Crazy in Love (11 page)

I sat straight up. What was I doing, planning trips around the country? I thought of Nick. I would eat alone in my hotel room, he would eat alone in his. I had no illusions that he would bother to fly home to Black Hall if I weren’t there. He had enough work with Project Broadsword to keep him in New York twenty-four hours a day and in the office twenty. Our little cottage on Bennison Point would be vacant, filling with dust and cobwebs.

The telephone rang, and it was Nick.

“They increased my grant!” I said.

“I know. John told me,” he said, sounding dismal.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to fly to London. We have some business to do there.”

“Great!” I said. Of all the places Nick went on business, I think I loved London most. My fantasy of flying to Chicago was replaced by the reality of London. The Basil Street Hotel, with its Edwardian facade and cozy country-house interior, filled my mind.

“Georgie, you can’t come,” he said. “I can’t even talk about it right now, but I’ll tell you when I see you in an hour. I have to leave tonight.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. Something was sucking the air from my lungs, and I couldn’t get my breath. I choked.

“Georgie? Are you okay?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll be there soon,” he said, and hung up.

Until Nick arrived, I treated myself like a very sick person, someone with jungle fever. I lifted things with extreme care, as though I might drop them. Not wanting to injure myself, I moved slowly around the room, leaving wide spaces between me and sharp corners. Every few minutes I would lie across the bed, thinking of nothing at all, trying to regain a little strength. I heard his key in the door. He lay beside me on the bed and hugged me hard.

“We always go to London together,” I said, thinking of Clare, of how Donald had not taken her to Tokyo, of how that was his greatest regret.

“I have to tell you some things,” Nick said, and he led me to the table, as if what he had to tell me was so important that we had to be upright to discuss it.

“Project Broadsword is a very large tender offer,” he said.

Not for the first time, I wondered why they were called tender offers. What was tender about them? Nothing.

“John and two other partners have told me, unofficially, that if I do well on this deal, I have a very good chance of making partner.” His eyes glowed with excitement.

“That’s wonderful. I’m really happy about that, Nick,” I said. “But why can’t I go to London?”

“Because what we’re doing over there is so top secret, it would look bad if I brought you along. Everyone would assume that you knew what was going on. No spouses on this trip, we’ve all been told.”

“That sucks.”

“I think so too.”

“What’s so top secret?”

“The target company is Bombay Petroleum,” he said, naming one of the largest oil companies in the world. He watched for my reaction.

The fact that he watched me, wanting me to be impressed, assuming that the deal’s magnitude would make me understand why he had to go to London alone, filled me with rage.

If it weren’t London, I wouldn’t be so angry. We loved London. We always found time for a walk in Hyde Park, a night at the theater, and dinner at Scott’s. But suddenly I remembered that Nick had gone alone on his last trip to London: I had volunteered to stay with Pem while Honora attended a meteorology conference in Montreal, a commitment that couldn’t be broken. I remembered feeling disappointed that I couldn’t go with him. But nothing close to the killing rage I was in now.

“If it makes you feel any better, I won’t have time for the theater on this jaunt. Back-to-back meetings have been scheduled, as John puts it, ‘far into the night.’ ” Nick had an air of distance to him, as if his involvement with the deal was total; he barely registered my fury. He had been so busy recently, he hadn’t had a haircut, I thought, noticing the way his black hair curled just above his collar. I wanted to touch it in spite of myself. “Besides,” he said, “Honora and Clare will be happy to have you all to themselves. I can see it now, the three of you taking Pem for a ride to Newport one day. . . .”

And all at once I realized why I felt so panicked at the idea of Nick going alone to London. It meant I had to go to Chicago. The anger left me. I uncoiled like a snake, and started to cry from the relief of understanding. “I have a few things to tell you,” I said. I began with a description of the Avery family and their office, and then I told him about their offer.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said. “John told me today that they consider you a bright light.”

“That’s nice,” I said, wondering how he had missed the point that I was afraid of going to Chicago alone. It came to me: because I hadn’t said it.

“I’ve never taken a business trip on my own,” I said. “It changes everything—my entire concept of the Swift Observatory. Why do you think I started the thing? Because it gave me the chance to work at home.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Nick said. “Your profile of the bay gave you the chance to work at home. You want to branch out a little, Georgie. The only subject you’ve met face to face was Mona Tuchman, and everyone says that was your best study. I think you need more contact than a voice over the telephone.”

I smiled and hugged him tight, my lips against his damp neck. “Off you go to London,” I said, my voice muffled by his skin and collar.

“What? I didn’t hear you,” he said.

I knew he hadn’t, and I didn’t repeat it. That was all the blessing I was able to give.

8

I ALLOWED MYSELF BARELY ENOUGH TIME TO
pack and inform Honora and Clare of my plans to go to Chicago. Forward motion, that was the key to maintaining sanity. If I allowed myself to sink into a chair, like one of Nick’s Whistler women, I would see my center of focus shifting from Bennison Point to the world at large. I would think of Nick staying at the Savoy, two doors down from Jean Snizort. Of course Jean had gone—how could I have thought she wouldn’t? I had known she was a colleague working on Project Broadsword. “Who else is going to London?” I had asked Nick that night at the Gregory. His expression told me even before he opened his mouth.

