The Hellfire Club

hope they'll go away.'

'Nora, I had a fling. People all over the world do the same thing. But if I'm as emotionally stupid as you say I am, why are we having this conversation? I'm worried about you, I know that much. The only way I know to explain these things is what I just said. And if you're going off the rails, I don't know what to do with you.'

'But I didn't do it! You had this sneaky little affair, you betrayed me, and then you took your guilt and handed it over to me. If I'm crazy, your adultery is justified.'

'Okay,' he said. 'Maybe there is some other explanation. I hope there is, because I really can't say I like this one very much.'

'Oh, I love it,' she said. 'It shows so much trust and compassion.'

'So I guess we'll wait and see.'

'I can't stand this anymore,' Nora said, electric with rage. 'I can't stand you anymore. I'm furious with you for sleeping with Natalie, yet if you can show me that you might begin to understand who I am, I could probably get over that eventually, but this garbage is so much worse that I…' She ran out of words.

'If I'm wrong. I'll crawl over broken glass to apologize.'

'Gee, it makes me so happy to hear that,' she said.

He stood up and hurried from the room without looking at her.32

After the door to the family room had opened and closed, Nora unclenched her hands and tried to force her body to relax. The beginning of Manon Lescaut drifted up the stairs. He was going to hide, presumably until a squad of policemen showed up to drag her away in shackles to the lunatic asylum.

He had reduced her, dwindled her. In his version of their marriage, a criminally irrational wife tormented a caring, beleaguered husband. Nora was not too angry to admit that their sex life had been imperfect, and she knew that many marriages, perhaps even most, had repaired themselves after an unfaithfulness. She could acknowledge that her night terrors, apparently far worse than she had imagined, might have played a role in what Davey had done. She found herself ready to take on her share of guilt. What she could not forgive was that Davey had written her off.

As soon as the difference in their ages had become a difference - Davey had started to panic. A woman's forty-nine lay several crucial steps beyond a man's forty. Menopause, not nightmares and irrational behavior, was spooking Davey Chancel.

This was really bleak, and Nora pushed herself away from the table. She piled their dishes and gathered the silverware, resisting the impulse to hurl it all to the floor. She put the plates, cups, and silver into the dishwasher, the pans into the sink. If Davey left her, where would she go? Would he move into the Poplars while she stayed in this house? The idea of living alone on Crooked Mile Road made her feel almost dizzy with nausea.

She could remember what she had done every day since Natalie's disappearance. She had shopped, made the bed, cleaned the house, read, exercised. She had phoned agents on behalf of Blackbird Books. The afternoon of the day after Natalie's disappearance, when Davey would have had her tormenting the missing woman on the South Post Road, Nora had run into Arturo Landrigan's wife, Beth, in a Main Street cafe called Alice's Adventure. In spite of being married to a man so crass that he felt he should bathe in a golden tub ('Makes you feel like a great wine in a golden goblet, Arturo had confided), Beth Landrigan was an unpretentious, smart, sympathetic woman in her mid-fifties, one of the few women in Westerholm who seemed to offer Nora the promise of friendship, the chief obstacle to which was their husbands' mild mutual antipathy. Davey thought that Arturo Landrigan was a philistine, and Nora could imagine what Landrigan made of Davey. The two women had taker advantage of their chance meeting to share an unplanned hour at Alice's Adventure, and at least half of that time had been spent talking about Natalie Weil.

Maybe I really am crazy, she said to herself twenty minutes later as she drove her car aimlessly down Westerholm's tree-lined streets. Nora took another turn, went up a curving ramp, and found herself surrounded by many more cars than she had noticed before. Then she realized that she was driving down the Merritt Parkway in the direction of New York. Some part of her had decided to run away, and this part was taking the rest of her with it. They had covered about fifteen miles; New York was only twenty-five more away. In half an hour she could be ditching the car in a garage off the FDR Drive. She had a couple of hundred dollars in her bag and could get more from an automatic teller. She could check into a hotel under a false name, stay there for a couple of days, and see what happened. If you're going to change your life, Nora, she said to herself, all you have to do is keep driving.

So there were presently two Noras seated behind the wheel of her Volvo. One of them was going to continue down the Merritt Parkway, and the other was going to get off at the next exit and drive back to Westerholm. Both of these actions seemed equally possible. The first had a definite edge in appeal, and the second corresponded far more with her own idea of her character. But why should she be condemned always to follow her idea of what was right? And why should she automatically assume that turning back was the only right course of action? If what she wanted was to flee to New York, then New York was the right choice.

Nora decided not to decide: she would see what she did and add up the cost later. For a few minutes she sped down the parkway in a state of pleasantly suspended moral freedom. An exit sign appeared and slipped past, followed by the exit itself. The two separate Noras enjoyed their peaceful habitation of a single body. Ten minutes later another exit sign floated toward her, and she remained in the left-hand lane and thought, So now we know. Several seconds later, when the exit itself appeared before her, she flicked her turn indicator and nipped across just in time to get off the parkway.33

Nora pulled her Volvo into the empty garage. That she would not have to explain herself to Davey came as a relief mixed with curiosity about what he was doing. At first she thought that he must be visiting his parents, but as she moved to the back door, she realized that Holly Fenn might have called with news of Natalie. A vision of her husband murmuring endearments to Natalie Weil made her feel like getting back into the Volvo and lighting out for some distant place like Canada or New Mexico. Or home, her lost home, the Upper Peninsula. She had friends back in Traverse City, people who would put her up and protect her. The notion of protection automatically evoked the image of Dan Harwich, but this false comfort she pushed away. Dan Harwich was married to his second wife, and neither groom nor bride would be likely to welcome Nora Chancel into their handsome stone house on Longfellow Lane, Springfield, Massachusetts.

She glanced into the family room and continued on upstairs. She wondered if Davey had gone out to look for her. The most likely explanation for his absence was that he had been summoned to the police station, in which case he would have left a note. She went to the usual location of their notes to each other, the section of the kitchen counter next to the telephone, where a thick pad stood beside a jar of ballpoint pens. Written on the top sheet of the pad were the words 'mushrooms' and 'K-Y,' the beginning of a shopping list. Nora went to the second most likely place, the living room table, which held nothing except a stack of magazines. Then she returned to the kitchen to inspect the table and the rest of the counter, found nothing, and went finally to the fourth and least likely message drop, the bedroom, where she found only the morning's rumpled sheets and covers.

Feeling as if she should have become the irresponsible Nora who had disappeared into New York, she was moving toward the living room when the telephone; rang.

She lifted the receiver, hoping in spite of herself to hear Davey's voice. A woman said, 'I made up my mind, and I want you to do it.'

'You have the wrong number.'

'Don't be silly,' said the woman, whom Nora now recognized as her mother-in-law. 'I want to go ahead with it.'

'Is Davey there?'

'Nobody's here. I can shoot right over and give it to you. I've been alone with the thing so long, I think it's crucial that you read it. I won't be able to sit still until I hear from you.'

'You want to bring your book over here?' Nora asked.

'I want to get out and around,' Daisy said, misunderstanding Nora's emphasis. 'I haven't been out of this house in I don't know how long! I want to see the streets, I want to see everything! Ever since I made up my mind about this, I've been absolutely exalted.'

'You're sure,' Nora said.

'I bless you for offering, I bless you twice over. You can bring it back to me Tuesday or Wednesday, when the men are at work.'