Disillusions

by Seth Margolis

  The gauzy white curtains that hung on either side of the French doors fluttered in a sudden breeze. The air-conditioning had been turned off since Priscilla’s death, even during the hot final weeks of June. Mett Piacevic had to force open several windows with a hammer and wedge. Shades and blinds now rattled in rooms as she walked by, open windows let in the sound of birds and creaking branches. Occasionally a newspaper would blow off a table, a leaf from a potted plant would flutter to the floor. With Priscilla gone, Penaquoit felt more alive than ever.

  Gwen went to the nursery and began straightening up. She waited for the music to resume, but it didn’t. After a few minutes Nick entered the room.

  “Aren’t you bored here?” he said casually, as if continuing a conversation.

  “It’s not the most demanding job,” she replied, resenting the rather condescending question.

  “I don’t mean just the job. I mean everything—this house, this town, the people here.”

  What the hell did he know about the people?

  “I can’t complain. I have my—”

  “Tell me about Barry.”

  She gripped the railing of Tess’s crib as blood rushed to her head. “How do you know his—”

  “The FBI checked up on you. I was briefed.”

  She folded the pink crib blanket and draped it over the railing. “I’d prefer not to talk about him. We’re divorced. I don’t see him anymore.”

  “Separated.” He stepped toward her. He wore a white T-shirt tucked into gray sweatpants, and white running shoes. He was always dressed for exercise, and indeed looked as though he worked out, though he never did. She busied herself picking up a few toys from the rug.

  “I’m saving money for a divorce lawyer,” she said. Which was half true. The whole truth? She hated the thought of dealing with Barry, even if it would mean being rid of him once and for all.

  “You left him suddenly,” he said. “Why?”

  “Didn’t the FBI tell you?”

  That silenced him temporarily. She continued to clean up, aware of his scrutiny.

  “I know this seems intrusive,” he said. “But I’ve put my daughter’s well-being in your hands. I’d like to know something more about you, especially now.”

  “Barry was…” No, not an alcoholic, that sounded too absolvingly clinical. “He was a drunk.”

  “And that’s why you came up here?”

  “Indirectly.”

  “What’s the direct reason?” His voice was deep and smooth, curious but not prurient.

  “He hit me,” she said softly.

  “Damn.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He started drinking after Jimmy was born, about five years ago. My store was doing well, his business wasn’t.”

  “He was a contractor, wasn’t he?”

  She wondered if Barry knew he was being investigated. What if he used that as an excuse to try to find them? Hawkins never mentioned talking to him, and she had not the slightest interest in learning his whereabouts.

  “A contractor, yes. But he screwed up on a few projects, once he began to drink. And then he couldn’t get decent references. Anyway, when Jimmy was born I guess he felt pressured to support us. I was taking home enough from the store to get by, but that didn’t sit well with him.”

  A colossal understatement. Once he’d taken a hammer and smashed every breakable object in the store. For days afterward she’d tweezered tiny slivers of glass and porcelain from her hands and legs.

  “He hit you when he was drunk?”

  She shook her head. “Barry was a happy drunk. Sober, he was a nightmare.”

  “How badly did he hurt you?” His voice was detached but kind, as if he needed to hear what she was saying.

  “No broken bones, no stitches. Actually, I got pretty good at defending myself. Barry wasn’t much taller than me, and once he started drinking he stopped working out. But he did some damage. I was bruised a lot of the time.”

  “You sound so matter-of-fact about it.”

  “Barry can’t harm me anymore,” she said. Me or Jimmy.

  “You don’t seem like the kind of woman who would allow any man to hurt you.”

  “He wasn’t any man,” she said. “Even when he was hitting me, pummeling me, I could never hate him the way he must have hated me. I’d wave a knife at him, but he knew I’d never really hurt him.” She hesitated, then spoke in a fragile whisper. “I never could hurt him.”

  “And today?”

  She straightened a picture on the wall over the changing table.

