The Cruel Ever After (5 page)

The phone rang just as Julia finished the final measure. She sat for a moment, breathing in as the bright high notes reverberated through the loft, then faded. She stood and walked purposefully over to the kitchen counter, where she picked up the phone.

“Julia? It’s Peter. I’m downstairs.”

“Hey. Glad you could make it.”

“Your phone message made it sound important, whatever ‘it’ is.”

“When you come into the building you’ll see an elevator right in front of you. Take that to five. I’m the middle door. Five-B.”

“I’ll be right up.”

*   *   *

Irina had been married to Steve for nine years. For a great part of that time, he’d been out of the country, fighting in Iraq. In many ways, he was a stranger to her, someone who appeared to prefer the dust, heat, and danger of a foreign battlefield to his life at home. She’d been pregnant three times in the years they’d been together. The first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, the second in a stillborn child. She had been forced by Steve’s absence to deal with the second loss—and an almost overwhelming sorrow—by herself. She couldn’t really blame Steve for being away, and yet, down deep, she did. After the birth of her son, Dustin James, in mid-April, her depression had finally lifted. Little Dusty made life worth living again. Chess was merely the icing on the cake.

Steve was an aviation engineer. He was a decent man. Not kind, but fair. He believed in what he was doing in Iraq, even if Irina didn’t. She’d kept quiet about her opposition to the war, knowing that he needed her support and love. Gradually, though, that love had been eroded by time and distance, by forgotten birthdays, too few letters, phone calls and e-mails that always seemed rushed. When he’d been hit by shrapnel after a roadside bomb exploded outside Mosul last summer, he’d been forced home to nurse his wounds. Irina felt sure that this would be the end of his days in combat. Then yesterday, he’d dropped a bomb. He’d been approached by a private military contractor called the Brigade, who wanted to hire him to work for them in Afghanistan. In an unconvincing effort to include her in his plans, he’d asked her to drive down to Rochester with him, bragging that he would earn more working for the Brigade in a year than he’d make as an engineer in ten. There was a time when she would have argued with him, tried to get him to stay, but now, since Chess had come into her life, her feelings had changed.

“You going in to the gallery today?” asked Steve. He buttered a piece of toast and took a bite so big that half the slice disappeared into his mouth.

“Eleven to six,” she said, pouring a second round of boiling water over the baby bottles in the sink.

“Smells like bleach,” said Steve.

“I rinsed the bottles with it.”

“Jesus, Irina, are you kidding me?”

She was used to his opinions, although they still hurt. “I rinse them thoroughly. There’s no problem. By the way, my sister’s coming over in a little while to babysit.”

He dropped another slice of bread into the toaster. “Where’d you go last night?”

She looked up.

“You were gone for a couple hours.”

She’d been absolutely positive that he’d been asleep when she left, that he never knew she’d gone. Now she had to think fast. “I just kept tossing and turning, so I went for a drive.” They hadn’t slept in the same bed since his return from Iraq. He wanted to resume their sex life, but because it had been a difficult pregnancy, she couldn’t deal with it. It was partly an excuse, and they both knew it. To say that their marriage was on the rocks was an understatement, and yet, for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to completely let go. “You go for late-night drives all the time. I wasn’t worried about Dusty because you were here.”

He moved up next to her and stuffed the last tip of buttered toast into his mouth. “Honey, I know you don’t want to hear this—”

“I don’t. So just drop it, okay?” She hated it when he tried to be nice. It was just an act.

He began again. “If everything goes the way I think it will with the Brigade, I could be deployed to Afghanistan by the end of the month.”

Her back stiffened. The man he’d talked to yesterday had promised him money, adventure, and another chance to serve his country. It was like throwing a steak to a salivating dog. “I don’t understand you. We might be having problems, but doesn’t Dustin mean anything to you?”

