simple call of notification, left on the answering machine: “Brian’s dead, Heloise. It’s a horrible accident and things are in a state. Is there any chance you could send Audrey over to stay with the kids tomorrow while I tend to arrangements?” It wasn’t really a question. Heloise sent Audrey over and ran the office that evening.
The second time, again on the machine. “I can’t believe how long the police were here on Saturday. It’s almost as if I were a suspect, when it’s so clear what happened. In fact, the autopsy came up with some strange findings, and it’s possible Brian had a ministroke just before he fell. At least, I think that’s what the medical examiner was trying to tell me. It’s all so much to take in.”
Third time, one A.M., voice slurry with drink. “He was vicious, Heloise.” Visshus, Hell-wheeze. “I’m not saying he beat me, but you don’t have to hit someone to terrorize them.” Tear-ize ’em.
Heloise picked up.
“Not on the phone, Meghan. If you need to talk, I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ll come by now. But please, do not call me here at home and talk about this.”
She starts to sob. “He was bad. He was, he was.”
“Tomorrow.”
But when tomorrow came and Heloise called Meghan to ask if she wanted to have lunch-which would mean a bit of shuffling in her schedule, because although the state legislature had ended, it was now cherry blossom time in Washington, and that was always a busy time for her, for reasons she had stopped trying to fathom-Meghan seemed surprised. “There’s so much to do,” she murmured absently. And then-“You weren’t here, were you?”
“Not on the phone, Meghan.”
“You’re a good big sister. Thank you.”
“I’m coming over, right now.”
They sat on Meghan’s deck, drinking coffee, two sisters enjoying each other’s company on a fine spring day.
“There was a pillow…”
“That he tripped on?”
“No, although I did throw Melissa’s Crocs down the stairs. She was always leaving them everywhere, so it’s utterly plausible that he tried to step over them, then fell.” Meghan caught Heloise’s look, the intent, the judgment, and added: “They really do think he had some kind of brain function episode. He might have died anyway.”
Uh-huh. “So what’s the thing about the pillow?”
“It was from our bed.”
“Why was it in the basement?”
“Exactly. Heloise, I think someone came in and…made sure to finish what I started. I thought it might be you.” A pause. “I hoped it was you.”
“As I told you that day, I charge money to sleep with men. I don’t kill them. I barely do bondage, and then only with customers with whom I have an established history.”
“Then someone-”
“Are you sure? Maybe Brian took the pillow down with him, planned to take a little nap or something.”
Heloise knew she was groping and Meghan’s withering look confirmed it.
“If it wasn’t you-”
A large woman came out on the deck of the house next door and gave Meghan a solemn wave. Heloise was impressed by how much compassion the woman seemed to put into that small gesture. She was less impressed by the approximation of sadness on Meghan’s face.
“I’m so sorry, Meghan. Let me know if I can do anything.”
“Thank you, Lillian, but you’ve already done so much. I might not have to cook for a month, given all the food you and the other moms have brought me.”
The phone rang, and they never finished that conversation. But Heloise remains uneasy with the calculus of it all: If Meghan is right, then someone knows Meghan’s secret. And Meghan knows Heloise’s secret, so she is drawn into this against her will. Her silence is a crime, and while Heloise’s business was built on violating several sections of the Maryland, D.C., and even Virginia penal codes, she is scrupulous about obeying other laws, keeping her nose clean. Here at Brian’s funeral, she still feels that grip of anxiety and fear, something she thought she left behind her when she got Val locked up for life.
IN ALL OF MEGHAN’S FANTASIES of Brian’s funeral-and, to be truthful, there were several over the years-she had never thought to imagine her own children. Here they are, shattered, and she wants to…shake them. I did this for you. Okay, perhaps not directly. But if her marriage was going to end, it had to be in a way that would shield her children from financial harm, and she has accomplished that much. She has not only Brian’s life insurance but a whopping policy from his former company, which is still in force because of his six-month severance package. She has not sorted out all the financial implications-she has decided it would be a little unseemly to be too focused on such details, just yet-but it’s her impression that she and the children can live extremely well, if she’s prudent. She wonders if Heloise is smart about investments. She can’t be planning to be a whore forever, right?
Meghan will marry again. The thought surprises her, for she knows that her next marriage will, in fact, have all the frustrations and irritations of her first. She has no illusions about the institution’s limits, about what it takes to live with another person. But-big but-she will be the widow of a beloved man. Her next husband will live in the shadow of dead Brian’s perfection and her eternal frailty. Her next husband will be permanently on notice, and she won’t have to say a thing. No pick up your socks, why are you late again, please rinse out the basin after you gargle and spit. She will simply look at her next husband-two years sounds about right-widen her eyes, and he will fold. It’s like rock, scissors, paper, and widow trumps everything.
And what about the pillow?
The thought is like some horrible corpse that cannot be buried, no matter how she tries to shove it down into its hole. It comes back to life again and again, often at the most inopportune times; Meghan needs enormous self-control not to have a physical reaction when it does. Here, at least, it’s not suspect when she begins shaking all over. There has to be a logical reason for the pillow, right? Not Heloise’s stupid supposition, but something similar. Still-why was it damp in the middle? Try as she might, she cannot remember if she locked the door on her way out, if she closed the garage behind her, and everyone in the neighborhood knows each other’s garage door codes anyway, and the garage door, the one that leads into the mudroom, is never locked. She really can’t remember anything about that afternoon. Temporary insanity is not a bullshit excuse in her case but the only plausible explanation. She went to Mark’s band practice, fury mounting in her until it was a fever, until the need to express it overwhelmed her. When the kids broke for lunch and Mark headed out with his bandmates, while parents were left with what the e-mailed schedule had called “lunch on your own,” it made perfect sense to drive home and confront Brian. But had she planned to push him, as she did? No, she couldn’t know that she would find him at just that moment, in that split second when he was lifting his right leg toward the final step, his posture unsteady because of the box. She saw an opportunity that might never have come again, and she took it.
Meghan has never confided this in anyone, but she has long been susceptible to something she thinks of as “anger dreams.” She slaps people, she screams at them, she flails and she wails, she beats her fists on their chests like a cartoon femme fatale, and they…laugh. No one feels her blows, no one registers the pitch of her screams. The fact is, it has taken enormous self-control never to raise a hand against her children. She wonders if killing Brian will, at least, exorcise this demon, if the anger has been appeased.
Or if it has simply whetted its appetite.
The pillow-the thought hits her again, and it’s like a nudge from a cattle prod this time, goosing her so hard that she lurches forward and one of her brothers has to steady her. She’s going to burn that fucking pillow when she gets home. But that would probably draw attention, earn her some sort of environmental citation from the county. She’ll just order new sheets instead. Porthault? No, better not. Too expensive, too impractical, especially given that Michael has been crawling in with her at night and-once, just once-wetting the bed. But something nice, something new, something in a purely feminine color and pattern to signal this new chapter in her life.
I LOVE YOU, THINKS A MAN in the back of the church. I love you, Meghan. I can’t wait to be with you. And he reaches for his wife’s hand.
