The Late, Lamented Molly Marx (37 page)

“Saturday after next I’m taking her to MoMA,” Brie said.

Exactly what every kid her age needs
, Lucy thinks.
She’ll take one look at the Van Goghs and have nightmares for weeks. Enough with this small talk
, she decides. “So, what do you hear from that detective? Anything new?” Hicks hasn’t returned her call from a few days ago.

“He’s evaluating the suicide theory,” Brie says. “Given the letter …”

“The letter? What a crock,” Lucy says. “I don’t know when my sister wrote that sop, but I’m positive it wasn’t to announce that she was going to off herself.”

“Can you prove this?” What Lucy saw as mawkish, Brie found sweet. Then again, she is now the devoted surrogate mother to a leaping canine who sleeps at the foot of her bed. Every day, maternal muscles she never knew she had begin to twitch.

“Of course I can’t
prove
it,” Lucy says. The look on her face might be defiant—or defensive. “It’s a gut feeling.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I agree.”

“Really?” Brie’s stock has spiked on Lucy’s Nasdaq. She is enormously pleased. “And how recently did you speak to the good detective?”
The guy who should have unraveled this mystery by now. How could any other case vie for his precious time?

“Last night,” Brie says as the food arrives.

“Really?” She’s already on the warpath about Hicks being more responsive to a mere friend than to flesh and blood. “What does New York’s finest have to say?”

Nothing that Brie wants to repeat. She takes a small bite of watercress, holding her knife and fork aloft as if she were raised by the Von Somebodies of Vienna, not outside of Portland, born to Sunshine and Herb, stringy, Birkenstock-wearing potters. Brie’s table manners annoy Lucy. “I feel like there’s something you’re keeping from me,” Lucy says, using the voice that always works with her students.
Jackson, get out of the block corner this minute—it’s snack time! Emily! Look at me. Now
.

Brie tilts her face and tries to stay composed, but she breaks out in a small grin. “Lucy,” she whispers after a moment, “the most amazing thing happened last night. Hicks and I slept together.”

Lucy doesn’t want for friends—fellow teachers, running buddies, college classmates, neighbors of every stripe, dogs, cats, hamsters, old people at the center where she volunteers, friends’ toddlers. But she has no friends like Brie, who bill almost a thousand dollars an hour and take up with a spoiled South American heiress who speaks lisping Castilian Spanish.

“What about Isabella?” she blurts out.
Isn’t one lover enough?

“Isadora?” Brie says. “It didn’t work out. We want different things.”

I’ll say
, Lucy thinks.
Can’t this woman pick a gender and stick with it? It’s fucking unfair. I haven’t had a date in eight months, and it’s not as if I didn’t notice Hicks. I have eyes
.

Brie feels the rumble of Lucy’s rage and sees that she’ll have to float this conversation. “Detective Hicks”—she hasn’t yet been able to call him Hiawatha or even Hi—“is different from every other man I’ve been with, in a remarkably good way.” The kissing was longer and sweeter, until she wanted to moan in boldface type, and he caressed her as if she were close to holy, which Brie has no desire to be in this man’s presence and plans to make clear. When she looks in Hicks’ eyes, every filthy-fabulous thought she’s ever imagined suddenly seems like lyrics to a song her body knew by heart.

Brie looks up from her salad at Lucy, thinking,
Give me something here. Act like a girl! Your sister would have been all over me
. Were I there, I’d say,
How did it happen? Were you both drunk? Who said what first? His best move? I’ve never been with a black man—is it better? Way better? Okay, forgive me for asking, but is he, I don’t know how to put this, huge? Does he make you laugh? Listen to you? Are you in love? And, for extra credit, do you think Hicks is?

Brie is right. I would be rattling on like one of those regrettable squawking parrots you order on QVC after midnight. I want to reach out and hug Brie. I’ve been rooting for her and Hicks, the kind of standup guy every woman needs if she decides to give men another shot. I predict that she’s finally found her equal. And yes, I’m not being entirely unselfish—maybe the relationship will be the kick in the butt Hicks needs to solve my case.

