Evolution (16 page)

SLEEP’S DARK AND SILENT GATE

Never in my wildest imaginings did I think that one day I’d consult a shrink. Shrink?
I’ve never even had a primary care physician, despite the fact my brother has an MD behind his name. But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t able to submerge my feelings. Feelings that were crushing me—threatening to kill me.

That said, I only managed to last two sessions before I knew she’d never be able to help me.
She wanted to dig deep into my past, but I wasn’t about to go there. It wasn’t the past that was bothering me, although she disagreed.

Before I left her office that last time, she suggested I write down my experiences and that maybe it would help me since I couldn’t begin to talk about it.
So, new notebook, new pen. Here goes.

I’ve never been particularly fond of the month of March, probably because my mother died during that month.
Since then, I’ve always seen it as a bad-luck time of year. But then, I’d never really had any good luck. Somehow events I thought might bode well always seemed to sour. Like my marriage.

Shelley Malone worked for Midtown Travel in Manhattan. I had a job interview in Indianapolis and needed to make reservations for a plane trip, hotel, and car rental. Shelley’s voice had a funny kind of raspiness to it—what my mother had called a whiskey voice.
I found it intriguing. Upon my return from the trip, I decided to check out Ms. Malone. As a trained investigator, I considered it a piece of cake. I staked out her office late one afternoon and followed her home. Did that make me a stalker? I didn’t think so, as I had no ulterior motive except to meet her in person. But then my social skills aren’t exactly top notch, so I needed to find out more about her to figure out if she might go for a guy like me. The next evening, I managed to bump into her as she left work for the day. I apologized profusely and introduced myself.

“The same Jeff Resnick who booked a flight with me last week?” she asked.

“Do you work for Midtown Travel?” I asked with feigned awe.

“Yes! Isn’t that a coincidence that we should meet in person?”

“In a city this big? It’s got to be kismet,” I said. “Are you doing anything this evening?”

She hesitated before answering. “You aren’t some kind of serial killer, are you?”

“No, ma’am, I’m certainly not. But if you’d like to call a friend to tell her where you’re going and with whom, I promise I won’t be offended.”

She smiled and didn’t make that call.

We had drinks at a quiet bar nearby and traded stories. Then she went her way and I went mine. But she gave me her number to call again. I waited two interminable days before I did. After our third date, Ms. Malone and I became intimately acquainted.

Six months later, we were married in a civil ceremony; me with my brown suit, and she in a low-cut pink sheath and a bouquet of ivory roses.
Two friends from work stood up for us. We honeymooned in Vermont.

That first year together was the happiest time of my life. We cooked together, took weekend trips to the Jersey shore or the Green Mountains of Vermont, and made plans for the future. On the top of our to-do list was purchasing a house, and then filling it with a couple of kids—everything I’d never had growing up. I even had a chance to introduce my new bride to my brother and his significant other. They were in town on business, and Richard was eager to reconnect. It was only the third time I’d seen him since I’d left home fourteen years before.

Something odd happened when I met Brenda Stanley, and I’m not sure how to explain it, but it was when she gave me an introductory hug. I got this really weird feeling that I’d known her before, and yet I somehow knew we’d never met and, of course, her face was unfamiliar to me. I was a bit surprised that Richard was with a black woman, but then there was something about her that made me think he must be the luckiest guy on the planet to have her in his corner. And then I looked at Shelley and her bright smile made me think otherwise.

Oh, how I wish I could return to that day when the four of us seemed so happy.
When Shelley and I were happy … because not long after, things began to sour.

I’d been sent to San Diego—a business trip that was supposed to last just two days.
But two days morphed into two weeks and when I returned home, Shelley wasn’t there to greet me. At first I thought she might be having dinner with a friend, but when midnight rolled around and she still hadn’t returned home, I started to panic.

Shelley finally staggered home at dawn, as high as a kite and crashed before I could get a coherent explanation of where she’d been—or with whom—and what she’d been doing. I had a damn good idea what she’d been up to, but I had to go to work.
When I returned that night, Shelley was Shelley again. She’d said she’d had dinner with friends and they’d smoked some weed and she’d lost track of time. She kissed me and promised it wouldn’t happen again … until it did two weeks later.

This time I’d been sent to Boston.
I was only gone a day, but when I returned it was Act II and Shelley pulled another disappearing act, coming home wasted in the wee hours and missing another day of work.

“Who are you hanging with?” I asked, unable to keep the anger from my voice and afraid to hear the worst.

“Just a couple of girls from the office. They like to party. What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong is you keep missing work.
If you’re not careful, you could get fired.”

“So what? It’s a crummy job.
I’m better than that.”

“Then find a better
job,” I said, “and dump the low-lifes you’ve been hanging with.”

Things didn’t get better.
A month later, she was arrested—caught buying a gram of cocaine from an undercover officer.

“What happened?” I asked when I arrived at the jail to make her bail, hoping she’d tell me it was all a mistake.

“It was a trap. The guy tried to entice me and I played dumb. You know I’m not into that shit.”

I believed her because I wanted to.
I found a lawyer who got her off, but it took a big hit to our bank account. We’d been saving for that little house in Jersey. That incident set us back a year.

The next time, Shelley OD’d. She’d been out late—way too late—with the girls when I got the call.
I worked in the insurance business, and yet I had to fight to get her into rehab. If I thought I’d had a shitty life growing up, I soon learned that there are degrees of shit, and those last few months with Shelley were the lowest of the low. She’d gone from a pretty, fun-loving woman with an infectious grin to a grasping, hollow-eyed junkie, and nothing I did seemed to help pull her out of that god-awful pit.

