Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (16 page)

Unfortunately, I was having trouble supplementing. Both Wally (back living up on our third floor) and Jo (now living at Gloria’s with her mother) were frantically playing catch-up with the readings and the class work they had missed. In addition, Wally, whose graduate program included doing casework in his field, was always running out to see some schizoid Cheryl or manic-depressive Dwayne—clients with significant mental-health problems. As a result, whenever I tried to embark on a let’s-discuss-your-future discussion, Wally and Jo insisted that they had too many obligations to take time to chat.

One afternoon, however, I came upon Josephine in my kitchen and seized the opportunity to speak to her privately. I started the conversation by saying, “It may not be appropriate, now that you’re seeing a reputable psychiatrist, for me to involve myself with your private affairs . . .” and almost choked on my diet Sprite when Josephine replied, “You’re right—it wouldn’t be.”

She gave me a chance to wipe spilled Sprite off my chin before she added, “I’ve got this really great positive transference going with Dr. X, and I wouldn’t want to—you know—attenuate it.”

Since when was Josephine using words like,
“attenuate”—not to mention “positive transference”? I was staggered. But, instantly regrouping, 1 said, “I wouldn’t want to attenuate it either, Jo. So let me just ask you this—what are your thoughts about when you and Wally might wish to marry?”

“I’ll be working that through with Dr. X,” Josephine crisply replied, “and you’ll be among the very first to know.”

“And Wally?”

“Oh, I’ll probably tell him even before I tell you.”

“I mean, aren’t you working your marriage plans through with Wally?”

“Not really, Mrs. Kovner. Right now my main relationship has to be with myself. Discovering my identity. Providing myself with my own self-validation. Learning to live with ambivalence. Stuff like that.”

The Josephine I was listening to was not the quivering wreck who had crept into Wally’s Chevy less than a month ago. I had to hand it to Dr. X—she worked fast. Still, remembering Jo’s conviction that her father was about to pounce on her sexually, I wondered how her literal mind would process all of her new psychological know-how.

I also wondered why Wally hadn’t stopped Josephine, down at the beach, from making the fatal phone call that had spurred her mother to walk out on her father. He had taken lots of psychology courses and surely he understood that Jo had confused the symbolic with the concrete.

“I tried to straighten her out—before the phone call and after the phone call,” Wally told me, when I raised the question with him a couple of hours after my thwarted talk with Jo. “But she was too mad to listen
then, and now I can’t discuss it anymore. She has asked me—so, told me—to please stay out of her treatment. She doesn’t want to attenuate the transference.”

We were in Wally’s room—an incredible mess, but, as I’ve repeatedly reminded myself, you cannot tell adult children who live at home to clean up their rooms (or to eat their vegetables, or to not drive the car when the streets are sheets of ice). Wally, eyeing his books, was making it clear that he wished our conversation to end.

“Can you and I make a date to talk about your future plans?” I asked, picking up a few stray socks and some underwear.

Wally looked uncomfortable. “Nothing personal, Mom, but I better not Josephine feels our relationship is a bit too symbiotic. She says that it’s hard for a man to fully commit to another woman when he hasn’t separated from his mother.”

I scooped up a soaking-wet towel that had fallen behind the radiator, then hung up a suit and a jacket that were crumpled at the foot of his double bed. “Maybe Jo should consider switching her major from English literature to psychology,” I said, making heroic efforts not to sound snide. “She certainly seems to have taken to the subject.”

Wally, who had noticed the snide despite my heroic efforts, said, “You shouldn’t see this as an attack on you. It’s just that Jo is killing her father—symbolically speaking, of course—and she’s sensitive about controlling parents.”

I guess I’d been feeling a bit more stressed out than I had actually recognized because I behaved in a quite untypical way. I was bending down to fish Wally’s
hightops and loafers and flipflops from underneath his desk, and instead of, as I’d intended, setting-them neatly in a row on his closet floor, I stood up and threw them with all my might—one by one by one—against his wall.

“Why should I”—bam!—“feel attacked,” I screamed, “merely because”—bam!—“I am being attacked? I’m a competent”—bam!—“can-do woman”—bam!—“and if people choose to mistake that”—bam!—“for controlling, well, boo”—bam!—“on them.”

