Fidelity

10

Emily went into the office, carefully placed all the files she had been reading into the lower-right drawer of Phil Kramer’s big steel desk and locked it, then dropped the silvery key into her purse. At the moment she didn’t care what happened to the files. Putting them away was just a stray impulse in the part of her brain that disliked clutter. She locked the door of Phil’s office, walked through the outer office, turned off the lights, and locked the door. She walked without having the sensation of her feet touching the floor, and for a moment she wondered if that meant she was fainting. Then she decided that she couldn’t faint in the hall, so she wouldn’t. She wanted to be away from this place. The thought of having people look at her right now brought a feeling like a burn to her face. As she walked toward the elevator, she began to move faster, trying to get out of this place where she was vulnerable. She passed the elevator because she didn’t want to be trapped in there with someone looking at her, and stepped into the stairwell.

As she walked down the stairs, she tried to keep her steps quiet as though that would preserve her privacy. She tried to keep her mind off Phil. When she came to the foot of the stairwell, she opened the door a crack to see if anyone was in the foyer before she pulled it open the rest of the way. Then she was out of the building and in the parking structure.

She got into her car and started it, then began to pull forward when Bill Przwalski pulled into the structure in his dirty green Toyota Corolla. He waved and grinned as though passing each other in the lot were the greatest good luck, so she gave a little wave as she drove past him to the street. She wondered if he knew.

She drove out to the street in a detached, automatic way. Of course Billy knew. If April was so sure Ray Hall knew, then Billy knew, too. Billy must have been with Phil much more often than Ray was, because he was an apprentice, learning from Phil. And Billy was also young, practically a teenager. He would be very interested in everything about April. The thought triggered a wave of nausea so strong that Emily began to pull the car toward the curb. There was the blare of a horn, and she realized she had nearly cut off a young man in a tall white pickup truck lurking in her blind spot.

As he pulled forward on her right she glanced at him, cringed, and mouthed the word, “Sorry.” He scowled, held his clenched fist toward her, raised the middle finger, then stomped on his gas pedal to accelerate past her.

When she reached the house, Emily drove all the way into the garage and sat still for a moment. While she had been approaching the house, she had been aware of the beautiful front lawn with the two towering trees, their wide canopies of leaves shading the house from the summer sun. It had always been a sight she stared at hungrily. Part of the sight was the improvements and replacements she and Phil had made: new roof, paint, the small addition. Now the sight of the house gave her no pleasure.

She noticed that she had not turned off the engine yet. All she would have to do was press the button on the garage-door opener, look in the rearview mirror to watch the door slide down behind her, and then sit here calmly for a little while. Phil had made sure the garage didn’t have any leaks, so he could heat and air-condition it and do woodwork out here, but he had always been too tired or too busy. Most of the power tools in the world were probably sitting in suburban garages. She looked at the carefully fitted seams of the wallboard that covered the insulation. It wouldn’t take very long to die in here.

As an experiment, Emily pressed the button and watched the door come down to close on the afternoon sky, like an eyelid shutting. She sat still for a few seconds, waiting to feel something, then opened the car window. She could smell the engine’s exhaust, but she didn’t feel any different. She got bored waiting for a feeling. She realized she could turn on the radio. The engine was running, after all, so it wouldn’t drain the battery. Phil had always been afraid of exhausting the charge on a car battery.

The radio came on, and she recognized the voice of a familiar talk-radio host. Once again he was railing against the supposedly bad influence of college professors, reporters, lawyers, members of minorities, and laborers, who were mortgaging the country’s future. She muttered, “Shut the fuck up!” and hit the power button. The words surprised her, but they expressed her feeling perfectly, so she was satisfied. She turned off the engine, opened the car door to get out, and realized she had forgotten about her suicide experiment. She went in the house and locked the door.

Emily sat at the kitchen table and stared through the window at the big tree in the side yard. There was a smudge on the window. She opened the cupboard under the sink, picked up the Windex and a paper towel, stepped to the window, keeping her eye on the spot so she wouldn’t lose track of the smudge, and cleaned the pane. She didn’t have the temperament for suicide. There was just too damned much to do.

She put the Windex away and went into the living room to sit on the couch. She began the thought, “How could he-” but then stopped. She knew how he could. Phil was a middleaged man who was tall and trim and attractive, and he was the boss. April was pretty and sweet-natured, but brainless, and there she was, right in front of him all day long. How could he not? April must have been amazed by a man like Phil, may even have been naive enough to think that there was a nice future in a relationship with a man old enough to be her father who was cheating on his wife.

Emily corrected herself. She was a fine one to be calling April stupid. April was twentyfive years old. Whether she wanted it to be or not, her unfortunate mistake with Phil Kramer was over. She had all those years ahead of her. She was sad right now, but she had lost nothing of any importance. Emily was forty-two. She had invested twentytwo years of her life-her attractive childbearing years-in loving Phil Kramer. As of today, there was no way to pretend that she had done the right thing, made the right choice. She had devoted her life to a man who hadn’t really loved her but hadn’t bothered to tell her, to bearing and raising the beautiful, strong son they named Pete after her father, and then having the child crash a car into the front of a tractor-trailer truck. It was a hard time to find out that Phil had been with other women.

