A Perfect Crime

23

“Sleep well?” Roger said.

Monday morning. Francie, who hadn’t slept at all, came downstairs to the kitchen and found Roger standing at the stove, glancing up from a cookbook to smile at her over his reading glasses, doing something with eggs.

“Yes, thanks,” Francie said, trying and failing to recall any previous time he’d done something with eggs.

“Good,” said Roger, “good, good. Take a pew-chow’ll be down in a jiff.”

Take a pew? Chow? Jiff? Francie took another look at him, saw exhilaration in the flush on his face, in the sprightliness of his movements. “More news about the job?” Francie said.

He paused, steel whisk poised above the blue gas flames. “Job?” he said.

“In Fort Lauderdale.”

“Oh, that. Promising, as I believe I mentioned. More and more promising all the time.”

There was one place set at the table. He gestured to it with the whisk.

“Aren’t you eating?” Francie said.

“I already have. Up betimes.”

Francie sat down, although she wasn’t hungry at all. Roger bustled over with a plate of eggs and toast. He watched her, beaming, as she tasted the eggs.

“Delicious,” she said. They were. Why was this talent emerging now, after so many years spent anywhere but the kitchen? “You can cook, Roger.”

“Much like a chemistry experiment,” he said. “And you never know when it might prove useful.”

Lauderdale: that was his way of telling her it was going to happen, that he’d soon be cooking for himself in some one-bedroom condo on a waterway, that what was left of their marriage would fade to a civilized end. But it was too late for her and Ned. She had proved to herself that she could cheat-the word people used, as Nora said, no point avoiding it-proved she could make a mockery of Swift’s Marriage Service from His Chamber Window, but she couldn’t do it with Anne’s husband. A long, confused night of thought and counterthought had boiled down to that: not with Anne’s husband. She was surer of that than anything she’d been sure of in her life. All that remained was telling him so in person, at the cottage in-she checked her watch-a little more than ten hours.

Roger went to the cupboard, returned with a jar of Dundee’s. “Last of the marmalade,” he said, spooning some-too much-onto the edge of her plate. “You might as well finish it off.” Then he poured coffee for both of them and sat across the table. Francie managed two forkfuls of eggs and half a slice of toast; her body had its priorities, wanted no food until she had done the right thing.

“Ever been to the Empire State Building, Francie?” Roger asked.

“With my father, when I was ten. Why?”

“Or China?”

“You know I have-on the NEA trip. What are you getting at?”

“Getting at? Nothing, really. Maybe we should do more traveling, that’s all. Think of all there is to do and see, had we but world enough and time, et cetera.”

Francie sipped her coffee. It, too, was excellent, better than hers.

“Possibly with another couple,” Roger went on.

She put down her cup.

“Anne and Ned, for example,” he continued. “A pleasant evening, didn’t you think? Although I can’t say much for the restaurant.”

Francie said nothing.

Roger tilted his cup to his face, revealing those white nose hairs-it hadn’t been her imagination-then set the cup carefully down in the saucer, as though the object were to make no clinking of porcelain on porcelain. “Does he play tennis?”

“Who?”

“Who? Ned, of course. Ned Demarco.” He watched her. “You’re not ill, are you?”

“I don’t know if he plays.”

“No? I thought Anne might have mentioned it.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Because if he does, I might pick up the old racquet again myself. How does a week of mixed doubles in the Algarve sound? Or possibly Sardinia.”

“I didn’t think we were in the financial position for that sort of thing.”

Roger’s eyes left hers. He picked up the empty marmalade jar. “Perhaps not at this moment,” he said, carrying it to the sink.

Francie rose. “I’d better get going.” She paused at the door that led down to the garage. “I may be late tonight.”

Roger opened the cabinet under the sink. “As you wish,” he said, and dropped the jar in the trash.

A dark day, the clouds so low and thick that the streetlamps of the city remained lit for the morning commute, and headlights glowed from every car. Dark, too, in Francie’s office, where the phone was ringing as she came in the door. She picked it up.

“Francie?”

“Nora.”

“Thought you might call yesterday,” Nora said. “Maybe to explain that teary little scene in the locker room.”

“Anne was upset, that’s all. About losing.”

“And what about you, babycakes?”

“Me?”

“Were you upset about losing, too?”

“I don’t like to lose. You know that.”

