Don't You Forget About Me (3 page)

“Let’s sit out here,” she’d say. It was their routine. Jack would take his jacket off and throw it over the chair. They’d sit facing the beach, and he’d have his drink and snack. They would talk, getting caught up in spite of having spoken on the phone three and four times a day. After he finished his drink, Jack retreated into their bedroom to shower while Pam got dinner ready. They’d eat on the veranda as long as the weather held out, often staying out there until after midnight. Jack would make the first move to go in, Pam holding on to every second she could with him.

“What’d you say, wife? Time to hit the hay?” Said with a gleam in his eye, he’d reach out for her hand to pull her out of her chair, and the two of them would take their dishes into the kitchen. He’d grab her hand again and lead her to their bedroom. They had a comfortable routine, and he was the first to admit that it brought him pleasure, not boredom, although after he died, Pam would wonder. They’d make love, and when they were finished, like a script, Jack grabbed the remote and turned the Weather Channel on so he could plan his weekend. And then he’d floss his teeth. Pam often buried her head in her pillow so he wouldn’t know she was laughing at him, although she wasn’t fooling anyone. At Jack’s funeral, his high school friend Ben said that Jack had the nicest teeth because he had flossed daily since he was a child. It was yet another obsession of his.

Pam loved her life with Jack, even though he was gone all week and never took a break once he got home. He packed every minute with activities; golfing, tennis, and swimming in the summer, and during the cold-weather months, he played games nonstop with his children or took them on adventures that Pam wasn’t interested in, often skiing or snowboarding. He’d leave Monday morning for the city, and it was always difficult for her. Finally, Jack asked her not to get up with him; he couldn’t stand leaving her when she was so sad. The last Monday he left for Manhattan before he died, he didn’t even wake her to say good-bye. For months, she knew that something was wrong because he didn’t initiate making love to her. Making excuses for him, hoping it was nothing serious, Pam figured he was just tired. Once she discovered he had been
having an affair with Sandra, she understood why he had changed. But it scared her now.
If Jack had lived, would he have been preparing to leave me for Sandra?
She would never know. It had occurred to her to ask Sandra, but their relationship was already strained, and Pam didn’t want that extra burden on it. Confirming it may have been the final travesty, one that Pam couldn’t overlook. Wouldn’t it be a matter of time before her anger at Sandra and Marie had to be faced?

Pam didn’t feel there was anything to look forward to anymore. When the children had come home for the July Fourth holiday, Pam’s fervor for living had returned. There was something to do every day. Lisa, just twenty years old, demanded her mother’s attention, and Pam bestowed it upon her. She was cooked for, pampered with foot rubs and manicures, and taken on shopping trips. Brent, almost twenty-two, was more inclined to vegetate when he was home and this time he was dejected, missing the companionship of his father, desiring to golf or play tennis, but his favorite partner was gone. Marie did okay as a stand-in.
Better than no one
, Brent silently thought. He was barely able to tolerate her insipid demeanor, mistaking her full-blown clinical depression for lack of personality. The two of them banged the ball around with violence, whether tennis or golf made no difference. And at the end of each game, they agreed it was just what they had needed. And then came the shocker; both children were going back to school, after all, and not staying in Babylon for the rest of the summer as Pam had hoped.

Every visit home after that first homecoming would be just as painful as the day they came home for his funeral.

“You are here all the time. Every day, you wake up and he is gone, and little by little, you are adapting,” Lisa explained to her mother. “We come home, and it’s a shock that Dad isn’t here. We have to get used to it all over again. Is it always going to be like this?”

Pam reached out and hugged her son and daughter, wishing their pain away. But it would be their own process to undertake, grieving for their beloved father. They didn’t know the whole truth yet; she would delay it as long as possible, having threatened their aunt and grandmother with death and dismemberment if they squealed. When the truth about Sandra and the baby came out, that they would be having a sibling soon, she didn’t know what to expect. Would they be devastated when they heard the news, the betrayal of their father more than they could handle? Or would they embrace Sandra and the coming baby as she had? Accept that their father had feet of clay and was as vulnerable to failure as any other? Only time would tell.

