“Good morning, Brenda, Wally. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Dunlap, as if she were at a State Department reception. And only after we had established beyond the slightest doubt that yes, it was indeed a beautiful morning, did Mr. Dunlap ask Wally, “Say, we hate to be nosy neighbors, but that person in the van—you’ve had a quarrel with him?”
Wally shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see who it was. Sorry about your front lawn, Mr., Mrs. Dunlap. But I kind of ran out of choices.”
“Not to worry, Wally. Now, can we offer you both some coffee? Or would you prefer Perrier?” said Mrs. Dunlap, trying to sneak a glance at the condition of her hedge and pachysandra while maintaining her position as a credit to the Diplomatic Corps.
Maybe, I said to myself, she wouldn’t be acting so composed if her son, not mine, had been inches away from death. On the other hand, I said to myself, as I heard her pun, “Bloody Mary? Herbal tea?” maybe she would.
We declined the drinks, and we and the Dunlaps finally returned to our respective houses, having agreed that the van attack was doubtless the work of some crack-addicted youth. Back on my porch, however, I said to Wally, as I sank, shaking, into my rocker, “That wasn’t some crack-addicted youth. I’m positive he was sent by Mr. Monti.”
“He’s a pretty rough guy, but he wouldn’t do anything physical,” Wally said, in that subject-is-closed tone of voice he seems to have recently acquired from his father. Anyway, whoever-it was, he was just jerking my strings. He could have run me over when I was splat on the Dunlaps’ lawn, but he backed away.”
“Maybe we scared him off,” I said, and then I added grimly, “this time.”
Wally dismissed my concerns. “There’s a lot of weirdos out there, believe me. This was just some weirdo getting his kicks. I doubt if he knew who I was. I really doubt this was anything personal. Unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Well, my dean called me in the other day to blast me for starting school more than two weeks late. I tell you, this woman was majorly pissed at me. In fact, now that I think, about it”—Wally gave me a big lighten-up Mom smile—“I’ll bet she was the person driving that van.”
• • •
I held myself together until Wally went off to see Jo, and then I ran into the house and fell apart, shivering and sobbing as I let myself grasp the full horror of what had just happened.
That Mr. Monti had turned to physical violence.
That a new and brutal phase had now begun.
That he’d sent the van to show us his vile intentions.
That the vengeance, the permanent vengeance, he had vowed to wreak on Wally was death—the death of my precious, beloved son.
I saw that Wally didn’t know, and needn’t know, the danger he was in. He had, thank God, his mother to protect him.
The sounds coming out of my mouth no longer belonged to a human being. They were the sounds of a maddened mama bear. And suddenly I was screaming, “I won’t let him do this! I won’t let him do this! I’ll stop him! I’ll kill him!”
And I suddenly understood that I really would—I really would—kill Mr. Monti.
• • •
In that column I wrote on the value of engaging in fantasies of sex and violence, I noted that if these fantasies became unduly obsessive and consuming, we might give some thought to getting outside help. But my column also suggested that we need not reject all our fantasies out of hand, that we need not always view them as unrealizable. Indeed, my column suggested that we might—with certain responsible modifications—dare to make some of these fantasies come true.
I underscored modifications and I carefully warned my readers that in trying to make their fantasies come true they must do so without breaking laws or causing harm to themselves or to others or blah blah blah.
But as I had lain in bed last night and contemplated my perfect murder plan, I knew I intended to disobey that warning.
• • •
This morning I purchased a Norse-blond wig styled in a tidy pageboy, a white nylon uniform with white stockings and shoes, supersized dark glasses, a sheet, a radio, a metal folding table, and those latex gloves that doctors and dentists wear. I also prepared a flyer that described certain interesting services available from a qualified professional. Obviously Mrs. Kovner would no longer be welcome in Mr. Monti’s home. With a little luck, however, he would throw his doors wide open to Ingrid Swedenborg.
