Topping From Below (41 page)

A neighbor’s dog barks at a passing car, and a small boy, maybe four or five, wearing dungarees and jabbering to himself, shambles past Franny’s Cadillac, trailing a stick on the ground. A woman’s voice calls out from up the street, and he freezes in midstep with his head cocked, like a cartoon character whose film reel has stalled. Then, as abruptly as he’d stopped, he resumes motion, weaving up the sidewalk toward the voice.

Ian returns, calmer now, and looks down at me. He says, “You’re afraid of me, Nora? You have to hide in the car?”

I stare at the steering wheel, unable to meet his gaze, unable to answer his questions.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why are you doing this to me?” There is a note of desperation in his voice, faint but unmistakable. I grip the bottom of the steering wheel, head bowed.

“The police questioned me today—again. They came by the office while I was working.” He places both palms on the glass, reminding me of a small boy leaving fingerprints. “They asked if I’d be willing to give them samples of my hair and carpet fibers from my house. I had to hire a lawyer, Nora. A lawyer.” His head drops. “How could you tell them I killed Franny? How could you even think it?”

Sighing, he turns around and leans against the car, his back to me, and folds his arms. A light breeze ripples through his hair.

Talking to the wind, he says, “Why are you doing this, Nora? I loved you—I still love you. When I said I needed time to be alone for a while, time to think things through, that’s all I wanted—time. Just a little time. I wasn’t splitting up with you; I would’ve said so if that was the case. I think of you every day, wondering if I did the right thing by distancing myself from you, knowing in my heart that I didn’t. I decided to call you and explain what really happened, why I needed to be alone for a while, but then the police started questioning me about Franny.” He hesitates, looks at the ground, then says quietly, “I suppose I can understand your being angry if you thought I broke off with you—but to tell the police I was stalking you, sending threatening letters, and making anonymous calls, and that I killed your sister? That goes way beyond vindictive. I had nothing to do with it, Nora. Not with any of it. I swear.”

He stops talking, and I hear the quiet vibration of the car’s engine. The plea in his voice was obvious, undisguised. I
still love you
. Does he think he can change my mind with a declaration of love? His affection—sincere or not—doesn’t change the fact that his fingerprints were on each item in the shoebox. Inwardly, I shudder. This is what stalkers do—kill with their love.

“I’m not sure what upsets me the most,” he says. “The police barging in on me while I’m working, or finding all that stuff under my bed, or knowing you believe I stalked you and killed your sister.” Another pause. “I didn’t do it, Nora. You know me better than that.” He turns his head so he can see me and lowers his voice. “You know better.” I barely hear his words.

Through the windshield, the sun glistens and throws glints of light off the glass. The sky is bright blue, cheerful, and I wish Ian would leave. I don’t want to be burdened with his problems—or anyone else’s. He will be arrested soon, and a jury will determine his innocence or guilt, not 1. All I want is to be left alone.

“I was hiking the day she died,” he continues. He’s still addressing the wind, his back pressed against the car. “With a friend in Desolation Wilderness. The only problem is, my friend doesn’t remember exactly which day we were there. It was too long ago; he just can’t be sure of the date.”

How convenient, I think. Another suspect with no alibi.

The sound of a roaring motor shatters through the air. A gardener is cutting down a tree next door, and he looks like a scrawny lumberjack in his yellow hard hat, steel-toed boots, and plastic goggles. His hands, one wrapped around the throttle control handle and the other around the front handlebar, vibrate under the roar of the saw. Specks of sawdust fly out from the chain. The loud, ratcheting buzz penetrates the air, choking out the sounds of skirring birds, barking dogs, passing traffic. The yard seems to shrink in this earsplitting, pressing noise; it doesn’t leave room for anything else.

Ian sighs. Minutes go by before he speaks again. When the gardener turns off the chain saw, he says, “It wasn’t me, Nora. You should know that. Listen to your heart.”

Without giving me another glance, he walks slowly back to his Bronco. Sunlight streams down between the tree branches and casts a silvery sheen on the hood of my car. Even with the windows rolled up, I can hear the treetops softly rustling, murmuring, as the breeze blows through their leaves. In my rearview mirror, I watch Ian drive away, which leaves only one other object reflected in my mirror: the black fin-tailed Cadillac, a constant reminder of how I failed to understand my sister.

