While I Was Gone (37 page)

I was waiting anyway. Waiting for the police to call me back. I didn’t Icnow what form the next step would take. I thought maybe Eli would call me. I’d stand at the mailbox in the gently falling snow and scan all the return addresses quickly, looking for… what? The district attorney’s office? The Cambridge police? Homicide? It occurred to me Eli might write me. Or Larry. Maybe they’d be in touch with Larry. Or Sara. Mighm’t they be called in for questioning? Or Dana’s sisters.

What I most often imagined was the need for more questions to be answered. Was this what a grand jury might do? I didn’t know. Or I imagined Eli in a rage, threatening me, coming at me somehow. Or, less likely, Eli sorrowful—perhaps even redeeming himself to me by recognizing that what I’d done was right. I ran over the various alternatives in my mind, the dramas that might come next. I held my breath when the phone rang, I sorted hurriedly through the mail each day. It seemed to me I’d imagined every possible thing.

I hadn’t thought of Jean. I hadn’t thought of Sadie.

I STEPPED INTO THE KITCHEN AND HEARD DANIEL’s VOICE AT its chilliest, “And I don’t think you’re being fair.” It stopped me. So categorical. So cold. Whom would Daniel ever speak to in this way?

set down the heavy box I was carrying—a new humidifier, the old one was corroded with our mineral-rich well water—and started to take my hat and coat off, listening carefully. Some unpleasantness at the church, is what I thought.

“I admit it seems nuts. But some things are nuts.

Period…. Yes.

Yes, I do…. Yes, I support her completely.”

I hung my coat up.

“Well, then, we’re both nuts.”

I stood still, listening.

“Sadie, no one is doing this to you Y(, nened to be in the line of fire, but…”

you haprv And suddenly I understood. There’s been some fallout, some thirdhand effect, on Sadie. Mla Jean, of course. I stepped into the kitchen.

Clearly Daniel had been waiting for me since he’d heard the back door open. He pointed to the phone, then raised his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows questioningly. I nodded and walked over to him.

“Sadie? ” he said.

“Sade? Mom’s here now. You want to talk to her? ” He covered the phone with his hand for a second.

“Repercussions,” he said.

f’ !j I nodded and took the receiver from him.

She began before I even said hello, “Mom, what are you doing?”

Her voice was almost a shriek.

“Slow down, sweetie, and tell me what—” “This stuff with Jean’s husband. I mean, you’re accusing him of murder?”

“He accused himself, Sadie. He told me he did it.”

“Mom. ” The tone was that of an adult to a child with an overactive imagination.

“How did you hear about it?” I asked.

“Because you’ve ruined my life, that’s how! Because the whole special project I was going to do with Jean is down the toilet, that’s how.”

I kept my voice calm.

“Because she’s mad at me.”

“Because she’s not sure she can separate this stuff in her head, so she told me she’d rather not do it. Or I had to find someone else.

But I don’t zuant anyone else.” She paused for breath. She lowered her voice.

“This was two credits, Mom. This was my whole semester. It was going to be part of my senior thesis eventually.”

“I’m sorry, Sadie.”

There was a silence.

“Can’t you stop it? Can’t you undo it?” A little girl’s voice.

“I don’t see how.”

“God, Mom. By going to the police. By saying you made a mistake.”

“But I didn’t make a mistake.”

“What. Mr. Mayhew is a murderer.”

“He told me so. Yes.”

“Mom, he’s a famous scientist. He’s a… he’s a doctor. I mean, why would he say that to you?” She stopped for a few seconds. Then, “Did you have a lot to drink?”

“That’s an insulting question, Sadie.”

“God, this is so crazy!”

“I know. But it’s real.”

“But how come you never… I mean, it’s like you invented this whole thing. I mean, I never even knew you had a friend who was murdered… ?”

“But I did,” I said.

“She was… she was my friend.”

“Yeah, well. Thanks for sharing.”

“I am sorry, Sadie. For everything.”

I listened to her breathe for a moment. Then she said, “Mom, look.

Isn’t it possible you misunderstood him? Isn’t it possible you ..

I

mean, had you had a lot to drink?”