“But I’ve never seen you look like that about it,” Nora said. “I’ve never seen you look like that about anything.”

The words marshaled themselves in Francie’s mind: I’ve got something to tell you, Nora. But she didn’t voice them, couldn’t, not without making Nora her accomplice, or risking the loss of Nora’s friendship, or damaging Anne. Those were the three possibilities, none acceptable, the worst being damaging Anne, and therefore Em as well. Francie hadn’t done any damage yet, had to keep things that way for only a matter of hours more, had to put everything, resolved and unresolved, in a box and close it forever. So instead of I’ve got some thing to tell you, Nora, she replied, “There’s always a first time.”

“And you do what you have to do, what goes around comes around, you get what you pay for. Are we going to talk in cliches from now on?”

“You and I?” Francie said. But she saw it was possible, a possibility her mind squirmed from.

“You and I. Something’s wrong, very wrong, and you’re not telling me.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit,” Nora said. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Not only is something wrong, but it’s something you can’t handle by yourself.”

Francie didn’t dare speak, knowing that nothing she said could be right.

“Tell you what,” said Nora, sounding a little more gentle, as gentle as Francie had ever heard her, in fact, although most people would have called her tone crisp, “I’ll meet you somewhere after work. How’s five-thirty?”

“I can’t.”

“Why? It’s not Thursday.”

“What do you mean, not Thursday?”

“For months now you haven’t been available on Thursdays. I’m clumsy and slow, Francie, but I get there.”

Francie almost spilled everything on the spot. What was left to spill? But she thought, No damage yet, and found a way out. “Now who’s the bullshitter, Nora? There’s nothing slow and clumsy about you, as you know. And this Thursday’s fine. I’ll meet you then.”

A long pause, followed by: “You’re too smart for me. See you then, babycakes.”

“Bye.”

“B-oh my God, I’ve got it. Anne’s sick, isn’t she?”

Francie held on to the phone.

“Or-or you are.” Francie heard a strange new note in Nora’s voice, almost frantic. “Is that what those Thursdays are about, Francie, some kind of treatment?”

“I’m not sick,” Francie said, but thought, Is there some thing wrong with me, after all?

“It’s Anne, then.”

“No.”

“You don’t have cancer?”

“No.”

“Neither does she?”

“No.”

Nora laughed with relief. “So it can’t be that bad, can it? Whatever it is.”

Francie was silent.

“See you on Thursday, then,” Nora said. “How about Huitres?”

“Somewhere else,” Francie said. “I’ll call you.”

Francie left the lights off in her office. The world outside the windows grew darker. She did no work, just thought about what was to come. She would get to the cottage first, of course, as she always did, but would leave the woodstove unlit, wait for him in the kitchen with her coat on. Then, when he came in, she would stand and say, It’s over, Ned. Because of Anne it’s over. After that, whatever he said or tried to do, she would stick to that point: because of Anne. That was what couldn’t be rationalized, argued away, compromised. Just stick to it, Francie told herself, and stay out of the square little bedroom upstairs, whatever happens.

But the thought of that little bedroom… her mind returned to it over and over-the brass bed, the comforter, what happened beneath. By three-thirty Francie had had enough: enough waiting, thinking, sitting still. She left the office, got her car from the parking garage, headed for New Hampshire.

The first snowflakes fell as Francie crossed the state line, tiny ones, laceless and hard. She barely noticed them, was too busy trying to cap all the memories her mind boiled with-black kayaks, those dark eyes, his skin; too busy clinging to her mantra: It’s over, because of Anne it’s over. She was going to be early, earlier than she had ever been. Perhaps she would light the woodstove after all, wait for him beside it. Nothing wrong with lighting the woodstove, was there? It wasn’t necessary to sit in the cold, to fabricate symbolic expressions of her coming internal state. Everything could be normal tonight and she could still do her duty, as long as she didn’t go up to the little bedroom. Then, out of nowhere, her mind offered up an image that would keep her out of that bedroom. The image: Anne’s face, but the giant face of a two-stories-tall Anne, like a character in a children’s book, watching through the bedroom window from the outside. There was nothing scary about Anne’s face, but this image scared Francie just the same. She tried to blot it out and found it wouldn’t go away.

Snow fell harder as Francie drove north, isolating her in a twilit cocoon, a strange cocoon that felt not the least protective. She was too preoccupied to notice the snow much, but she was very aware of the unprotected part.