Monday Mourning (9 page)

An hour and a half later Anne began meandering through an explanation. As she talked, I sensed vacillation, as though she were testing ideas as she spoke them.

We’d stopped at home to deposit Anne’s things, and were now in the Trattoria Trestevere on lower Crescent. The waiter had just delivered Caesar salads. I was drinking Perrier. Anne was working on her third chardonnay.

And the chardonnay was working on Anne.

“I’m forty-six years old, Tempe. If I don’t search for some meaning now, there’s going to be nothing out there for me to find later.” She tapped a manicured nail to her breast. “Or in here.”

Again, I thought of my sister. Harry had come to Montreal questing for inner peace. She’d hooked up with apocalyptic crazies who were going to take her on a voyage to permanent peace. As in dead. Fortunately, she’d survived. Anne’s discourse sounded like flotsom straight down the same self-help psychobabble pipeline.

“So the kids are all right?”

“Peachy.”

“Tom didn’t do anything to piss you off?”

The nail pointed at me. “Tom didn’t
do
anything.
Ever.
Unless you count defending asshole developers who want to rid the world of trees, and spending the rest of the time seeking the grail of a hole in one. Guess it’s my own fault marrying someone with a name like Turnip.”

Tom-Ted’s surname had also been a source of much amusement over the years.

“The tuber is terminated.”

“You’ve left him?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Yes.”

“After twenty-four years and three kids?”

“This does not concern the kids.”

My fork stopped in midair. Anne and I froze eye to eye.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she said. “The kids are grown. Josh and Lola have graduated college. Stuart’s off doing whatever it is Stuart does.” She jabbed at a lettuce leaf. “They’re moving on with their lives and I’m left with selling real estate and cultivating fucking azaleas.”

Upon completion of my doctorate at Northwestern, Pete joined a Charlotte law firm, and I accepted an appointment at UNCC. I was thrilled to leave Chicago and return to my beloved North Carolina. But the move had its downside.

By day, I was surrounded by academics. Dedicated. Compassionate. Bright. And as socially sophisticated as the Burpee seed catalog. Katy was an infant. My colleagues were childless and clueless concerning the demands of parenthood.

Each evening, I collected my baby at child care and transitioned to a picture perfect ad for country club living. Manicured lawns. Upmarket cars. Stepford wives with stay-at-home mind-sets. Female conversation focused on tennis, golf, and car pools.

I was despairing of ever developing meaningful female friendships when I spotted Anne at a neighborhood charity tea. Or heard her, to be more precise. Steel magnolia meets the drunken sailor.

I zeroed in. Instant connection.

Anne and I have seen each other’s kids through broken bones and broken hearts. Our families have shared two decades of camping and ski trips, Thanksgiving dinners, christenings, and funerals. Until the collapse of my marriage, the Turnips and the Petersonses hadn’t missed a summer at the ocean. Now Anne and I made the beach trips alone.

“What have you told the kids?”

“Nothing. I haven’t actually moved out of the house. I’m on a leave of absence. Traveling.”

“But—”

“Let’s not talk about me, darlin’. Let’s talk about you. What are you working on these days?”

There is no pursuing an issue with Anne when she closes down.

I summarized the pizza basement case, and told her of my frustration with my pal Claudel.

“You’ll bring him around. You always have before. Get to the good stuff. Are you seeing anyone?”

“Sort of.”

The waiter replaced our salads with entrées. Lasagna for Anne. Veal piccata for me. Anne ordered another wine, then snatched up the grinder and screwed cheese onto her pasta. I decided to try another run at the Tom thing.

“What exactly is the focus of this new personal outreach program?” I tried to keep the cynicism from my voice.

“Fulfillment. Self-esteem. Appreciation.” She smacked the grinder onto the tabletop. “And don’t even suggest it. I’m not signing up for one more puking course.”

We ate in silence for a few moments. When Anne spoke again her tone sounded lighter, but forced, somehow.

“I got more attention from the hunk in 3C than I have from Tom Turnip in the past twelve months. Boy’s probably out buying me gardenias right now.” Anne knocked back a swig of wine. “Hell, messages are probably piling up on your answering machine as we speak.”

“What boy in 3C?”

