“You think that because we didn’t go to some classy Ivy League college, we don’t know about those parts of a woman’s body.” Joseph Monti, his weight on his elbows, his eyes boring into mine, waited for me to catch my breath and reply.
“Joseph,” I told him, “believe me when I say even I didn’t know. I mean, what you just did, it was a new and whole different kind of orgas—”
“Silence!” Joseph Monti roared. “I don’t want to hear any words that begin with ‘Or.’ I don’t want to hear them—even from women like you.”
I gasped. The muscles in my throat contracted. My stomach muscles, such as they were, contracted. I pushed Joseph Monti off me and sat up. We were driving, I noticed, along Rockville Pike in Maryland, heading toward Toys R Us and Bloomingdale’s. I was almost angry enough to leap out of the limo, minus my clothes, and hitch a ride.
“Women like me?’ I screamed “Women like me? What’s this—the old Madonna-whore routine?”
“You probably think,” Joseph Monti was back to being defensive again, “I’m not educated enough to get the reference,” He pressed me bask down and rolled over on me, turning my face to face his with one of his powerful hands held under my chin. As my anger turned to hurt and the tears started welling up in my eyes, I could feel him—well, not all of him—suddenly softening. “That’s not what I meant,” he said gruffly. “I’m not calling you a whore. That’s not what I meant.”
He then, far the first time since I’d entered the limo, embarked on a normal human conversation. We discussed the kids, including Josephine’s problems. He described his dream with the message from his dead mother. And he swore that he’d never reveal—“or may my daughters only give birth to female children”—what we had just done, and still appeared to be doing.
For as we continued speaking he rolled around so that I was on top—“I bet you thought,” he said, “that we were too macho for this position.” “Oh, why don’t you just shut up,” I sweetly replied—and slowly, very slowly he started us rocking.
“You still haven’t had an—ooops!” I censored the word that began with “Or.”
Joseph Monti chose to ignore my remark. Still gently rocking he said, “What I told you before? You misunderstood. You shouldn’t think I think that you’re a whore.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “but when we talk about our families and all, I start to feel cheap.”
“I can respect that.”
“And when I think about your wife—”
“She’s a wonderful woman.”
“—a wonderful, wonderful woman—I feel guilty.”
“I can respect that.”
“And then when I think that someday you and I could be sharing a grandchild . . .”
Joseph Monti quit rocking. He was silent for quite a long while. And then he said, “That’s revolting. Wait, I mean—”
“You mean,” I said, “that you wouldn’t want your grandchild’s grandma and grandpa commiting adultery.”
“With each other,” Joseph Monti corrected me. “With each other’s the part that wouldn’t be right.”
His line of thinking fit perfectly into my one-time adultery plan. Great as this was, I didn’t want to repeat it. Joseph Monti’s aptitude was way ahead of his attitude, sexually speaking. I mean, sometimes a woman simply has to say “Or—.”
“Then this morning,” I whispered huskily, glad that the matter was being resolved so easily, “is going to have to be our final encounter.”
“Yeah, but not yet,” he whispered back. “I’m going to make you—you know what—with me. Together. Both together this last time.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t possibly. Not again,” I protested. “Go ahead, Joseph. It’s your turn to . . . enjoy.”
As Joseph resumed his rocking, our driver slammed on his horn and his brakes. The limo jerked to a sudden screeching stop. With a sickening thud that had us clutching each other tighter than ever, another car plowed into us from behind. Metal groaned and glass shattered as the laws of thermodynamics (or whatever) rolled us forward—then back to our prior position.
Our driver shut off the engine and leaped from the limo.
Astonishingly, Joseph Monti kept on rocking.
I peeked out the one-way smoked-glass window and saw that we were on upper Wisconsin Avenue, jest at the Maryland-Washington district line. Out on the street our driver and the driver of a vintage Fleetwood Cadillac were hurling recriminations at each other as they inspected the limo’s smashed taillights, the Caddy’s fractured headlights, and the rest of the not-as-bad-as-it-sounded damage. Our cars, which were messing up traffic, were unable to pull over because, improbably, their bumpers had locked, the Cadillac’s front bumper entangled with the back bumper of our limousine. Beneath me, Joseph Monti continued rocking. I swear he was humming “Volare” in my ear.
