Three Women (24 page)

“While I'm working and in court, this is what you do, you bastards.” She raised the gun in both hands and shot. Elena threw herself in front of Jim. Marta fired shot after shot. Elena waited for the bullets to tear through her flesh. She had been meant to die in the desert and she had failed then. Now it would be complete. At least she would save her lover.

Jim was shouting over and over, “It didn't mean anything, baby, it didn't mean anything. It was just this once. It was an accident!”

As what he was saying sank in, she drew away from him and sat on the bed, stunned. She felt very cold. Everything seemed too brightly lit in the room and outlined in light. She saw that Marta was aiming way over both their heads. Marta had drilled a neat line of bullet holes in the wall high over the bed. Elena almost smiled, but her face was frozen. Her heart was frozen. She did not think it was beating. “Jim, you don't have to pretend. You don't have to lie about us,” she said, but he paid no attention. “Don't be scared. She isn't shooting at us.” He would not even look at her. It was as if she had not spoken.

The gun fell and Marta ran from the room, sobbing wildly, crying out something Elena could not understand. Jim was talking now very fast, “It doesn't matter, it doesn't mean anything!” he was shouting and chasing after Marta, leaving Elena on the bed. She got up and grabbed her clothes from the floor, dressing quickly. Jim in his underwear was pleading with Marta in the living room. Carrying her shoes, Elena headed for the kitchen and the back stairs.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if he says it doesn't. Maybe nothing at all mattered in her life. She wished Marta had shot both of them dead. Marta said she was pregnant, she was sure Marta had said that, which meant Jim had been lying and lying to her. She put her hand on the kitchen door and paused. In her head his words repeated themselves over and over again. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything. So it didn't.

Beverly

After Elena made them lunch, her granddaughter went upstairs, and Beverly, back to bed. Waking from her postlunch nap, Beverly rolled over to her computer and started composing an E-mail to the
New York Times
, complaining about their coverage of an airline strike. She was
trying to think of a word that was escaping her, the way they so often did—like trying to grab a minnow in a bucket—when she heard loud noises from upstairs. Screaming. More screaming. Then the sharp report of shots.

Beverly had heard shots often enough in her life to recognize them. Heard them in the South. Heard them in the streets of her neighborhood. Guns meant trouble. Trouble and blood and somebody hurt. Then she heard even more loud yelling. She called out, “Elena! Elena?”

Beverly struggled out of her chair into her walker and began her slow progress toward the back stairs. Finally she arrived at the bottom and called out again. No one answered, although she could hear someone crying upstairs. It must be Elena. She had to get to her. Marta had a gun upstairs. It was a stupid thing to have around. She hated firearms. Little kids were always getting killed playing with them. They should be banned. She could understand some clerk in a 7-Eleven keeping one under the counter, but in somebody's house? She had fought with Suzanne many times about owning a gun, but Suzanne at least kept hers under lock and key. Nobody else ever saw or handled it, stored in a small safe in her office.

Beverly began laboring up the stairs. It was hard. In fact, it was almost impossible. The walker just wouldn't balance on the narrow back stairs. She was dragging herself up by the railing, pulling the walker after her, thumping. She had to get upstairs to see what had happened. Oh, she could imagine terrible things. She heard yelling but no one answered her calling for Elena.

She had climbed halfway up when she lost her balance. The walker skidded on the edge of the narrow step. She grabbed at the railing and held herself by her good left hand. The walker clattered down. She was lying on the steps holding on by one hand. Her arm ached. She tried to form words more clearly, but she could only shriek in incoherent blurts of sound. Slowly her grip began to slide off the railing. She tried to get her knee up onto the step, but she couldn't. Her leg wasn't strong enough.

She heard steps coming, the door opening. “Help…me,” she called. Elena appeared at the head of the steps. She was crying and her sundress was on inside out. Beverly tried to speak but she was slipping down the steps and then thumping, banging, step after step hitting her brutally as
she went down. Elena came after her, flinging herself down the stairs, grabbing for her. “Grandma! Hold on! I'm coming!”

Their hands touched. Elena tried to grip her but could not get a purchase on her hand. Beverly was hurled from step to step to the bottom where she lay in a heap. Elena ran down and knelt over her. “Grandma. Are you okay?” Elena was gently examining her. “Grandma, where does it hurt?”