“A sweet little stud I met on the plane.”

“You gave him my phone number?”

“He’s harmless.”

“How do you know he’s harmless?”

“He was in first class.”

“So were the nice lads who torpedoed the Trade Center.”

My friend looked at me as though I’d suggested she cut off a foot.

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Tempe. I’m not actually going to
see
the guy.”

I wasn’t believing this. I use extreme caution in giving out my home number. Anne had blithely shared it with a complete stranger, who might be calling my home looking for her.

“I’d had a couple of Manhattans,” she continued, oblivious to the extent of my annoyance. “We talked. He asked where he could reach me. I jotted the stuff on a napkin—”

“Stuff? Meaning address, too?”

Anne gave an Academy Award orbital roll.

“I’m sure the guy tossed it as he exited the Jetway. How’s your veal?”

In contrast to the conversation, my meat was perfect.

“Good,” I mumbled. So the guy might not call. He could show up on my doorstep.

“Mine is
parfait.
See what I mean? Already I’m in a different galaxy from Clover, South Carolina.” Anne circled her fork in the air.
“Québec! La belle province! C’est magnifique!”

I have been accused of speaking Southern French. Anne’s accent left me in the Dixie dust.

“This is just a cooling-off period, right? A marital sabbatical?”

When I was married to Pete, Anne and I often joked about the “marital sabbatical.” It was our code phrase for “road trip, no men allowed.”

“I could be dead a week and Tom Turnip wouldn’t notice I was gone.” The fork came back up, this time pointed at me. “No. That may be harsh. If Tom ran out of toilet paper he might holler to inquire as to my whereabouts.”

Anne gave one of her full, throaty laughs. “There’s a pretty picture, darlin’. The great barrister, caught midstep taking a dum—”

“Annie.”

“Hon, the boy is history.”

For a few moments we ate in silence. When I’d finished, I gave the topic one last shot.

“Annie, this is Tempe. I know you. I know Tom. I’ve seen you two together for twenty years. Tell me what’s really going on.”

Anne laid down her fork and began working the paper napkin under her wineglass. A full minute passed before she spoke.

“Things were amazing when Tom and I first met. The March of the Toreadors every night. And things stayed great. The books and talk shows tell you that married couples go from towering inferno to not so hot, and that that’s normal. But it didn’t happen with Tom and me.”

Jagged scallops were appearing along the napkin’s edge.

“Not until a couple of years ago.”

“Are you talking about sex?”

“I’m talking about a major, total downshift. Tom stopped smoldering and began focusing on anything that wasn’t me. I began settling for less and less of him. Last week it struck me. Our paths were barely crossing.”

“Nothing terrible had happened?”

“That’s just it.
Nothing
had happened. Nothing
was
happening. Nothing was
about to
happen. I’d begun to feel numb. And I’d begun to think numb wasn’t so bad. Numb began to feel normal.”

Anne gathered the napkin scraps into a tiny mound.

“Life’s too short, Tempe. I don’t want my obituary to read, ‘Here lies a woman who sold houses.’”

“Isn’t it a bit soon to just pull the plug?”

With a sweep of the hand, Anne sent the scraps spiraling to the floor.

“I have aspired to be the perfect wife more than half my life. The result has been deep disappointment. Cut and run. That’s my new philosophy.”

“Have you considered counseling?”

“When hell and the golf courses freeze over.”

“You know Tom loves you.”

“Does he?”

“We meet very few people in this life who truly care.”

“Right you are, darling.” Anne drained her fourth chardonnay with a quick, jerky move, and set the glass onto the mutilated napkin. “And those are the folks who hurt us the most.”

“Annie.” I forced my friend’s eyes to mine. They were a deep, dusky green, the pupils shining with an alcohol buzz. “Are you sure?”

Anne curled the fingers of both hands and placed her forehead on her fists. A hesitation, then her face came back up.

“No.”

The unhappiness in her voice stopped my heart.

During dinner the wind had blustered up for a personal best, and the temperature had dropped in opposition. Negotiating the quarter mile home felt like mushing the Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome.

Gusts moaned up Ste-Catherine, manhandling our clothing and sandblasting our faces with ice and snow. Anne and I ran hunched like soldiers on a bunker charge.