After a while, the recriminations ceased. Insurance information was exchanged. And a small crowd had assembled, eager to offer helpful advice on how to disentangle the locked bumpers.
Joseph Monti kept on gently rocking. For sure he was humming “Volare” in my ear.
A few of the helpful citizens tried to unlock the bumpers by leaning on them and rocking them up and down. Both bumpers were tightly engaged, as were Joseph and I. And despite my firm “I can’t. I couldn’t possibly. Not again,” I was beginning to feel that maybe I could.
Outside and inside, up and down, the rocking continued in perfect synchronicity. Joseph kept humming “Volare” in my ear. Bumpers and bodies rocked up and down, and up and down, and up, until, with some mighty manly roars and one last eee-eee eee-eee-eee-eee-eeeeeeeee, both outside and inside achieved release and I was persuaded to reconsider a view expressed in a column that I had called SIMULTANEOUS—IT’S NOT THAT BIG A DEAL.
When, a bit later, the limo stopped a couple of blocks from my house, I bade Joseph Monti a truly grateful goodbye. “I never had a lover before,” I told him, in all honesty. “And I’ll never have one again.” (Okay, so I lied.) “I want to thank you for a . . . quite special morning.”
“I’m glad you found it fulfilling,” Joseph Monti, with deep solemnity, replied. “You shouldn’t go around thinking of us as animals.”
“And you, sir,” I told him, half-jokingly, as I covered my sex-drenched body with my clothes, “shouldn’t go around thinking of us as whores. Even”—and now I was speaking with deep solemnity—“even though I feel guilty about your wife.”
“I can respect that,” Mr. Monti replied. “My wife is a wonderful—”
“Woman. Yes, I know. And I guess I really deserve some kind of punishment for doing this to her.”
“Don’t worry,” Joseph Augustus Monti reassuringly said to me, as he handed me my crumpled underpants. “You don’t have to worry about it—you’ll be punished.”
• • •
And now, at the end of this very demanding weekend in late September, Joseph Monti’s prediction had come true. My husband had returned to the woman for whom he had once almost left me. I had been punished.
“So do you swear on your children’s heads that you didn’t make love with Sunny?” I inquired. It was, I’m the first to admit, a desperate question.
“I never swear on my children’s heads. Never have. And never will,” was my husband’s maddening reply.
“Look, Jake, I didn’t ask you—just remember I didn’t ask—where you were last night You volunteered the goddam information. But now that you have started it, I want to know the truth. Did you go to bed with her?”
Jake shook his head, though I wasn’t prepared to take that as a denial, “That’s not what I went for.”
“Which was what?”
“Comfort. Sunny’s a very comforting person.”
“And what does she wear when she’s comforting you? Where does she conduct her comforting sessions? And how come she’s so available—didn’t she get married a couple of years ago?”
“They just broke up.”
“Nice. S
o she’s back in the business of looking for a husband. Anyone’s husband.”
I got out of bed and covered myself with one of my vast collection of T-shirt nightshirts, this one emblazoned with a SO MUCH TO READ, SO LITTLE TIME across the chest.
“That remark,” Jake said to me as he pulled on his pajamas, “is unworthy of you. Sunny didn’t go looking for me. I went looking for her. And she tried to help me put this whole thing in perspective.”
“What whole thing would that be?” I asked, as we stood on opposite sides of the bed and glared at each other. “You and me? You and Sunny? Or is it the three of us—together again?” A sudden wave of dizziness made my words come out shakier than I’d intended. I steadied myself by grabbing hold of the bedpost. “What whole thing?” I stubbornly persisted.
“You wear me out, Brenda. You wear me out.” Jake sounded truly sad, which scared me more than anything else he had said. “Tonight, with the dinner, the love-making, you were a genuine pleasure. But I’ve got to tell you, most of the time you are work.”
