A Good Marriage (6 page)

Enough with the cat hairs, too.

She lay there, even more wide awake than she’d feared she’d be, her mind going around and around, now thinking of the victims, now thinking of her children, now thinking of herself, even thinking of some long-forgotten Bible story about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. She glanced at Bob’s clock after what felt like an hour of going around that wretched worry-circle and saw that only twelve minutes had passed. She got up on one elbow and turned the clock’s face to the window.

He won’t be home until six tomorrow night,
she thought . . . although, since it was now quarter past midnight, she supposed it was technically tonight that he’d be home. Still, that gave her eighteen hours. Surely enough time to make some sort of decision. It would help if she could sleep, even a little—sleep had a way of resetting the mind—but it was out of the question. She would drift a little, then think
Marjorie Duvall
or
Stacey Moore
or (this was the worst)
Robert Shaverstone, ten years old. HE DID NOT “SUFFER!”
And then any possibility of sleep would again be gone. The idea that she might never sleep again came to her. That was impossible, of course, but lying here with the taste of
puke still in her mouth in spite of the Scope she had rinsed with, it seemed completely plausible.

At some point she found herself remembering the year in early childhood when she had gone around the house looking in mirrors. She would stand in front of them with her hands cupped to the sides of her face and her nose touching the glass, but holding her breath so she wouldn’t fog the surface.

If her mother caught her, she’d swat her away.
That leaves a smudge, and I have to clean it off. Why are you so interested in yourself, anyway? You’ll never be hung for your beauty. And why stand so close? You can’t see anything worth looking at that way.

How old had she been? Four? Five? Too young to explain that it wasn’t her reflection she was interested in, anyway—or not primarily. She had been convinced that mirrors were doorways to another world, and what she saw reflected in the glass wasn’t
their
living room or bathroom, but the living room or bathroom of some other family. The Matsons instead of the Madsens, perhaps. Because it was
similar
on the other side of the glass, but not the
same,
and if you looked long enough, you could begin to pick up on some of the differences: a rug that appeared to be oval over there instead of round like over here, a door that seemed to have a turn-latch instead of a bolt, a light-switch that was on the wrong side of the door. The little girl wasn’t the same, either. Darcy was sure they were related—sisters of the mirror?—but no, not the same. Instead of Darcellen Madsen that little girl might be named
Jane or Sandra or even Eleanor Rigby, who for some reason (some
scary
reason) picked up the rice at churches where a wedding had been.

Lying in the circle of her bedside lamp, drowsing without realizing it, Darcy supposed that if she
had
been able to tell her mother what she was looking for, if she had explained about the Darker Girl who wasn’t quite her, she might have passed some time with a child psychiatrist. But it wasn’t the girl who interested her, it had never been the girl. What interested her was the idea that there was a whole other world behind the mirrors, and if you could walk through that other house (the Darker House) and out the door, the rest of that world would be waiting.

Of course this idea had passed and, aided by a new doll (which she had named Mrs. Butter-worth after the pancake syrup she loved) and a new dollhouse, she had moved on to more acceptable little-girl fantasies: cooking, cleaning, shopping, Scolding The Baby, Changing For Dinner. Now, all these years later, she had found her way through the mirror after all. Only there was no little girl waiting in the Darker House; instead there was a Darker Husband, one who had been living behind the mirror all the time, and doing terrible things there.

A good one at a fair price,
Bob liked to say—an accountant’s credo if ever there was one.

Upright and sniffin the air
—an answer to
how you doin
that every kid in every Cub Scout pack he’d ever taken down Dead Man’s Trail knew well. A
response some of those boys no doubt still repeated as grown men.

Gentlemen prefer blondes, don’t forget that one. Because they get tired of squeezin . . .

But then sleep took Darcy, and although that soft nurse could not carry her far, the lines on her forehead and at the corners of her reddened, puffy eyes softened a bit. She was close enough to consciousness to stir when her husband pulled into the driveway, but not close enough to come around. She might have if the Suburban’s headlights had splashed across the ceiling, but Bob had doused them halfway down the block so as not to wake her.