  “And today?”

  “Today I could kill him.”

  His eyes widened but he waited a moment before speaking. “Why? What changed you?”

  She shrugged and looked around the room, wishing there was something left to pick up, fold, put away.

  “Why did you leave so suddenly?”

  “I…couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “You reach a boiling point…”

  He watched her for a few moments, and though she was careful to meet his gaze without flinching, she could tell he didn’t believe her. He knew she was holding back. After a few tense moments he smiled gently.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps someday you’ll trust me with the entire truth.”

  She turned toward the window as he left the room.

  Jimmy had just kicked the soccer ball downfield when he saw the policeman standing on the side, watching the game. No, not the game. Him. He tried to follow the ball—goalies had to keep their eyes open even when the ball was all the way on the other end of the field. But every time he checked, the policeman was looking right at him.

  “Nooo!”

  He heard his teammates’ shouts even before he saw the ball bounce right by him into the net. He just stood there, the backs of his eyes getting full with tears, like his stomach in the morning when he had to pee. It wasn’t my fault, he wanted to shout back at them. Don’t blame me, okay? Blame that policeman over there.

  Coach blew the whistle for halftime and both sides ran to the drinking fountain near the baseball diamond. The policeman joined them after a while. Jimmy didn’t want to stand there by himself, so he joined them, too.

  “Mister, is that a gun inside your jacket?” Bobby Preston asked.

  The policeman looked down. All the boys were staring at his shoulder holster.

  “Last I checked it was.” He opened the jacket to show them the gun. “It’s a Smith and Wesson, same as I carried my whole career.”

  “It looks old-fashioned,” Jason Arnold said. A couple of guys giggled at that. Coach always said Jason was a wise guy.

  “It is old-fashioned. The county boys think I ought to upgrade to a Glock automatic, but I feel rather attached to this old revolver.” He patted the gun like a baby’s head.

  Bobby stepped closer. “You ever use it, Detective Hawkins?”

  The policeman shook his head. “Never fired it at anybody, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve waved it around a few times, just to make an impression.”

  Everyone seemed kind of let down by this.

  “You fellows must be hot from all that running,” the policeman said. “Too bad there’s no pool here.”

  “You can say that again.” Jason lifted his arms and let them flop against his hips.

  “Any of your counselors ever thought of taking you over to the Devil’s Ravine for a swim?”

  A couple of the boys shook their heads.

  “Any of you actually been to Devil’s Ravine?” he asked.

  Two boys raised their hands. But the policeman wasn’t looking at them. So Jimmy raised his hand, too.

  “I hope it was a hot day,” the policeman said. “That water’s cold.”

  “We didn’t swim,” said a boy named Roger. “We just threw stones.”

  “Did you swim?” the policeman said, looking directly at Jimmy, who nodded.

  “Was it a hot day?”

  Jimmy nodded again.

  “Mus
t have been during the heat wave last month, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

  “The week before school ended.”

  “Near the end of June,” Hawkins said. “Did you go with a friend?”

  “Just my mom.” A few of the boys started walking away. Jimmy watched them leave. He didn’t want to talk about that day. The police were asking his mom about what happened at the ravine when Mrs. Lawrence got killed. He hadn’t even told her about seeing him at the diner that day. She seemed as though she couldn’t take any more bad news. And now he wasn’t even sure he had actually seen his dad. Sometimes he dreamed about him, and when he woke up his heart was going like a jackhammer and he had a hard time knowing if he’d been dreaming or not.

  “Did your mom swim that day?” the policeman asked. “Grown-ups hate the cold water.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Did you walk around there much? You know, explore?”

  “No.”

  “I bet it was your idea to go there, am I right?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t catch that,” the policeman said.

  “It was my mom’s idea.”

  “Well, she’s a smart lady, then, choosing a place like the Devil’s Ravine on a hot day.”

  The policeman looked up at the sky. The other kids were back on the soccer field.

