Compromising Positions (12 page)

“Damned if I know. Do you want to hear what the lawyer said?”

“Yes, of course. Here I am, babbling on and on, when you’ve gone out of your way to help me. To be a friend. And you know what they say about a friend in need, don’t you?”

“Right. Okay, Mary Alice, let me tell you about Claymore Katz.”

“Is Claymore Katz really his name?”

“No. It’s really J. Winthrop Aldrich IV, but he felt it wasn’t ethnic enough.”

“Really? I’ve never heard of that. The other way around...”

“I’m just kidding, Mary Alice. Now, let me tell you what he had to say.” Trying to sound as cool and rational as possible, as if we were discussing a minor legal problem involving a contractual dispute or a real estate transaction, I related my conversation with Claymore, including his suggestion about taking a lie detector test. She looked almost lost in the wing chair, a child with crow’s feet, staring at me intently. A fine imitation of intelligent concentration. Possibly the real thing. When I finished, she breathed deeply and said: “I have to think about it.”

“Is there anything particular that’s bothering you?” I asked.

“No, nothing special.”

“Is it the money?”

“No.”

“Are you worried about Keith finding out?”

“Not really. Not if the lawyer says they can keep it quiet.”

“Then what’s the matter?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Look, Mary Alice, you’re the one who has to make the decision, but Claymore did say time was an important factor. The longer you wait, the more chance you have of the police finding the photographs and tracing them to you.”

“I know. I know.” She tilted her head in the other direction. “Judith, would I have to tell the lawyer the whole story?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to count the hairs on Fleckstein’s chest for him, but you would have to go into some detail.”

“How did you know that Bruce had hair on his chest?”

“I didn’t. I made an assumption to illustrate a point.”

“Well, he did have hair on his chest. Lots. Very curly.”

“That’s nice,” I breathed. She had a gene programmed for digressions, a mind born to meander.

“And would I have to tell the lie detector man everything? Or the lie detector woman. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we insist on sexually stereotyping every profession.”

“Yes, you’d have to tell him.” I sighed. “Or her. But look, Claymore Katz is a very urbane human being. He’s not going to sit in judgment over you. He’s been divorced three times. I think he’s immune to shock.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“No, Mary Alice. He’s not good-looking.”

“Then how come he was able to attract three different women?”

Maybe Fleckstein took the pictures to blackmail her into silence, I mused. If you say one more word, he threatened, I’ll send these pictures to the
Shorehaven Sentinel
. Now shut up and fuck. “I’ll give you Claymore’s office number, Mary Alice. If you want to call him, you can. Now, would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No. I’m off stimulants.”

“Well, keep me company.” In the kitchen, I reached up into the cabinet and withdrew my mug with the big “J” on it. “Can I get you anything?” I asked.

“Some water at room temperature with the juice of half a lemon.”

“With or without pits?” I inquired.

“Oh, Judith. I know when you’re teasing me. Without pits.”

I began making small talk. Of course, with Mary Alice, anything but small talk was a waste of words, but I managed to make her feel more at ease. I was at an uncomfortable advantage. I knew her life, her fantasies. All she knew about me was what I chose to tell her. But, then, she had chosen to confide in me.

“Did Bruce ever talk personally to you?” I asked suddenly.

“Well, of course,” she answered, casting her eyes down in an attempt at modesty.

“No, I mean about himself, his life, his family, his friends.”

“Not really. A little, maybe.”

“Did he ever say anything about Norma, his wife?”

“I know her name,” she snapped. “Not much. Well, he did say they had grown apart and that she was cold in bed but that he couldn’t leave her because one of their children was hyperkinetic.”

“Oh.” I’m generally confused by statements that are supposed to be self-explanatory but really aren’t. I decided to let it pass. “Do you think she knew about you and Bruce? Or that Bruce was having an affair with someone?”

Mary Alice smoothed her fine blond hair with her tiny, babylike hands. “No,” she asserted. “I’m sure she didn’t know, because he said he could always account for every minute of his time.”

“What did he mean by that?” I’ve had weeks of frenetic activity and couldn’t account for more than a half hour.

“Well, he’d call her. From the motel.” I must have stared at her, because she sat straight up and began to explain. “You see, he’d tell her he was at the dental clinic at North Shore Hospital, about to start working there, and that he missed her. That way she couldn’t call his office and find he was taking too long for lunch.”

