Folly Beach (22 page)

“But, she must have.”

“Well, who knows but anyway, I stayed with her. Then the same thing happened a few more times so I moved out. She refused to see a doctor or anyone. I felt terrible for her but I couldn’t live like that.”

“Who could? Where was her family?”

“Father took off when she was a kid and her mother was basically a street person in Salem, Oregon, making jewelry with beads made out of recycled paper, selling the stuff for whatever she could get.”

“You mean useless?”

“Exactly. Anyway, Lisa wanted us to get back together and all that but I said no, I really didn’t think it was a good idea. And, there were lots of hysterical phone calls and crying and I just held my ground. I mean, I was as nice as I could be. I kept telling her she needed help but she refused, saying she was fine. Somehow she continued to function. Then one day all the phone calls stopped.”

“And you had not filed for divorce yet?”

“No. I didn’t have money for a lawyer and I wasn’t seeing anyone so it didn’t matter. Anyhow, she found out where I was living and one day when I was out . . .”

“So she was watching your house?”

“Had to be. Anyway, she climbed in through my kitchen window and poured thallium into my grapefruit juice. Then she left.”

“Nice. Very nice. That’s an insecticide, I assume?”

“Yes. It’s rarely used these days.”

“The world’s probably better off for it. Then what?”

“I came home, drank part of a glass, thought it tasted funky, then my stomach started killing me. I thought I was having an appendicitis attack so I went to the emergency room. They did blood work, found traces of the poison in my bloodstream, and called the cops.”

“Holy hell! So, did you say you thought it was her?”

“No. Stupidly, I did not. Look, I felt bad for her, you know? And I thought well, it won’t happen again. But it did. Then I realized she really
was
trying to kill me so I let the police search my house. They found all kinds of forensic evidence that nailed her. She was convicted but sent to a high-security hospital instead of a jail. Anyway, she’s not coming out.”

“How do you know? I mean, don’t people go to a hospital to get well and go home?”

“Yeah, but apparently she tried to stab a few of the orderlies with a fork and she’s had some other issues with other patients.”

“So she’s violent.”

“Very. And delusional.”

“Gosh, that’s so sad. So, how come you never got a divorce?”

“For a lot of reasons. First, I struggled with the whole
in sickness and in health
part of the vows. I thought if I don’t forgive, I will become angry and bitter. Then, as I began to teach at a college level, I realized it was probably better if my rambunctious coeds thought I was married. And now, I can’t get the ring off. Seems like my knuckle grew. I mean, I could have it cut off, I guess, but there’s never been a reason to.”

“Oh.” I understood now and didn’t feel so guilty.

“Oh? Oh, I see what you’re thinking. I got close a couple of times but life always got in the way of serious commitment for me. You know, either I moved or they moved or something.”

“Wow.” That was very disappointing news. After all he’d been through, the chances of him ever making a commitment were probably greatly diminished. What good-looking straight man with a job makes it to his age without a family? One who doesn’t want one. I was forewarned but not completely discouraged.

“Okay, I can hear what you’re thinking. Listen, I’ll make you a deal.”

“I’m all ears, Risley, and this had better be good.”

“When you get rid of yours, I’ll get rid of mine.”

I looked down at my left hand and there it was. My wedding band of disappointment. My phony diamond, that unforgettable deception, was in a box somewhere, packed with other costume jewelry. THE TALE OF THE WIDOW AND HER INFAMOUS CZ was another story to tell him on another night.

There would have to be some kind of a ceremony to mark my liberation from the confines of my inglorious farce of a marriage. Maybe I would wait for Patti to come to town. We could stand on the last tiny bridge to the island with a couple of lit sparklers and a thermos of something wicked and toss the lying thing over into the water. Or maybe I would toss it from the Ravenel Bridge. It was higher and would be more dramatic. This required thought.

“It’s kind of like a battle memento, isn’t it?” I said and smiled.

He looked at me and smiled so sweetly that I believed then that his relationship with me was going to be different from all the others. I knew it. I did. Okay, I didn’t know it but it didn’t really matter because I was already in the soup. The way we were looking at each other? All I could think about was how we would be together. We may as well have already been in bed. And soon we were. But here’s how the evening progressed.

First, I put my fork down and John immediately said, “You don’t want dessert, do you?”

And I said, “I was thinking of something else but if you want dessert? I don’t mind if you do.”

“Let’s polish off this bottle. I’ll just get the bill, and let’s get out of here. I have some ideas of how we might spend the rest of the night, too.” He signaled the waiter with the universal check mark written in air and the waiter nodded. “Before we go, I mean, since I laid it on the table about Lisa, is there anything you want to tell me about your husband?”

“Well, his name was Addison, he killed himself, which I think you know . . .”

“God, no. Actually, I only knew that he was deceased.”

“Yes, well, lemme tell you, committing suicide was the only noble thing he had done in years. Very few people mourned. My children did, of course. But not many others. I don’t miss him one little bit, which surprises me sometimes. That’s not to say finding him wasn’t a terrible shock, but I am sort of over that now. I think. But the reality is that he was such a terrible husband for so long that I am more relieved than anything else. The Tale of Addison Cooper is a really strange story about arrogance and self-deception, but yours is actually more bizarre.”

“Well, it’s not every day that your spouse tries to murder you. What did he do for a living?”

The waiter placed the bill on the table; John glanced at it and put his credit card down.