  “Not today, though,” the policeman said. “The front finally came through on the second, sucking down this nice, cool Canadian air.”

  “Can I go now?” Jimmy said.

  The policeman looked at him for a while and Jimmy felt something squiggling around in his stomach. No more questions, please?

  “Sure, run along,” the policeman said.

  Jimmy walked quickly back to the game, feeling the man’s eyes on him like a ray gun the whole entire way.

  Chapter 22

  The Cunninghams’ house was only about fifty yards from Penaquoit, but stylistically it was light-years away. A long, one-story ranch, about thirty or forty years old, it belonged in a middle-class suburb of New York City; only in a place like Sohegan would it be considered luxurious. Gwen knew from earlier explorations of the area that it was accessible from the road by a long driveway that began a few yards from the Penaquoit gates, slicing straight through a dense, dark wood.

  She took the shortcut through the row of hemlocks to the east of the mansion and headed for the Cunninghams’ back door, wondering about a couple who would give up a huge mansion equipped with a solarium and library and swimming pool for this modest ranch, all to accommodate their daughter and her husband and young child. An undeniably generous gesture, and yet there was something unsettling about it, like reigning monarchs abdicating in favor of the young heir, living out their lives in frugal irrelevance.

  She rapped on a screen door, got no response, and opened it.

  “Mrs. Cunningham?” She stepped into an immaculate kitchen, House Beautiful, circa 1955: linoleum floor in a brick pattern, white cabinets with sleek metal hardware, speckled Formica countertops. A clock over the small breakfast table clicked softly.

  “Mrs. Cunningham?” She walked across the kitchen and entered a small foyer. Pale blue carpet covered the floor and staircase; the brass chandelier was turned off, casting the area in gray shadow. The smell of cigarettes permeated the air. She checked the living and dining rooms. Long, heavy drapes were drawn in both rooms, cloaking them in cool darkness. She followed the only trace of light into a paneled room with bookshelves on two walls.

  Tess sat on the shag-carpeted floor, playing with a toy truck. On a tweed couch across from a large television set, Maxine Cunningham slept in an upright position, her head dangling forward, snoring in short, grunting bursts. Over the sofa were two large black-and-white photographs, one of a young Maxine in an elaborate wedding dress, the other of Russell in a morning suit. They were facing each other, smiling stiffly from their separate portraits.

  “Hello, Tess,” Gwen said.

  Tess turned toward her as Maxine snorted loudly and sat forward.

  “Oh!” Maxine cleared her throat and patted her hair with both hands. “Hello.”

  Tess ran over to Gwen, who scooped her up.

  “Nick asked me to get Tess at ten.”

  Maxine nodded but looked disoriented. “Did you have fun, Tess?” she asked in a groggy voice. She looked tiny and frail on the sofa, skinny legs dangling above the carpet. Her gray hair was a bit disheveled.

  Tess smiled. “Truck,” she said, pointing to the floor.

  “That belonged to our son, Russ,” Maxine said. “My husband throws nothing away.” She stared at the truck. “You should see our basement, full of Russ’s toys and books, every award he ever brought home, every test he ever took.”

  Gwen almost mentioned the basement at Penaquoit. What would happen to all that stuff, now that Priscilla was gone? Would the stacks of magazines be left to molder down there, each pile topped for eternity by the July issue? She noticed a Bible on the coffee table in front of Maxine, the black leather cover worn through in places.

  “What made you come here?” Maxine said, finally looking at her.

  “I told you, Nick asked me to pick up Tess.”

  “No, I mean to Sohegan. You’re from Manhattan, I believe.”

  Why couldn’t people just accept her presence in town?

  “I wanted a small town, I suppose.” She put Tess down and watched her toddle over to the toy truck. “I have a young son.”

  Maxine frowned. “I’ve always hated it here. I’m from the city too, you know, raised on the Upper East Side. I met Russell at a Vassar-Yale mixer. He brought me back here after we were married. To the big house, I mean, not here.”

