Illusions

21

She was waiting for me on the porch, in the shade of the big magnolia tree. Wearing a lightweight, butterscotch-colored suit and a peach-hued blouse, all of which seemed to hang shapelessly on her thin body the way clothing hangs on a scarecrow. When I’d talked to her at the San Rafael real estate brokerage company — she’d gone back to work last week — she had thought at first that I was after her again about the uncashed five-hundred-dollar check. No, I said, I needed to talk to her right away on another matter, and not at her office or any other public place. And she’d said, “Home, then,” in a voice gone as dull and lifeless as it had been during that painful Sunday visit nine days ago. Meaning her temporary home, the only one she had now — the Hoyt house in Ross.

When I came up onto the porch she was on her feet and smiling, but there was no warmth or light in the smile. It was nothing more than a narrow stretching and upturning, like the stitched grin on the face of a rag doll. A pale-skinned rag doll with hollow cheeks and spectral eyes.

“You made good time,” she said with false cheerfulness. “I’ve only been here two or three minutes.”

“Not much traffic.”

“We can talk inside or out here...”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Out here, then. The weather’s been so nice the past couple of days.” She sat down again in a padded redwood armchair. I leaned a hip against the porch railing; I didn’t feel like sitting. “Spring has always been my favorite time of year.

I had no comment on that.

“I hope this won’t take long, I can’t take more than an hour for lunch and it’s twelve-thirty already—” She broke off abruptly, and the stitched grin vanished and the shape of her expression changed, darkened. “Oh God,” she said, “I knew when you started asking all those questions it would come to this. The five hundred dollars, the psychologist, the emergency room doctor...”

“He was abusing you, wasn’t he, Bobbie Jean?”

The question seemed to hang in the air between us. She sat still so long it was as if the essence of her had gone away, leaving nothing but the shell of her body. Then, not quite looking at me, “How did you know?”

The way you moved at the funeral, stiff and slow — the same way Sondra Nelson moved that day at Woolfox’s ranch. The labored breathing, the winces — as if there might be bruises under your clothing, too. But all I said was, “How long?”

“Physically? Not long.”

“Weeks, months?”

“A few weeks. Before that, it was all words, looks, gestures... you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It wasn’t much at first. A shove, a slap, a poke in the arm. But then it was happening every time he drank too much, every time we had a cross word about alcohol or money or any of the other things we fought over. He grew angrier, and the slaps and pokes harder and harder. I could see he was losing control. Of his work, his life, everything.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Tried to convince him to stop drinking, join AA, see a doctor. I threatened to leave him. Once I even threatened him with legal action. None of it did any good. It only made matters worse.”

“You could have left him.”

“I tried that, too. More than once I had my mind made up and my bags packed. The only time I actually put them in the car, he came after me and begged me to stay. Down on his knees, crying like a little boy, telling me how much he needed me. I couldn’t turn my back on him. I should have, I know that, but I couldn’t.”

Foul taste in my mouth again; I worked saliva through it before I asked, “What happened that last Sunday night, two weeks ago? The night you ended up in the hospital?”

“Another argument, a whole flock of vicious words between us. I was also drinking, I’d been drinking too much myself. I thought... I don’t know what I thought. We were both drunk. He slapped me and I slapped him back, the first time I ever hit him. His second slap was so hard my ears rang. It made me wild enough to try to knee him. He grabbed me, threw me on the floor, started yelling and kicking me. Half a dozen kicks in the side and hips.”

“Hard enough to break two of your ribs.”

“The last kick... I think I screamed before I passed out.” Her voice was brittle, without emotion. She was like a sponge that had had all moisture wrung out of it and been left to dessicate, curl inward at the edges until it was little more than compressed dust. “When I woke up I was in his car, he’d carried me out and was driving me to the hospital. Crying the whole way, telling me how sorry he was, how much he loved me and that he’d never hurt me again.”