“He ran a private equity firm and managed a portfolio that was once worth about twenty billion dollars in assets. His friends and former partners think he found out that he was going to be indicted for every crime in the books he cooked but he preferred to die rather than go to jail. How stupid is that?”

“Seems like a drastic way to deal with things, doesn’t it?”

“To say the least. Maybe someday I’ll tell you just how unbelievable he was. And I was so busy trying to keep him calm and keeping things going I had no idea how much trouble he was in.”

John poured out the last of the wine and I took a sip.

“I’ve always thought that life’s a gift, you know?” he said. “I think it’s better to try and work things out, even with the IRS if, God forbid, they came knocking. But then I’ve always been a pretty modest guy in terms of my own ambitions. I just don’t have some burning desire to own a lot of worldly possessions. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like nice things but you should own your stuff, it shouldn’t own you.”

“And you see, that’s where he was, dead center in that trap of defining himself through what he could own,
and
what he could get away with. I remember the day we were moving into our house in Alpine, which was quite the fantastical over-the-top testimony to Addison’s success. My brother-in-law looked at the house and back to him and said,
So Addison? How much is enough?
You know what he said?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess.”

“Right? I remember this like it was yesterday. He said,
Mark? Enough? Double what I have at any given moment in my life.
” I shook my head. “My brother-in-law is a perfectly wonderful podiatrist and he does very nicely, but he just blinked his eyes and let out a low whistle. He looked up at the house and then back at Addison again and slapped him on his shoulder and said something like
better you than me, pal.
Anyway, my family thought Addison was pretty funny and generally a great guy at first but then something happened to him. He became someone else.”

“And that new Addison wasn’t so great.”

“Not so great? No, he was intolerable but at least he didn’t put poison in my juice. Jeesch! I have to remember to count my blessings.”

“Truly. So not only did you lose your husband, your whole life is now completely different. You weren’t exaggerating that night at the Pig, were you?”

“Not one bit.” I took a drink of water. “Yeah, it’s just me and the Heywards down at Porgy’s. But some of my family is here and that’s awfully nice.”

“I’ll bet so.” He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “So you’re really feeling okay?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I haven’t been with another man in decades so I’m a little nervous.”

“Don’t be. I think you’re amazing.”

“Well, I think you are, too. You know, I keep thinking about all the possibilities.”

“You should be really. Who knows? You could be the next Lillian Hellman!”

Well, that wasn’t exactly the response I sort of hoped for. But I took it in stride.

“Or Dorothy Heyward.”

“That’s right. Look, I can help you get started. I mean, I teach creative writing, you know.”

“Would you? Gosh. That is so nice! I mean, if I can find the courage to try . . .”

John added the tip, took his receipt, and stood, coming around to pull my chair away from the table.

I stood and he put his finger under my chin and said, “Ms. Cooper? I have not met someone like you in so long I cannot say. But I have this funny feeling that you’re going places with your ideas on the Heywards and I want to go with you.”

“Oh, John,” I said. Someone had not just an interest in me but also a little faith.

This man was going to be mine, somehow, some way, I was going to make him mine. Actually, so far it didn’t appear that he would put up much of a fight.

“It’s dark,” I said, when we went outside to the car.

“Dark enough to steal away into the night and throw caution to the wind?”

“How fast can you drive those clichés?”

We laughed then, completely comfortable with each other, knowing full well what we were about to do. To sleep with a man after knowing him for such a short period of time was not like me at all, because I never had, but I hadn’t been single for decades. Besides, if television represented real life, this was what people did in 2010. They had spontaneous sex. To be honest, at that moment? I was going for it. I’d debate the sense of it later.

Along the road we’d steal a glance at each other and smile. We were excited. It was cold and most of the way home we could see our breath. But this time I had the key to the front door in my hand before we got there and we walked right in like we owned the place. There was only a small light coming from the kitchen, but it was enough to cast a faint glow across most of the first floor. He disappeared upstairs. After all, John knew the house better than I did. He had been coming here for years. Wait! What was he doing? Getting undressed?

“Hey, John? Would you like a glass of something?” I called out. “White wine? I’ve got a bottle here in the refrigerator.”

Suddenly, I was getting very nervous. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to appear to be so cavalier about something so important. No matter what they did on HBO or in the movies, I didn’t want to make a mistake and then be embarrassed if he never called me again. He’d show up with students and I’d have to hide in a closet. What if he had a sexually transmitted disease? Like herpes or something or that awful HPV virus or what if he had a weird one? I’d heard about that, you know, men with weird ones were all over the place.

“Not yet,” he said. “Why don’t you come up here? I want to show you something.”

Oh, God, come
on
! What was he going to show me?
IT?
My mind was racing. Okay, I said, get a grip for God’s sake. What’s he going to do? Jump you? That’s ridiculous! So I took a few breaths, got the bottle, two glasses, and the corkscrew. Then I inched my way toward the dark stairs, turning on the light switch.

“Turn off the light,” he said.

“Why?” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as frightened as I was becoming. What was he doing? I made my way up to the second floor, slowly. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the living room.”

Good, praise God, I thought. He’s not in a bedroom.

“Come see!”

There it was. The fullest and largest moon I had ever seen, hanging over the ocean, rising in orange and then turning gold. It was absolutely gorgeous.

“Oh!” It was simply amazing.

“Here, give me that,” he said, taking the bottle and glasses from me. “I remembered the paper said it was a full moon tonight and boy, it sure is something, isn’t it?”