As Husbands Go (26 page)

“Thank you. Listen, your coming over, hanging with the boys because you have fun with them, not because it’s the decent thing to do—it means a lot to me. And so does your telling me how strong I am, even though I’m not so sure about that.” We sat in what I suppose was called companionable silence. I broke it by saying, “When I tell myself,
All right, Jonah went to a call girl for sex,
and no matter what my gut says, it’s a fact, I still hit a wall. I try and try, but I can’t imagine a scenario where his being murdered there could happen. How could Jonah set someone off to the point where she’d want to kill him?”

“Maybe . . .” He decided to let it drop.

“You mean maybe he did something awful to her, or asked her for something that was totally disgusting?” Scott nodded. I continued, “But prostitutes get asked to do disgusting stuff all the time. See, that’s what I don’t understand. Men beat them up or ask them to do dominatrix stuff. All sorts of things that you think,
God, how could anyone be so bent?
”

At that moment, it occurred to me that I had no idea what my cousin did for sex, that maybe he shared a bed with a blowup doll named Titty Rabinowitz and I’d offended him.

“Maybe it wasn’t anything Jonah did,” Scott said. “Maybe Dorinda was crazy.”

“She had arrests for cocaine. But nothing I heard from the detective or the DA’s office made me think of her as a violent person.”

“Did Jonah have a bad temper? Ever lose control?”

“No. He never screamed like a crazy person or anything. Once in a while we’d have a fight and he was really loud, but so was I. At his worst, he was overbearing, I guess that’s the word. A control freak: my way or the highway.”

“If she was really deranged,” Scott said, “that’s the kind of behavior that might have set her off.”

“Could be.” I guessed that made sense. At least it was an explanation, where none had existed before. I started with the
Time for you to go
thought waves again, but they were as unsuccessful as
they’d been earlier.

“No,” Scott said. “I don’t think I’m right. Because if Dorinda was a total nut job, she would have—sorry to say this—killed him in a crazy way. He was stabbed, what? Twice?”

“Yes.”

“It seems to me a crazy person would have stabbed him a freakish number of times. That’s what happens if someone is wild with anger, out of control. Right? Doesn’t that make more sense to you than just twice?”

“Yes,” I said, “it does.”

Chapter Nineteen

My conversation with Scott was keeping me up. For the first time since I lost Jonah, I wanted to talk more. Not with my cousin, though.

I could call Andrea, who would welcome any excuse—“Susie needs to vent”
—
to escape the California king she shared with Fat Boy. But we’d talked so long and so often that before our first word, I knew where we’d end up.

I adjusted my pillows against the headboard and considered my best friend from high school, Jessie Heller. I called her my human resource; she’d been in HR at Goldman Sachs before she had kids. But even though she was smart and practical and had been at the funeral and the shiva, it would take a half hour to bring her up-to-date.

Seconds later, Grandma Ethel’s phone was on its third ring. That was when it hit me that she might not be thrilled with such a late call. What saved me from hanging up was remembering that old people are supposed to need less sleep. And I’d always felt that gay people led more exciting lives and so went to bed later than straights.

“I was just thinking about you a few minutes ago,” she told me. “I saw the hooker on the TV.”

“So how come you didn’t call?” I said it in a teasing way, but when it came out, it sounded whiny.

At least I thought so, but my grandmother acted like she’d heard a regular question. “I didn’t want to wake up your children.”

“The children are boys,” I said. “Three of them. Triplets.”

“Did you call because you missed me or to give me a hard time?
Because to tell you the truth, if you want to give someone a hard time, don’t bother me. Call your mother.”

I was about to make a snide comment, but then I thought that would be like telling Grandma Ethel, “Boy, were you lucky to get away from her.” “Is this too late for you?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? I live in Miami. For half my friends, this is dinner hour. Now, as I used to say to the guests on my show, ‘Talk to me, sweetheart.’ You wouldn’t believe the people I called ‘sweetheart.’ Cher. Archbishop Desmond Tutu.”