As Wally gaped with astonishment, I took a few deep breaths and returned to my more characteristic calm. “You’ve been happy to use my help in the past,” I reminded my son with enormous dignity, “and whenever you wish to use it again, I’m available.”

I gathered up an armful of sopping towels and dirty clothes and marched out the door. “If you don’t think I’m being controlling,” I told Wally as I departed, “I’ll just go ahead and drop these into the hamper. And then I’ll be writing my column. On I
NGRATITUDE
.”

•  •  •

On Sunday, September 20, I was sitting on my porch reading the
Post.
Jake had gone off to make hospital rounds. Wally, parked in front, was sweeping the rest of the beach sand out of his Chevy. He had just rolled up the windows and was hosing down the chassis when a plain black van came roaring up our street. Careening from side to side, with heavy-metal music blasting at top volume, the van abruptly took aim and bore down on Wally. I’m sure it would have smashed him if he hadn’t dropped the hose and spread-eagled himself across the hood of his car.

“Hey, watch it, you asshole,” Wally yelled, clambering
down from the hood, as the van, its speed unchecked, went barreling past him. “What do you think you’re—”

With a squeal of brakes and a grinding of gears, the black van slammed to a stop and went into reverse, aiming again for Wally, who stood in the middle of our street with an upraised fist. He ducked to his left; the van shot left. He ran to the right; the van was almost on him. And when he tore to the left again, diving over a hedge and landing facedown in the Dunlaps’ pachysandra, the van spun around, crashed through the hedge, and moved relentlessly toward his helpless body.

Screaming, “My God, he’s going to run over my baby boy,” I raced off the porch and over to the Dunlaps’. But before I could get there, the driver braked, insolently gunned his engine three times, backed out over the hedge—and roared away.

“Say something, Wally. Speak. Let me know you’re all right,” I called to my son, my heart achieving heart attack velocity. But he was already on his feet and brushing himself off when I and the Dunlaps, pulled from their house by the ruckus on their front lawn, got to him.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. No harm done,” said Wally, plucking a couple of leaves out of his hair. “But that asshole!”

The Dunlaps, foreign-service types who had returned to Cleveland Park after several years with the embassy in Beirut, were smiling and shaking our hands with warm cordiality. A profile in
Washingtonian
magazine had recently characterized them as “unflappable and gracious through car bombs and coups.” Clearly this vicious van attack—which had left me wondering
whether to faint or throw up—was a piece of cake for the unflappable Dunlaps.

“Good morning, Brenda, Wally. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Dunlap, as if she were at a State Department reception. And only after we had established beyond the slightest doubt that yes, it was indeed a beautiful morning, did Mr. Dunlap ask Wally, “Say, we hate to be nosy neighbors, but that person in the van—you’ve had a quarrel with him?”

Wally shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see who it was. Sorry about your front lawn, Mr., Mrs. Dunlap. But I kind of ran out of choices.”

“Not to worry, Wally. Now, can we offer you both some coffee? Or would you prefer Perrier?” said Mrs. Dunlap, trying to sneak a glance at the condition of her hedge and pachysandra while maintaining her position as a credit to the Diplomatic Corps.

Maybe, I said to myself, she wouldn’t be acting so composed if
her
son, not mine, had been inches away from death. On the other hand, I said to myself, as I heard her pun, “Bloody Mary? Herbal tea?” maybe she would.

We declined the drinks, and we and the Dunlaps finally returned to our respective houses, having agreed that the van attack was doubtless the work of some crack-addicted youth. Back on my porch, however, I said to Wally, as I sank, shaking, into my rocker, “That wasn’t some crack-addicted youth. I’m positive he was sent by Mr. Monti.”

“He’s a pretty rough guy, but he wouldn’t do anything physical,” Wally said, in that subject-is-closed tone of voice he seems to have recently acquired from his father. Anyway, whoever-it was, he was just jerking
my strings. He could have run me over when I was splat on the Dunlaps’ lawn, but he backed away.”

