The Dearly Departed (27 page)

“We should,” said Joey.

“I don't know if I can capture adequately the terror that seized me as he tugged on the doorknob like an insane intruder, shaking it until the whole house rattled. And then he was aiming projectiles at our bedroom window. I called you because I was terrified for my own safety.” She sat down unhappily. “But I guess I have no choice.”

Joey pulled out the chair opposite her. “May I?”

She paused. “Unless you want to wait in the car so you can guard Emil.”

Joey pressed his lips together to suppress a smile, but Mrs. Ouimet noticed. “This isn't a joke! I knew this would happen—that I wouldn't be taken seriously. What does a man have to do these days before a wife is taken seriously? Kill her? Gun her down outside the courthouse after she's secured a restraining order?”

“I take your charges
very
seriously,” said Joey. “I take every domestic disturbance seriously. I have to. If I didn't, I shouldn't be a police officer.”

The front doorbell rang, several sharp peals.

“Don't answer that,” said Mrs. Ouimet.

“It's probably my backup,” Joey lied. “Please excuse me.”

The unrelenting thumb on the bell belonged to Dr. Ouimet, who was near dancing in his discomfort. He strode past Joey, took the stairs two at a time, and was soon heard urinating forcefully and acoustically into a toilet.

Mrs. Ouimet rushed to Joey's side, frowning, one foot on the bottom step. “Emil!” she barked.

The toilet flushed.

Joey said, “Clearly it was an emergency.”

“Well, that's just great. Now we have a situation: He's gained access, he's done his business, and he's ready to renew his hate campaign against me, police protection or no police protection.”

Joey said, “I'm not playing judge and jury here, Mrs. O, but I don't think that lobbing a rock at a screen to get someone's attention is an arrestable offense, especially when it's the perpetrator's own house, he's in distress, and he's locked out. What would you have done?”

Mrs. Ouimet hissed, “He's dangerous. Something snapped—that's obvious. Either you take him away or I call whoever it is that you report to.”

“He isn't under arrest—”

“So arrest him! You can release him tomorrow, can't you? On his own recognizance?”

They heard the sound of a toilet seat being slammed, water running in the sink, a face and neck being vigorously soaped.

“Emil!” his wife called sharply. She climbed up one step. “I'm not sleeping in the same house with you. Come down this instant.”

When the rush of water stopped and Emil still didn't answer, Joey said, “I'll go up. You stay here.”

He found the doctor in a pink bedroom, an unzipped garment bag already on the bed.

“You can tell my wife that she will not have to sleep in the same house with me. You can tell her that I'm packing and I'll be out of here as fast as I can.” He opened the top bureau drawer and began inspecting identical pairs of dark socks.

Joey asked quietly, “Do you want me to tell her it was all a misunderstanding? That you had to take a leak badly, and that it won't happen again?”

“There's no talking to her,” said the doctor. “And I have no desire to make things right. I returned because my lawyer said I shouldn't walk away from my house and its contents, but I think that's been taken out of my hands.” He crossed to the closet and came back with a stiff, impeccably ironed white dress shirt.

“Do you have someplace to go?” asked Joey. “Friends? Your sons?”

“Both out of state,” he said. “And my friends all happen to be married to friends of hers.” He had been folding and refolding the white shirt defiantly, but stopped. “At least now, anyway.”

“Now?”

“I had a confidante, but she died.”

“I'm sorry,” said Joey.

“So either I stand my legal ground, which I'm not inclined to do, or I go to that motel. If you'd be so kind as to drive me.”

“You don't want to drive yourself?”

“My jailer has my keys and I doubt whether she'll give them up.”

Joey said, “I think I can liberate your keys.”

“And I'll need my wallet.”

“She's got that, too?”

“It's not on the night table. I'm sure she appropriated it.” He stopped, murmured, “Cuff links,” and went back to the dresser.

Christine's voice rose from the first floor. “What's taking so long?”

“I'm packing the bare minimum of what I need until I can return to the house from which I'm being evicted involuntarily.”