  She looked shrunken and defeated. Gwen glanced up at her wedding portrait and saw what Russell Cunningham had been attracted to. Her face had been pretty in a delicate way, her eyes slightly too large for her face, lending her an appealingly innocent, almost plaintive fragility. Now they looked haunted.

  “I thought I’d get involved in the community,” Maxine said. “You know, good works, ladies organizations, that kind of thing. But I quickly learned that the Cunninghams don’t mix with the natives. They’re the local royalty, you see. And the worst part was, there were no other royals around to mix with. Everything was family. Perhaps if my husband had brothers, sisters, someone.”

  Gwen sat on the bench of an upright piano, plotting a quick exit.

  “Family and business,” Maxine continued. “If the Cunninghams had a coat of arms, that would be on their crest.” As she chuckled her chest quivered beneath a blue cotton sweater; she was more bird than woman.

  “You must have felt very isolated,” Gwen said.

  “Utterly. Of course, it got easier once the children were born. Those were the best years, when Russ and Priscilla were young. They actually went to the local elementary school—there wasn’t any alternative, you see. But then we sent them to boarding school and I was alone again. My husband and I were alone together, I should say.”

  Gwen steeled herself for what was coming.

  “After Russ was killed I…well, I didn’t think I could endure. He was all I had.”

  “Priscilla…”

  “Daddy’s girl,” Maxine said sharply. She paused before continuing in a softer voice. “You’re raising your one child on your own, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps it’s hard for you to understand how…allegiances can form in families, even small families like ours. Russell and Russ, well, they were at each other constantly. I often wondered what might have happened if he’d lived. I couldn’t imagine them in business together. But Russ and I…” She smiled as her eyes lost focus. “We understood each other because neither of us fit in here.” The smile faded. “Priscilla and I, well, once she reached adolescence she had no time for me. I never understood why she felt so…dismissive toward me. She worshipped her father, of course. Perhaps she p
icked up on his disdain.”

  “Why was she carrying that flower at the ravine?” Gwen asked.

  “Flower?” Her voice crumpled on the word.

  “A purple thistle.”

  Maxine looked away. “I wasn’t aware…”

  She was lying, just as Russell had lied, but Gwen wasn’t about to confront her. Tess had walked over to the coffee table and was systematically throwing magazines onto the floor. Gwen got up and grabbed her hand, grateful for the distraction.

  “No, Tess, don’t do that.” Gwen began to collect the strewn magazines as Tess started to cry.

  “I should get her home,” she said. “She’s long overdo for her morning nap.” She picked up Tess and moved toward the door, turning back in time to see Maxine reach for her Bible. Pity flashed through Gwen, then something closer to anger.

  “It’s not too late,” she said.

  Maxine glanced up at her and smiled dimly.

  “You’re not a prisoner here,” Gwen said. “It’s not too late to change.”

  Maxine shook her head slowly. “You can’t leave the Cunninghams, much as you might want to. My mother-in-law knew that, and I certainly caught on quickly. I believe Nick is learning that lesson now.”

  “But…”

  Maxine shook her head slowly. “You’ll find out soon enough, too,” she said as she opened her Bible and held it close to her face. Gwen turned and left.

  Nick met them on the flagstone terrace as they returned from next door.

  “We’ve been summoned to the plant,” he said with mock seriousness. “The old man wants to introduce the troops to the heir apparent.”

  “It’s never too early to start a management education,” Gwen said, turning to Tess, who was already sleeping in her arms. “Right, Madame Chairman?”

  “We’ll take the Range Rover.”

  She followed Nick across the yard toward the garage. After strapping Tess into her car seat, she walked back toward the house.

  “Where are you going?” Nick called after her.

  She turned. “I have a few things to do.” Not true, of course: cleaning Tess’s room and doing her laundry took about fifteen minutes a day; looking after someone else’s toddler wasn’t exactly hard labor.