“Maybe we scared him off,” I said, and then I added grimly, “this time.”

Wally dismissed my concerns. “There’s a lot of weirdos out there, believe me. This was just some weirdo getting his kicks. I doubt if he knew who I was. I really doubt this was anything personal. Unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“Well, my dean called me in the other day to blast me for starting school more than two weeks late. I tell you, this woman was majorly pissed at me. In fact, now that I think, about it”—Wally gave me a big lighten-up Mom smile—“I’ll bet
she
was the person driving that van.”

•  •  •

I held myself together until Wally went off to see Jo, and then I ran into the house and fell apart, shivering and sobbing as I let myself grasp the full horror of what had just happened.

That Mr. Monti had turned to physical violence.

That a new and brutal phase had now begun.

That he’d sent the van to show us his vile intentions.

That the vengeance, the permanent vengeance, he had vowed to wreak on Wally was death—the death of my precious, beloved son.

I saw that Wally didn’t know, and needn’t know, the danger he was in. He had, thank God, his mother to protect him.

The sounds coming out of my mouth no longer belonged to a human being. They were the sounds of a maddened mama bear. And suddenly I was screaming,
“I won’t let him do this! I won’t let him do this! I’ll stop him! I’ll kill him!”

And I suddenly understood that I really would—I really would—kill Mr. Monti.

•  •  •

In that column I wrote on the value of engaging in fantasies of sex and violence, I noted that if these fantasies became unduly obsessive and consuming, we might give some thought to getting outside help. But my column also suggested that we need not reject all our fantasies out of hand, that we need not always view them as unrealizable. Indeed, my column suggested that we might—with certain responsible modifications—dare to make some of these fantasies come true.

I underscored
modifications
and I carefully warned my readers that in trying to make their fantasies come true they must do so without breaking laws or causing harm to themselves or to others or blah blah blah.

But as I had lain in bed last night and contemplated my perfect murder plan, I knew I intended to disobey that warning.

•  •  •

This morning I purchased a Norse-blond wig styled in a tidy pageboy, a white nylon uniform with white stockings and shoes, supersized dark glasses, a sheet, a radio, a metal folding table, and those latex gloves that doctors and dentists wear. I also prepared a flyer that described certain interesting services available from a qualified professional. Obviously Mrs. Kovner would no longer be welcome in Mr. Monti’s home. With a little luck, however, he would throw his doors wide open to Ingrid Swedenborg.

• 
The Rest of September and On into October 28

•

L
ate Wednesday morning, three days after I’d made the decision to murder Mr. Monti, Rosalie flew to Washington to have a consultation with my friend Carolyn. I was not thrilled. Rosalie, now a landscape architect, had sent oat a mailing to everyone she knew—and everyone
I
knew—announcing her availability as, and I cringingly quote, “a transformer of your exterior space into a true vision of loveliness.” Carolyn, who had just decided to give her vast backyard a completely new look, expense no object, had invited Rose to make her a proposal. My concern was that Rose would talk herself into the job, get it halfway done, and then succumb to an other career-change crisis, having reached the conclusion that her true calling in life was manager of a health spa or maybe an acoustical guitarist.

I yearned to tell Rosalie not to screw up but I managed to restrain myself as I drove her from the airport to Carolyn’s house. In part I attribute my silence to my commitment to improving the sibling relationship. In part I attribute it to the fact that I had a lot of other things on my mind.

While Rosalie and Carolyn consulted about her yard, I went back home and started working the phones. I first called Birdie Monti, on whose behalf (unbeknownst to her) I had tracked down a displaced homemakers support group. Now was the moment to tactfully persuade her to check it out. I was even prepared to go with her the first time.

Once past the usual pleasantries about Wally and Jo and the grandchildren and the weather, I eased into “If you’ll please excuse me for being a little personal, I just want to say that it must be hard, after all these years, to be a woman alone, without a husband.”

“I’m getting by just fine,” Birdie replied.

“But to find yourself stripped of your role, your self-definition, your raison d’être . . .”

“My what?”

“You know—the feeling that your life has some meaning, some purpose.”