I gripped the bedpost tighter. “What exactly,” I asked, “is that supposed to mean?”
“That this need of yours to be in control of every-body’s life is driving me nuts. That you’re out of control with trying to be in control.”
“A nice turn of phrase,” I murmured, as the room spun around and around and I started to sink. “Though it sounds a lot more like Sunny’s than like yours.”
“Brenda! What’s wrong?” Jake shouted, as I crumpled to the floor. “Are you having those dizzy spells again?”
“You see, I can’t control everything—yet.” I said to him, smiling weakly. Then, for all kinds of reasons, I started to cry.
Jake joined me on the floor and tenderly leaned my reeling head upon his shoulder. After a while the room settled back into place. “Okay,” Jake said in a gentle voice, “I’m willing to grant that you’re only trying to help.”
“Is that what Sunny told you?”
“Shhh,” Jake said. “You’re only trying to help, but a lot of the stuff that you’re doing is—iatrogenic.”
“What?”
“Iatrogenic. That’s when the treatment causes—instead of cures—the disease. And that, let’s face it, Bren, is what’s happening here. You’ve screwed up the Monti marriage and you’ve screwed up my malpractice suits, and I shudder to think what else you’ve been screwing with.”
Oh, baby, I thought, if you knew—would you ever shudder!
Jake went on. “It’s like, these past few years, you almost can’t stop yourself. There’s nothing that you don’t think you can fix. At least”—he sighed—“I’ve learned when I shouldn’t operate, when to call in another surgeon, say no to a case.” He kissed the top of my head and stood up. “Brenda,” he said, “say no. Quit being a fixer.”
“Or else you’ll divorce me and marry Sunny Voight?”
Jake walked across the room and dug a rolled-up parcel out of his overnight bag. Then he came back and pulled me up on my feet. “I went to one of those T-shirt stores”—he handed me the parcel—“and had this made especially for you.” He watched me closely as I unfolded the shirt and read its message: FOR PEACE OF MIND, it said, I HEREBY RESIGN AS GENERAL MANAGER OF TUB UNIVERSE.
“You’ve got to do it, Brenda,” he said. I clearly heard the unspoken “or else” in his voice.
“Maybe you’re right,” I insincerely replied.
Maybe he’s right, I even thought, a fleeting thought that I rejected immediately. For what, I would like to know, would become of the universe if I decided to hand in my resignation?
• • •
Even without the assistance of my managerial skills, something remarkable happened the very next day.
I was on a plane to Miami to give a lecture at a women’s mental-health seminar. Sitting directly behind me two men—on their way, I learned, to a coroners’ convention—were discussing interesting autopsies they had performed. I was not especially interested in even the most interesting of autopsies, but something one of them said to the other suddenly had me sitting straight up in my seat.
“And we’d never of known what killed him. We didn’t have a clue. Ain’t nothin’ showed up on any of the tests.”
“So if that empty container hadn’t been found—”
“That’s right. And even so, me prescription was just for this innocent-seeming drug—these pills he took once a day to prevent the gout.”
“Then what made you think he used them to commit suicide?”
“The label was dated three days before his death. The quantity of pills dispensed was sixty. And like I said before, the container was empty.”
“So you figure he took all sixty of them at once.”
“You got it. He probably mashed those mothers up—they’re teeny, smaller than peppercorns—mashed them up and took them all at once. And he wouldn’t even of tasted them if he drank them in something sweet, like a strawberry Daiquiri.”.
Keep talking, I telepathed to the men behind me. Give more details. And please, please name your poison.
“He almost got away with it,” my coroner continued. “This stuff gets absorbed in the system very fast. All we knew was, two days before, he caught what everyone thought was the stomach flu. And then he wakes up dead, and no one—until we found that container—could figure out why.”
“And the name of the medication?” his companion asked him aloud and I asked him silently.
“It’s called” (he not only said it; he spelled it!) “——.”
And so I learned the name of a painless, easy-to-obtain, undetectable poison. You’ll forgive me if—out of prudence—I don’t pass it on. You’ll also forgive me if—though I do not believe in God or in signs from God—I nonetheless believed that this was a sign directly from God to go ahead and murder Mr. Monti.
