Missing Pieces (27 page)

“When would you have time to do this?” Larry’s voice was a glass of cold water, dampening our enthusiasm.

“Well, naturally, we’d have to work around Kate’s schedule,” Robert began.

“You’ve never done anything like this before,” Larry said.

“That’s the whole point,” I told him. “It would be a challenge.”

“You don’t think you have enough challenges in your life at the moment?”

I fell silent. What was the matter with him? Had he always been such a wet blanket?

“Ideas like this take months to develop,” Robert said. “We’re in the very beginning stages. And we haven’t even started contract negotiations.”

“Should I be hiring an agent?” I joked. Kidding on the square, as my mother would say.

“Uh-oh,” Brandi said, and laughed, once again snaking her arm across her husband’s shoulders. “Something tells me you’re going to have your hands full with this one.”

“Don’t fuck this guy,” Larry said, his voice measured and calm, his anger restrained and simple.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You tell me,” Larry said as we climbed into the car. The downpour had ceased, but a light drizzle persisted.

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

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do I sound as if I’m joking?”

“You think I’m sleeping with Robert Crowe?”

“Are you?”

“No, of course not. Where is this coming from?”

“You tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“This is just some guy you knew from high school,” Larry said.

“Yes.”

“Who you just happened to run into one day at the courthouse.”

“Yes.”

“And he just happens to own a radio station.”

“His wife’s father …”

“And he offers you your very own show. Just like that. Out of the blue,” he continued, not interested in my clarification.

“More or less,” I conceded.

“How much more?”

“What?”

“Why would he offer you your own show? You have no experience. He hasn’t seen you in thirty years. What’s he really after, Kate?”

“This is very insulting,” I said, and actually managed to be offended.

“I’m not an idiot,” Larry said.

“Then stop acting like one.” My voice was shaking, although whether it was shaking more with indignation or
guilt, I’m not altogether sure. Was I really so transparent? And did just thinking about having an affair make me guilty as charged? Maybe I should be on my way to the state prison in Starke along with Colin Friendly.

Larry started the car and we drove home without speaking. I flipped on the radio, tried to make my mind a blank, to lose myself in the music. “Here’s an old favorite,” I suddenly heard my voice crackle across the airwaves.
“Your Cheatin’ Heart
by Hank Williams. Callers, the phone lines are now open. Have your questions ready.”

I
t was around this time that I started having recurring dreams. There were two of them, different in content, though equally disturbing. In the first one, I’m lying facedown on my bedroom floor, my hands tied with a rope behind me, my sister sitting on the small of my back, bouncing up and down, riding me as if I were a pony, as a faceless stranger ransacks my drawers, throwing a seemingly endless supply of bras and panties into the air, letting them fall where they may.

In the second dream, I’m walking alone along a sunny strip of sidewalk, my steps propelled by a feeling of buoyancy, of being almost lighter than air. In the next instant, I am absolutely convinced that with a little effort, I can actually take flight, and so I start flapping my arms wildly up and down, angling my body to forty-five degrees, my chin thrust forward and leading the way, my neck and shoulders following, as if skiing off a high jump. And suddenly my legs actually leave the ground, and I am suspended in the air, maybe a foot or two off the sidewalk, and I flap my arms even more furiously, trying to sustain the momentum, to increase my speed, to gain greater height, to fly through the air. I’m so close. “Let me,” I
cry, even as I feel my feet returning to the ground, my flight aborted, my energy spent.

It’s not hard to figure out what these dreams mean: the perceived loss of control, the outside forces keeping me down, my desire to break free, to escape the underpinnings of my life, the oblique references to Larry and Robert, the not so oblique reference to my sister. Even my dreams are transparent, it would seem.

The dreams became a constant, alternating with one another on a nightly basis, occasionally doubling up, like an old-fashioned double bill at the movies. They interrupted my sleep, woke me at three in the morning, like a colicky infant, and hung on till it was time to get up. Occasionally, I awoke from one of these dreams dripping with perspiration, the skin between my breasts glistening with sweat, the sheets around me damp and cold. I forgot what it was like to sleep through the night.

Interestingly enough, it was during this time that Larry and I started making love again. I woke up one night, sweaty and breathless from my attempts to take flight, and he was sitting up in bed beside me. My thrashing had awakened him, he said matter-of-factly, and I apologized, which he said wasn’t necessary. I smiled gratefully, and told him I loved him. And he took me in his arms and told me he loved me too, that he was sorry for his part in our recent estrangement, and I apologized for mine. And we made love. And it was nice and familiar and comforting, and I hoped that would put an end to the dreams, but it didn’t.

The subconscious, it would appear, is not so easy to fool as our waking selves, and the truth was that I didn’t want lovemaking that was nice and familiar and comforting. I wanted lovemaking that was furious and unfamiliar and exciting. The kind of lovemaking that transports you,
makes you think that anything is possible, the kind of lovemaking that can save your life. Or destroy it.

I wanted Robert.

Don’t fuck this guy,
I heard Larry say, even as I fucked him daily in my mind. Robert was everywhere around me, his voice in my ear, telling me what to say, his eyes behind mine, showing me where to look, what to see, his hands at my breasts, dictating the beat of my heart. I made love to my husband, but it was Robert who slept inside me at night, who guided my hands when I showered in the morning, and if I tried scrubbing myself free of him, which I did only rarely, he clung to me stubbornly, coating my body, like a soapy residue, refusing to give way.

