A Cold Christmas (15 page)

There were several boxes of old clothes, some full of dead moths as well. And some with old pictures of people who might have modeled for
American Gothic.
She found a box with no dust. It held photo albums. She riffled through the top one and saw that some of the pictures had been removed. She hauled the box to the stairs, where Caley, huddled in a bulky sweater, sat on the bottom step. The post she was clutching seemed the only thing holding her up.

After poking around randomly without coming upon anything of any use, she went over to sit down beside Caley. “Where are the missing photos?” She showed her the pages with blank sections.

Caley took in a long breath, as though she were too weary to do it more than once. “I don't know. One of the kids? Bonnie maybe?”

“Would she remove them without permission?”

“She's a good kid,” Caley insisted as though Susan had implied otherwise. “So are the boys.” Caley looked up at the spiderwebs on the ceiling and pulled in another long shuddering breath. She closed her eyes.

“What were you saying?” she asked after a moment.

“The photo album. Where are the missing pictures?”

“I have no idea.” She appeared to be falling asleep.

“How long have they been gone?”

“No idea.”

“When did you last see them?”

Caley acted like she'd been drugged. Just when Susan thought she'd better shake her awake, Caley opened her eyes, blinked, and looked around as though trying to figure out where she was.

A long moment went by. “When I put it down here.”

“This is where you keep photo albums?”

A weary smile floated across Caley's face. “I'm not very good at putting things where they should go. I've never had a basement before. It seemed a wonderful storage place. Limitless. I could just keep putting stuff down here and still—” With a hand, Caley gestured all around. “Space, space, space everywhere. I didn't know everything would smell of mildew after it had been here ten minutes.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I don't think I've seen that particular album before.”

“You must have boxed it up,” Susan said.

“No. I may seem like a flake to you, but I'm not so far gone that I can't remember stuff. I didn't.”

“Who did?”

“Mat, probably. That would be like him. To do something without telling me. He's—” Caley caught herself.

“He's what?”

Caley shrugged. “Doesn't always tell me what he does.”

“How did you meet Mat?”

Caley sniffed and rubbed her nose with a shredded tissue. “I thought it was a fairy story come true. Bonnie doesn't come by it out of the air, you know. She gets it from me, all her stuff about fairy tales. I was working for Triple A in Seattle, saving money to go to college. My parents died when I was a baby and I lived with my grandmother. There was no money to send me to school. Then Mat James strolled into my life to get road maps. He was the handsomest, most gorgeous, most beautiful man with the most devastating blue eyes I had ever met.”

Caley coughed, a hacking cough. “He'd taken a leave of absence from his job in Kansas City and traveled across the country. In Seattle he bumped into me, and we got married two weeks later.”

“You got married after only knowing a man for two weeks?” Susan's voice held no judgment. She'd met a man and married him after two weeks. Four weeks later he was dead.

“Wait till you hear the really dumb part,” Caley said. “I went back to Kansas City with him and life started. It wasn't two years before he bumped into another gullible female who gushed over blue eyes and golden curls and dazzling charm. And that was only the beginning. I kept threatening to leave; he kept begging me to stay, promising never again. We had Adam and I threatened to leave. He begged and promised. We had Bonnie, same thing. Six years later, where am I? Ha. Hampstead, Kansas.”

“Why
are
you here?”

“Mat was transferred. He bought this house before I even saw it. We all moved in. I finally smartened up when he got into another affair. I threw him out. So far I'm standing firm. This place is so—” Caley put her face between her knees and mumbled to the floor as though reciting words she'd memorized. “It's a great house. A little run-down, is all. It needs a little paint and cleaning, but it's got six bedrooms and a basement for when it's bad outside, and this town is a great place to raise kids. Wait till you see it.” She lifted her head. “That's what he told me before I got here and saw this Addams Family house.”

“Mat was still with you then?”

“He moved us in and then I found out about the apartment in Kansas City. When I dropped by, a cute little brunette was with him. Don't say it takes me forever to learn something.” She rested her cheek against her knees, wilting to the point of dropping over. “Even when he threatened to take Zach away if I went ahead.”