The holiday was over, and the time for both children to return to their respective colleges had come and gone. Once again, Pam was despondent. She knew the day would come when they wouldn’t be coming home during breaks and holidays. What would she do with her time then?

She drank her coffee in silence, listening to the sounds of summer: gulls calling, laughter from a group of teens throwing a Frisbee back and forth, the waves hitting the sand. She got up and switched on the radio behind her.
She remembered, in her youth, going to the beach at Coney Island with her sisters Susan and Sharon and listening to neighboring radios blasting out the latest songs. The girls would sing along, hysterically laughing at the out-of-tune harmony. Some of her fondest memories were of lying on the beach covered in baby oil, listening to the radio. They would spend the entire day there, roasting in the sun. There was a snack bar on the boardwalk above the beach, and the memory of the smell of frying onions and hamburgers and vinegar-doused French fries made her appetite return. The order came packaged in white butcher paper in a flimsy cardboard box. They always got heavy glass mugs of root beer to drink. Pam never worried about her weight; she was naturally thin. Her sisters would conspire to fatten her up, but it didn’t work. “I hate you,” Susan would complain. But jealousy of her sister didn’t prevent her from buying the biggest burger on the menu and getting one for Pam, too. When Pam was finished after a bite or two, her sisters gobbled up the leftovers.

Pam finished her coffee and left the radio on, grabbing her sun hat and a folded-up beach chair. She walked the wooden path that lead to the beach, wanting to sit there for a while by chance some inspiration, some epiphany, would cross her. In the weeks prior to Jack’s death, she felt restless and a foreboding that she had never experienced before.
It’s your age
, the still, small voice said.
Be patient
. And sure enough, before she had even gained admittance to his deathbed, Pam saw the other woman as she left Jack’s final room. Sandra Benson had seen Jack’s body before Pam did.

As she sat on the beach, a silent observer of those bodies lying around her, the unforgettable memory of knowing the second she laid eyes on Sandra that Jack had
loved
her drifted through her mind. The sudden knowledge had taken her by such surprise that she teetered on her feet and had to be supported by the nurse in charge of Jack’s body. Thinking the wife was swooning due to grief, the nurse was prepared to care for her as she had for the husband. Tenderly guiding her into the room where Jack’s body lay, and where Sandra had just exited, the scent of her shampoo on still wet hair lingered, filling Pam’s olfactory with an overwhelming connection to her husband. She had smelled that scent on him before.

Thankfully, the odor of coconut-based suntan lotion wafted toward Pam as these unwelcome thoughts pestered her, banishing the remembered scent for the time being. In the proceeding weeks, she had grown to know that scent and to love its source. Sandra was the only other person who knew Jack as she knew him—the fake Jack, to be sure, but the one who persisted through the past thirty-five years of marriage. He was the Jack who gave gifts, who was reliable, who had a smile on his face almost all of the time. That Jack was the Jack the children knew, the father who worshiped his children but was ignorant of the pain he would be causing them in the days to come. Odors, colors, activities, the very house she lived in were monuments to the life she had lived with him, the life that had turned out to be a smoke screen, a sham, a house built on sand.

Jack was a liar of the most adroit kind. He had years of experience in secrets and lies after his childhood of abuse.
Pam was almost able to forgive him when she thought of what his life in that house must have been like.

“Poor Jack,” she said out loud. The beach was starting to lose its allure, so she got up, folded up her chair, and turned back to the house. She could hear the phone ringing and, once she got on the wooden pathway, ran to get it. It was Detective Andrews. Andy. She was happy to feel a little thrill when she saw his number on caller ID.

“Well, hello, Detective Andrews,” she said. “How are you today?” she asked.

“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” he answered. “I am parked outside of your house, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, come on in! I just came in from the beach.” They hung up, and seconds later, he was walking through the door, Pam holding it open for him. She decided weeks ago that she would keep their relationship on the formal side for as long as possible.

