Woman in Red (41 page)

They didn’t say good-bye when he left. That would have been too final. For while Eleanor despaired of ever seeing him again, a part of her clung to the fragile strand of hope he’d held out to her. If he let enough time pass before asking his wife for a divorce, so no one grew suspicious, maybe, just maybe it could work. A little voice, scratching in the back of her brain like a stuck phonograph needle, insisted,
Stranger things have happened
.

He arrived back at the house to find no one home. William, braced for an angry tirade from his wife, felt the speech he’d been rehearsing on the way over die on his lips as he walked from one deserted room to the next, calling out her name. Danny and the dog were nowhere in sight, either. There was no reason to think it odd—Martha could have dashed off on an errand, leaving Danny with their neighbor—but with the house’s silence coming at him like a reproach, William knew in his heart that something was wrong.

Finally, he thought to check the garage, where he found Martha’s jaunty little red Austin Healy right where it always was. Baffled, he stepped outside, frowning. It occurred to him then that Martha might have decided to go for a walk—unlikely in this weather, for it had started to rain, but where else could she have gone? He was crossing the yard on his way to the path that led down to the cove when he noticed that the door to his studio was ajar. He halted in his tracks, a dull alarm sounding at the back of his brain. He was almost certain he’d locked up when he’d gone out yesterday. But so much had happened since then, he hardly felt like the same the man who’d last walked out that door less than twenty-four hours before. His head spun with images from yesterday and his body was like something loosely strung together with wire. In the midst of it all, like a quiet eye at the center of a hurricane, was the thought of Eleanor.

He pushed open the door. At first all he saw were the canvases stacked against the wall and the one on the easel, over which a cloth was draped. Then he spotted her, huddled in the old mustard armchair that she’d long ago banished from the house, her feet tucked under her and her arms wrapped around her knees, like a child left abandoned and shivering on some stranger’s doorstep. In the soft gray light that filtered through the rain-streaked skylight he could see that Martha had been crying.

His first thought was of his son. “Martha. What is it? Did something happen to Danny?” he asked, rushing over to her.

“He’s fine. Though I’m surprised you care enough to ask.” Her voice was cold as the rain trickling down outside. “In fact, I don’t know why you even bothered to come home.”

“So this is about last night.” He felt a heaviness settle over him, mixed with an odd sense of relief at knowing there was no further need for pretense.

“I know what you’ve been up to.” Martha’s face twisted into something ugly. “Oh, I had my suspicions all along, but I kept telling myself that was for wives who’d let themselves go, who’d turned their husbands away in bed. Then after you phoned last night I went through your things. I found what I was looking for, all right. It’s
her
, isn’t it?” She jabbed a finger toward the canvas on the easel, and he saw now that the cloth that covered it was askew.

He didn’t bother to deny it. “I’m sorry you had to find out that way,” he said quietly.

“So you were planning to break it to me eventually? Yes, I suppose that would be the honorable thing to do,” she said, looking at him with contempt. “You probably even fancy yourself in love with her, and you think
that
makes it all okay. The great artist and his muse.” She swept an arm out in a scornful gesture. “Well, you won’t be making a public laughingstock of me, at least. I made sure of that.”

He was gripped with a sudden sense of foreboding. He knelt before his wife, seizing her by the shoulders. It was all he could do not to shake her.

“Martha, what have you done?”

“What have
I
done?” she threw back at him, with a shrill little laugh. “I trusted you, that’s what. I should have known better.”

He knew there was no getting through to her right now, that she was in no mood for an explanation, but he made a clumsy attempt nonetheless. “I didn’t go looking for it,” he said. “It just . . . happened.” He wanted to tell her about Yoshi, for her to know that his motives had been pure in the
beginning, but that would only have made it worse.

“So now what? I suppose you want a divorce.” She tossed her head, and he saw the challenge in her red-rimmed eyes. She wanted him to beg her to forgive him, to promise never to see Eleanor again.

But he couldn’t do that, and the expression on his face must have told her everything she needed to know, for she began to weep.

“Martha . . .” He reached to console her, but she swatted his hand away.

“You’re a coward, William. Not fit for duty, not even fit to be a husband. You couldn’t even fight to save your own marriage.”

What would she say, he wondered, were she to learn that last night he’d killed a man in cold blood? He smiled grimly to himself at the thought. Poor Martha. She really had no idea.

“I didn’t see that there was anything left to fight for,” he said wearily.

It was an honest response, not meant to be hurtful. In fact, it had surprised him to learn that Martha herself had thought there was something worth fighting for. Nevertheless, he could see at once that it was the wrong thing to have said.

His wife erupted off the chair, quivering like a drawn bow. “Are you insinuating that I drove you to it? How dare you! This is all
your
fault, William.”

He sighed. “Honestly? I don’t know anymore who’s to blame.” And right now he didn’t care. His head throbbed and he wanted nothing more than to stretch out on the floor and close his eyes.

“Well,
I
know. And I’m not going to stick around and have you make an even bigger fool of me.” She snatched up
the sweater that she’d left neatly folded over an arm of the chair—even in despair, Martha didn’t go about things sloppily—and tossed it over her shoulders. “I’ve already called Mother and Dad. They’re perfectly happy to have us stay with them as long as we want.”