“So you and the detective,” Lucy finally says. “I’m curious. How did it happen?”
What do other women do that I don’t?
This is what my sister wants to know. Lucy feels as if every female but her has received annotated,
illustrated directions on how to attract and keep a man. Were such instructions the secret prize in their first Tampax box?

“It just happened,” Brie answers. Like it always does. One minute you’re having an ordinary conversation, complaining about presidential campaigns that last as long as getting a master’s; the next, all the atoms around you have realigned. Suddenly there’s no one else in the bowling alley or on the plane or at the hardware store. You notice that his eyes are undressing you, and you wonder what it would feel like if your hands were under his shirt.

Brie senses an openness she’s never noticed before in Lucy’s face and for a few seconds feels as if it’s me sitting across from her. There’s a connection. Brie wonders,
Could I make this woman my friend? I could use a friend
. There’s a canyon in her heart that I used to fill. She turns over the question as she takes her last bite of salad.

“It’s going to happen for you, Lucy,” Brie says. “I know it.” The minute the words tumble out she’s sure my sister will take them as condescending. She’s forded a river and found a grizzly bear on the other bank.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Lucy grunts.

“Do you have time for coffee?” Brie asks.

“No can do,” Lucy answers, and waves to the server. “There’s a lot I haven’t gone through yet, and I don’t have much time before Annabel gets back.”

“Could you use some help?” Brie asks. “I could cancel my afternoon appointments.”

“I’ve got it covered.” Lucy’s face has closed down. You can practically hear the grinding grate.

Brie takes out her wallet. “You’re my guest.”

“Absolutely not,” Lucy says as she lays down five crisp tens, gets up, and slips into her jacket. “This one’s on me. But I have a favor to ask.”

“Shoot,” Brie says.

“Your boyfriend. Tell him to find my sister’s killer.”

The next day—after dragging seven bags of Molly-abilia to the thrift shop—my sister finally gets down to my drawers. Yesterday, knowing Aunt Lucy was visiting, Annabel refused to go to ballet. Delfina reluctantly
watches Oprah in her room, popping out every ten minutes to check on my sister and daughter bonding over Nemo. Lucy gives Annabel her bath, reads her a story, and just as our daughter nods off, Barry arrives.

“You’re good to take care of all this for me,” he says as he pours them each a glass of amaretto. “How’s it going?”

“By tomorrow the dig will be complete,” Lucy says.

“Any rare finds?” Barry pokes the fire, and the flames salute him.

“Not really, unless you count a green reptile belt—I assume that means I’ve reached the Paleozoic era, or at least the eighties.” Lucy has decided to keep my Swatch, which matches the one she lost years ago.

She glances at Barry, who seems to be studying the fire. She knows she owes him. “About that crazy thing I did at Annabel’s school—I was wacko. I wrote you, but I need to say it out loud. I’m so sorry. But it was done out of love, misguided but—”

“Forget it,” he says as he refills his glass. “I have.”
Almost
.

He certainly doesn’t want to talk about it. All day he’s been marinating in estrogen. This afternoon was nonstop consultations, culminating with a fifteen-year-old who fought with her mother over the rhinoplasty Madame Pixie Nose was insisting on so the two of them would look related. Then Stephanie lambasted him for forgetting some dinner date she swore they’d made for tonight. Even his nurse eyed him as if he were Dr. Mengele. Barry wishes he could mainline the liqueur. He offers Lucy another pour, but she declines. He looks hard at his sister-in-law, whose straight-arrow posture accentuates her bountiful chest.

Lucy feels his stare. “Time to go,” she says abruptly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” But she won’t. She’s booked an afternoon flight, and she’s not in the mood for a weepy goodbye.

The following morning Lucy faces my highboy, whose drawers are carefully lined with pale purple paper that long ago lost its lilac scent. If you were a Victorian woman who owned a chemise, two pair of drawers, a corset, five ribbons, and a bonnet, this narrow chest would have been practical. In my case it’s jammed with black tights, bras, thongs, socks, nightgowns, camisoles, and random sex toys. I loved the highboy’s walnut sheen, its deeply carved flowers, and especially its wavy
mirror, which allowed me the luxury of merely estimating my hair on off days.

