None of this Ever Really Happened (21 page)

"Uh-huh," she said. I watched her plod heavily down
the aisle.

I went out the front door, down the steps, around the corner
and across the one-way street, put the gun under my seat,
got a single "ruff" out of Art, who was asleep, nothing out of
Cooper, and drove away without passing the church again.
I was on the highway in six minutes. Adrenaline made me
keen. I let out a howl and a laugh that surprised myself and
startled the dogs. God, I hadn't had so much fun in I didn't
know how long, perhaps ever, and I told myself, "It's only a
game. It's still a game." But, of course, I now owned an illegal
firearm. If a cop stopped me, I would tell him just what I'd
told Alice—"I'm a writer"—and driving back into the city, I
thought about the story I'd already started to write.

Now I want to tell you about the day Lydia broke up with me.
I've already written three versions of the story, searching, I
suppose, for one in which I don't look so bad, but I can't find
it. Sometimes you just look bad and there's no way around it.

It happened the next Saturday morning; it was almost as
if I were the first item on her list of Saturday chores, but that's
probably unfair. She did it in typical Lydia fashion: quickly,
cleanly, efficiently, effectively. I would have made a mess of it,
but then I didn't do it at all, did I? I guess I knew all along that if
I just did nothing, Lydia would eventually do something. After
all, I'd already put a deposit down on an apartment for October
first and arranged to stay with John Thompson until then.

She was the first person all summer to ring my doorbell,
and I had to search for the buzzer to let her in. She took one
look around the apartment, at the big cluttered table, the lists
on the walls, my bike, the furniture pushed back, and said,
"Jesus Christ, does Carolyn know about this?"

"Don't worry; it'll all be shipshape when she gets back."

"I need to tell you something," she said still standing in
the middle of the room. "I've taken a job in Milwaukee." That's
how she told me that she was breaking up with me. "And I've
rented a place that doesn't take pets. You're going to have to
keep Art."

"Milwaukee? Is that what you were doing up there that
day all dressed up?"

"Not really. It was a headhunter deal that just came out
of the blue, and I did it just to see what my options were, but
they ended up offering me the creative director's position,
and I've taken it. So if you want, you can have the apartment.
My movers are coming on Monday."

I waited. We just stood there looking at each other. "Is
that it?" I said.

"Look, Pete, all summer I've been thinking about how
much I love you, and I do. I know it took me a long time to
admit it, and maybe that's the problem, but I do. Anyway, all
summer I've been thinking about the wrong thing. I should
have been thinking about how much
you
love
me,
and the
answer is 'not enough.'"

"Lydia—"

She raised her hand. "Stop. It doesn't matter. All that matters
now is what
I
think, and I don't think you love me. Not
in the way I love you. Not in the way I need to be loved. Pete,
I've lost my belief in you. You know me. I'm an extremist; I
can't live on maybe and sometimes. I do not want to be lying
in bed alone late at night when I'm fifty-five wondering what
your latest doubt is. I can't live like that."

"Lydia—"

"No," she said. "The thing is broken irreparably. It can't be
fixed; it won't heal. I know that I can never trust you again,
not with my heart. I tried all summer to get you to love me,
and now the summer is over. Now I'm going to leave, and I'm
going to ask you to let me. All your attempts to be a nice guy
have only made things worse, so please let me go." She stood
up and looked at me. She went out the door. I watched her go
down the stairs. Then I went to the window and watched her
cross the street.

I had no intention of killing the doctor. None at all. It was
research or a game or a great indulgence, a return to the summers
of my youth. Now I was pretending again, pretending to
be a detective or a mystery novelist or the right hand of God.
And I was having an enormous amount of fun. Still, I know
that the only difference between a passenger and a skydiver is
a single step, and the closer I got to the open hatch, the more
exciting and pregnant my fantasy became. And I must admit
that somewhere in me I knew that the ultimate thrill would
be to discover that it wasn't a fantasy at all.