“It’s not so much about me talking,” I said untruthfully. “I could use some wisdom.”

“For that you need Sparky.” My grandmother’s voice sounded cheery and charming, the upbeat voice people use at dinner parties they’re delighted to be at but surprised to be invited to.

“Actually, what I want now is grandmotherly wisdom,” I said. No one could possibly call my voice upbeat.

She was obviously someone who knew when to leave the party, because when she spoke again, it was clear that she’d let go of the cheery business. “Sure, grandmotherly wisdom . . . if I have any. Tell me. Whatever I can do for you, I’ll do it. And don’t think that’s just Ethel O’Shea’s patented bullshit, because I almost never make offers like that.” I was about to thank her when she added, “Maybe three times in my life. You don’t make commitments, you don’t have to back out of them. Know what I mean?”

This wasn’t exactly reassuring, but after eleven at night, I couldn’t be picky. “Sure.”

“Good. Now talk to me.”

“Okay. You know how when something bad happens, there’s the story of what happened that makes sense to most people. And then there’s all sorts of conspiracy theories?”

“Right,” Grandma Ethel said. “You should’ve been around after the Kennedy assassination.”

“From what I’ve seen, a lot of the conspiracy theories are crazy stuff—from paranoids and idiots. Then there are a few that come across as reasonable.” I had been lying back in bed. Now I sat up
and crossed my legs under me, which had the double advantage of being the posture of a heart-to-heart discussion and also keeping my feet warm. I was so chilled. I prayed the boiler wasn’t having its biweekly collapse and I’d have to wait up half the night for the oil burner guy.

“You heard some conspiracy theory about Jonah that you’re tempted to believe?” my grandmother asked.

“No. Not really. It’s just that the murder case against this Dorinda Dillon is so open-and-shut, which is fine with me. Well, it should be fine. But every time I accept what happened, what all the experienced people like the cops and the head of Homicide at the DA’s office say happened, I think,
All right. They’re pros. Not emotionally involved. Now it’s time to get on with my life
. And just when I do, something starts troubling me.”

“What’s the something?” Grandma Ethel asked.

“That’s just it: nothing specific. It’s always one bit of information or another that seems wrong. I keep wishing somebody—me, even—would come up with a conspiracy theory that would take care of all the little doubts I have.”

“Tell me the little doubts.”

I went through my talk with Scott, saying that if Dorinda had been crazed with anger at Jonah or plain crazy, how come she hadn’t stabbed him over and over?

“You don’t know for sure that’s how a nutsy person would go about it,” Grandma Ethel said. “I’m sure some of them would stab him a lot more than twice, but there’s no book called
There Is Only One Type of Homicidal Stabbing Behavior for the Criminally Insane
. Right?”

“Right. But stabbing multiple times seems more likely. And even
if she was a stab-twice-only kind of person, it doesn’t explain why she went and got the scissors and killed him.”

“Listen, I interviewed a madam and also a couple of call girls over the years. The madam, I forget her name—that’s okay, there’s not a chance in hell it was her actual name—she was smart. Well spoken, well put together, reminded me of Rita Hayworth, except not sexy. That was strange, because before her Call Me Madam days, she was a hooker. The madam, not Rita Hayworth, who I think started out as a dancer. Anyway, when I say her ‘Call Me Madam’ days, that was a Broadway musical. Ethel Merman. But not about a madam. The madam on my show was smart, made a good appearance. You could bring her to a luncheon at your club and not be at all embarrassed. But below the surface, I could feel there was something a little nuts. A cold beyond cold. It’s one thing to sleep with a creep because he’s rich or famous or you need a guy and he’s the only one with a regular paycheck who’ll have you. It’s a completely different mentality to sleep with twenty, thirty, forty guys a week. What I’m saying is, don’t go giving Dorinda Dillon a clean bill of mental health.”