Now Marta appeared at the top of the stairs. Her face was swollen and wet. She spoke in a strange numb voice, “What happened?” She came slowly down the steps and leaned over Beverly, touching her carefully. She did not look at Elena. Jim was standing above in his underwear, wringing his hands and calling to Marta, who ignored him.

Marta was gingerly exploring her leg. “Beverly, can you hear me? I think your leg is broken. We mustn't move you.” Gently Marta ran her hands over Beverly's back. “I don't think you have a spinal injury, but I'm not a doctor. Listen, don't be afraid, Beverly. I'll call an ambulance.” She carefully disengaged herself, never touching Elena or looking at her, and ran back upstairs.

“Grandma, Grandma. Don't die on me! Grandma! I couldn't stand it. Please! Please don't die. It's all my fault. Please!”

She wanted to speak but she couldn't. Elena was cradling her. Beverly could not form words. Her head was roaring. Her back hurt horribly, her legs hurt. One of them was twisted under her. It must be broken, as Marta said. But the worst pain was the one in her head. She recognized it. She remembered it. It was lightning in the brain, the nightmare come again. She was having another stroke.

Suzanne

Suzanne canceled her litigation class. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to dictate the note Jaime taped to her office door canceling her hours till further notice. Then he got her car to take her to the hospital, for she did not trust herself to drive. Her mouth kept twisting into a weird crooked smile, a nervous grimace of appeasement, the way a frightened dog will wag his tail. Beverly had been doing so well. She had been walking daily, no matter how awkwardly. She had been involved with acquaintances and causes on the Internet. There had been no warning signs. Beverly seemed to have been steadily improving, pleasing her therapists with her progress. Suzanne had just talked to the agency about cutting back Sylvia to four mornings, since Beverly thought she could manage by herself in the afternoons.

Suzanne went up to the front desk of the hospital, to ask for her mother. Beverly was in surgery. In addition to the stroke, she had broken bones. Suzanne was directed to a lounge, where she found Elena huddled in a chair. “What happened?”

Elena looked at her momentarily, but her eyes immediately slipped away from Suzanne's gaze. “It's all my fault.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

Elena was silent for several minutes, while Suzanne reminded herself of her vows of patience. Finally Elena in a flat almost inaudible voice told her the story. Halfway through she began to weep uncontrollably. Suzanne was startled, almost frightened. Elena never cried. Elena had stopped crying when she was twelve, and Suzanne had not seen her in tears since. Elena seemed reduced to childhood by her tears, convulsed, out of control. She spat the story out in gulps. Tentatively, Suzanne embraced her, held her as her shoulders shook.

“Marta started screaming, I was screaming, Jim was going on and on
to her how she should forgive him and I meant nothing, nothing to him.”

“He was scared. And guilty.”

“She said she was pregnant. Then she took her gun out of the gym bag on the dresser—”

“Did she shoot Jim?”

“She didn't shoot anyone. She just drilled a row of holes over our heads to scare us.” Elena sighed. “She had every right to shoot us, and I wish she had!”

“I'm devoutly glad she didn't.” Marta was volatile, but under it, she was a rock. Besides, it was hard for a defense attorney to ignore the consequences of murder. This was a disaster. “It was my fault too. I should have gone to her with my suspicions.” She should have confronted Elena more forcefully. She should have backed Jim into a corner. He had always been a little afraid of her. She could have used that on him.

“It's not your fault, Mother. You tried to tell me. You said I'd get hurt. I deserve to get hurt, but Grandma didn't.” Quickly, brokenly Elena told her what had happened. “I've killed her. And I love her so much!”

“She's not dead.” Suzanne hugged her daughter. “She's not dead and you're alive. I couldn't lose you, and Marta knows that.” Marta had been there for her for years and years, before she had married Sam, when Rachel was little, after Sam and she broke up. Marta had helped raise Rachel, certainly. She had been more than an aunt. If she had been raised by her Aunt Karla as much as by Beverly, so Rachel at least had been raised partly by Marta, and Marta had always helped with Elena, when Elena would permit any help.

Suzanne sighed. “It is a mess, that's for sure. Now I'm going to try to find someone I can ask about Beverly. She can't still be in the operating room.”