Clare couldn’t come when Honora drove me to the airport.

“She wanted to,” Honora said, “but Casey has that dentist’s appointment.”

We headed north to Bradley Field. We allowed plenty of time because Honora had several stops to make along the way: the bank, the dry cleaner’s, the pharmacy. At first I felt annoyed that she insisted on doing her errands before taking me to the plane, but then I realized she wanted to prolong the ride, wanted us to have more time together. She told the bank teller I had an important interview to conduct in Chicago; she gave the druggist an oral history of the Swift Observatory.

“Mom,” I said, “you’re embarrassing me.”

“Honey, I bragged when you won the Eel Pond Science Fair, and I feel like bragging now. Mothers have the inalienable right to brag about their daughters.”

I smiled, looking across the front seat at my mother. She drove like a college kid: a little too fast, window down, elbow resting on the window ledge. Her chestnut hair blew in the wind. I remembered when I was small and felt lucky for having such a fun, beautiful mother. She had seemed to be, but was not, younger than my friends’ mothers. I also remembered dimly one night when Clare cried, accusing Honora of flirting with her boyfriend.

“Do you like Chicago?” I asked.

“I adore Chicago. Any town that puts a Chagall mosaic in the middle of the business district is okay by me.”

We finally reached the airport. She insisted on parking the car, accompanying me to the check-in desk.

“Be careful,” she said, giving me a big hug.

Of what? Of strange men? Of high winds? I didn’t flinch or bother to ask what she meant, because “Be careful” was as normal a farewell for Honora as “So long” or “Goodbye.”

THE FLIGHT PASSED QUICKLY
enough, but stepping off the plane in Chicago I felt impossibly far from anything familiar. In my hotel room I reached for the telephone book, as if holding it connected me to all the names it contained. Maybe I knew someone listed: an old teacher or someone I had gone to school with. The impulse to grab the telephone and dial randomly came over me. Instead, I ordered a drink from room service and forced myself to breathe deeply. “You are not alone,” I said out loud, foolishly, since of course I was alone. But was I? Closing my eyes, I conjured Nick. I saw his lean face and broad grin, his mop of black hair, his dark eyes. He leaned close to kiss me. Then I heard Pem asking, “Who’s the boy?” “My husband,” I answered out loud. “Nicholas Symonds, my husband. Go away, Pem.” She shuffled off, sullenly, in the direction of the kitchen, no doubt to make a secret sandwich. But Nick must have gone with her, since he was no longer kissing me and I truly was alone, waiting for room service to deliver my drink.

All that night I couldn’t stop observing myself. I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was at once going through certain motions and watching myself go through them. While I was brushing my teeth, I was also two paces away, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, my knees crossed, my chin resting in the palm of my right hand, thinking, “Let’s see how she brushes her teeth.” I was alone in a very nice hotel in a strange city, on a different continent than Nick, because of my work. The different format of Chicago’s telephone books gave me a strange thrill. The unfamiliar newspapers seemed heavy with promise. I had traveled west without knowing which prison held Caroline Orne; I was not sure that I would be allowed to visit her even after I found out. Nevertheless, lying in bed that night, I thought of myself as an adventurer, climbing a mountain in order to plant a flag at the summit.

Before I left the hotel the next morning, Nick had called me and I had called Honora and Clare. I felt better, knowing that I had everyone pinned down. Then I went out. I took my satchel of notebooks and the morning papers down to a bench at the edge of the lake. Lake Michigan is enormous; I could see no land on the other side, the way one sees Plum Island across Long Island Sound, but I wanted to deny that a lake could be greater than any body of salt water. I sat in the shade of a walnut tree and opened the first paper. On page five I found a story about her. The photo showed a pretty girl, pert with small, regular features and straight hair held back with barrettes. She was smiling at a spot somewhere beyond the photographer, and I decided it must have been a yearbook picture. The article said her lawyers claimed that she was not guilty by reason of insanity; she was being held for observation at St. Ursula’s Hospital.

I considered calling her lawyer, to ask permission to see her. I thought of visiting the University of Chicago law library, to check any statutes that might prevent me from meeting her. Sitting on that shady bench, I complicated matters terribly until I saw a cab cruising past, hailed it, and told the driver, “St. Ursula’s, please.”

The hospital’s shiny, sterile environment seemed hardly the place for an intimate talk, the sort I had had with Mona. I was prepared for some sort of screening: what if I were the daughter of the man whom Caroline had killed because he had killed her mother? I could be the latest link in the chain of vengeance. But the nurse on duty simply asked me to sign a guest book and take a seat in the lounge. Waiting for Caroline Orne, I wondered if I would have flown to Chicago to interview brides. Probably not. Sitting in that gleaming room, I thought of Carson Bleyle, of my sister’s and my very real plan to murder him with marbles. Loss had not moved us, because if he had married Honora we would, in fact, have gained a stepfather. Still, loss was what we had feared: the loss of our family as we knew and loved it. Carson Bleyle would have removed us from Bennison Point, from our home with Honora, Pem, and Granddamon. Those strange memories came back to me; I was feeling the weight of slimy marbles in my hand when Caroline Orne walked toward me.