“I see. Well, then, did he ever mention anything about his business affairs? Was he making enough money?”

“He once said there’s more to life than just being a periodontist. He wanted to experience everything and have style.”

“What did he mean by style?” The cool, long-fingered elegance of characters in a Noel Coward play came to mind. But Bruce Fleckstein’s hairy chest sticking out of a flowered Qiana shirt?

“Style? I don’t know,” she admitted. “But he wore black underwear.”

“Black underwear.” If I found a man pleasing enough to join in a motel room, what would I do if he unzipped his fly to display black underwear? Would I laugh? Would I politely excuse myself? “Mary Alice, did he ever mention anything about pornography?”

“He showed me some pictures a couple of times.” She wiped the moisture from her glass off the table, folded her napkin neatly, and placed it in the garbage can. “Do you have any tissues?” she asked.

“Upstairs in the bathroom. What kind of pictures?”

“Pictures. You know, Judith.” She was beginning to sound exasperated. She gazed angrily into the garbage.

“I don’t know, Mary Alice. Tell me.”

“Pictures. Of women doing things. Like playing with themselves. Or using a big thing.”

“Thing,” as I had known since about age eight, was a cutesy synonym for penis. “Using a big thing? Do you mean a dildo?”

“Yes. I need a tissue.” She walked out of the kitchen, the heavy, lumbering walk of someone hugely obese or terribly tired. A moment later she returned, clutching a wad of green tissues.

“What kind of pictures were they, Mary Alice?” She gazed at me blankly. “I mean, were they in color? Professional-looking?”

“I don’t remember. I think they were in color.”

“Were they taken with a Polaroid? Were they square? Sort of stiff?”

“Yes,” she whispered, staring at the white tile floor. “I have to go home now.”

“Okay. I’ll speak to you in a couple of days. Do you have Claymore’s number?”

“Yes.” I followed her into the living room, where she retrieved her jacket from the couch. “I’ll speak to you,” she said.

“Fine. Don’t forget that if you’re going to take that lie detector test, time is a factor.”

“I won’t. Bye.” I watched as she strode rapidly down the path toward her white Mercedes. Keith had its negative, in black. Then, drawing a deep breath to insulate myself from the cold, I chased after her.

“One more question,” I called over the purr of the car’s ignition. She peered straight ahead, as though I hadn’t spoken. “Did he show you those pictures before or after he took pictures of you?”

“After.” She gunned her engine and roared out of the driveway.

I stood watching her car’s exhaust trail waft over the snowy lawns until I realized that my ankles and feet were painfully cold. I dashed inside, taking a deep breath of the dry, heated air. Mary Alice had seemed so startled when I suggested that the photographs had been taken with a Polaroid, just as hers were. Or had it been an act? Could she really have repressed the unavoidable conclusion that M. Bruce liked to show his work around? Had she been that stupid, that pathetically passive, that she had not confronted him immediately?

And, I wondered, climbing upstairs, why hadn’t she called Claymore immediately? She had asked for legal advice and gotten it. Was she afraid she’d be too emotional and flunk the lie detector test? Could she really believe that by gritting her teeth and letting time pass, the whole thing would go away?

I had vague answers to these questions, but the unfathomable one remained: Why had she let this happen to her? I could comprehend part of it, certainly. But it was as if I were holding a diamond in my hand. I could count the facets, ascertain the carat weight, probe for carbon flaws. And yet, despite exhaustive examination, the damned thing wouldn’t sparkle for me.

For example, I realized I had as much prurient interest as the next person. At a fraternity party at Wisconsin, I had been barely able to contain my delight in viewing
Three Sailors and a Girl
, complete with false noses and a cast of four abysmally unattractive people, all with bad skin. It wasn’t
Wild Strawberries
, but I reveled in it, roaring when the ejaculate rushed back into the penis when the film was rewound. But it did not in the least tempt me to take off my plaid skirt and blue tights and pose.

I had no trouble at all understanding Mary Alice’s need for a passionate sexual encounter. After all, what more is demanded from any of us besides a clean kitchen floor, two or three or four reasonably amiable children, and a steak and salad at seven o’clock? No one even cares any more if we can type. But a lover would. A lover would notice that we shave under our arms twice a week. Or that we reread
King Lear
once a year.