When he touched her shoulder, she pulled away. She was keenly aware of the disdain he felt for the way she’d been handling their little boy’s health issues. Dusty had been born prematurely. His immune system hadn’t developed properly. Because of that, Irina kept him away from people and worked hard to shield him from germs that might harm him. She couldn’t risk the loss of another child. Steve thought she was overreacting, that she was too protective, had even gone a little crazy. Maybe she had, but in her mind, everything she did was a necessary precaution. As long as he was home, he was simply going to have to live with it.

Glancing over at him, Irina saw that he hadn’t dressed yet. He was still in his pajama bottoms and V-neck T-shirt. He’d always been fastidious about his clothing and his personal hygiene, which she appreciated even more now that they had a child. He put on a clean white T-shirt every night before he went to bed and replaced it with a new one after his morning shower. He looked so different these days, now that his hair had grown out. Normally, he kept it shaved on the sides with the top a little longer. A military cut, he called it. Irina thought it made him look mean, very different from the shaggy-haired man she’d met twelve years ago. His time in the military had changed him in more ways than she could count. Most significant was the effect his service had had on his self-confidence. All the shyness and reticence had been burned out of him. Some might say the change was for the good. Irina thought the jury was still out.

“Honey,” he said, trying again. “Just listen to me for a second. Have you thought any more about finding a therapist for us before I go?”

“What’s the point of seeing someone now?”

“I was hoping that after I left you’d stick with it a while.”

“Seeing a marriage counselor without you doesn’t make any sense.”

He stepped closer. “A lot of this is my fault.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“I don’t want to leave like this.”

“You mean leave me all alone with a child to raise? At least my sister is here for me.”

Irina worked two days a week at the gallery. Steve would occasionally stay with the baby, but most of the time he was either with his buddies or at work. He’d taken a part-time job with an aviation contractor. Misty, her younger sister, was just out of drug rehab and currently unemployed. Irina had been touched by how eager she was to take over as the primary babysitter. Without her help, Irina would have been chained to the house. “If you hadn’t told my mother that she was no longer welcome in our home—”

“You know why I said that. Irina, look at me.” He tried to turn her around, but she wouldn’t budge from her place at the sink. “We need to talk about this.”

“She doesn’t support the war.”

He moved around her, leaned on the counter, and looked up at her.
“Please.”

“Admit it. You hate her guts. She’s a liberal. All liberals are un-American.”

“I never said that.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that she doesn’t come over. I was so sick of you two arguing.”

“It’s not like you don’t see her, I’ve never prevented you from going to her condo.”

“
Prevented
me? What’s that supposed to mean? This isn’t the 1950s. You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Fine. Invite her over all you want—after I’m gone. I was just trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from my own mother?” She didn’t want to get into it with him, but more and more these days, it was becoming impossible not to. They were like two caged animals circling each other, searching for an advantage.

“This is hopeless,” said Steve. “I don’t know why I even try.”

“You’re too sensitive about your military service. U.S. foreign policy wasn’t handed down from God, you know. You’re not right about everything.”

Steve had always had a temper, but after serving in the military, anything and everything set him off. She could see by the sudden redness flooding his face that she’d just stumbled over a trip wire.

“Your mom actually blamed me—
me
—for the looting that went on at the Baghdad Museum. That comment crossed the line, and you know it.”

Steve had been in Baghdad in April of 2003. His unit had been fighting in another part of the city when the museum was looted.

“Since you mentioned it, I was in your office this morning.” His fists rose to his hips. “You’re doing research for your mom, right? On the looting in Baghdad? The Nimrud gold?”

“Mom’s giving a speech in New York next month.” Her mother had been asked to give a talk before the UN, but Irina’s interest in the Nimrud gold had nothing to do with it.

“God damn it, why can’t that woman just drop the subject. She doesn’t have all the facts. She just wants to blame. To blame the U.S. To blame
me
.”

“Steve—”

“No, you need to hear this. Our government
did
put the museum on a no-strike list. We knew it was important.”

“Then why wasn’t it protected?”

“Do you have any idea what it was like in that city? The compound had been filled with Republican Guard by the time we entered. There was a serious firefight in that area, one we didn’t start. It was illegal, under international law, for Saddam to put his men inside those walls. It
made
the place a military target. The U.S. commanders showed great restraint.”

