia’s mother had killed herself. Pamela, who was pretty cheery for a stepmother, used to say that with the new antidepressants she would have been fine. Virginia was supposed to take comfort in this observation, but it made no sense to her. It seemed to imply that her mother’s experience was less than real. Sometimes things were too much to bear—and that was the sane response. Sometimes you had to ask how to go on, or even whether to.
CHAPTER
19
The sky was a bright empty blue pasted with a few fat white clouds. From a stalled feeder street Virginia could see the sun glittering off a moving carpet of cars on Route 287. Ahead of them was a camouflage Hummer pulling a flatbed of saplings. Pat said she thought the next entrance would be better, so she drove off into a labyrinth of brilliantly light-filled working-class streets. At the next entrance the traffic was indeed more fluid, and it remained so for at least ten minutes, until the lane on the far right backed up behind a dense line of cars exiting onto the Garden State. In exasperation Pat swerved into the faster moving lane and then edged back in about a half mile down. Soon she got tired of that, too, moved back out to the center lane, sped nearly to the exit, and shouldered her way in again. She had jumped dozens and dozens of cars.
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