“Take him away?”

“Zach's not mine. He was two when I married Mat.”

“Where's his mother?”

“She died when he was a baby. Overdose of sleeping pills.” Caley started up the stairs.

“Let me help you.”

“Thanks, but I think I can make it.”

In the living room, Adam was sitting cross-legged in front of the television and Bonnie was singing to a doll while she changed its clothes.

“Hey, you two,” Caley said. “Did either of you take snapshots out of this album?”

“I didn't,” Adam said without taking his eyes from the television screen.

“It was the evil prince,” Bonnie said.

“Why would he do that?” Caley asked.

“Because he wanted the numbers on the back, of course,” Bonnie said.

19

After calling her boss at the Basslight Music store, who heard the first croaked word and told her to stay home, Caley crawled back to bed and pulled the blankets over her shoulders.

Women were to Mat as air was to lungs. Not long after their marriage, Caley picked up signs that he was getting new air.

When she'd first met him, he claimed she was one of the loveliest women in the world, her hair was the color of dark honey with the sun shining through it, her eyes like finest cognac, her skin like porcelain, and her face like the sculpture of a goddess. When she looked in the mirror she saw chin-length light brown hair, clean and shiny but otherwise left to itself, hazel eyes, and a face without makeup. No goddess that she could see. It made her uneasy and put Mat's credibility to question. It left her feeling one day he'd meet a real goddess.

And he did that very thing.

After those first two years, tokens of other goddesses in the Garden of Eden started showing up. Caley, being the innocent doofus that she was, was too dumb or too unwilling to listen to the inner voice that was both strident and panicky. In the beginning there was only the faint odor of perfume. It could be the woman at the coffee shop where he stopped every morning before going to work. Her hand brushed his when she left the check. Or one of the tellers at the bank. They probably had lunch together. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. The clerk at the convenience store where he sometimes stopped to pick up the paper before coming home. He gave one of his fellow employees a ride.

It was a long time before one persistent voice came through. Didn't it seem a trifle odd that each and every one of these women wore the same perfume? And so lavishly it made her stink of it?

He'd started getting home later and later. Not something she'd notice in the ordinary stream of their life. He did the usual eight-to-five stint and got home around five-thirty. She didn't get off at the sporting goods store until nine. The first time she'd called and didn't get him she thought nothing, but after a second and third, the game started. Find the golden Easter egg.

None of this was concrete evidence, but her women friends began to look at her with wary eyes and shift knowing glances to each other. They'd been there, and their instincts were better than a bloodhound's at finding the buried body.

The time finally came when Caley believed them. The truth must out. So one day when Mat told her he had to work late, she called in sick to her own job. The owner of the sporting goods store, a man, had his own radar, and it bleeped immediately. He wanted to know what she was so sick with; she didn't sound sick. Cramps, she told him. She started telling him about her periods, the amount of blood and the color, and … He didn't stay on the phone to hear the rest.

She sat and thought about transportation. They only had one car. Mat drove it, even though his job was closer. Would she want him to arrive at work all sweaty from pedaling a bicycle? She rode the bicycle.

Her neighbor in the next apartment had said she could borrow his car any time she needed one. She'd never taken him up on the offer for a couple of reasons—number one, he was weird, and number two, she didn't know what he might want in return—but she couldn't see herself pedaling madly in hot pursuit of Mat's red Thunderbird convertible.

So she borrowed the neighbor's old blue Chevy. In shorts and tennis shoes—they were easier to drive in than sandals—and oversized sunglasses, a six-pack of bottled water on the seat beside her, she sweltered in the afternoon heat, keeping an eagle eye on the Thunderbird in the bank lot. She fanned herself with the paperback novel she'd brought. It was too hot to read. Kansas City was bordering on hell, as far as she was concerned.

Seattle wasn't like this. She tried to imagine cooling rain, but wasn't very good at it.