“Which suitcase are you taking? Not my leather carry-on?” she asked.

Emil looked more triumphant than aggrieved. “Did you hear that?” he asked Joey. “Which suitcase am I taking? This is my life. This is what I come home to every night.”

“Emil?” she yelled. “I asked you a question.”

“Go to hell!” he shouted back.

Joey walked to the top of the stairs. “Mrs. Ouimet? I need your husband's car keys. And do you happen to know where he put his wallet?”

She had ascended as far as the landing and was waving her report. “I'm finished. I assume it's confidential and that you won't be sharing this with my attacker.”

“Actually,” said Joey, “his lawyer will get a copy of it. Be sure it's signed and dated.”

Emil appeared at his side, the garment bag in one hand, his dress shoes in the other. “Did she give you back my keys and wallet?” he asked Joey. They both looked down at Christine.

“Lawyer?” she repeated.

“What did you think happens when a wife calls 911 and the police takes the innocent party away in the paddy wagon?” asked her husband.

“Ma'am?” Joey prompted. “Dr. Ouimet's keys?”

“His car keys are on the same ring as the house key,” she said. “So you can see the problem inherent in that.”

“I don't know how you live with yourself,” said Emil.

“If he needs to come back for more of his things, I'll accompany him,” Joey promised. “Or one of my deputies will.”

“You don't have any deputies,” said Christine.

“Then hire a bodyguard,” her husband yelled. “Jesus Christ! Give the man my billfold and let me out of here.”

“Don't think I'm not calling your sons,” she said. “Don't think they won't jump into their cars and race up here the minute they hear what you did.”

“You do that,” he said. “Then ask them which parent has always been the reasonable one, the loving one, the real mother in this family!”

“If I have one piece of advice—” Joey began. But Christine was storming back toward the kitchen. She returned in seconds and threw both keys and wallet up the stairs, hitting Joey in the chest.

“Assaulting a police officer!” barked Dr. Ouimet.

“I'm just here to keep the peace,” said Joey. “Both of you. Let's go. Mrs. Ouimet—please get out of our way.”

“Take my written statement,” she said. “Here. Run it on the front page of the
Bulletin.
I don't care who sees it, because I meant every word.”

“And so did I!” said her husband. “Shrew!”

To inconvenience him further, Christine had parked her car behind his and removed her keys from his ring.

Joey said, “I can go back inside and ask her to move it, or I can drop you off at the motel.”

“Let's just go,” he said.

The King's Nite office was dark, and there was only one car parked anywhere on the premises. “I'm losing my nerve,” said the doctor.

“I can't let you go home. Even if I looked the other way, I doubt you're going to get your foot in the door.”

“I meant about registering here. It's so . . . public.”

“It's clean, if nothing else,” said Joey.

“It isn't that. It's the harpy who owns this place. What do you think she'll make of a married man checking into one of her units on a Saturday night without his wife?”

“You mean she'll think you're fooling around?” Joey frowned. “Wouldn't she know that any guy cheating on his wife wouldn't check into the motel in his own backyard?”

“Not Florence Peacock! She always thinks the worst.”

Joey reached under his vest and shirt to scratch the increasingly itchy edges of his bruises. “And do you care what she thinks? A mean old lady without the sense to illuminate her place of business on a Saturday?”

Dr. Ouimet didn't answer.

“Would you like to stay at my place?” Joey asked after a few moments.

“Do you mean your mother's house?”

“I meant at the station,” said Joey. “I've got a setup in the back—a cot, a bureau, a sink, a toilet, cable TV, a microwave.”

“Where would you stay?”

“At home. No problem. I go back and forth, depending on my schedule and whether I feel like company.”

“And it wouldn't violate any police rule?”

“I make the rules,” said Joey.

Dr. Ouimet turned to glance out the back window. “I could take my meals very conveniently at The Dot,” he murmured.

“Well, it's not a long-term solution. I was thinking more of one night.”

