The Misfortunes of Others (23 page)

“So it is.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

“What did the police say?”

Weezy shrugged. “Nothing much. Took down the information, made a photocopy of the letter, said they’d get back to us. What can they do, after all? They said if I was worried I should hire a bodyguard.”

“I’m her bodyguard,” said Snooky.

Bernard looked at him sadly. “I think they were referring to somebody competent, Snooky.”

“I am competent.”

“Maybe Weezy should come live with us for a while. Get out of the line of fire.”

“I suggested that,” said Maya eagerly, “but she says no. Tell her to stay with us, Bernard, she’s crazy not to.”

Weezy was shaking her head. “I don’t want to get the two of you involved in this. It’s not like my whereabouts would be a secret, anyway. My God, it’s impossible to keep a secret in a little town like this. Besides, you don’t have a security system and I do. I’ll be okay.”

Bernard unfolded the letter and looked at it again. “
You are no good
,” he mused. “Said it twice, in fact.
You have no talent
. Somebody who really needs to tear you down, Weeze. Who could it be?”

“Don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Where can you get these gold stick-on letters?”

“Any art supply store in Manhattan, any stationery store. They’re everywhere, you’ve seen them.”

He nodded. “Any of your students spring to mind?”

She lifted her hands in a gesture of bewilderment. “I don’t know. I mean, there’s been all these weird things happening in there, but … what do they have against me, Bernard?”

“Your talent, my dear.”

She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m not that talented, believe me. Not talented enough to deserve this kind of treatment.”

Bernard folded the letter up and put it away in the envelope. He held it out to Snooky. “Do you want to keep this?”

Snooky regarded it with distaste. “No. Do you think we should throw it out or burn it?”

“Neither,” said Bernard. “I’ll keep it. You may need it later, as evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Yes.” Bernard turned and bent a kindly gaze on his wife’s best friend.

“Come stay with us for a couple of days,” he said. “Just long enough to get your feet back on the ground. Leave your security system on and come let us take care of you. Snooky can cook for everybody and I think both Maya and I would like to have you around where we can make sure you’re okay.”

This, for Bernard, was a long speech. Two tears rolled down Weezy’s pale cheeks.

“Okay,” she snuffled, “if … if you’re sure.”

“We’re sure,” said Maya, patting her arm. “Come stay here, and Snooky can dance attendance on all of us.”

“Thank you,” said Weezy, and, with a trembling sigh, she put her head down on Maya’s shoulder.

“Did you notice how both my sister and Bernard emphasized the part about my cooking and dancing attendance on everybody?” Snooky remarked later. “Am I wrong, am I overly sensitive, or did you notice that too?”

“Oh, Snooky.” Weezy folded a sweater and put it neatly into a suitcase. “They were being kind.”

“Oh, yes, tremendously kind. Maya gave me some pointers afterwards, a list of things they’d like to eat. That’s kind, too, don’t you think? Does the phrase
bloodsucking parasites
spring to mind?”

“You never mind cooking for me.” She folded a blouse and put it on top of the sweater.

“That’s because you’re you. You’re not my sister or Bernard.”

“I thought it was very nice of them,” said Weezy. “I’d
like
to get out of this house.”

Snooky caught a glimpse of the mulish expression on her face as she bent over the suitcase. “Oh. I see. Okay. Do you think they’d like lasagna tonight, or shepherd’s pie?”

Bernard had thought that it would be nauseating to see Snooky and Weezy together under his roof, but since they acted just as they always had, with no sign of their changed relationship except a few shared jokes and the fact that they retired to one bedroom at night instead of two, he gradually began to relax. This was easy to do in the happy postprandial haze induced by Snooky’s cooking. After a few days, it was as if the four of them had been together always.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” asked Maya one night, when she and Bernard were reading in bed.

“Weezy and Snooky?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No.” Bernard turned a page.

“I mean, we hate having company, but if you’re going to have company, they’re the best around.”

Bernard grunted.

“I’m going downstairs to get something to eat. I’ll be right back,” said Maya, throwing off the covers.

“Didn’t you just have a snack?”

“Yes, I did, Bernard. Why? Do you have some kind of problem with that?”

“No.”

“I’m pregnant. I’m supposed to eat as much as I want.”

“Good, good.”

“I’m feeding your precious offspring, okay?”

“Yes, yes, okay.”

“Want anything from the kitchen?”

Bernard was always in the mood for a snack. “Bring me some of those whole-wheat crackers Snooky bought the other day.”

“Okay.”

“And some peanut butter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And a little bit of jelly.”

“Blackberry or cherry?”

“Blackberry.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t forget the cream cheese!” he bellowed after her as she went down the stairs.

Maya returned ten minutes later with a laden tray of goodies.

“Bernard, you should talk about what I eat. Look at you,” she said, watching him shovel it down. “You’re going to gain as much as I am.”

“Mhmmmhmmm,” said Bernard, his mouth full of crackers.

“I mean, this is ridiculous. How dare you say anything about my food consumption?” She spread a cracker thickly with peanut butter and cream cheese, and stuck it in her mouth. “How dare you?”

“Mmmhmhmxmhxmmjm,” explained Bernard, gesturing.

“What? Well, I don’t care. You have no right to talk to me that way.” Maya rubbed her abdomen fretfully. “I’m starving all the time.”

“I know.”

“It’s an uncomfortable feeling.”

“I know.” Bernard was normally hungry all the time. He gave her a sympathetic glance.

“I feel bloated.”

“Mmm-hmmmm.”