“No. No and no.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

“So you believe it, you honestly believe that Mr. Mayhew killed this… this friend.”

“I do. And I’m really sorry—sorrier than I can say—that it has had any effect on you.”

We were both silent. She spoke first.

“I am just so blown away by all this. It’s like I can’t… So you won’t… you won’t change your mind.”

“I cant, Sadie.”

“Well, there goes my academic career.” Her voice was flip, brittle, but I could hear she was near tears.

“Sadie, if I could do this any differently, I would.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks a lot, Mom,” she said. There was a muff fled clunk, and the line went dead.

I was frozen for a moment, holding on to the phone. Then I hung it up. I turned around. Daniel and I stood looking at each other, over the clutter of mail, of grocery bags of food on the kitchen table, over the dancing, joyous dogs, who had finally assembled to welcome me home.

“Well,” I said, trying to sound normal. My throat hurt.

“I guess the police have been in touch with Eli.”

C HAPTE R

Dear Sadie, I know you are still angry with me, and though that’s painful for me, I can understand it. I am only sorry that you are in any way touched or affected by all this business, which is so unrelated to you, finally. It is unfair. It seems unfair to me too. What Ifind myself hoping is that at some point your deep admiration for Jean will, not diminish, but be tempered enough by time and experience to allow you to consider the possibility that despite her understandable shock and anger at what’s happened, she is simply wrong about Eli Maybew.

That he did in fact say to me what I reported to the police he said to me. That he did in fact do the thing he said he did, which was, in moment of rage and passion and deep hurt, to kill someone dear to me, someone whose very sweetness and gaiety and affection were, I think, a kind of torment to him.

This is a long story, Sadie, and perhaps one I should have told you.

It’s never been clear to me encactly what you girls need to know of my past, or your father’s past, what stories are the right ones to tell and what are better kept private. Certainly everyone, maybe even you too, Sadie, has done things that seem shameful. I probably didn’t teUyou many of those about myself unless they were funny somehow. Why?

Maybe because I didn t want to condone my own behavior by claiming l l it. Maybe because I wanted to think of certain things I d done as being not really who I am. Also because I was ashamed, I suppose. Because I wanted your love and admiration.

This story, the story of Eli and my lovely friend, was different. It seemed to me too frightening, too awful in its message—that we are never safe, that evil can descend on us at any time—to inflict on you or Nora or Cass. (At least this is the message I’d always taken from it.) I wanted to spare you such news about life.

Now there’s a different message, I guess, something having to do with our inability really to know or guess at the secret depths of another person. Perhaps that is what you are feeling about me now, too, since you are so certain of my perversity, or my craziness, in doing what I’m doing. Who the hell is she?

But that is what I’ve felt about Eli too. I wouldn’t have believed, either, that he did what I now say he did. But he told me he did, and he explained it very, very well, Sadie, in ways I couldn’t have invented. Itfit with everything I knew about what happened—and I was the one who found my friend, seconds after she died. Her name was Dana, and she was beautiful and lighthearted and loving. You remind me a little of her.

I suppose I am trying to defend myself to you. But I’m also asking for your forgiveness, in ways that are very complicated indeed, I do bear some responsibility for this chain of events. I hope that you will at some point feel again that I’m a trustworthy part of your life.

That you do know me.

Lovingly, Mom I walked to the post office to mail this. Somehow I couldn’t bear to leave it in our box with the flag up. It seemed too private. It seemed too awful that I should have had to write it at all. But Sadie hadn’t called in more than a week, in spite of three messages I’d left for her and at least one call I’d overheard Daniel making, trying to intervene on my behalf.

I waited up for Daniel that night. I wanted to tell him about the letter. I wanted to talk, if that was possible. He was late getting home.

At ten-thirty I decided to walk the dogs. It had been so long since either of us had taken them out that they were hard to roust.

Finally, though, we were gathered by the door, they were leaping on me, mauling me in their excitement, and we stepped ouside into the dark.

I hadn’t realized how cold it was. The temperature must have been near zero, the dry stillness was almost frightening. The sky was vast, and the stars were somehow more distant than usual. My breath froze and pinched in my nostrils. By the time we were halfway around the common, even the big dogs were ready to turn back. Shorty, lagging behind me, would stop and stand painfully for a moment, with one paw, then another, lifted, trying to offer it some relief from contact with the biting-cold ground. I carried him the last half block or so home. He was shuddering in my arms.