• • •
My Tuesday-morning lecture, on Emotional Support Systems, focused on the importance of finding time in our busy lives to take care of each other. In a rousing conclusion I told the attentive women in my audience, “Make friends of your sisters and sisters of your friends.” I then flew home to Washington, where I worked on feeling friendlier about the impending arrival of Rose and her dog.
• • •
Rose showed up on Wednesday in a rented minivan, in which she’d installed—in case Hubert wanted to nap—a full-size mattress covered in pink crushed velvet. Driving, she explained, was less of a strain on Hubert’s nerves than going by plane. Pink, she explained, was Hubert’s favorite color. And the box she was dragging into my house was filled, she explained, with Hubert’s special supplies, including—and I’m going to quote her directly—his “yummy yum-yums” and his “favorite blankie.”
It remains for me one of life’s mysteries that a number of folks who are more or less basically sane can speak to and of their dogs in unabashed baby talk, oohing and cooing and lisping and using words like “yum-yums” and “blankies” without the slightest suggestion of self-consciousness. I also find it mysterious that some of these folks—my sister, for example—would never in a million yeas do for their children what they do for their dogs. Believe me, my sister would not be renting minivans with velvet-covered mattresses to ease the strain on the nerves of her only child. But the sky was the limit for Hubert, a.k.a. “snookums,” a.k.a. “my lovey pie.”
Anyway, there was Rosalie—who had never called her daughter snookums or lovey pie, who indeed had never gone in for what she once termed “that mommy shit” of snuggles and hugs—crawling around on nay living-room rug and drowning Hubert in praise for being the “bestest doggie traveler ever.” Several minutes passed before she stopped with the kisses and coos and managed to address a “Hi, Brenda,” to me.
Hubert, thrilled to be free of the car, exuberantly explored his Washington lodgings, loping from room to room and then up the stairs, returning—as I boiled Rose some tea—with my Donna Karan panty hose in his teeth. The panty hose for which I’d paid ei
ghteen dollars. The panty hose I had worn only once—last night. The panty hose which, when I lunged for them, were shredded into bits in a game of tug-of-war with the bestest doggie traveler, and panty-hose wrecker, ever.
Afterward, to show me that he was not a gloating victor, Hubert nosed me up against the wall, rearing up on his back legs and putting his front legs on my shoulders and moistly licking my face from forehead to chin. “He seemed a whole lot calmer at your apartment,” I grumped to Rosalie as I tried to escape this damply dogged embrace.
“He’s telling you that he likes it here, that he’s feeling right at home,” said my sister serenely. “You should be flattered.”
Flattered was not exactly what I was.
But, as I tell my readers, once you’ve agreed to do whatever it is you’re doing, get credit for it by (as I called my column on the subject) DOING IT GRACIOUSLY.
My point is that once you’ve agreed to dine with your husband’s boring former college roommate, be perky and charming—give it your absolute all. And once you’ve agreed to go shop for a dress with your cheap and hard-to-please cousin, be patient and sweet-natured—give it your absolute all. And once you’ve agreed to allow your sister’s panty-hose-chomping Great Dane to move his two-hundred-plus pounds into your house, be . . .
I tried. I did. I gave it my absolute all. Which, I’m sorry to say, was nowhere near good enough for Rosalie, who kept telling me, as she bustled about her business, “If you’d spend more time with Hubert, Bren, he’d be a happier dog, and you, I can promise, would be a better person.”
• • •
Rosalie was a dynamo: Preparing her yard plans for Carolyn. Taking bids from carpenters. Comparing the relative merits of flagstone and slate. Discussing the outdoor lighting and the underground watering system. Checking out shrubs and plants at various nurseries. “How did you learn to do all this stuff?” I once inquired uneasily. “You don’t think I know what I’m doing?” she replied. “You figure out how we all should live, but I can’t figure out a lousy backyard?” I dropped the subject.
Murdering Mr. Monti Page 18
