Restitution

by Lee Vance

  Jenna walked me home instead, and I woke the next morning spooned naked against her, caught between two physiological urgencies. By the time I’d hurried back from the bathroom, she was already half-dressed, warm breasts just vanishing beneath a Toots and the Maytals T-shirt. She was tall and slim, long-muscled like a swimmer, with sandy blond hair that cascaded loosely around her face as she bent over to slip one bare foot into her jeans. She had a pale scar on her upper lip, and blue-gray eyes the color of soapstone. Seeing her in the morning light inflamed me, my lips and fingers burning with tactile memories.

  “Don’t go,” I said, closing the bedroom door behind me. “It’s only seven. We can sleep another couple of hours, and then I’ll make you breakfast.”

  “Sleep?” she asked, with a significant look at my tented boxer shorts.

  “Whatever.”

  “ ‘Whatever’? That’s a new euphemism for me. Listen, last night was last night. It was fun.” She tucked her hair back behind her ears and gave me a smile, top front teeth ever so slightly gapped. “Thanks.”

  “There’s a party at the Deke house tonight. I could meet you there, or pick you up.”

  “I’m not big on frat parties.”

  “We could see a flick.”

  “I’m pretty busy with back-to-school stuff.”

  “You’ve got to eat. I’ll cook you dinner.”

  “Are you going to make me hurt your feelings?” she asked quietly, eyes resting on mine.

  “I guess so,” I said, thoroughly confused, wishing I hadn’t drunk so much the previous evening.

  “You hang with a crowd. Everybody knows who you are. Captain of the basketball team, a big man on campus. I’m really not interested in getting involved in all that.”

  “Then what was last night about?”

  “Poor impulse control.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry,” she said, grinning. “You’ve got that tall, dark, and handsome thing going on. I saw you across the room and was overwhelmed with lust.”

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “A little. You mind if I move some of this stuff?” she asked, motioning toward the laundry piled on my desk chair. My room was a disaster. I hadn’t been expecting company.

  “Whatever,” I said, wanting her to smile again. “But I’d appreciate the truth.”

  “The truth,” she said, obliging me with another grin as she tossed dirty clothes on the bed and sat down. “I saw you play, last winter, just after I transferred in. I thought you were a good-looking guy, and I liked the way you moved. Then I started reading your rubbish in the school paper and found out you were on the Inter-Fraternity Council and head of the Young Republicans and Christ knows what else. I mean, really.”

  “So why last night?” I asked, ignoring her provocation.

  “I’m kind of embarrassed about last night,” she said, concentrating on her bootlaces. “It was a mistake.”

  “You make a lot of mistakes?” I asked, feeling a little pissed off.

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” she said, not smiling. “The trick is not to make the same one twice.”

  “I apologize,” I said quickly. “You hurt my feelings. The Young Republicans is a quality organization.”

  “I warned you.”

  She got up to go.

  “You still haven’t answered my question properly.”

  “Why did I sleep with you?” she asked, meeting my eyes again. “I was working as a teacher’s aide at the middle school last spring. You walked by the playground at recess and one of the kids recognized you and waved hello.”

  “I remember. His mom’s in the Athletic Department.”

  “I figured that anyone who took forty minutes out of his day to teach a gang of eleven-year-olds how to run the pick and roll couldn’t be a bad guy, regardless of his questionable extracurriculars and contemptible politics. So you had that going for you.”

  “So why leave?” I demanded. “You said it yourself—I’m a good guy. If you take your clothes off and get back in bed I’ll go play ball with the kids again this afternoon.”

  “Sorry,” she said, laughing. “I have to go to work.”

  “Give me your number. I’ll dump all my friends and become a Democrat.”

  “I don’t think so. Have you seen my bag?”

  “No.” I was lying. It was in the hall by the front door. She scanned the floor, eyes lighting on a pile of books.

  “That’s too perfect.”

  “What?”

  “You have a copy of the Boy Scout manual by your bed.”

  “My dad gave it to me when I was a kid. It covers most situations. There’s a good section on nocturnal emissions.”

  She laughed again, and I felt like I was making progress.

  “He told me I wouldn’t go wrong if I stuck to the Scout law.”

  “Be prepared?”

  “That’s the motto. There’s a motto, a slogan, an oath, a code, and the law.”

  “I guess Scouts are prepared. So what’s the law?”

  I raised three fingers.

  “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

  “You’re not doing so hot on clean.”

  “Some of the laws are more important than others.”

  “Tell me,” she said, tipping her head sideways and folding her arms. “Which is the most important?”

  “Loyal,” I replied instantly. “No doubt about it.”

  “So you weren’t planning to dump your friends?”

  “Not right off,” I said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give them a chance.”

  She ripped a corner off an old newspaper lying on my desk and scrawled something on it with a pen.

  “My number,” she said, tucking the slip of paper into the waist of my shorts. She stood on tiptoe to kiss me chastely on the lips, ran a cool hand over my bare shoulder and down my arm. “Loyal was the right answer.”

  “Time,” Tigger says.