Rounding the corner of my block, I noticed oddly drifted snow against the outer door of my building. Though cold teared my eyes, something about the white mound looked very wrong.

As I blinked my vision into focus, the drift expanded, changed shape, contracted again.

I stopped, frowned. Could it be?

An appendage snaked out, was drawn back.

What the hell was going on?

I dashed across the street and up the outer stairs.

“Birdie!”

My cat raised his chin slightly and rolled his eyes up. Seeing me, he shot forward without seeming to flex a limb. A small cloud puffed from my mouth as my chest caught his catapulted weight.

Birdie clawed upward, laid his chin on my shoulder, and pressed his belly to my jacket. His fur smelled wet. His body shivered from cold or fear.

“What’s he doing out here?” A gust snatched Anne’s question and whipped it up the street.

“I don’t know.”

“Can he let himself out?”

“Someone had to have opened a door.”

“You tight enough with anyone to give out a key?”

“No.”

“So who’s been inside?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, we better find out.”

Pulling off her mittens, Anne produced a Mace dispenser from her shoulder bag.

“I think that’s illegal here,” I said.

“So shoot me.” Anne yanked the outer door.

Entering the vestibule was like stepping from a vortex into a vacuum.

Handing off Birdie, I removed my mittens, reached into a pocket, and took out my keys. Palms sweaty, I unlocked the interior door.

The lobby was graveyard quiet. No snow residue or wet prints marred the runners or the marble floor. Heart hammering, I crossed and made a hard right. Anne followed.

Faux brass wall sconces light the interior lobby and corridors. Normally, the low-level illumination is sufficient. Tonight, two candles were out, leaving murky pools of darkness between the islands of yellow dotting my hallway.

Had the bulbs been out when we left? I couldn’t remember.

My condo lay straight ahead. Seeing it, I stopped dead, totally unnerved.

Black space gaped between the open door and jamb.

T
HROUGH THE GAP
, I
COULD MAKE OUT DISORDERED SHADOWS
and an odd luminescence, like moonlight on water.

I glanced over my shoulder. Anne stood with one arm wrapping the cat, the other upraised, Mace at the ready. Birdie clung to her chest, head twisted one-eighty to stare at his home.

I turned back to the door, straining to hear sounds on the far side. A footfall. A cough. The whisper of a sleeve.

Behind me, Anne’s ragged breathing. Beyond the door, intimidating silence.

The three of us held stock-still, eyes wide, a triptych in trepidation.

A heartbeat. A lifetime.

Then Birdie made his move. Scrabbling upward, he gave a “Rrrp,” rocketed off Anne’s chest, and shot toward the opening. In a lunge to grab him, Anne only managed to divert his flight path.

Paws slammed the door, sending it backward into the wall. Birdie sped inside as the door ricocheted back from the wall and shut.

Blood drained from my brain. Options kaleidoscoped.

Retreat? Call out? Dial 911?

I find cell phones in restaurants annoying beyond tolerance. I hadn’t brought mine to dinner.

Damn!

I turned to Anne. Her face was a tense white oval in the dim light.

I pantomimed punching numbers on a cell phone. Anne shook her head, canister on high. Lady Liberty with Mace, but no phone.

We traded looks of indecision. I spoke first, barely a whisper.

“Could the latch have failed to catch?”

“I pulled it tight. But it’s your damn door.” Barely a sibilant, but she managed to hiss. “Besides, that doesn’t explain Birdie being outside.”

“If someone was waiting to assault us, the door wouldn’t be open.”

“Assault us?” Anne’s eyes saucered. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Are you talking about some homicidal crazoid you’ve pissed off through your work?”

“That’s not what I meant.” It was exactly what I meant. “I meant some random intruder.”

Anne’s eyes ballooned. “Great. Some crazoid
rapist.
”

“That’s not the point. Leaving the door open would be a dead giveaway of a break-in.”

“Excellent choice of wording.”

Under stress, Anne’s sarcasm keeps its cool.

“If it’s a routine burglary, they wouldn’t announce their presence with an open door. The door makes no sense if anyone’s inside.”

Lady Liberty relaxed her arm a fraction, but said nothing.

Creeping forward, I placed my ear to the door.