In the house, I undressed quickly and got ready for bed.

When I came back into our room, all the dogs were curled up on the coverlet, waiting for me. I had to shove and bounce them around to make room for myself.

It was just after eleven. This was very late for Daniel.

Perhaps he’d gone out for a drink with someone after the meeting.

What meeting?

I couldn’t remember what he’d said when he went out, what he was supposed to be doing tonight. It occurred to me that if Daniel were different person I might worry about that, about whether he’d found someone sympathe ic to listen to the sad tale of his wife’s betrayal, of the ugliness she’d brought into their lives. Shorty had begun to snore gently.

I turned the light off. In the dark, the silence of the house and the empty village ouside seemed to change. I heard, suddenly, the ticks, the creaks of the old wood shifting in the cold. I heard the onrush of a car passing, the slow rise of the wind. One of the dogs whimpered in his sleep, licked his chops. His feet twitched as he chased something killed it, in a happy dream. I was recalling that other world in which it had thrilled me, in a way, the surprise of thinking that I could be a person who would betray Daniel. Now I wondered if Daniel could surprise himself, could surprise me, by being such a person too. Would he let himself do such a thing? I didn’t think so. And then I wondered, Is it by will, then, that we are who we are? Do we decide, do we make ourselves, after a certain point in life?

I tried to call up the moment when I had decided I could be such a person. It seemed to me I hadn’t quite got there, not really. That I was still just playing with the idea of it when the ground shifted under me.

But perhaps to play with such an idea was already to be a certain kind of person.

I must have dozed off. A growl on the bed woke me, and then I, too, heard Daniel moving carefully through the house. The old pine boards croaked, the hinges on the bathroom door squealed faintly.

looked over at the glowing digital clock. Eleven fifty-two. The dogs shifted eagerly, but none of them got up. Too lazily comfortable where they were. Too warm.

I was going to say something to Daniel when he came in, but I heard his whisper first, speaking gently to each dog, bending over them, luring them off the bed one by one. I lay still, silent. I was loving him too much, the solicitous, elegant quiet in everything he did, peeling his clothes off in slow motion, laboriously hanging his shirt on a hook. The hissing intake of his breath when the coins in his pocket jingled faintly as he stepped out of his pants. If I spoke, he would become the other Daniel, the Daniel who had not yet forgiven me, who would be polite, stiff, only carefully responsive. In the dark, I lay still and watched the shape of my Daniel, the real Daniel, sitting slowly, carefully adding his weight to the bed. I imagined that as tenderness toward me. He whispered to one of the dogs, somewhere on the floor.

I was loving him, I was loving his voice. I was taking from him what he couldn’t give to me. I felt his slow slide into the flannel sheets, the little shudder of pleasure at the warmth of the pockets the dogs had made. He smelled of toothpaste, of wine. He shifted toward me, perhaps to take heat from my side of the bed. I lay utterly still, happy-joyful—with what I was stealing.

THE POLICE CALLED ME AT WORK THE NEXT DAY. DETECTIVE

Ryan. Could I come in? No urgency, he just wanted to go over things, see where we were now. I explained that my next day off was Monday.

That was fine, he said.

“Like I said, this is just to catch you up, more or less.” We fixed a time for Monday morning and hung up.

It preyed on me through that day, a Wednesday. It was my surgery day, though there wasn’t that much to do. We had a teeth cleaning on an ancient Lab—anesthesia was the issue there, not cutting—two spays, and the removal of an extra toe that seemed to be bothering mixed-breed puppy. Mary Ellen was assisting me. One of the spays, cat, was pregnant, and we lifted out the tiny, beautifully intricate embryos and carefully set them aside. Mary Ellen wanted to take them into her son’s day care center to show to the kids.

While we were working, I was thinking about it, I heard Detective Ryan’s loud voice. I pictured the homicide department’s cheerful office, the hum of machines, of people working and talking.

“You can only go one step at a time,” Daniel had said to me over breakfast that morning when I told him about the letter to Sadie.