DARING TO DO IT
• The Rest of September and On into October 28
7
•
HEAVY-DUTY RASKOLNIKOV-TYPE GUILT
Late Wednesday morning, three days after I’d made the decision to murder Mr. Monti, Rosalie flew to Washington to have a consultation with my friend Carolyn. I was not thrilled. Rosalie, now a landscape architect, had sent oat a mailing to everyone she knew—and everyone I knew—announcing her availability as, and I cringingly quote, “a transformer of your exterior space into a true vision of loveliness.” Carolyn, who had just decided to give her vast backyard a completely new look, expense no object, had invited Rose to make her a proposal. My concern was that Rose would talk herself into the job, get it halfway done, and then succumb to an other career-change crisis, having reached the conclusion that her true calling in life was manager of a health spa or maybe an acoustical guitarist.
I yearned to tell Rosalie not to screw up but I managed to restrain myself as I drove her from the airport to Carolyn’s house. In part I attribute my silence to my commitment to improving the sibling relationship. In part I attribute it to the fact that I had a lot of other things on my mind.
While Rosalie and Carolyn consulted about her yard, I went back home and started working the phones. I first called Birdie Monti, on whose behalf (unbeknownst to her) I had tracked down a displaced homemakers support group. Now was the moment to tactfully persuade her to check it out. I was even prepared to go with her the first time.
Once past the usual pleasantries about Wally and Jo and the grandchildren and the weather, I eased into “If you’ll please excuse me for being a little personal, I just want to say that it must be hard, after all these years, to be a woman alone, without a husband.”
“I’m getting by just fine,” Birdie replied.
“But to find yourself stripped of your role, your self-definition, your raison d’être . . .”
“My what?”
“You know—the feeling that your life has some meaning, some purpose.”
“Meaning? Purpose?” Birdie Monti sounded baffled. “With two new grandchildren, I have plenty of . . . raison d’être.”
“I’m sure it feels that way,” I hastened to say, validating (as one must) her experience. “But once again, as you did with your husband and children, you’re living through others. You need to be tuning in to your own desires and needs, your undeveloped potential.”
Mrs. Monti sighed. “That must be more of a Jewish kind of thing.”
“Not at all,” I assured her. “It’s an everybody thing. This is the time to find out who you are. Not you, Mrs. Joseph Monti. Not you, mother and grandmother. You, Birdie. No! You, Renata. Who, after all, really is Renata?”
She said she wasn’t rushing me but her granddaughter needed her diaper changed and was there something special that I had called about? I told her about the displaced homemakers support group that met once a week sot too far from Gloria, and asked if she’d go with me to the next meeting.
Mrs. Monti was instantly solicitous. “Oh, my, I heard from Josephine that there were—well—some tensions around your house. But I didn’t know you were having serious problems.”
I explained, over the urgent screams of her grandchild, that the group was for her, not for me, and that she needed it a lot more than she realized, and that—before the depression and the anxiety set in—how about if I picked her up tomorrow night around a quarter to eight.
She sighed once more and said, less gratefully than I might have hoped,
“All right I’ll go.”
I next called Philip Eastlake, who had phoned me just before I left for the airport to let me know that he had returned to town, having completed his interviews for the first in his four-part television series entitled “Democracy in Disarray.” Philip back in Washington. Rosalie coming to Washington. I suddenly had a fabulous idea.
“Join our family for dinner tonight,” I urged him, an invitation he swiftly accepted.
After that, all I wanted to say was, “See you at seven-thirty.” But Philip wouldn’t release me quite that fast.
“I’ll be counting the moments,” he said to me, his magnificent voice aquiver with deep feeling. “It’s been terrible having all those miles between us.”
“Philip, please, don’t start in,” I said. “This is not an assignation. It’s me and Jake and my sons and my very attractive unmarried sister. Attractive. Unmarried.”
“I have no interest in your older sister.”
“Older than me. Not older than you.”
“Not interested. I’m coming tonight for only one reason, my darling.”