Women. Plural. She had suspected it for years. April had certainly not been the first. The suspicions Emily had pushed to the back of her mind so many times were true. There had been a hundred moments over the years when the only reason she had to believe he was faithful was that she wanted to.

She realized she was crying, and hearing herself cry this way was the loneliest sound she had ever heard. Phil was dead, Pete was dead. It didn’t matter if she cried loudly or softly. She was as alone as a person floating in the middle of the ocean.

She had been working frantically to learn the reason for Phil’s murder and to find out who did it, because being engaged in the investigation let her stay close to Phil. The connection was thin and waning, constructed of memory and intellect and intention, but it was something. Now that the truth about April had been driven into her skull, the connection was painful and sour. She couldn’t make herself think that Phil deserved her loyalty and devotion. She couldn’t even say he would have done the same for her.

Emily couldn’t sit still. She stood up and began to pace up and down the living room. She had to stop herself from formulating the idea that it was better for her to have learned about Phil’s infidelity now because knowing would help her break the bond with him. It was a cowardly impulse to make excuses for circumstance. Things didn’t happen for a reason, and people who thought they did were idiots. Knowing wasn’t better, and it didn’t make anything easier. She felt as bad about his cheating right now as she would have a year ago. She couldn’t even talk to him now and ask him why, or tell him she was hurt and angry, or do anything else. It was simply a fact that could never be changed.

She heard the sound of a car engine, but no sound of the car passing. Then she heard the slam of a car door. She stepped to the front window just as the bell rang. The sound seemed incredibly loud and intrusive. She stood still for a few seconds, then moved the curtain aside a half inch.

Ray Hall stood on the porch, looking straight into her eye. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t at home, or that she thought the person at the door was a salesman or a solicitor. She closed her eyes and sighed, then stepped to the door and opened it.

“I’m sorry, Ray. I’m just not feeling up to visitors right now. Can I call you tomorrow?”

“April told me.”

“All right. Come in.”

Ray stepped inside and Emily closed the door. He stood in the entry until Emily walked toward the kitchen, and then he followed her. She stood at the counter and started making coffee, and he sat down at the table.

Emily looked only at the coffeemaker as she spoke. “April said you knew, and that you were going to tell me. Is she right?”

“Not exactly. If I found out for sure, I would have told you.”

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“Because you asked me to find out who killed Phil and why. I’ve noticed that an extramarital relationship sometimes bears on those questions.” He paused. “I wasn’t ready to say anything because I could have been wrong.”

“But you weren’t wrong. When did you start to suspect it?”

There was nothing subtle about her questions. She wasn’t imagining he had forgotten she’d asked him a couple of years ago. He chose to answer a narrower question than the one she had asked. “A few months ago, I noticed she would stay late with Phil after everyone else had left. There wasn’t that much paperwork.”

“Go on.”

“Jesus, Emily. You really don’t want to hear about that. April said she had confessed to you already. Take her word for it.”

Emily shrugged. “I guess you’re right. I probably know all of his moves already. I suppose I’m just reacting out of shock.” She gave a single, unhappy laugh. “I don’t know where the shock comes from. You remember we had a conversation about this a couple of years ago, before April came along.”

“I remember,” he said.

She folded her arms across her chest. He recognized that she was unconsciously protecting herself from what was coming. “Tell me, Ray. Were you lying then?”

“I don’t know. I thought he might be seeing somebody. I wasn’t sure, and I couldn’t tell you he was cheating if I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think what I was saying was a lie.”

“After I talked to you, did you try to find out?”

“No.”

“Not an honorable thing to do to your friend?”

“No. Come on, Emily. I think it’s time to go.”

“Go where? What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

“No. I’m not in the mood to get dressed up.”

“You already are dressed up. You got dressed up to go to work.”

“I can’t go out. My husband just died, and I want to be alone.”

“My friend just died, and I don’t want to be alone.” He took her hand and gently pulled her, picked up her purse, and conducted her to the door. “Nobody wants to be worthless on a bad day, Em. Not even me.”

“I’m not going, Ray. I can’t.”

He studied her face, and realized that she meant it. He put the purse on the chair near the door. “I wish you would. If you change your mind, or just want to talk, call me.”

“All right.” She looked at the doorknob.

He saw where she was looking, opened the door, and stepped outside. He watched her shut the door, heard the lock, and then the faint sound of her going deeper into the house. He felt a twinge, an impulse to protect her. It was as though he were missing a chance, letting something happen that he shouldn’t. He walked to his car. As he drove away up Emily’s street he looked in his rearview mirror several times, but he couldn’t find an excuse to stop or go back.