  We both get out, the car beeping as he locks it with the remote. He straightens my tie, flicks lint from my shoulders, and examines my pants critically. The waistband is bunched under my belt. I’ve lost about ten pounds. He buttons my coat and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a clean handkerchief.

  “Wipe your face,” he says.

  I blot away tears and offer the handkerchief back.

  “Keep it,” he says. “I brought a couple.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “The guys I hired have got a good chance of figuring this thing out before the cops, because they aren’t spinning their wheels on me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And when they do, I’m going to go after the fucker who murdered my wife and kill him myself.”

  Tigger glances down at his feet and then back up at me.

  “We can talk about that tomorrow,” he says quietly. “It’s time to say good-bye to Jenna now.”

  I wipe my face again, square my shoulders, and walk toward the church.

  4

  A SMALL GROUP OF reporters and photographers are working the front entrance of the church from a police-barricaded section of the street, and a television van is setting up in a driveway opposite. Jenna’s murder got a lot of local coverage in our quiet corner of Westchester, but I’m unhappily surprised to see how much press has traveled to New Jersey for her funeral. Maybe Rommy’s leaked his suspicions of me—the media always love a Wall Street defendant.

  Shutters click as I approach, and a man with plastic credentials hanging around his neck rushes me from the side, microphone extended as he calls my name. A uniformed cop snarls at him, saying the press aren’t allowed on church property. Ignoring them all, I follow Tigger through the heavy wooden doorway into a dim vestibule. Jenna was confirmed in this church, and she and I were married here sixteen years ago. The organ groans as I retrace her steps down the aisle, mourners rubberne
cking. I concentrate on Tigger’s back, keeping my face as impassive as possible.

  Tigger hesitates as we approach the altar and then glances back. Both front pews are empty, Jenna’s parents nowhere to be seen. I give a tiny shrug and tip my head to the right, uncertain as to protocol. Mary planned the service, well aware her daughter’s religiosity had never rubbed off on me. A polished mahogany coffin looms in my view as Tigger steps to the side, an abrupt vision of Jenna’s broken body within making me flinch. I’ve been having nightmares, dreaming Jenna’s corpse lay in bed with me, and knowing with a dreamer’s certainty that my love could resurrect her. Night after night I gather her cold limbs to mine, clear blood-matted hair from her face, and breathe life desperately between her waxen lips. Time and again her lungs empty lifelessly, each chill exhalation finding me wanting.

  Heart pounding, I edge into the pew after Tigger and lift a program from the seat. The words swim into focus as my breathing slows. Jenna’s name is printed on the cover, and beneath it the same claptrap I learned to mumble as a child, save that the kingdom and the power and the glory are omitted. More puzzling than Jenna’s faith was her fidelity to a church whose teachings so frequently infuriated her. Her insistence on a Catholic wedding ceremony condemned me to half a dozen basic religion classes and a solemn oath to raise our children in the “One True Church.” Jenna found ways to compensate me for the pain of the educational sessions, but, despite our best efforts, we never had any kids to raise. Would it be better or worse to have a child of ours with me now? Better and worse maybe.

  Father Winowski, Jenna’s parish priest, emerges from the sacristy clad in black-and-gold liturgical robes. I’m glad he’s saying the service; Jenna was fond of him. They used to trade book suggestions, and Jenna stopped by his rectory every couple of weeks to cook Polish dishes from his grandmother’s recipes. A plump man with fussy manners, he had dinner at our house a handful of times, drinking neat vodka before, during, and after the meal, and giggling nervously as Jenna took him to task for Vatican lunacies such as the prohibition of condoms. He looks distressed today, eyes red-rimmed and shining with emotion. My heart warms to him for his grief.

  “Peter,” he says, approaching me. “I need a word.”

  “Of course,” I reply, puzzled. Tigger starts to rise with me, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

  Father Winowski leads me to the altar boys’ vestiary, where a couple of black-cassocked teenagers are playing cards. He chases them out and closes the door.

  “I’d like to take a moment to pray for guidance,” he says, voice breaking. “You might want to pray also.”

  He bows his head and I follow suit, acutely uncomfortable as he murmurs to himself. Thirty seconds pass. He looks up.

  “I have some things to tell you,” he says, hands knitted together nervously. “I don’t know if I’ve done right or wrong. I haven’t been able to talk to my confessor yet.”

  “Please,” I say, his demeanor unsettling.

  “You know the church has had a lot of trouble with the civil authorities in the past few years. The bishop has us all on eggshells. None of us wants any more attention from the police.”

  “Tell me what happened,” I say, my mouth dry.

  “Detective Rommy and his partner came to see me yesterday afternoon, at my rectory. He asked if I’d been counseling Jenna and I said no, not in any formal way, and told him that we usually talked about books. Then he asked if it were fair to characterize the time I spent with her as social, and I said yes, that she and I were friends. And then he asked if she’d spoken to me about her relationship with you. I said I couldn’t talk about that.”

  A tear skips down his pudgy cheek.

  “What did Rommy say?” I ask, although I’ve already figured it out.

  “He said I couldn’t refuse to answer, that I’d already admitted we didn’t have a privileged relationship, and that unless I were prepared to swear she’d never talked to me about you outside of the confessional, he’d arrest me for obstruction of justice. He said he’d call the local newspaper and get them to send a photographer over, and then take me out the front door of the rectory in handcuffs. I didn’t know what to do.”

