Bloodlines

40

W HEN SHE FIRST SAW THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THIS morning’s Express, the woman who had once been known as Betty Bradford became so alarmed, she threw the paper in the kitchen trash. Her husband came downstairs as she did and teased her as he retrieved it, telling her she was becoming absent-minded. “Just because it’s Saturday doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep up with the world,” he said.

She laughed it off, told him she didn’t know what she had been thinking. She was a convincing actress. All the world had been her stage for fifteen years.

She had become the woman in the part she played. A respectable woman.

How she loved that word, respectable.

She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast at all. From the moment he took the newspaper in hand until the moment he left to take the boys to Little League, she worried that he would see her photograph and ask questions. Twenty years, a few pounds, and a change in hair color-was that enough to keep a man from recognizing a photo of his wife?

Now, several hours later, while he took the boys to their swimming lessons, she stood stock still at the kitchen sink, staring out through her greenhouse window, her hands in yellow rubber dishwashing gloves. The warmth of the sudsy water came through the gloves, and she enjoyed the plain, everyday feel of that.

She looked out at the front lawn, looked out at her neighborhood. A good neighborhood. One where they thought the problem kid was the long-haired boy who played in a band. He wasn’t a problem. He smoked a little dope with his friends once in a while and played his guitar too loud, but he was a sweet kid at heart. He wasn’t going to do anyone any real harm. They should all keep an eye on the quiet, sullen boy who lived three doors down.

She knew how to spot a troublemaker.

She had been one.

She didn’t like to think of it, but there it was, right in the paper. She glanced over at the place where it lay on the counter, stained by coffee grounds that had been in the trash, and quickly looked away from it, looked back to the sunny day just beyond the window. She thought about a little box that held something she had stolen from a powerful man, something she had nearly thrown away a half a dozen times. Maybe, she thought, she should throw it away now.

She told herself that even if he learned the truth, her husband would love her, would stand by her.

She didn’t really believe it, though.

She had known only one man who had stood by her, accepted her as she was. A tough man who was, all the same, gentle with women, gentle with her. Who had helped her to find her way from being a wild and restless thing into being a woman. Not some silly mimicry of womanhood, but something real. Just by respecting her.

But that man had died in Mexico. His name was Luis-she had stopped calling him Lew, the anglicized version of his name, not long after they had become lovers.

“Luis,” she whispered now, “what am I going to do?”