She looked twenty-five, was my height, and she wore blue corduroy pants and a beige sweater, clothes too warm for the season. Her hair was feathered in the manner seen on young women in shopping malls, and she wore tinted turquoise contact lenses. She smiled, waiting for me to introduce myself.

“That’s an interesting profession,” she said after I had explained my mission. “Did you major in sociology?”

“No, I didn’t go to college,” I said.

“I was a sociology major before I switched to Spanish. I must say, I left sociology because I didn’t think the career possibilities were very interesting. But I’d never heard of anything like the Swift Observatory.”

I didn’t tell her that I had invented the Swift Observatory, that I in fact was the Swift Observatory. I had never connected my work with any discipline as defined as sociology, and the definition made me uneasy.

“Are you willing to talk to me?” I asked.

She stood still for a minute, not speaking. I thought she was going to walk away without answering, but she shrugged and said, “Okay. Let’s go in here.”

I followed her into a smaller room, equally clean and smelling of disinfectant. A television played to the otherwise empty room. A nurse stuck her head in, saw that we were sitting quietly, and left. For some reason, that nurse’s vigilance comforted me.

“You taught eighth grade?” I asked.

“Yes, but only temporarily. I was taking master’s courses at the university.” She leaned forward, grabbing her ankles with both hands. “I have to tell you, I’m interested in your study. I can understand how a sociologist might be pretty interested in someone like me.”

“But I’m not really a sociologist,” I said, not wanting to deceive her.

“Maybe that’s not your label, but that’s what you do—you study society, people, behavior. Or you could call yourself an anthropologist before the fact, the fact being death or maybe extinction. Anyway, go on.”

“You lived at home?”

“Lived. Hmmm, you’re putting it in the past tense. I think of myself as still living there. It made a lot of sense, when I decided to do it. All my friends from college have their own apartments, or else they live on campus if they’re in graduate school. But I get along very well with my family, and it seemed like a good way to save money.” She laughed. “That’s what my parents kept telling me, ‘Live at home and start a bank account,’ as if they weren’t dying to have me back home. It was hard for all of us when I went away to college.”

“Why?”

“Well, it was the first time I’d ever gone away from home. I never went to camp, never went on a long trip without my family. Still, going to college was easier than I had thought. God, I really dreaded it! All the summer before I left I would lie awake thinking about what would happen at home when I was gone.”

“Good things or bad things?”

She shrugged, impatient because I had missed her point. “It didn’t matter. Just that things would change. Like the first time I came home for vacation, my father had been on a diet and lost about ten pounds. Also, my brother had fallen and cut his chin, and he had a terrible red scar. And no one had bothered to tell me! I know none of that’s important, but I cried when I saw how different everything was.”

“I think that’s important. You want to keep track of things in your family,” I said, thinking of Nick, Honora, Pem, Clare and Donald and the kids, glad that I had them in place, the way a radar operator tracks aircraft on a screen. “Who’s in your family?” I asked.

“My parents, me, my brothers Guy, Brian, and Peter, and my sister Bonnie.”

“Do you see them often?”

“Of course. They all come, every day. Even Guy, who’s in college. He goes to the University of Chicago, and he lives there, even though it’s so close to home. My parents thought it would be a good idea. But I’m sure they’ll encourage him to move in after he graduates, to start his bank account.” She grinned, and I noticed her unconscious use of “my parents” and “they,” as though they were both alive.

“What do your parents do?” I asked, going along with her use of the present tense, but I watched her register my mistake as the grin slid away.

“Well, my father is a musician. He plays French horn in the Chicago Symphony. My mother was a pediatrician. She had her office in our house.” She paused for a moment, smiling. “The sound of crying babies used to drive us crazy. It used to upset Bonnie horribly, thinking of Mom giving injections to all those babies. I loved hearing about her cases. She’d tell us about cradle cap, and failure to thrive, chicken pox and whooping cough, and once a case of meningitis that worried her so much she evacuated the family to a hotel near the airport. Failure to thrive was the worst. It meant that a baby wouldn’t take nourishment. God, we hated when babies failed to thrive.” She frowned, remembering those sad babies. “All those little lives that came through our house. It seemed wonderful, having a mother who specialized in taking care of children. When Bonnie was little she was afraid that other kids would hate us, because our mother gave them shots. She had a real thing about injections. But I didn’t see it that way at all. I thought if the worst happened, and one of us contracted a deadly disease, she would be able to cure it. I thought having a pediatrician for a mother was about the safest thing in the world.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Which part?” she asked, snorting, a sound that seemed half laugh and half sob. “Well, she had gone to see a play one night. My father had a performance, so she went with her friend, Linda Donatello. After the play ended, they were heading for their car, and the man robbed them. He had a gun, and he told them to hand over their jewelry and money. They did—very calmly, Linda said. Linda said my mother was very careful to not make any fast moves. The guy had everything in his pocket, and he started to walk away. Then suddenly he turned and shot her. Shot my mother.”