“Believe me, Philip, you’re going to like my sister. And I promise you’ll go crazy for my brisket. It’s guaranteed to put you in touch with your roots.”
Fending off a couple of emotion-packed rejoinders, I got rid of Philip and telephoned Vivian Feuerbach, whose philanthropic concerns might be enlarged (with a little bit of assistance from me) to include some homes for the homeless in Anacostia. Vivian agreed to get together with me on Friday afternoon, though I was, I’ll admit, somewhat vague about my intentions. And Louis (phone call four) agreed to help me make my homeless pitch to Vivian.
I was down in the kitchen working on my brisket when Rosalie, dancing with excitement, returned from Carolyn’s house and twirled into the room. “She adores my ideas. The Japanese garden. The lily pond. The tree house for adults. She says I’m a true original. She wants me to get going right away.”
Rosalie seized me in her arms and spun me around the floor, then stopped in her tracks, sobered up, and said, “Just one thing. Would it be a big imposition if, while I was getting going on this, Hubert and I moved in here for two or three weeks?”
I will spare you (as I spared Rosalie) my thoughts on the subject of having a dog as a house guest. I consoled myself with the fantasy that when Philip and Rosalie met tonight over brisket they’d fall in love immediately and profoundly. One happy result would be that I would put an end to Philip’s. passion for me. Another result could be that when Rose came to Washington to redesign Carolyn’s yard, she and Hubert would go be Philip’s house guests.
• • •
Rosalie had named Hubert after Senator, later Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, whom she adored. It turned out, however, well before we had finished our first course (a leek soufflé), that Philip had never forgiven Humphrey for failing to stand up to Johnson on the issue of the Vietnam War. It also turned out that bipolar Rose, who—only a few days ago—was moaning, “I can’t live without a man,” had swung to the opposite pole and was now in her “men—who needs them?” totally hostile mode. So instead of saying bewitchingly, as she knew how to do, “We’ll have to agree to disagree about Humphrey,” she unattractively sneered, “It’s always the lesser men who Crucify the great ones. On everything else but the war, his record’s magnificent.”
“There was no everything else,” Philip answered haughtily. “The war was the central issue—it was the central moral issue of the sixties.”
Rose spoke between clenched teeth. “Maybe your TV audience needs you gurus to explain to them what the central moral issues are. But surely all of us here can decide for ourselves.”
This was as sweet as Rosalie got all evening.
I wanted a little help from the rest of the people at the table. It wasn’t forthcoming. Jake was being deposed the next morning on the Tessler lawsuit. He was preoccupied. Wally had had a tiff (though he refused to say about what) with Josephine. He was also preoccupied. And Jeff, his skin drawn, too tightly across his cheekbones, had whispered, just before we sat down, “My real estate lawyer has ran out of moves. The vultures are closing in.” He, too, was preoccupied.
“Hubert Humphrey aside,” I said to Philip, heaping brisket onto his plate, “I suspect you. and Rose are basically in agreement on a whole wide range of matters.” 1 smiled at Philip and tossed Rose a shape-up look.
Rose spent the next two hours proving she wasn’t in basic agreement with Philip on anything. Not the sixties, the nineties, affirmative action, Bill Clinton. Not cilantro, Salman Rushdie, rational suicide, Lily Tomlin, or Great Danes. While Philip parried, pouted, and pontificated, and my husband and sons stayed maddeningly silent, I rushed in with constructive interventions.
“Rosalie,” I told Philip, “has a wonderfully wry sense of humor, was a junior-year Phi Beta Kappa, and contributes both time and money to many good causes.”
“How truly fascinating,” Philip said coldly.
“Philip,” I told Rosalie, “plays the piano, has nine honorary degrees, and was once named Washingtonian of the Year.”
“Thank you so much for sharing,” Rose said coldly.
It seemed a good time to serve the dessert and coffee.