“No units were assigned to the museum, Steve. Planners simply didn’t believe the museum would be looted. That’s unconscionable.”

“Oh, so you’re taking her side now. Okay, let’s think about it. A unit gets assigned to the compound. The guys get there and find looters—and Republican Guard. So the unit commander does what he’s required to do when someone starts shooting. He requests backup, tanks and mortars. But because the museum was put on a no-strike list, the commander’s request would have been denied. What we’ve got now is a killing field.”

Irina’s head was beginning to throb. “Quiet a minute.” She leaned toward the baby monitor she’d set on the kitchen counter. “Is that Dusty?”

“You’re not listening.” He grabbed the toast out of the toaster without buttering it and stormed out of the room.

“Don’t wake the baby!” she called after him.

Just then, Misty sailed through the screen door. “Whoa,” she said, coming to a halt next to the center island. “What did I walk in on?”

“Just more of the same.”

“Something about Mom? If it is, I’m with Steve.”

Misty, the classic bad girl who seemed to attract nothing but bad karma, had been at odds with their mother since she was a teenager. If the two of them weren’t fighting about her drug use, her poor grades, or her spotty work history, or her generally snotty attitude, they were battling over her current boyfriend. Move forward fifteen years and nothing had changed.

“Put Dusty in his swing chair when I leave,” said Irina, finishing her coffee in two quick gulps.

“Yeah, yeah.” Misty set her purse on the counter and ran a hand through her bleached blond hair.

Irina was sad to see that her sister was starting to look hard, older than her years. Physically, Irina and Misty were opposites. Where Irina was thin and petite, taking after their mother, Misty was fleshy and tall, like their dad. Mom had married twice, once for love—her first marriage—and once for lust. Irina and Misty were the product of number two. Dear old dad was long gone. He’d been a workaholic, a ghost in their lives, so they hardly missed him when he ran off with his secretary and settled in Argentina. Irina had been too embarrassed to tell any of her friends because it was such a pathetic cliché. After the second divorce was final, their mother quit trying. The gallery was her passion now. Men, as she often said, were too much trouble.

“You should be nicer to Steve,” said Misty, pouring herself a mug of coffee. “He’s sweet.”

Irina glanced at her sister’s tight hip-hugger jeans. The look might have worked for her once upon a time, when she’d been young and thin, but now she just looked cheap.

“And
you
should be nicer to Mom,” said Irina on her way out of the room.

“Sure. Like that’s going to happen. Did you hear the latest?”

Irina paused in the doorway and turned around.

“Mom wants me to come work at the gallery—part-time. I haven’t had any luck finding a job. She thinks this is the answer.”

“Maybe it’s a good idea.”

“Me and Mom? In the same room? Are you kidding me? It will be thermonuclear war.”

“But you need to support yourself somehow.”

“It’s not fair. She’s loaded. Why can’t she just help me out?”

“She is. She’s letting you stay at our old family house free of charge.”

“Yeah, but I have to toe this stupid line or I’m out. I figure, hell, most of her money came from our dad anyway. I think some of it should rightfully be ours.”

“That’s not the way it works. We’ll inherit after she dies.”

“Can’t happen soon enough for me.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Misty’s gaze dropped to the mug in her hand.

“Look, you’re doing me a big favor by babysitting Dusty. I’ll write you a check, something to help out. It’s just … you’re not—”

“What?” she snapped. “Using?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

Irina worried constantly about her sister. She’d been in and out of rehab so many times that it seemed impossible to think she’d stay clean for more than a few months. Drugs were everywhere these days. Misty told her once that she could walk out of Irina’s home and find just about anything she wanted in a matter of blocks—and this wasn’t the inner city, it was Apple Valley.

“It’s a dangerous world out there,” said Misty.

“Tell me about it,” said Irina, remembering the snapshot of Melvin Dial’s bloody body lying behind his couch.