But Mary Alice and Scotty and several other women had gone beyond a little extramarital clitoral stimulation, beyond sharing their bodies and their thoughts. They had given Fleckstein their core of privacy, their soul. Or had he taken possession of them? Had he been an evil to be exorcised? Thinking it over, I knew that Lucifer as periodontist was too banal, even for Shorehaven. And isn’t a contract with the devil a two-party agreement?

And how open should we be? I could not imagine telling Bob everything, even in those days in graduate school when I loved him without qualification. I kept back my sexual fantasies as I kept back my other fantasies—my Pulitzer prize in history, the friends of his I’d date after he died at forty of a heart attack.

Perhaps, if he insisted, I would own up to wanting a Pulitzer prize, but I wouldn’t give him even an outline of my acceptance speech.

I truly could not comprehend Mary Alice’s letting herself be persuaded by a stranger, albeit a slick one, to tell all—and then allow it to be recorded for posterity. What did she hold back, keep for herself? Or was I wrong? Was it better to let everything go, to divest oneself of all those quirky little vestiges that adhere to the psyche, to say to the world, “So what?”

I mulled this over all day but came up with no answers. When Kate came home from school, I asked her what she had done. “Nothing much. We talked about Japan.” She too had her world. Would she grow out of it and lie in bed with a boy her first week at Radcliffe or Brown and tell him everything? Or would she be a chip off the aging block, a throwback to the outmoded Era of Privacy, her mother’s daughter?

By eight forty-five the next morning, Thursday, I grew weary of thinking alone. I called Nancy, my last iron in the fire, and invited myself over.

“All right. I’ll just call Little Cupcake and tell him not to bother dropping by. Maybe he’ll write up a report on the Fleckstein murder and mail it to me. These days, it doesn’t pay to be subtle.”

“Can I come over early tomorrow morning? Before you start working?”

“I guess so. I should have something to tell you. I just happened to mention the murder, and he said he’s been hearing about it for the last couple of weeks till it’s coming out of his ears. Of course, that does make sense because the poor sweet thing doesn’t have anything like a brain to absorb what other people do.”

“Doesn’t it bother you,” I asked, tapping my fingers against the phone, “that Cupcake is so, so unendowed mentally? I mean, if you’re going to have an affair, it seems to me you’d want someone you could talk to, even for just a few minutes afterwards.”

“Doesn’t bother me a bit. He’s a darling. I like him.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have someone with more of an intellect?”

“No. Would you?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“Yes, we are,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Be honest, I commanded myself. If I were going to indulge in a little fun between the breakfast dishes and the school bus, I wouldn’t select a partner on the basis of IQ either. Bob had enough intelligence. He also had enough sexual expertise to satisfy me, at least in the purely mechanical sense. For what, then, would I trade in the security, the reflexive closeness, the familiarity, the occasional interesting conversation, the tolerable sex? Not for a roll in the hay with a semiliterate Cupcake. And not for a couple of throwaway remarks about my substance as a hairy, braceleted arm slid under my sweater. Then for what? Maybe for fun. Not for laughs, but for fun. Thinking about it, I hadn’t had any real fun with Bob in about six or seven years. But can you abrogate your marriage vows on the basis of Lack of Fun, a Dearth of Enjoyment?

By the time I drove to Nancy’s the next morning, I was quite cranky, annoyed at everything from Bob’s unvarying “Good morning to you” to having to stop at the gas station to see why the station wagon was making an ominous gagging sound. The real reason for my pique, I knew, was that at some point I would have to make several changes in my life. Or not make them.

“Shit,” I muttered, as I pulled into the long driveway of Nancy’s house. Although it really wasn’t Nancy’s house as much as it was her husband’s. Larry, ten years out of Yale’s School of Architecture and fourteen years into his trust fund from his family’s paper business, had bought a twenty-room Victorian monster overlooking Long Island Sound and then had completely gutted the inside. The result was a sweep of glistening white ceramic floors, white furniture, white walls, relieved only by the chrome frames of the white-on-white embossments made by a friend of his, a graphic artist. Everywhere there were built-in drawers, bins, closets, and cabinets to preclude the possibility of clutter. Even the children’s rooms, up the transparent spiral staircase made of some exotic form of plastic, were a glaring shiny white, although Larry conceded that they could have two stuffed animals each on their beds—providing he approved of their choice of color.