That's why I took the bullet that night. I had never intended
to, but at the last minute I knew that it just wouldn't
be the same with an empty pistol. I wanted verisimilitude.
I wanted to feel that adrenaline rush again. I wanted to have
the doctor in my sights and to make the decision not to pull
the trigger. And I thought that I had everything planned right
down to the last second and the final detail, but as it turned
out, I was in no way prepared for what happened.

I practically idled up Sheridan Road refusing to even
think about my destination, a man in search of a lake breeze
on a warm autumn evening listening to a ball game on the radio.
The Cubs were playing out the string and the announcers
were working very hard—too hard—to not sound bored
silly, distracted, and tired of it all.

I parked at the far end of the lot with a clear view of the
doctor's black BMW. I opened the
Trib
over the steering
wheel, section by section, and slowly the lot began to empty.
When the spot to the left of the doctor's car became available,
I looked at it a long time and then idled forward into it. This
upped the stakes. Now I not only had means and motive, I
had opportunity. I had proximity. In a few minutes he would
be practically close enough to touch, certainly close enough
to kill. My heart beat in my ears.

But it wasn't a few minutes. It was forty-five minutes after
his last appointment had ended. It was getting dark and
there were just three cars parked in the lot now, all side by
side, with the doctor's in the middle. As each faded ray of
light made my enterprise more conceivable, more possible, I
imagined the scene. I envisioned it. I picked the heavy, cool
gun up, held it, raised it to the open passenger window of
my car. Too close, I thought. He would be right there. How
could I shoot something—someone—so close? Blood would
splatter. It might splatter on me. He might fall against my car
and smear blood on it. I saw myself driving back down the
lakeshore with a big smear of human blood on my passenger
door, specks of blood on my glasses. What if he fell under
my car, fell and rolled under my wheels? Drive over him?
Get out and pull him away by the feet? I had almost come
to the conclusion that I couldn't shoot him, that I couldn't
shoot anything at such horrifyingly, intimately close range.
But of course that would be the exact time to do it; when you
thought you couldn't possibly, when you were absolutely sure
you wouldn't. Then blam! And "intimate" was the word. It
would be a very intimate act; I had not realized that. It would
be as intimate as kissing him, as intimate—more intimate—
than sex. . . .

I heard voices. He wasn't alone. "Shit," I said, relieved.
I saw two figures cross my rearview mirror: a man and a
woman. Quickly the doctor was at the door of his car and
across my car I could see his torso. I held my breath. I had
never been this close to him. Then the woman was there, too.
She touched his elbow and pressed against him.

"Don't" he said. "We can't." Then she disappeared, and
just as quickly, he had closed his door and started his engine
and backed away like a drawn curtain, and there was
the woman unlocking her car door and getting in.

"Oh fuck," I said. It was Tanya Kim. She heard me. She
looked toward me. She backed out and was gone into the
night.

Lydia left me a rug, a dresser, a coatrack, a boom box, a coffee
table, an easy chair, most of the dishes, flatware, pots
and pans, and an old-but-good maple dining-room set with
ladder-back chairs that had once belonged to my parents.
I instantly transferred my operation to this table and taped
my lists around it, although by the middle of October, the
lists were mostly new. I bought a bed, borrowed a couple of
lamps, and brought home one of the couches students had
donated to my classroom. For the time being, I didn't buy a
television. I like TV, but I didn't have any time for it that fall;
I was too busy. Unfortunately, what I was busy with was very
seldom schoolwork, so in early November, I went to see John
Thompson and told him that I needed some time off. I told
him I wanted to take a leave of absence. He listened to my
plans.

"How much time do you want?" he asked.

"One year, two semesters."

"If you do this, will you come all the way back and be the
teacher you used to be?"

"Yes. I will or I'll resign."

He looked at me, thinking. "Tell you what I want you to
do," he said. "Go home and write a letter of application to the
sabbatical committee. Tell them you want to do some writing;
you've got the credentials for that. You're way past the
deadline, but who knows. Can't hurt to try, and you might get
half your salary."