The moment we finished our coffee, Wally excused himself to go upstairs and study, and Jake excused himself to go phone Marvin, and Rose excused herself to go to sleep, and Jeff excused himself to go—he mumbled something vague about needing to check out some documents down at his office.
Philip insisted on helping me clear the table.
“Alone, at last,” he actually said, and he backed me against my six-burner restaurant stove. “I thought they’d never leave.”
“Okay, enough,” I said to him, pushing him away. “I’m not available. My sister is. And despite—I’ll have to admit—€ not-too-terrific first impression, you’re going to find that to know her is to love her.”
Philip closed in on me again. “Don’t talk foolishness. We love each other.”
“Wrong,” I told him, slipping out of his fevered embrace and starting to put the perishables into the fridge. “This isn’t an earthquake. It’s simply a shock. It isn’t the real turtle soup. It’s merely the mock.”
Philip, his self-esteem awesomely unassailable, smiled tolerantly at me and shook his head. “Brenda, Brenda, Brenda,” he said. “Stop fighting it.”
With a real edge in my voice I told him, “There is no it to fight. I don’t—” I started again. “Look, I really liked going to bed with you. I liked it a lot. It was fun. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things.”
“A thrillingly total soul/body experience,” Philip stiffly replied, “is considerably more than just one of those things.”
I took a deep breath and decided to go for the truth—well, for part of the truth. “Why don’t we just forget about that thrillingly total stuff,” I said to him firmly. “I have something to confess: I used you, Philip.”
As I scraped the plates and loaded them into the dishwasher, I described my forty-sixth-birthday sex-and-mortality crisis and my need, before I died, to explore my sexual nature in another man’s arms. I decided to make it “another man” instead of “other men” because I was convinced that I’d look better and he’d feel better if I omitted Louis and Mr. Monti. I was correct.
“So out of all the men in the world, I was the one you chose to . . . as you say . . . use.” Philip was looking extraordinarily pleased with himself. “You are”—he ruffled my hair—“a wicked creature.”
“So you forgive me?” I asked, relieved that everything—more or less—was out in the open.
“I not only forgive you, querida, I understand you,” Philip replied, “better, I think, than you understand yourself. Death becomes sex. Sex becomes love. Love becomes guilt and shame and renunciation.”
“That isn’t quite it—” I began, but Philip hushed me up and said, “I’m yours to use but I shan’t press you now. Let’s just say we
have . . . unfinished business.”
“Let’s just say good night,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”
I walked him to the front door and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I’d like to leave you with one little word: Rosalie.”
Philip wound his sporty red scarf twice around his neck and flipped it dashingly over his left shoulder. “I’d like to leave you with one little word: Never.”
• • •
Early the next morning, while Jake met with Marvin and Wally met with his client, Dwayne, I ran Rosalie out to National Airport. When I stopped at the shuttle, she warned me, “You can forget about palming Philip Eastlake off on me. A jerk like that—I could never be interested. Never.”
I thought about informing her that she and Philip had finally agreed about something. I smiled instead and said, “Never say never.”
“Anyway”—she grabbed her suitcase and tote bag—“my current career plans leave little time for romance.” She gave me a hug and a kiss and said, as she rushed to catch her plane, “Hubert and I will be seeing you next week.”
• • •
A group-dynamics friend of mine had put me onto AFGO, the nickname of the Northern Virginia Displaced Homemakers Support Group to which, on Thursday evening, I escorted a docile but dubious Birdie Monti. The house in which we were meeting belonged to Frances, one of AFGO’s seventeen members, all of them former (or soon to be former) wives in their upper forties or fifties and sixties, who had either been dumped by their husbands or (less commonly) had decided to do the dumping. Urged by counselors and comforters to regard their new unattached status not as a loss but as a chance to grow, one of the ex-wives had groaned, “Yeah, right. My husband walks out and gets a sexy young girlfriend. I get Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.”
Which is how, group leader Ginger told Birdie and me as we helped ourselves to some wine and cheese, this local support group got to be known as AFGO.
Murdering Mr. Monti Page 13