As for Robert himself, he was mercifully out of town, first at a media convention in Las Vegas, then reluctantly, on some sort of cruise, organized on behalf of one of his wife’s pet charities. He’d be gone just over three weeks, he told me over the phone before he left. He’d call as soon as he got back. By which time, I assured myself repeatedly in the interim, I would have returned to my senses.

I kept hoping the same would hold true for Jo Lynn, who, during the month of January, made weekly treks to Starke, driving up on Friday and staying at a motel not far from the penitentiary, then spending the allotted six hours with her “fiance” on Saturday, before making the five-hour drive back home. She had few kind words to say about how the state prison operated. What could possibly be the harm, she demanded indignantly, in allowing the inmates visitors on both Saturday and Sunday, and not forcing them to choose either one day or the other? And talk about cruel and unusual punishment, did we know that the state of Florida didn’t allow conjugal visits? Not that this would stop her from going ahead with her wedding plans, she insisted.

Probably it was that blind, stubborn insistence that propelled
me into action, although I had no idea what I was doing, or what I thought I could accomplish. One afternoon, I simply picked up the phone, punched in 411, and waited for the recorded voice to come on the line.

“Southern Bell,” the cheery voice obliged. “For what city?”

“Brooksville,” I heard myself say.

“For what name?”

“Ketchum,” I answered, spelling the name of Colin Friendly’s neighbor, the one who’d tried to help him, who’d supposedly taught him that all women weren’t like his mother. “Rita Ketchum.” Why did I want to speak to her? What good did I think talking to her would do?

Seconds later, a human voice replaced the recorded message. “I show no listing for a Rita Ketchum,” the woman said, her voice decidedly less cheerful than the recording she replaced. “Do you have an address?”

“No, but how big is Brooksville? There can’t be very many Ketchums.”

“I have a listing for a Thomas Ketchum on Clifford Road.”

“Fine,” I told her.

The recorded voice returned, relayed the phone number, offered to dial it directly for a nominal charge. I accepted, not trusting my fingers to do the job.

The phone rang once, twice. Assuming I had the right number, what was I planning on saying to Rita Ketchum?
Hello, I understand you taught Colin Friendly all he knows about love?

The phone was answered on its fourth ring. “Hello,” a young woman said, a baby crying in the background.

“Is this Rita Ketchum?” I asked.

The voice grew suddenly wary. “Who is this?”

“My name is Kate Sinclair. I’m calling from Palm Beach. I need to speak to Rita Ketchum.” Except for the
baby crying in the background, there was silence. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“My mother-in-law isn’t here. May I ask why you want to speak to her?”

“There are some questions I’d like to ask her,” I said, growing uneasy.

“Are you with the police?”

“The police? No.”

“What kind of questions do you want to ask her?”

“I’d rather discuss this directly with Mrs. Ketchum.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“Why is that?”

“Because nobody’s seen or heard from her in almost twelve years.” In the background, the baby began screaming.

“She disappeared?”

“Twelve years ago this May. Look, I really have to go. If you want to call back this evening, you can speak to my husband.”

“Thank you,” I said, too stunned to say anything else. “That won’t be necessary.”

“So what are you saying?” Jo Lynn demanded over the phone only minutes later. “That just because some woman ran away from home, Colin had something to do with it?”

“For God’s sake, Jo Lynn, what is it going to take to get through to you?” I said angrily. “The woman didn’t just run away from home. She disappeared. Of course Colin had something to do with it.”

“Colin would never hurt Mrs. Ketchum. He loved her.”

“The man is incapable of love. He makes no distinctions between feelings, between people. If he could kill the one woman who tried to help him, what makes you think you’ll be any different?”

Her answer was to hang up the phone. I lowered my head into the palms of my hands and cried.

On February 5, I took my mother to our scheduled doctor’s appointment. Dr. Caffery’s office, located on Brazilian Avenue in Palm Beach proper, is a small series of examination rooms off a larger waiting room, the whole area decorated in gradations of pink. Like the womb, I thought, ushering my mother inside and pushing her toward the receptionist’s desk.

“Hi, I’m Kate Sinclair,” I announced. “This is my mother, Helen Latimer.”

“Hello, dear,” my mother said to the receptionist, who was about twenty-five, with short black hair cut on the diagonal and half a dozen assorted gold loops and studs running up each earlobe. Her nameplate identified her as Becky Sokoloff.

“We have an appointment,” I said.

“Have you been here before?” Becky asked.

“No, this is our first visit.”

“You’ll have to fill out these forms.” Becky pushed several sheets of paper across her blond-wood desk. “Why don’t you have a seat for a few minutes. The doctor is a little behind schedule.”

I took the forms and directed my mother to the row of bright pink chairs that ran along the pale pink wall. Several women were already waiting, and one glanced up from her magazine with a weary smile, her eyes indicating that the doctor was more than a
little
behind schedule. “Would you like a magazine, Mother?” I didn’t wait for her reply, just grabbed a handful of magazines from the long, rectangular coffee table that sat in the middle of the room, and plopped them into her lap.

My mother promptly folded her hands on top of them, like a human paperweight, making no move to open them. I studied her for several seconds, deciding that she looked well. Her skin color was good, her dark eyes bright, her
gray hair combed and curled. She seemed in good spirits. No one was plotting against her, nobody was following her, everything was “magnificent,” she’d trilled on the drive over from her apartment, then lapsed into silence, other than to ask how the girls were getting along, a question she repeated at least five times.

“Mom, don’t you want to read a magazine?” I reached under her hands and extricated the latest edition of
Elle,
opening it to a page of naked breasts in quite an astonishing assortment of shapes and sizes.