Once, when I was driving around Sacramento on an errand, I spotted Franny in her Cadillac, going in the opposite direction on her way to the dialysis clinic. I hollered and waved, trying to get her attention; just as I was about to honk the horn, something made me stop. She looked so serene, oblivious of me and everyone else, a contented smile spread across her face, that I didn’t want to disturb her. Transfixed, I watched her as she sailed past, looking like there was nothing else in the world she would rather be doing than riding around in her shiny black Cadillac. I felt like an interloper, intruding on someone else’s private moment. I wanted to avert my head, look the other way, but I couldn’t. I turned my car around and followed her surreptitiously. It was like a whale, her Cadillac, and seemed not so much to cruise as to float down the road, ponderously, weighted down and bloated, taking up the entire lane. I hadn’t remembered the car being so large; it seemed as if it had grown over the years, like a living body, expanding with time. Even from a distance of two car lengths, I could hear the Cadillac announcing its presence in a low, steady rumble. Passing cars got out of Franny’s way. They hugged the shoulder of the road, swerving around the car as if it might be a huge, predatory fish, and when she pulled into the clinic, she parked in the very back, on the white line, and took up two parking spaces. With a shudder and a deep moan, the engine stopped. Franny got out of the car like a dignitary exiting a limousine: first the head, a look around, a smile to no one in particular, then the body. She stood up, slung her purse over her shoulder, and then, with hands on hips, nodded at the car approvingly, a look of pure delight on her face. I spied on her from across the street, wondering what she saw in the car that gave her such joy. She looked as if she had discovered something priceless, something intangible, like the secret of happiness. What was it? I wanted to know. What was the secret?

But then I went on my way, soon forgetting all about her, wrapped up in my own concerns. Later that day, when I recalled the incident, I was amused—at myself for following her, and at Franny for allowing a car to define and validate her presence. I couldn’t understand that type of thinking at all. I asked her once why she was so enamored with the Cadillac, but she only smiled cryptically and said, “It leaves me room to grow.”

CHAPTER
FORTY

Autumn arrives on a chilly, windswept day. Ian has been arrested for the murder of my sister. Although neither his hair strands, fingerprints, nor carpet fibers matched those found in Franny’s apartment, the duct tape did. A chemical analysis proved, without a doubt, that the end fibers matched those of the tape over Franny’s mouth. Ian still maintains his innocence, and will not reveal how he murdered her. The cause of her death remains unknown. I may never learn how or why he killed Franny, and I wonder if this is where her story will end. Perhaps there was no reason. People kill without conscience—it’s reported in the newspapers every day. Mark Kirn is still in San Quentin for the murder of Cheryl Mansfield, but I doubt his guilt. Ian could’ve killed her as well. I don’t know the answers, and I probably never will. I can accept that now

… I think.

Since the day Ian was arrested, the phone calls and threatening letters and photos have stopped. A languid mantle of serenity has settled on my life, and M. and I get along quite well. We have a unique arrangement: he orders and I obey. I guess this is what he meant when he said I’d have to learn to deal with men. It is a satisfactory alliance. What little control I had left, I have relinquished, and I have no responsibility now but to do as he asks. This is fine with me. My protracted search for Franny’s killer has left me drained. I feel emotionally bruised, betrayed by the one man I thought I could trust completely. How could I be so wrong about Ian? Now my only desire is to retire into the cocoon of M.’s authority. I’m content to be on autopilot with him as my helmsman, plotting my course. My subjugation, for the most part, is confined to the sexual arena, although the boundaries of this arena do blur and cross over to the other areas of our lives. At times, I feel like a nonperson, someone with little weight or substance—like a child or a slave, with no obligation but to obey and please my parent, my master. As time goes by, it is a role I assume with less and less difficulty. Let someone take care of me for a change. My peace of mind—the first I’ve had since Franny died—is achieved by the loss of personal power, but it is a loss with which I can live.