He knew how lucky he was to find a decent, intelligent woman who was single, had no financial problems, and carried little baggage outside of having two college-aged kids and being a widowed mother. There were a lot of single, middle-aged women on Long Island, and he felt like a magnet for them. He would be as patient as she required.

Marie pulled off Route 9 into Rhinebeck. Jeff’s house was in the center of town he told her, near the Village Inn. She drove slowly, looking for addresses on mailboxes, when she spotted him standing on a patch of lawn in front of the smallest house she had ever seen. There was a driveway next to his house, and he was pointing to it,
so she turned in and stopped the car. He was right at her door with happiness all over his face as he greeted her.

“Wow! You made wonderful time! I’m so happy to see you.” He offered her his hand as she pulled her legs out of the car, stretching as she stood up.

“What a cute little town!” she said, going from a stretch to putting her arms around his neck as they embraced. “It’s so good to see you!”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for driving up here,” he said as they moved apart.

She went to unlock her trunk and get her bag out. They walked hand in hand, she telling him about the traffic and how beautiful the mountains and woods were after the concrete of the city. All of her worries, her concerns about his intentions and character, dissipated. He wasn’t a jerk, after all, just a really nice guy.

He took her bag, and they held hands again, walking up the path to his house. Traffic was heavy on the street; the village was a historic spot and a place known for its ambience. Weekend tourists were as thick here as they were at the beach. She found herself wondering how he happened to have two vacation properties.

His house was built by Dutch settlers and was in perfect condition, thanks to his painstaking restoration. When Marie entered the house through the front door, she had the sensation that she should duck down, as the ceilings were so low. They were standing in the living room. Jeff hung back and let Marie take her time looking around. He was so proud of himself! It was an oddly furnished room, stuffed with oversized pieces that left little room to navigate. There was hardly enough room for
anything but the utilitarian, yet Jeff had managed to cram a complete library of winemaking books into the space, along with collections of bric-a-brac and several baskets of folded laundry. Shocked, Marie wondered what his place in Babylon was like on the inside. A narrow, curved staircase was along the wall on the right, and Jeff started going up, ducking his head to avoid bashing himself. She followed him.

“Watch your step here,” he warned as they came to a turn in the staircase, the steps wide near the wall and tapering to a point on the room side. She could imagine having to navigate this booby trap after a glass of wine. “I thought you would be comfortable here,” he said, entering a lovely, albeit small, bedroom. It had a narrow twin four-poster canopy bed against the inside wall, with a wing chair at a low desk by the window. Fortunately, the clutter on the lower level had not found its way up here. It would be a room where she might be comfortable for the rest of her life if she had to. Opposite the bed was a flat-screen television.

“Oh! I didn’t expect this!” she said as she saw a doorway on the other side of the TV that led to a small, but complete bathroom. It was new and spotless.

“It’s surprising where you can stick those things,” he said. “This tiny place actually has four bathrooms! Wait until you see the basement.” He chuckled, excited to show her his pièce de résistance—the wine cellar and tasting room. The Hudson Valley was known for its vineyards, and he was an avid supporter of local vintners.

He took her on a tour of the house. The wine cellar was world class; it got her curiosity going.
Who is this
guy?
He was becoming more and more attractive to her the longer they were together. The impulse was to pull back, to avoid any dangerous liaisons. But where caution used to guide her, interest now took over. Here was a man who had not one, but two fun places to live, was semiretired from a lucrative law practice, and was amicably divorced with grown children who didn’t seem to be too needy. Maybe she should count her blessings.

3

T
he young and beautiful Sandra Benson was debating what to do with herself for the weekend. The prospects of staying home, puttering around her apartment, and not answering the phone were very appealing. Last night, however, after she got home from work, Bernice Smith, Jack’s mother, had called her and invited her to spend the weekend at her mansion, five blocks away from Sandra’s apartment. The story of the mansion’s ownership was rather convoluted; Jack had mortgaged it for the family when their business fell on hard times, and then Pam loaned more money to Bernice now that Jack was dead and no longer giving her an allowance.