As she waited, and sweated, she'd examined the glove box and found it stuffed with inflammatory pamphlets to overthrow the government that had taken away all our rights. The backseat had books on how to make bombs and destroy bridges. The slogans were “Burn 'em down” and “Blow 'em up.” The car, rust spots held together by primer, smelled like dirty socks. The smell and the sun were making her sick.

Bored, she tried to sleep sitting straight up. She didn't want to lean back because the seat back was sticky and she didn't care to find out what made it that way. After forty minutes, just in time to keep her brain from permanent damage, Mat came striding out of the bank, swinging his briefcase, yanking his tie loose to pull off, and unbuttoning his shirt collar. He tossed the tie in the passenger seat of the Thunderbird and took off. Bright red, not hard to follow in the afternoon sun. The dazzle almost blinded her even with dark glasses that kept sliding down her sweaty nose.

He drove south a while, then zigzagged west and came to an apartment building with two floors of apartments and apparently four apartments per floor. She parked on the other side of the street, oozed from the car like a bad spy, and slunk along in the direction he was going.

Mat, intent on seeing his paramour, didn't even look her way. He trotted eagerly up the stairs to the second floor and rapped softly on the door of the second apartment. He leaned his head close to it.

Maybe he was whispering magic words like “Jack sent me.” The door opened and the Other Woman threw her arms around his neck with an octopus grip and pressed her lips plunger-style against his mouth. Her hair, cascading blond curls, swayed with passion.

Mat's arms wormed around her; he walked her backward and kicked the door shut behind them. Well, now, wasn't that sweet? Caley climbed the stairs, albeit slower than Mat had, and checked the number. Two-one-four, with a card that read “Buller, T.” Caley was pretty sure the
T
didn't stand for Thomas.

Buller, T. must read children's books. Lined up against the wall were a small cement Snow White and, even smaller, three dwarves. The other four dwarves must not have made it yet. Probably hard for cement dwarves to climb to the second floor. She looked over the railing down to the parking lot at Mat's shiny red Thunderbird.

Picking up Snow White, she hefted it in her hand and wondered if it would bash Mat's head in. As a blunt object, it had a nice feel to it. It's a good deed you're doing, Snow White. She pitched Snow White down at Mat's car. It hit with a satisfying clunk and bounced, leaving an okay dent in the red hood. She picked up a dwarf and studied it. She couldn't actually tell who it was, but it looked like Dopey. They all looked like Dopey. Unless they were all Happy with a Dopey smile. She heaved it.

This time her aim was better. A starlike crack crazed one side of the windshield.

Some guy came barreling out of the apartment below. “Hey! Whattaya think you're doing!”

“Don't worry,” Caley yelled. “You're safe.”

The door of apartment two-one-four banged open. Mat flew out, pants in hand, otherwise as bare as Adam in the Garden. He saw her, stopped, and stared at her, slack-jawed, goggle-eyed.

He seemed to be having trouble talking; all he could do was stutter “Ahahahah.” She could see his mind kick in and start to spin with explanations while he tried to pick one that he might throw out.

“It's not what it looks like,” she said helpfully. “You can explain everything.”

He nodded and notched up a syllable to “Uhuhuhuh.” The blond, probably Buller, T., came out of the apartment clutching an airy filmy thing around her, blond hair in sexy disarray.

“You know how bad this looks,” Caley coached, “but I'm always jumping to conclusions and don't always think.”

“Caley—”

She threw a Dopey-Happy, hoping to bash in Mat's head. She hit his shoulder. Dopey landed on his foot, toppled over, and the head broke off.

“My gnomes!” Buller, T. knelt beside the decapitated blunt instrument and cradled both pieces against two large globes that Mat had, no doubt, recently had his hands on.

With Mat on her heels, Caley stomped to the last Dopey-Happy and grabbed it, trotted down the stairs, and smashed a star on the other side of the Thunderbird's windshield.

Mat groveled, begged her forgiveness, swore it would never happen again. She let herself believe him. She turned out to be pregnant, and there was Zach, three years old. He wasn't hers; he belonged to Mat.