- 8 -

A cat was stroking her cheek with a velvet paw. Very lightly but very insistently.

Darcy tried to brush it away, but her hand seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. And it was a dream, anyway—surely had to be. They had no cat.
Although if there are enough cat hairs in a house, there must be one around somewhere,
her struggling-to-wake mind told her, quite reasonably.

Now the paw was stroking her bangs and the forehead beneath, and it couldn’t be a cat because cats don’t talk.

“Wake up, Darce. Wake up, hon. We have to talk.”

The voice, as soft and soothing as the touch.
Bob’s voice. And not a cat’s paw but a hand. Bob’s hand. Only it couldn’t be him, because he was in Montp—

Her eyes flew open and he was there, all right, sitting beside her on the bed, stroking her face and hair as he sometimes did when she was feeling under the weather. He was wearing a three-piece Jos. A. Bank suit (he bought all his suits there, calling it—another of his semi-amusing sayings—“Joss-Bank”), but the vest was unbuttoned and his collar undone. She could see the end of his tie poking out of his coat pocket like a red tongue. His midsection bulged over his belt and her first coherent thought was
You really have to do something about your weight, Bobby, that isn’t good for your heart
.

“Wha—” It came out an almost incomprehensible crow-croak.

He smiled and kept stroking her hair, her cheek, the nape of her neck. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“What are you doing here, Bobby? It must be—” She raised her head to look at his clock, which of course did no good. She had turned its face to the wall.

He glanced down at his watch. He had been smiling as he stroked her awake, and was smiling now. “Quarter to three. I sat in my stupid old motel room for almost two hours after we talked, trying to convince myself that what I was thinking couldn’t be true. Only I didn’t get to where I am by dodging the truth. So I jumped in the ’Burban and hit the road. No traffic whatsoever. I don’t
know why I don’t do more traveling late at night. Maybe I will. If I’m not in Shawshank, that is. Or New Hampshire State Prison in Concord. But that’s kind of up to you. Isn’t it?”

His hand, stroking her face. The feel of it was familiar, even the smell of it was familiar, and she had always loved it. Now she didn’t, and it wasn’t just the night’s wretched discoveries. How could she have never noticed how complacently possessive that stroking touch was?
You’re an old bitch, but you’re
my
old bitch,
that touch now seemed to say.
Only this time you piddled on the floor while I was gone, and that’s bad. In fact, it’s a Big Bad.

She pushed his hand away and sat up. “What in God’s name are you talking about? You come sneaking in, you wake me up—”

“Yes, you were sleeping with the light on—I saw it as soon as I turned up the driveway.” There was no guilt in his smile. Nothing sinister, either. It was the same sweet-natured Bob Anderson smile she’d loved almost from the first. For a moment her memory flickered over how gentle he’d been on their wedding night, not hurrying her. Giving her time to get used to the new thing.

Which he will do now,
she thought.

“You never sleep with the light on, Darce. And although you’ve got your nightgown on, you’re wearing your bra under it, and you never do that, either. You just forgot to take it off, didn’t you? Poor darlin. Poor tired girl.”

For just a moment he touched her breast, then—thankfully—took his hand away.

“Also, you turned my clock around so you wouldn’t have to look at the time. You’ve been upset, and I’m the cause. I’m sorry, Darce. From the bottom of my heart.”

“I ate something that disagreed with me.” It was all she could think of.

He smiled patiently. “You found my special hiding place in the garage.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you did a good job of putting things back where you found them, but I’m very careful about such things, and the strip of tape I put on above the pivot in the baseboard was broken. You didn’t notice that, did you? Why would you? It’s the kind of tape that’s almost invisible once it’s on. Also, the box inside was an inch or two to the left of where I put it—where I always put it.”