“I’m not,” I said. I wished now that I could ask her to bring Sparky into the room and put me on speaker. That way there would be someone in on the conversation capable of saying, “Eth, you seem to have used up your daily quota of logic.”

“Good, because from what I’ve seen of darling Dorinda on the television, she looks like she’s got a few screws loose.”

“Even if she’s not a picture of mental health, it still doesn’t explain her being a killer. Thousands of prostitutes go through their entire careers without murdering a customer.”

I got into explaining what I believed in my heart, that while there were no guarantees in life, I was willing to bet Jonah hadn’t had some kind of messy sexual secret, no fetish that could send a pro like Dorinda into a killing frenzy or frighten her into self-defense with a pair of scissors.

“Did he ever hit you?” my grandmother asked a little too casually.

“No! Of course not!”

“Okay, I was just asking. Don’t bite my head off. Did he ever call you names or humiliate—”

“Absolutely not! Jonah didn’t have an abusive bone in his body.”

“Just to make sure I have the picture . . . He wasn’t violent, no vicious tirades. Any throwing things, kicking over tables?”

I shook my head but then realized we were on the phone. “No.”

“Was he controlling with money?”

“No, only with tight lips. As far as money went, he wasn’t at all cheap. Maybe one of the reasons he was so uncritical of me was that he was really good at spending, too. And I was never out of control.” I paused. “Well, once.”

“What?”

“A red gown. From Valentino’s last collection.”

“No! Not the strapless with the double flounce on the bottom?” It was a question, but somehow she knew.

“Yes!”

“My God! They had a Valentino spread in . . . I think
The
Miami Herald,
and my jaw dropped when I saw that gown! Good for you!”

“But usually, both of us were under control, for two acquisitive personalities. Jonah was never one of those show-offy guys, handing hundred-dollar bills to maître d’s. It’s weird, I was thinking about this last night, about Jonah and money. Whatever happened at Dorinda Dillon’s, I can’t imagine him being cheap or not fair. And he would never hold back on paying her, if that’s a thing that could set her off. He told me a story over and over again about going out with his parents when they had a lousy waiter. His father left a dollar bill as a tip.”

“It upset Jonah?”

“Incredibly. He kept bringing it up.”

“He was right. It was petty and vindictive. Probably made him realize his old man was a shtunk.” On the phone, I kept forgetting my grandmother was a woman of a certain age—old. Not only was her voice free from shakiness, but even though she was pretty good at digression, she didn’t lose her focus. This was especially true when she wasn’t being Unforgettable Character and concentrating
on her own delightfulness but was focusing on a thought or another person.

“Jonah always said, ‘Give someone the benefit of the doubt.’”

“So give Jonah the benefit of the doubt by asking the questions.”

“Who can I ask questions? They closed the case. It’s over.”

“It’s not over. Dorinda’s in jail, she hasn’t been on trial yet, so how can it be over? Go back to the cop or the district attorney and tell them you still have some questions.”

“They’ll think I’m a real pain in the ass.”

“So? Big damn deal if they do. Listen, law enforcement has to cooperate with a victim’s widow—unless she’s an out-and-out lunatic, which you obviously aren’t. They don’t want to risk alienating you. You could go to the media and shed a few tears and tell them, ‘I’m disappointed in how the police and the DA are handling my husband’s murder case.’ It would be a nightmare for them: a beautiful widow with three little boys who are also victims of this crime.”

“I don’t like the role of victim.”

“But you’ve got it,” my grandmother said. “This isn’t ‘victim’ as in ‘My parents wouldn’t pay for a nose job, and when my first husband left me, he called me Pinocchio.’ This is genuine victimhood, so you might as well use it. The world loves victims.”

“I don’t.”

“Then be a pain in the ass, a thorn in their side. Be whatever the hell you want to be. But give your husband the benefit of your doubt. And while you’re at it, toots, give that to yourself, too.”