As Husbands Go (31 page)

She was a good lawyer. If Grandma Ethel and I had been on a jury, we would be nodding
Yes, right, I believe her
. Her argument made sense, but sense is what your mind appreciates, not your gut.

“What about her using a pair of scissors?” I asked. “Does that make any sense to you? Why would someone go into a bathroom, open a medicine cabinet, take out something she definitely wouldn’t use every day, and choose that as the weapon? Why not go into the kitchen and grab a knife? It’s more logical, more normal, in the sense that it’s something a person would do. And a knife is easier to stab with than scissors, isn’t it? It has a handle. And why stab only twice if she was so angry?”

“I have no idea why she chose a pair of scissors as the weapon. What I do know is that they did come from her medicine cabinet and that her fingerprints are on them. And it’s not really relevant that she stabbed only twice.”

Eddie Huber wasn’t much good at hiding her body language, or maybe she didn’t want to. Instead of leaning back in her chair, she sat straight and crossed her arms over her chest. She reminded me of an impatient teacher, annoyed at a disruptive student, waiting for the kid to quiet down.

“One more question,” I said anyway. “Why do you think Dorinda
called that lawyer she’d used in the past when she supposedly regained consciousness and saw Jonah lying there, dead? Why did she wait an hour for the lawyer to call back?”

“We don’t know that she waited,” Eddie Huber said. “She said she waited.”

“If you can fix the time of the call from the lawyer’s voice mail,” my grandmother said, “then find out what bus Dorinda took at Port Authority, you might be able to subtract the earlier time from the later time and discover whether she really did hang around for an hour.”

“First, even if she did wait an hour, it in no way proves where she waited, or that she didn’t murder Dr. Gersten. Staying in her apartment for an hour would, to me, indicate a certain cold-bloodedness. If you came across a dead body, would you stay with it in a tiny one-bedroom apartment? Or would you want out?”

Grandma Ethel didn’t take long to admit, “Out.”

That was my reaction, too, and I nodded in agreement. Then I said, “Is there any way I could speak with Dorinda Dillon, ask her a few questions?”

I could have done without the recoil on Eddie Huber’s part and without her mouthing the word “no.”

“It’s just that I’d like to know what happened before Jonah—”

“Absolutely not!” She stood and braced herself on her desk. I wasn’t totally sure what that meant in body language, but I think she was saying
I am restraining myself from leaping over this crap-covered surface and throttling you, bitch
. “It would taint the entire case. I’m sorry for you, Ms. Gersten. And I admire your wanting to seek the truth. But there is no way I’ll let you get in the way of my office doing what needs to be done.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Grandma Ethel’s arrival meant trouble: From the moment she and Sparky had walked into the living room that night at the shiva, I’d known it was only minutes until some older cousin would search out a quiet corner to call my mother and whisper, “You won’t believe who just came to see Susie!”

The evening following her appearance, my parents had shown up with a shopping bag full of the plastic containers they’d used earlier in the week to bring home a half-ton of smoked salmon, egg salad, and tuna salad from a platter someone had sent over. “Listen,” I said as they’d come through the door, “there’s something I need to tell you.” As they walked through the house, my mother performed her sneezing/coughing/choking number at every vase she happened to notice.

Trailed by my father, she headed for the kitchen. Once there, she pushed up the long sleeves of her mourning apparel, a black T-shirt with an understated World Wildlife Federation logo, and started washing the plastic containers in my sink. As she pumped out enough Dawn direct foam to clean a 747, my father explained that their water in Brooklyn wasn’t hot enough. “It’s okay,” I told him, “I’ll put them in the dishwasher.” My mother turned from the sink, shook her head, and told me the heat from the drying process would cause the plastic to release toxins that would infect the next food that went into the containers. I offered to take over the washing for her, or have our housekeeper do it first thing in the morning. When she shook her head emphatically, I suggested putting them in the recycle bin, where they could enjoy the company of all their
little plastic friends. But she kept saying no, that I had enough on my hands, by which I assumed she meant Jonah’s death, not bad smells.