I, however, am not the sole person to give up my power. In his love for me, M. also has relinquished some of his control. At first, I thought this was a ruse, another attempt to deceive me. The way he treated Franny was despicable, and I did not believe him capable of change, capable of love. But his manner suggests otherwise. Many nights we talk well past midnight. And in these nocturnal interlocutions, hidden from the light of day, he opens up to me, shares his feelings, tells me his weaknesses, his frailties, his vulnerabilities—everything that makes him human—exposing the quiddities of his soul. I am the safekeeper of this knowledge. He trusts me to guard it well, and perhaps that makes him more vulnerable than I. At the very least, we are equals.

A mean sky, as black as anthracite, covers the city. Clouds churn and a stiff wind forces the rain down in slanting sheets, flooding the downtown gutter on Second Street. Bits of urban duff—shredded paper, tinfoil gum wrappers, cigarette butts—and scratchings of twigs roil in the muddy water like toy boats tossed about on choppy seas. The water and debris rush along the curb, then become trapped in the vortex above the sewer grate where they whirl, briefly, before the drain sucks it all down. It’s going to be a wet Halloween.

This evening M. is making dinner for me. He enjoys cooking, and he’s much better at it than I. He gives me a glass of red wine and I perch on a barstool to watch him. He’s wearing a burgundy shirt the same color as the wine, open at the collar, and his forehead glistens in the warm kitchen. He reminds me of one of those gourmet cooks on television, his movements rapid but precise, a hand towel flung over one shoulder, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A glass pan of lasagna is cooling on the stove top, its cheeses bubbling and golden brown. He is finishing a salad, and I smell the garlic and butter from the sourdough bread under the broiler. He swirls around the kitchen, tossing the salad with Italian dressing, snatching the bread out of the oven before it burns, arranging it on a platter. His black slacks are creased down the middle, not wrinkled at all. I think of moving in with M.; the idea does not seem as absurd as it once did.

“We’re set,” he says, and he tosses the hand towel on the counter. He disappears for a minute—says he wants to turn off the porch light so we won’t be disturbed by trick-or-treaters—then returns. He uses a hot pad to pick up the lasagna and carries it and the garlic bread into the dining room. I follow him, with the salad and bottle of wine. I’ve already set the table, and we sit down to eat. He’s at the head of the table and I’m next to him, on his right. As he dishes up the lasagna, he tells me about one of his students, a pianist.

“He has this incredible desire to perform,” M. says. He tastes the lasagna, then offers me the platter of garlic bread. “He’s so driven, yet his playing is mediocre at best. He’ll never be a great musician.”

“How old is he, Michael?” I ask. Michael. It seems strange to call him by his first name. The word sticks in my mouth like chewy caramel clinging to my teeth.

“Twenty-one.”

“Give him time. If he’s got the drive, he’ll improve.” I pause to eat what’s on my fork. “This is great,” I say, referring to the lasagna.

“Thanks,” he says, then a tiny frown furrows his dark eyebrows. “His technique will improve with time, but he’ll never be a great pianist. He lacks the creative impulse that separates the good from the great. He understands the music, intellectually, but he doesn’t
feel
it.”

I smile at him and say, “Well, he’s got a good teacher.”

M. dismisses my comment with an impatient wave of his hand. “It’s not something you can learn,” he says. “You either have it or you don’t. All the technique in the world, all the instruction, won’t help him. He’ll improve to some degree, maybe even a lot, given his drive, but he’ll never be a great musician. Hard work isn’t enough.”

“Thomas Edison wouldn’t have agreed with you. He thought genius was due to hard work more than creative impulses. ‘One percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.’ If your student works at his music long enough, and hard enough, he’ll probably succeed.”

“Don’t quote aphorisms to me, Nora. They’re utterly banal and almost always oversimplified—which means they bring scant understanding to individualized situations. My student lacks true genius, and perspiration will never fill that void. He’d be better off if he recognized his limitations. He’d be happier as a top-rate lawyer or accountant than as a secondrate musician who would always know he’d never be good enough. And it’ll only get worse for him: wanting something desperately, knowing it will always be denied him, and the ultimate wound—seeing others less worthy than he, less diligent, blessed with, and taking for granted, the talent and genius he lacks. He’s in for a life of disappointment.”