Woman in the Fifth

‘You’re a liar,’ she said with a laugh. ‘And you’re continuing to evade my question …’

‘What question?’

‘The question I posed to you last time.’

‘Which was?’

‘How badly did your wife damage you?’

‘Badly,’ I finally said. ‘But ultimately it was me who damaged myself.’

‘You only say that because you believe her rhetoric … because, all of your life, you’ve been told you’re a bad boy.’

‘Stop sounding like a shrink.’

‘You have nothing to be guilty about.’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said, turning away.

‘Did you kill anyone?’ she asked.

‘Don’t try to soft-pedal this …’

‘It’s a legitimate question: Did you kill someone?’

‘Of course I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘Then what are you guilty about? Betraying your wife perhaps?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Or was it really all about getting found out?’ Silence. I turned away.

‘We all want to get found out,’ she said. ‘It’s sadly human … and sadly true. Just as we all can’t really cope with the guilt that—’

‘Do you want to know about the sort of guilt I contend with, day in, day out? Well, listen to this …’

That’s when I told her about the hit-and-run accident involving the desk clerk at the Select.

‘It hardly sounds like an accident,’ Margit said when I finished recounting this story.

‘That’s what’s nagging me, the fact that—’

‘Now don’t tell me that, because you thought ill of the bastard, the wrath of the gods came down upon him?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘But he got what was coming to him. Somebody out there didn’t like the way he was behaving toward others, and decided to settle the score. And even though you had no bearing whatsoever on this person’s decision to run him down, you still feel guilt?’

‘I wanted something bad to happen to him …’

‘And that puts you at fault?’

‘I have a fucked-up conscience.’

‘Clearly,’ she said, topping up my glass with champagne. ‘But I’m certain this self-loathing didn’t simply arrive one day, out of nowhere. Did your mother—?’

‘Hey, I really don’t feel like talking about it …’

‘Because she so disapproved of you?’

‘Yeah, that — and because she was a deeply unhappy woman who told me repeatedly that I was the root cause of her problems.’

‘Were you?’

‘According to her, sure. I screwed things up completely for her …’

‘How, exactly?’

‘Before I showed up in her life, she was this big-deal journalist …’

‘How “big deal”?’

‘She was a court reporter …’

‘A mere reporter?’

‘For the Cleveland Plain Dealer.’

‘Is that an important newspaper?’

‘It is … if you live in Cleveland, Ohio.’

‘So she was a self-important hack, covering trials …’

‘Something like that. I arrived by accident. She was forty, a hard-bitten professional, someone who never married and lived for her work. But — and this I got from her later — she was starting to “feel her age” … wondering if she’d end up alone in her early sixties; a dried-up spinster, living in some small apartment, on the way out at the paper, no one caring if she lived or died …’

‘There was no husband in her life?’

‘Not until she met Tom Ricks. Ex-army guy, built up a successful insurance business in the Cleveland area, divorced after the war, no kids, met my mom when she was covering an accident case in which he was testifying. She was lonely, he was lonely, they started seeing each other. It was “pretty agreeable at first”, she later told me, especially as they both liked to drink …’

‘And then she got pregnant?’

‘Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. It was all a big accident, she “agonized” over what to do, whether to keep it …’

‘She told you all this?’

‘Yeah — when I was around thirteen and we’d just had a fight about my refusal to do something stupid, like take the garbage out. “You know the biggest mistake of my life was not having you scraped out of my womb when I still had the chance.”’

‘Charming,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

‘Well, she was pretty drunk at the time. Anyway, she found herself up the spout, Dad convinced her to keep it and promised her he wouldn’t stop her working or anything. But then the pregnancy turned out to be a nightmare. She ended up confined in a hospital bed for around three months. As this was 1963, when maternity leave wasn’t exactly a progressive concept, the paper let her go. It was the biggest blow of her life. All the time I was growing up, she always referred to the Plain Dealer as “my paper” … talking about it in such mournful tones you’d think it was a man who jilted her.’

‘So you were vilified for being the person who ruined her life. Is she still alive?’

I shook my head. ‘The cigarettes got my father first — he died in ‘87. Mom went in ‘95 — cigarettes and booze. Suicide on the installment plan. I’m pretty damn sure my mom started the slow process of killing herself the day the Plain Dealer let her go. And … could we drop this subject, please?’

‘But it’s so illuminating — and it so explains why you feel such guilt about nothing.’

‘Guilt has its own weird trajectory.’

‘Which is why you weirdly blame yourself for that desk clerk getting run over?’

‘I don’t blame myself … I just wish I hadn’t wished him ill.’

‘Why spill tears over a shit? Anyway, don’t you think that those who damage others deserve to be damaged themselves?’ ‘Only if you buy into an Old Testament view of things.’

‘Or if you do truly believe in retribution.’

‘But you don’t believe in … ?’

‘Retribution? Of course I do. It’s a rather delicious concept, don’t you think?’

She was smiling at me.

‘You’re joking, right?’ I asked.

‘Not really, no,’ she said, then glanced at the watch on my wrist.

‘Don’t tell me our “allotted time slot” is over?’ I said.

‘Just about.’

‘Great,’ I said, then added, ‘And yeah, I know that sounds petulant, but …’

‘See you in three days, Harry.’

‘Same time?’

She stroked my hair.

‘You’re learning,’ she said.

Learning what? I wondered.