She found a nurse at last who had an answer. “Mrs. Blume's in the recovery room. I can't tell you anything else. You'll have to speak to the doctor, and he's operating. No, you can't see her yet. Come back in an hour. She should be out of recovery by then.”

At least Beverly had survived the operation. Suzanne had never felt more helpless. She was not accustomed to total uselessness. She ought
to tell Rachel. Not till there was something more definite to report. It was four-thirty here, so it was the middle of the night in Israel. They had been communicating exclusively through E-mail. No reason to worry Rachel until the situation was clear. Clear. What a bland word. Like a shard of glass.

Marta had left a message to call her. She must, although she felt guilty before Marta. Had Marta miscarried? That was the critical question. Instead of going back into the lounge immediately, she sat down in the corridor, in a plastic chair holding her head in her hands as the tears began to seep out.

Why wasn't Jim the one lying in the recovery room? That would have been justice. He was seventeen years older than her daughter, which should have given him some discretion, some pass at wisdom. Suzanne found a quiet corner and called Marta on her cell phone. “Are you all right? I mean as all right as you can be….”

“I didn't lose the baby, if that's what you mean.”

“That's what I mean.”

“I can't talk long now. Jim and I are having a huge fight. I just want him to get out and leave me alone.”

“I'll be there as soon as I can. Beverly's out of the operating room, but she hasn't regained consciousness.”

“When you get here, come upstairs—but don't bring Elena, please. I can't deal with her yet.”

Is our friendship over? That was what Suzanne most wanted to ask, but how could she bother Marta at a time like this? She would have to move out. She would have to take Elena and move out. She felt desolated. She felt painfully alone. She began to bargain with fate: all right, just let my mother live, let Beverly survive and I will gladly move to any miserable place and not complain, I promise, I promise! And I won't complain about expenses, never again. I will make her happy somehow, I promise. I will make it better!

At five-thirty, Beverly was out of recovery and moved to the intensive care unit. She was not yet conscious. Suzanne was allowed to see her briefly, to speak to her inert body with the tubes threaded through her arm and nose. Beverly looked tiny in the bed, among the apparatus that kept her alive. Her skin was blue-gray. Then Suzanne had to leave, and Elena was allowed to go into the room briefly.

When the nurse told them that they must leave, they went downstairs. The doctor would see them in an hour or so. They were silent, both exhausted with emotion. They decided to go to the cafeteria and sat, both with a cup of bitter coffee on the table, facing each other. Elena would not meet her gaze but pressed her face into her hands.

“I must sound callous, but I half wish she had plugged Jim. I know”—she started to say “you think you love him” and realized how patronizing that sounded—“I know you love him—”

“I did! I can't now. I made him up. He was just a middle-aged married man fucking an employee who was shoved in his face. It was my fault—”

“Don't keep saying that, Elena. He's supposed to know what he's doing. He's a therapist, for pity's sake.”

“Mama, you don't even know how to swear, do you?” Elena briefly, bleakly laughed. “Grandma's the last person I ever wanted to hurt. All I can hear in my head is Marta shouting that she's pregnant, and Jim being a complete worm and telling her I didn't mean a thing to him—”

“He was scared, Elena. He didn't necessarily mean what he said.”

“But he did. Long after she threw down the gun and ran out of the room, all he could think of was denying what happened, trying to make it go away! He didn't think for one second of how I felt.”

“You have to understand, Elena, he's really dependent on Marta—emotionally, economically, socially, every way. He wasn't about to leave her. I tried to tell you that. I've known them for so many years, I know how their marriage works.”

“I thought their marriage was over. I didn't think they cared about each other.”

“It's hard to judge other people's marriages from the outside—”

“Mother, don't be so rational. I've fucked everything up! Everything!” Elena was clutching herself by the shoulders. “Grandma looks terrible. I've been such a fool, but why does she have to pay for it?”

“It's my fault for agreeing that you take that job. I knew he had a history with young women. I just didn't think he'd come after you.”

“Maybe I went after him, Mother. You pretended I was an innocent when I was fifteen. Don't do it now. How could you have prevented me from taking the job? How could you have prevented me from taking him?”

“So we'll all have to share responsibility for what's happened.” Suzanne stood. She must go back upstairs to wait for the doctor, who was supposed to make an appearance to talk with them. “The consequences will be with us for a while.”