Lucy starts at the top—bras—and works her way down. She sorts quickly to avoid feeling anything, since wandering through another woman’s lingerie is like being in the same bed with her when she’s having sex. It takes her less than an hour to get to the bottom drawer, where she spots the flannel nightgown she sent me when I was pregnant. Whenever I wore it, I was Maria in
The Sound of Music
. No whiskers-on-kittens gal herself, Lucy nonetheless gently fingers the dainty eyelet around its yoke. This, she suddenly decides, she will save for herself.

She shakes out the nightgown and holds it up. From its voluminous folds, a black-and-white photograph falls on the rug, facedown.

One day Luke set up a tripod and we posed, again and again. This shot was the one I saved. My eyes are closed and I’m laughing. Not an especially flattering pose. What I loved about the photo was the way Luke is looking at me with a pour of pure honeyed tenderness. Only I might know how blue those eyes are, but any casual observer can see they’re filled with love. On the back of the photograph, I’ve written
November
. Lucy can tell from my haircut that the captured moment happened within the last few years.

She feels chilled. Her breath comes in short bursts. Lucy stares at the picture and with her index finger touches my face as if she is stroking my cheek. “Jesus, Molly,” she whispers. “How dumb could a woman be? If you loved this guy, whoever this lug nut is, why didn’t you leave your husband? And if it’s Barry you love, why would you keep this red flag in your drawer?”

She does have a point.

Lucy tries to read the face of the man in the picture.
This guy loves you
, She thinks.
And you probably felt the same way
.

Lucy wipes away a tear. She quickly slips the picture into her pocket, ties together the last bag, and walks out of the room.

icks’ office is nothing special—twitchy fluorescents, a wooden floor that’s never flirted with polyurethane, and a metal desk so dented you wonder if it’s been kicked. It has. He sits in an oak swivel chair that, to the irritation of Detective Gonzalez, who shares the cubicle, he mindlessly spins—and squeaks—as he studies his bulletin board. On it is what I like to think of as a growing shrine to me, with photos of Barry, Lucy, Kitty, my parents, Brie, Isadora, and Barry’s nurses (including the fawning witch who always sniveled, “Dr. Barry will have to return your call”). I also see a cattle call of interchangeable women who I assume are patients. One is Stephanie; others I recognize from the funeral and shiva, the rest are high-maintenance strangers. The centerpiece of this sacred masterpiece is a map Hicks has drawn—rather well—of the path from my home to my next-to-final resting place. X marks the spot where my life ended, the spot that’s got Hicks thinking out loud.

“Did someone off you or did you do it to yourself? Tell me, pretty lady.”

I wish I could. So does Gonzalez. She’s sick of Hicks tossing questions into the office air, which smells of day-old coffee, mustard, and
air freshener working overtime. “Hi, you talkin’ to me?” she mutters. Georgia Gonzalez may demonstrate the subtlety of a hockey player, but she has instincts Hicks trusts as much as—maybe more than—his own.

“Sorry there, G.G. I didn’t mean to interrupt your solving a Very Important Crime,” he says. “Put any drug lords in the slammer today?”

“You don’t honestly think that woman killed herself, do you?” They chew over my case every day. Gonzalez read my letter, which almost made her cry—she’s a mother, after all—and announced to Hicks immediately that it was too prim to be a suicide note.

It’s taken a few days for him to come to the same conclusion. “Nah, I don’t think it was a DIY,” he admits. “That’d make my life too easy, and it’s also too damn hard to kill yourself by running your bike off the road. Unless she screwed up when she was heading for the river to drown. Nope, today I’m leaning back toward damn nasty accident.”

He conjures it. Klutz, cuts, guts. Mud, thud, blood.

“I keep thinking the mother-in-law hired 1–800-Kill-Her.” Gonzalez says this with a half smile that makes her tough, round face look almost pretty. “When I taught kindergarten I used to tell kids’ parents that learning to share’s a lifelong job. Wants her boy all to herself.”