“What do I do if your phone rings?”

“Ignore it. Everything's being forwarded to Claremont until Monday morning.”

“Then how did Christine reach you?”

“She called my house. My mother answered. And despite my having just said, ‘I'm not here,' she handed me the phone.”

“Sometimes there's just no hiding,” said Dr. Ouimet. “Of course, Christine was always one step ahead of me. If the phone rang when I wasn't on call, I'd say, ‘If it's so-and-so I'll take it.' But Christine always got there first. It made me cringe, actually: ‘Doctor isn't home . . . no, I don't know what time he'll return. Dr. Lee is covering for him tonight.' “ He shook his head sadly. “Heartless, really. Sometimes it was a simple matter of making one call to the pharmacy to renew a prescription.” He signaled with a flutter of his hand that Joey had prevailed and should now proceed in the direction of the police accommodations.

Joey drove around the block to prolong the hundred-yard trip. “Ordinarily,” he began, “it wouldn't be any of my business, but maybe it is now, since I've got you in my cruiser and your wife's incident report in my pocket. But you two might consider marriage counseling. I don't say that to the ones who are swinging baseball bats at each other, but it seems if you've been married this long, maybe you can get past this and remember what it was that got you this far.”

“Cowardice,” said Dr. Ouimet. He turned to face Joey. “Would you believe that a grown man could be afraid of his wife? Could feel no love for years and years, for as long as he remembers, yet feels powerless to change his situation?”

“I believe anything. The stuff I see . . .”

“And I wasn't just afraid of Christine. I worried about what my patients would say and how it would affect the boys—”

“In this day and age? You really worry that patients would care about a doctor's private life?”

“I'm not claiming to be logical or modern. I'm saying I was too worried about appearances to save my own life.”

“Things could still work out, Doc. Tonight you'll have privacy and a chance to think. And—don't laugh—maybe a chance to miss your wife.”

“Never. It's over. I said it to myself, and then I said it aloud. ‘I hate you, Christine.' I used those very words. I don't
want
things to work out.”

“I'm no authority on marriage—” Joey began.

“I'd like to rest now,” said Dr. Ouimet. “Complete solitude and peace and no phone calls are things I rarely experience.” His gaze left Joey's face and migrated to the sign above the doorway:
POLICE.

“I'll come by in the morning,” Joey said. “So why don't you stick around until I get there. We can go across the street for blueberry pancakes.”

“Too high in carbs,” said the doctor. “But I can choose something else.” He smiled. “I love The Dot. So did Margaret. She usually ordered the LumberJill.” His smile faded and he looked away.

Joey said, “It'll be okay. Someone's gonna get to the bottom of this.”

“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

“Psychologically speaking: why it took thirty-some-odd years to have a fight with your wife. Why, in the face of a lockout and a full bladder, you didn't piss on her doormat.”

“Joey!” scolded Dr. Ouimet.

“What?”

After a long pause, he answered, “I'm the only doormat here.”

 

A
fter Fletcher dropped Sunny off at her mother's house, after he'd interpreted her pointed good-night stare to mean Be extra nice for the rest of the evening, he invited Emily Ann back for a drink. “I'm not looking forward to being there alone after last night,” he added dolefully.

“Why? What happened last night?”

“I must've slept for a total of two hours. And no wonder: all the images of the funeral swirling around in my head. The dirt hitting the coffin.
Plop.
And sleeping in my father's bed, surrounded by his belongings. I could actually smell his aftershave on the pillow.”

Emily Ann asked if he'd changed the sheets.

“Believe me, I will. First thing. I kept telling myself, Dad left here alive and well. He had no idea he wouldn't be coming back. There were clothes in the dryer and dirty dishes in his sink.” Or Billy the juvenile delinquent's dirty dishes, he thought.

“I could change the linens for you if that would help,” said Emily Ann.

One day earlier he would have retorted, When did
you
learn how to make a bed, Missy Em? But now he said, “Thank you. Thanks a lot.”