We?
William was at once on full alert. “You’re not taking Danny with you.” He was in no position to object, but all at once he knew with a sickening certainty that if he didn’t put his foot down now, he could lose his son for good.

“Just try and stop me. I’ll have my lawyer slap you with papers so fast your head will be swimming.” Her eyes glittered with malice. William didn’t think it was an idle threat. If Martha had gone off to battle in his place, the war would have ended by now, he thought.

“Where is he? Where’s my son?” he asked, in a hard voice tinged with desperation.

Ignoring his plea, she said coldly, “I’ll tell him you said good-bye.” She stepped past him on her way out the door, pausing on the threshold to fire one last volley. “I’ll spare him the sordid details, but make no mistake—Danny’s going to know what kind of man his father is.”

William stood there for a long moment after she’d gone, staring into space, listening to the rapid tap-tapping of Martha’s heels as she hurried up the path to the house. None of it seemed real. Yesterday he’d shot and killed a man, and this morning he and Eleanor had made love. Now this. If a Japanese Zero were to have dropped a bomb on the island just then, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.

Then he recalled his wife’s words and raced over to the easel, snatching off the cloth. With a sinking heart, he saw how Martha had exacted her revenge.

The portrait of Eleanor was unrecognizable. It had been slashed with a sharp object until it was little more than shreds of canvas clinging to its frame. A low moan escaped him, and he slowly sank to his knees, feeling as if all the breath had been knocked out of him. She might as well have plunged a knife into his heart.

“You ain’t be fooling me, girl. I know that look.” Calpernia was giving her the eye, which meant not only was she on to you but you’d better not even
think
about trying to pull one over on her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alice said. She attempted to sidle past Calpernia on her way to check on the dough she’d left in the refrigerator to rise, but her friend shifted her bulk to block her path.

“The hell you don’t.” Calpernia was dressed in gray sweatpants and a warm-up jacket that looked as if it had come off an NFL linebacker, her braids gathered into a ponytail that bristled like a dried-flower arrangement. Alice had arrived home from Colin’s to find her here. Calpernia preferred the restaurant, even when it was closed, to her studio apartment over Mrs. Meehan’s garage, which she’d said reminded her of being in solitary. Suddenly, her fierce expression gave way to a grin. “Damn, girl, you done got yourself laid.”

Alice threw her hands up in surrender. It would have done no good to deny it; Calpernia would have gotten it out of her one way or another. “Yes! All right! I slept with him.”

“All I got to say is, it’s about time.” Calpernia just stood there, grinning.

But Alice was thinking about the look Colin had worn as they were saying good-bye. He’d been standing right in front of her, but he’d been somewhere else in his mind: If she was long overdue for this, then for Colin it might have come too soon. “Let’s not make too big a deal out of it, okay?” she said. “It was fun, we both enjoyed it, end of story.”

Calpernia watched, her arms folded over her chest, as Alice busied herself with the dough, dumping it onto the counter and carefully shaping it into loaves. Her friend had been cutting up onions when she’d walked in and now the sharp scent was making her eyes water.

“Want to know what
I
think?” Calpernia asked.

“Not particularly, but I’m sure you’ll tell me anyway,” Alice replied.

She glanced up to find Calpernia shaking her head, as if the diagnosis were grim. “Girl, you got it bad.”

Alice, on edge, cried in exasperation, “What do you know? When was the last time
you
got laid?”

Calpernia tipped her head back in a haughty look, her eyes narrowing. “You think you the only one got it going on?”

Alice broke into a grin. “Why, Calpernia King. You’ve been holding out on me.”

“A girl can’t have some privacy ‘round here?” Calpernia grumbled, pretending to be annoyed. “Bad enough you got me working myself half to death for shit pay make Mickey
D’s look good. I get me some on the side, ain’t nobody’s damn business but my own.”

Alice, used to these sorts of rumblings, asked in amusement, “Who’s the lucky guy?”

Calpernia deliberated a moment, then she heaved a mock sigh. “Know that big dude come ’round couple times a week? Always order the same thing, ribs and slaw, baked potato on the side?”

Alice could hardly contain her surprise. “Ralph Dwyer?” Ralph owned his own tire shop, Dwyer’s Tires. He was a nice enough guy, polite, even a little shy. But, leaving aside the fact that he was white, he was old enough to be Calpernia’s father. It took her a moment to recover before she could remark, “Well, they say there’s a lid for every pot. If it fits, I guess that’s all that counts.”

Calpernia gave a snort of contempt. “This ain’t no Tupperware party. I ain’t said I was planning on marrying the dude. But if the man’s fool enough to want what I got to offer, which Lord knows ain’t much, I ain’t turning it down neither.” She gave Alice a hard look no doubt meant to convey that Alice would be equally foolish to reject what Colin had to offer. But what exactly was Colin offering her? Friendship, with maybe a little something on the side. Hadn’t he made it perfectly clear he wasn’t interested in a relationship? No, it had been a mistake to sleep with him, she thought. One she didn’t regret, but a mistake all the same.

And it wasn’t just Colin. The timing couldn’t be worse for her, either. She was just getting back on her feet and had enough to do rebuilding existing relationships, like the one with her son. Also, she would be making herself vulnerable in a way that was frightening to her, more frightening than
any of the stumbling blocks she’d met with so far. If that was love, Alice wanted no part of it.