I invited Tanya Kim to dinner at my apartment three weeks
before Christmas. I was straight with her on the phone; I told
her I had things to tell her about Lisa and Decarre. I did not
tell her that I had also invited Decarre's other two victims,
Dorothy Murrell and Jeanette Landrow, nor at the last minute,
Carolyn O'Connor, thinking that the others might feel
more comfortable with another woman there. Carolyn could
put anyone at her ease.

I decided to make a casserole, a favorite of mine with hot
Italian sausage, artichoke hearts, rice, green peas, and Parmesan
cheese. More of a man's dish, I suppose, but mighty
good on a chilly, winter evening, and I'd serve it with a big
mesclun salad full of nuts, berries and cherry tomatoes and
good, crusty bread. I had tiny lemon tarts as a sweet, and
three cheeses with fruit for afterwards.

About mid-afternoon it began to snow, and I thought for
sure someone would use that as an excuse, someone wouldn't
show, but they all did. Carolyn was the first to arrive. She
brought some red-pepper hummus and her pictures of Europe,
but I was too busy and nervous to look at them. "Hey,"
she said when she saw my Trek. "That's a serious bike."

"Pretty, isn't it?"

"I thought you were the guy who said you could find
everything you needed in life at a garage sale. I don't think
you got that at a garage sale."

"No, I sold out. I even got a helmet and a spandex outfit."

Jeanette came next. She carried with her a file that she
held against her chest even after she was also holding a glass
of red wine. She leaned against the kitchen counter, and we
spoke of Christmas plans as I prepared dinner. Then came
Dorothy. She was nervous and laughed a lot. Jeanette and
Dorothy shyly, curiously, looked at each other when they had
a chance, when the other was saying something. When the
chatter died for a moment, Jeanette said, "I guess it's kind of
an intervention, isn't it?"

Tanya came last. I poured her a glass of wine and carried
a plate of crackers and hummus out to the living room, then
went back to the kitchen and turned up the music. I realized
then that I could feel my heart beating, and I raised my eyebrows
at Carolyn and said, "We'll see." I half-expected Tanya
to be gone when we went into the living room, or maybe all
of them to be gone, but they weren't. Instead they were all
sitting on the couch with Tanya in the middle. The two other
women were doing the talking and mostly to each other, but
Tanya was listening. She was listening and watching. The talk
went on at dinner, and at times it gushed out, as if in relief.
Everyone relaxed. Carolyn and I just listened, but we were
not excluded. It was as if all of us were a part of a secret club,
and I guess we were.

Tanya didn't say much, and she didn't show much, but
she did drink a lot of wine and in the end both Carolyn and
Dorothy offered to drop her off, but she said no, she wasn't
driving; she wanted to walk.

At the door I said to Carolyn, "I never looked at the
pictures."

"We could now quickly."

"I don't want to do it quickly, and I'm too pooped anyway.
Let's have dinner next week, and I'll see them then."

"Okay, sure," she said. "Call me."

"Thanks for tonight," I said.

At midnight, as I was finishing the dishes, I thought to
myself that neither Tanya nor I had acknowledged that it was
the anniversary of Lisa Kim's death, and I wondered if Tanya
even realized it.

On Monday I got a letter with Mexican postage on it. It was
addressed to both Lydia and me, and that made me feel for
just a second as if I'd gone over a rise in a fast car. I hadn't
bothered to tell Charlie, and I imagined that Lydia hadn't,
either.

Charlie's Christmas letters were famous between Lydia
and me. They consisted of his usual picturesque prose decorated
with winking lights and sparkling bulbs. I made a cup
of tea to enjoy with it, then sat down at my big table and
opened it.

Dear Pete and Lydia,

I'm very sorry to have to inform you that Charlie
died of a heart attack in October after he had gone
back to school. He had a slight attack teaching and
was immediately taken to the hospital. I talked to
him by phone that evening, and we made plans for
my coming to drive him home in a couple of days.
That night, however, he suffered another attack that
was massive and fatal. He was in intensive care and
surrounded by doctors, but they could not save him.

Since then I've been busy with his affairs. Two of
his children were down for a memorial service.
He was cremated and buried here at the ranch.