He reached to stroke her cheek some more, then withdrew his hand (seemingly without rancor) when she turned her face away.

“Bobby, I can see you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about something, but I honestly don’t know what it is. Maybe you’ve been working too hard.”

His mouth turned down in a
moue
of sadness, and his eyes were moistening with tears. Incredible. She actually had to stop herself from feeling sorry for him. Emotions were only another human habit, it seemed, as conditioned as any other. “I guess I always knew this day would come.”

“I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

He sighed. “I had a long ride back to think
about this, honey. And the longer I thought, the
harder
I thought, the more it seemed like there was really only one question that needed an answer: WWDD.”

“I don’t—”

“Hush,” he said, and put a gentle finger on her lips. She could smell soap. He must have showered before he left the motel, a very Bob-like thing to do. “I’ll tell you everything. I’ll make a clean breast. I think that, down deep, I’ve always wanted you to know.”

He’d always wanted her to know? Dear God. There might be worse things waiting, but this was easily the most terrible thing so far. “I don’t
want
to know. Whatever it is you’ve got stuck in your head, I don’t
want
to know.”

“I see something different in your eyes, honey, and I’ve gotten very good at reading women’s eyes. I’ve become something of an expert. WWDD stands for What Would Darcy Do. In this case, What Would Darcy Do if she found my special hiding place, and what’s inside my special box. I’ve always loved that box, by the way, because you gave it to me.”

He leaned forward and planted a quick kiss between her brows. His lips were moist. For the first time in her life, the touch of them on her skin revolted her, and it occurred to her that she might be dead before the sun came up. Because dead women told no tales.
Although,
she thought,
he’d try to make sure I didn’t “suffer.”

“First, I asked myself if the name Marjorie
Duvall would mean anything to you. I would have liked to answer that question with a big ole no, but sometimes a fellow has to be a realist. You’re not the world’s number one news junkie, but I’ve lived with you long enough to know that you follow the main stories on TV and in the news paper. I thought you’d know the name, and even if you didn’t, I thought you’d recognize the picture on the driver’s license. Besides, I said to myself, won’t she be curious as to why I have those ID cards? Women are always curious. Look at Pandora.”

Or Bluebeard’s wife,
she thought.
The woman who peeked into the locked room and found the severed heads of all her predecessors in matrimony.

“Bob, I swear to you I don’t have any idea what you’re tal—”

“So the first thing I did when I came in was to boot up your computer, open Firefox—that’s the search engine you always use—and check the history.”

“The what?”

He chuckled as if she’d gotten off an exceptionally witty line. “You don’t even know. I didn’t think you did, because every time I check, everything’s there. You
never
clear it!” And he chuckled again, as a man will do when a wife exhibits a trait he finds particularly endearing.

Darcy felt the first thin stirrings of anger. Probably absurd, given the circumstances, but there it was.

“You check my
computer
? You sneak! You dirty sneak!”

“Of
course
I check. I have a very bad friend who does very bad things. A man in a situation like that has to keep current with those closest to him. Since the kids left home, that’s you and only you.”

Bad friend? A bad friend who does bad things? Her head was swimming, but one thing seemed all too clear: further denials would be useless. She knew, and he knew she did.

“You haven’t just been checking on Marjorie Duvall.” She heard no shame or defensiveness in his voice, only a hideous regret that it should have come to this. “You’ve been checking on all of them.” Then he laughed and said, “Whoops!”

She sat up against the headboard, which pulled her slightly away from him. That was good. Distance was good. All those years she’d lain with him hip to hip and thigh to thigh, and now distance was good.

“What bad friend? What are you talking about?”

He cocked his head to one side, Bob’s body language for
I find you dense, but amusingly so.
“Brian.”

At first she had no idea who he was talking about, and thought it must be someone from work. Possibly an accomplice? It didn’t seem likely on the face of it, she would have said Bob was as lousy at making friends as she was, but men who did such things sometimes did have accomplices. Wolves hunted in packs, after all.