“Mom,” I said, resting my back against the side of the sink so she couldn’t avoid looking at me, “your mother was here last night.” She looked me in the eye, or nearly, and told me she didn’t want to hear about it. If I desired a relationship with the woman, I should feel free, but she didn’t want to know anything about it. My father chimed in that my mother really meant what she said, then asked me where I kept the dish towels. That was that: end of conversation.

But I knew more discussion was needed and now, having finally deposited Grandma Ethel back at the Regency, my car seemed to go on automatic pilot. It headed for Brooklyn and even found a parking space on Avenue O, around the corner from my parents’ building. (If I’d had to go as far as Avenue P, I probably would have chickened out and gone straight back to Long Island.) I called and cut short my father’s “By the time you get here, it’ll be so late . . .” As I got off the elevator on their floor, I thought that if someone blindfolded me and turned me around a few times, like in Pin the Tail on the Donkey, I would have no problem walking a straight line to the door of their apartment. I’d rely on either the familiarity of having lived in that one place until I was seventeen, or the scent of garlic powder.

After I’d accepted a glass of store-brand seltzer with bubbles the size of my fist, we sat down in the living room. The only photographs were the ones I’d given them framed—our wedding picture and one of the triplets we’d taken when they were eight months and could sit up by themselves. For that one, I’d ordered anti-UV glass, so it was the only thing in the room not faded. The boys’ blue, red, and yellow onesies, cute but ordinary, made them look like a riotous circus act in that dead brown room.

“I wanted to talk to you about your mother coming to see me,” I told my own mother. Before she could object, I said, “I need to clear the air. Please view it as a favor to me. I’ll be as quick as I can, and then I won’t bring it up again unless you want to talk about it. Okay?”

“Do you have any idea what kind of person would walk out on,
abandon
her own child?” my father demanded. His voice had double or triple the emotion he normally expressed in his most passionate moments—debunking sciatica cures not sold by My Aching Back. “Do you, Susan?”

“Yes, I do have an idea. She’d be a person with terrible character or who’s really disturbed,” I said. Turning to my mother, I went on, “In her case, I vote for terrible character.”

“Then why did you seek her out that time you went to Florida?” She often sounded angry, but that was everyday bitterness about glass ceilings, polluters, Al Sharpton, or pharmaceutical companies. This was a different anger; while she wasn’t at all hoarse, her voice sounded raw. “It was early in your marriage, but I’ll bet any amount of money looking for her wasn’t Jonah’s idea.”

“I was curious.”

“Curiosity—” my father began, but fortunately, he let it go.

“Your mother has always been the mystery woman,” I said, “the subject nobody ever mentioned. I wanted to see for myself. Maybe it was wanting to look into the face of a monster. That visit came around the time everybody was getting into genealogy. It was a chance to see where I came from.”

“You came from me!” my mother said. “And him.” She jerked her chin toward my father. “There was no mystery. What in God’s name is the matter with you? Why is it a mystery when someone doesn’t talk about a person who did them wrong, who put a blight on their whole life?”

“Maybe I wasn’t mature enough to understand that.” I tried to sound both soothing and sorry.

“Oh, please! A child could understand that. But no, you heard
about her, that she was on TV. The big shot: ‘Oh,
everybody
in Miami knows Ethel.’ What were you doing, looking for a new mother?”

“No—”

“A rich mother who went to the beauty parlor three times a week?”

I had an awful feeling she was going to add “Someone you weren’t embarrassed about?” and I would have had to lie and say “Don’t be ridiculous.” I quickly said, “I already had a mother. You, okay? Why would I have wanted another one?” There were several possible answers, but I kept going. “And of all the people in the world, if I were searching for a mother figure, why would I pick someone who had proved herself to be totally incompetent as a mother? Worse than incompetent: selfish and cruel.”

All that was true. Yet walking around Soho with Grandma Ethel after the meeting with Eddie Huber, laughing at lace-sided pants and thousand-dollar military-style boots, then having Japanese beer and sushi and telling her about the weekend I’d moved in with Jonah, had been better for my spirit than any time I had ever spent with my mother.