“Weird things are happening all over my body. I feel out of control, Bernard. I feel like I’ve been taken over by an alien organism.” Maya was near tears. She crammed a cracker angrily into her mouth. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

“And now I can’t even fit into my jeans. I have to wear those stupid maternity pants.” Maya had taken to wearing
black stretch pants and enormously oversized sweaters, culled from Bernard’s wardrobe. Bernard thought she looked very nice in them, and said so.

“You know I think you look terrific.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Maya, in a tone which clearly conveyed to him that she didn’t care. She fiddled absently with her peanut butter knife. “I just feel so … I don’t know … so
helpless
, somehow. I feel like I don’t live in my own body anymore, somebody else does. It’s so busy building somebody else’s body that it doesn’t have time for me anymore.” She burst into tears. “It’s a horrible feeling.”

“Now, now.” Bernard hugged her awkwardly over the crumb-filled tray. “Now, now, sweetheart. I know it’s hard. Everybody says it’s hard.”

“Who, Bernard? Who says it’s hard? Nobody does, everybody just idealizes it into this perfect experience. Nobody talks about this sense I have of being taken over by an alien being. Do they? No, they don’t. Am I the only one? Am I the only person who’s ever felt this way? Am I all alone in the universe?”

Bernard regarded her lovingly. “Now, you know the answer to that.”

“Oh, I guess so.” Maya raked her fingers through her hair and moved over to snuggle against his shoulder. “I guess so. I’m sorry I’m so horrible already, and it’s only the second trimester. Can you imagine where I’ll be by the seventh or eighth month?”

Bernard couldn’t imagine. He kissed the top of her head and offered her a cracker with cream cheese and jelly.

Upstairs, in Snooky’s tiny third-floor bedroom under the eaves, another conversation was taking place.

“Beautiful view you have here,” Weezy said. She was sitting
up in bed, wearing a long pink nightgown and leaning her elbows on the windowsill. The window was open to the warm May night and the moon shone bright yellow overhead. The light streamed in, making the edges and planes of her face look mysterious, illuminating her wild hair in an aureole. “Look at that moon.”

“Something, isn’t it?” Snooky propped the pillows up behind him. “Full tonight.”

“When I was younger,” Weezy said dreamily, “much younger, about your age, let’s say, I used to open all the windows on a night like this and paint by the light of the moon. The moon changes all the colors, it’s wonderful, you can’t tell what the hell you’re doing. Everything looks completely different. I used to go crazy and paint and paint and paint. In the morning my roommates would find me asleep with the paintbrush in my hand, surrounded by all these crazy drawings.”

“And how would they look by daylight?”

“Oh.” Weezy gave a low laugh. “Psychotic, really. Not much sense to them. But sometimes the colors would be wonderful. And I could never get over the difference between day and night, looking at them.”

Snooky shook his head, his eyes riveted on the pale orb floating overhead. “That’s something, Weezy.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It was pretentious, really. I was convinced it showed how wild and creative I was.”

“When I was younger and there was a full moon, I used to stand in front of William’s door and howl. I was convinced that showed how wild and creative I was. Used to drive him nuts. And when I was in college, I would get into a car with a bunch of other guys and go around trying to pick up women. Our theory was that since people go crazy at the time of the full moon, maybe they would go out with us.”

“I see. The biorhythmically-deranged dating theory?”

“Exactly.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “Do you feel like flinging open all the windows—well, there’s only two in this room—and painting till dawn?”

“No.” Her voice went curiously flat. “I don’t feel like painting at all anymore. With everything that’s going on … I don’t feel like it.”

He nodded. “I was wondering if you were working these days.”

“No. Not a bit. The only time I pick up a brush is in class.”

He looked at her face, beautiful and serene in profile, like a Renaissance goddess with fiery hair burning on her shoulders and curling over her arms. Weezy turned to him, her face a pattern of light and dark, lovely and mysterious.

“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I keep waiting for the next letter,” she said patiently, as if explaining something to an idiot child. “The next one. You don’t seriously think whoever it is is going to stop now, do you? Now that they’re on a roll?”

“There doesn’t have to be another one, Weezy.”

She shrugged again, lightly. “I don’t know. I don’t have a good feeling about it, that’s all.” She drew with her fingertip on the windowsill. “I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

Snooky nodded. He tightened his grip around her waist. Weezy smiled at him faintly, then propped her elbows on the windowsill again and gazed out at the moondrenched night.

The second letter came three days later.

Weezy had gone home to check on the house, water her plants and pick up the mail. She came back looking wan and frightened, and handed Snooky the letter.

“Oh, God,” he said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down.

“I couldn’t open it,” she said. “I saw the gold letters and thought I was going to throw up.”

He nodded. The outside looked exactly the same as before: the Manhattan postmark, the shiny golden letters spelling out Weezy’s name and address. Snooky tore it open.

The color drained out of Weezy’s face as she read it. “I want it to stop, Snooky. I just want it to stop.”

He was reading it over again, grimly. “I know.”

“Somebody hates me, and I don’t know who or even
why!
” Her voice ended on a long wail.

“ ‘I’m just as good as you,’ ” Snooky read out loud. His eyes met hers. “Now who could possibly think that?”

She shrugged miserably. At that moment Bernard came into the kitchen with his coffee cup in his hand. He paused when he saw their faces.

“Should I go away?”

In reply, Snooky held out the letter.

Bernard took it and read it through impassively. When he was done, he folded it and handed it back.

“Well?” demanded Snooky.

“Well, what?”

“Any thoughts?”

“Yes,” said Bernard, going to the stove and pouring himself
a cup of coffee. “Whoever did it must have bought a lot of those alphabet sets. There aren’t that many letters in just one set, if I’m not mistaken.”

Weezy leaned her head in one hand. She laughed shakily. “Thank you, Bernard. Always the unique point of view.”