  He rocks back and forth in his distress, clasped hands pressed to his mouth. Some corner of my brain admires Rommy’s ingenuity even as I resolve to hurt him.

  “What did you tell him?” I ask, hoping Jenna kept to generalities.

  He bows his head again, staring at my shirtfront.

  “Jenna came over to cook a week and a half ago. We were playing Chinese checkers and talking after dinner. She said she’d asked you to leave.”

  “And?”

  “And that she was struggling,” he whispers. “She was considering a divorce.”

  I slump back against a wardrobe, feeling devastated despite my lack of surprise. It seems impossible that Jenna and I ended like this. The thought of Rommy gloating over Winowski’s disclosures is a crowning blow.

  “I loved her,” I say bitterly. “Whatever problems we had aren’t important now. She would have wanted you to keep your mouth shut. This is only going to make things worse for her parents. I thought you were her friend.”

  His mouth works silently for a second, fresh tears starting.

  “I loved her, too,” he says.

  “You loved her kielbasa,” I snap, his moist, moonish face infuriating me. “It’s not really the same thing.”

  He draws himself up stiffly, as if I’d slapped him.

  “You’re the one who was seeing another woman.”

  So Jenna told him. It’s my turn to drop my eyes, rage giving way instantaneously to shame.

  “You told Rommy I cheated?” I ask a few moments later, looking up to confirm my worst expectation.

  He nods, stern-faced.

  “Did Jenna tell you the other woman’s name?”

  “No.”

  I rub my forehead, a trickle of sweat running down my collar. This is going to be awful. Fucking Rommy. I stand up straight, pulling myself together.

  “Okay,” I say. “It’s probably best that the O’Briens hear about this from me. I don’t want to burden them any more today, but first thing tomorrow, I’ll pay them a visit to apologize and explain. I’d guess they might want to call you afterward. Anything you see fit to tell them is fine by me.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” he says, sounding pained.

  “Understand what?”

  “The O’Briens are in the sacristy. Detective Rommy spoke to them last night. They’re very upset. They’ve asked me to tell you that they don’t want you to attend the funeral. If you insist on staying, Mrs. O’Brien says she’ll denounce you from the altar.”

  I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  “I’ve already emphasized to her that you have every right to be here,” Father Winowski continues. “And I’ve told her that as a representative of the church, I’ll strongly condemn any unauthorized statement she makes from our pulpit.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked what I thought as Jenna’s friend.” He lifts one hand and covers his Roman collar, his eyes unexpectedly glacial. “I told her Detective Rommy made some persuasive arguments, and that I sympathized with her position.”

  A chill foreboding quivers in my chest, and it occurs to me for the first time just how damning Rommy might be able to make my sins and omissions seem. Maybe I haven’t been thinking about things clearly. I walk to the door of the vestiary and peer through a small diamond-shaped window. The church is full, with mourners fidgeting in the side aisles and the back. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jenna’s mother will do exactly what she threatened. I try to imagine getting up in front of this congregation to admit my failings but profess my love. It’s hard enough talking to Tigger. Defeated, I turn away.

  “It’s up to you,” Father Winowski says. “I’m willing to speak to Mrs. O’Brien again if you want me to.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” I say, anger surging throug
h me. “But I’m leaving.”

  The vestiary has an exterior door. He tips his head toward it. “Do you want me to get your friend?”

  “No,” I say, determined not to slink away. “I’m going out the way I came in.”

  “I’ll pray for you,” he says in a conciliatory tone, extending a hand.

  “You’ve done more than enough for me already,” I reply, turning my back on him. “I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out any further.”

  ———

  Tigger stares at me with a quizzical expression as I walk out of the vestiary.

  “We’re leaving,” I whisper, leaning over the front of the pew.

  “What?” he says, startled. “Why?”

  “Later.”

  Standing upright, I turn toward the altar and approach the casket. Laying both hands on top, I close my eyes and summon an image of Jenna, the wood cool beneath my fingers. I see her cross-legged and barefoot on the ratty couch we had in our first New York City apartment, the one on the outskirts of Spanish Harlem that we took when she started law school. She’s looking up at me with a smile, hair shining in a shaft of sunlight from the uncurtained window, an open newspaper in her lap. I bend from the waist and kiss the smooth lid gently. Jennifer Mary O’Brien Tyler. Good-bye.

  Eyes dry, shoulders squared and tall, I walk back down the aisle, concentrating on swinging my arms normally. Tigger hustles ahead and pushes the interior doors open for me so I won’t have to break stride. Cameras flash as we step outside, the light blinding me.

  5

  THE PRESS SCRUM OUTSIDE THE CHURCH has grown by half in fifteen minutes. Three or four reporters shout questions at me.

  “Mr. Tyler, why are you leaving your wife’s funeral?”

  “Is it true that your wife’s parents insisted you leave, Mr. Tyler?”

  “Were you cheating on your wife, Mr. Tyler?”

  And, finally: “Mr. Tyler, did you pay someone to murder your wife?”