And then she got arrested a second time.
This time, our savings took an even bigger hit, and I got her off once again with her promising me it would never happen again. And it didn’t—because a month later she left me—stripping our savings account and taking everything we had of any value. I came home from work to find a note and our apartment looking like it had been vandalized. I stood there for a terrible few minutes surveying the devastation before I had the presence of mind to call a locksmith, and then paid through the nose to get the locks changed that very night. No way was I going to let that happen again.

But that wasn’t the end of it. I took a few days off from work, determined to find her.
By then, she’d been fired from her job, but she’d convinced a former co-worker that I was an abusive husband. I had never hurt her—but at that moment I wanted to.

Our last conversation wasn’t pleasant. Shelley stood behind her friend’s apartment door, the chain intact, hurling abuse at me until the neighbors threatened to call the cops.

That was it. We were done.

And yet … I didn’t file for separation.
Some part of me hoped Shelley would come to her senses, straighten up, and come back to me.

And then on a stormy evening in March, the cops arrived at my door.

“Jeffrey Resnick?”

“Yeah,” I answered warily.

“Married to Shelley Malone Resnick?”

“Oh, Christ, now what’s she gone and done?” I asked, fearing what I thought might be the worst, but it was even more terrible.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your wife is dead.”

I don’t know how long I stood there in my open doorway, just staring at them with my mouth agape.

“Murdered?” I asked in disbelief.

“Execution style. Were you aware your wife was into drugs?”

“Yes,” I admitted, heartsick. Shelley—dead? At that moment, I could only think of her as she’d been when we’d first met: pretty and vivacious.

“She was killed in a bathroom in Grand Central about two in the morning two days ago.”

What the hell was she doing at Grand Central at that time?

Stupid.
I knew perfectly well what she’d been doing. She’d sleep with anyone for a hit of cocaine. Had she stooped to prostitution before the end? Had a client or a pimp killed her?

“Sir, do you have a gun?”

My heart sank. They thought I might have killed her. I swallowed. “Yeah. A thirty-eight caliber Smith & Wesson.”

They nodded.
“Can we see it?”

Thanks to the locked gun safe bolted to the floor, it was one of the few things Shelley hadn’t taken.

I nodded.
“Sure.”

I led them to the bedroom closet, took out my key ring, and opened the safe. “I haven’t fired it in over a year.”

Again they nodded. I took the gun out and they checked it over before handing it back. “Your wife was killed with a Glock.”

I wasn’t off the suspect list, but I was one step closer to proving my innocence.

“Where is she? The morgue?”

They nodded.
Couldn’t they just answer yes or no once in a while? “We identified her by fingerprints. We’d be glad to take you there for corroboration.”

Did I want to see the woman I’d once loved with the top of her skull missing?

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get my jacket.”

***

In the old days, a friend or relative would have to actually walk into the morgue, watch as an attendant opened a stainless steel drawer and haul out the sheet-draped body for identification. I was glad, therefore, to be shown to a room where a TV monitor had been set up. The video showed my once-beloved Shelley lying supine, a sheet draped around her head to cover the damage. The camera panned her face from different angles. The lighting emphasized how gaunt she’d become, and there seemed to be bruises around her jaw. The view changed to show the little tattoo of an airplane on her left ankle, and then the video looped back to show her face.

The tattoo proved the body was really Shelley.
She’d told me she’d gotten it in Mexico on a dare when she’d led a tour of Americans to Cancun and had a little too much to drink.

The video cycled back to the beginning for a third time and I watched the camera pan over her face once again.
Profile from the left; full face; profile from the right. No blood. No brain matter. Her complexion was pale and waxy—not at all as I known her, loved her.

“That’s her,” I finally managed, tears welling in my eyes. I had to clear my throat before I could speak again.
“What happens next?”

“The medical examiner’s office will let you know when the body has been released so you can claim it.
If you want to,” the officer added.

What would a burial cost? Shelley had told me she didn’t want to be cremated, but with no assets, could I even afford to bury her?

“Thank you,” I said.

“Let us know when you’re ready to leave and we’ll have a patrol car take you home.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

They left me alone.

I watched that video loop over and over again for more than an hour—hating the content, but reluctant to tear my eyes away. How I loved and then hated Shelley. How I was glad to be rid of her and yet would forever miss her and the life we’d planned that would never come to be. I studied the contours of the face that I already knew so well—had loved—and wondered if I’d ever love another woman so intensely.

At last
, I left that dark sterile room and rode home in the back of a patrol car, feeling numb.

Shelley was dead, and a part of my life was over, too.

It was March and I’d lost yet another woman I’d loved with all my heart.

#

The priest had gone back with the hearse. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d get back to the city. Take the train. Yeah. There was a station about a mile down the road. I could walk it in about fifteen minutes ... probably less. And then I’d go home. To that empty apartment. Back to my empty life.

I stared at the mound of dirt.
After the brief ceremony, the cemetery’s workmen moved right in, filling in the hole, covering the casket’s shiny finish.

I hadn’t brought any flowers.
Maybe I wouldn’t even spring for a monument. That way no one would know she was here. Hell, no one knew but me, the undertaker, the priest and the cemetery’s records office knew that Michelle Kathleen Malone Resnick lay beneath the ground.