“Now that she’s an old lady, she wants a family?” my father wanted to know. “Don’t make me laugh!”

Knowing that was close to impossible, I tried to tell them that Grandma Ethel wanted something or maybe wanted to do something. She was back in town. But my mother didn’t give me a chance to talk. “You’ll see,” she said, “you’ll be hearing from her again. She’ll call, try to insinuate herself into your life. And then what? You want to know what?”

“She’ll drop me like a hot potato,” I said.

She nodded. I guess she meant to look wise, but it came off like a bad imitation of Yoda. “That’s right! She’ll charm the pants off you, then drop you for the pure pleasure of inflicting pain.”

“I’ll watch out for that,” I said quietly.

“Look at the bright side,” my father said to my mother. “Maybe she’ll drop dead tomorrow and leave you everything.”

“Stanley,” my mother exhaled. “How can you be so naive? It’ll all
go to her girlfriend.” She shook her head in sadness. “I was always a supporter of gay rights, but to think they can make a will any old way they want and completely cut out the family . . . Not that I ever expected anything.” She turned to me. “I don’t think I have any memories of her.” She tugged at the neckline of her Air America
FOR THOSE OF US LEFT . . .
sweatshirt. “Is there any resemblance between her and you?” she asked me.

“Yes. It’s pretty strong, actually. Same color and shape eyes, same bone structure, body type.”

“Funny,” she said.

“At least I didn’t inherit her character,” I said, no doubt fishing for an “Of course not!” All I heard was a grumble from my father’s stomach.

Right after the kids left for school the next morning, I went back to sleep. It was one of those awkward situations when, because you don’t know the person who’s vowing to support you, you don’t know if she means what she says. Grandma Ethel’s “I’m here for you” might have been the truth; on the other hand, when she mentioned she hadn’t been to Barneys in a couple of years, her voice had the wistful tone of someone who had a strong need to scrutinize avant-garde gloves. Still, on the chance she would call, I didn’t turn off the phone ringer to avoid the “just calling to check how you’re doing” calls, though their number had plummeted in the last couple of weeks anyway. Besides, my mother’s warning was still fresh in my ears. It wouldn’t have surprised me if my grandmother had simply picked up and gone back to Miami because she wanted to hurt me for the pure pleasure of it. Not that I really believed she would do that, but I couldn’t rule it out.

So I was surprised to be wakened at a quarter to twelve when the bedroom door opened and Grandma Ethel, hand on the knob but facing the staircase, shouted, “Thank you, Bernadine sweetheart. I found the room.” It was probably the first time in Bernadine’s life anyone had called her “sweetheart,” and she called back in a sug
ary voice I’d never heard, “Let me know if you need anything, Mrs. O’Shea.”

“You need some more sleep?” my grandmother asked. “I can go read or tiptoe into your closet and try on your clothes. What size are you? An eight?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting up and feeling with my feet for my shoes, “but more toward a six than a ten.”

“I’m more toward a ten, but I know how to breathe in. You getting up?”

“Yes, but you can still try on my clothes if you want to.”

“‘Tomorrow is another day.’ Know who said that?”

“Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Right. So listen, that Eddie Huber? What’s with the Eddie? I didn’t pick up any signals.” Before I could answer, she said, “I’ll tell you what bothers me about her. Between you and me and a lamppost, like my uncle Morty used to say, I think she’s part of a cover-up.”

“Of what?”

I must have gasped “Of what?” because she quickly said, “Calm down. It’s no major deal. Let me tell you.” She tried to hurry me downstairs immediately. But whenever I woke up, I needed to brush my teeth right away. She followed me into the bathroom, just like the boys did, and talked while I brushed. “I think they all decided that Dorinda was the killer much too fast. That’s what I think. What kind of investigation did they do? All they really did was send in a forensics team, do an autopsy—which of course they have to—and then try to track down Dorinda.” I spat out the toothpaste, and she asked, “You don’t brush your tongue?”