“And after Dr. Caslon treated you, he talked to Eb and told him he’d better get counseling and gave him Richard Disney’s name.”

“Yes. He would’ve agreed to anything that night.”

“Including you paying the hospital bill. The records are in your name.”

“He had no choice then.”

“Not until Sunday night, when he caught the thief at the O’Hanlon Brothers warehouse. Instead of turning him in, he extorted five hundred dollars from him. Received the full amount the next night, deposited it in his account Tuesday morning.”

“Is that how he got the money? I knew it had to be something like that. He said he borrowed it, but I didn’t believe him.”

“The check he wrote was to you,” I said. “To pay you back for the hospital bill.”

“Yes.”

“What’d you do with it?”

“Tore it up and threw the pieces in his face. A mistake... but I couldn’t stand to take dirty money from him.”

“When did that happen?”

“Tuesday evening, after I came home from work.”

And later Eberhardt had gone back to Bolt Street. Not to stake out the warehouse; not to gouge any more wages out of T. K. O’Hanlon under false pretenses. Because he’d picked it as his dying place. Gone too far finally, so far he couldn’t come back. I’ve had enough. I can’t keep hurting anymore. Himself or Bobbie Jean. And the trigger wasn’t one thing but a chain reaction: him breaking her ribs, her having to pay the hospital bill, him sinking low enough to shake down Danny Forbes, and the last link, her tearing up his check and flinging the pieces in his face. You won’t believe this Bobbie Jean but I love you.

“Wednesday A.M.,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

“He died,” she said.

“But not alone.”

“No. Not alone.”

A UPS van went rumbling by on the street. A couple of houses away, two boys — home for lunch or playing hooky — began yelling and performing loops and wheelies on their racing bikes. I listened to them while I watched Bobbie Jean, waiting for her to go on. But she just sat there in that gone-away posture, for so long that I had to prod her with words like barbs. Making them into a question because this was the part I wasn’t sure of, the part I hoped I was wrong about.

“Did he kill himself, or did you do it?”

She heard me because she made a sound in her throat, low and inarticulate. But she didn’t answer.

“Bobbie Jean. Did you kill Eb?”

“No,” she said. “Yes,” she said.

“Which is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I’m not. I swear I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me.”

“How can I tell you? I wasn’t there.”

Mutely she shook her head.

“He called you at two-forty that morning,” I said. “On his cell phone.” The last call of his life. And the record of it — to his home number, along with the exact time — right there on the final Cellular One bill, staring me in the face every time I looked at it.

“Yes.”

“To say good-bye? Or was he still on the fence and wanted to be talked out of it?” One or both of the reasons he’d called me the week before, maybe. But more likely he’d been bitter and vindictive enough to want to lay a little of the blame on me. Leave me a legacy of hurt.

“Neither one. Help, my help.”

“Make sense, Bobbie Jean.”

“I’m trying to. I’ve been trying to make sense of what happened ever since that night.”

“What did he say when he called?”

“He was drunk. So drunk I could scarcely understand him. He said he was going to kill himself, that he’d been thinking about it a long time and it was the only way. He said he’d been sitting there for an hour with the gun in his hand. He said he... needed me.”

“Needed you. Meaning what?”

“He wanted me to drive down there. Right away.”

“The alley, Bolt Street.”

“Yes.”

“And you went.”

“Yes.”

“Why? You could’ve called nine-eleven instead. Or Rivera or Joe... somebody.”

“I was afraid if anyone but me showed up, he’d go ahead and do it. I believed I could talk him out of it. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I’d been asleep and I was groggy and scared... I crawled into my car and drove down there, that’s all.”

“And when you got there?”

“He was sitting behind the wheel with the gun in his hand, just as he’d said. Spilled liquor and vomit all over him. He started to cry when I got in. He said he wanted to die. Couldn’t stand to go on or to hurt me anymore. Said he’d written a note, it was in the glove compartment, and he’d been trying to finish the job ever since. Said he’d had the gun in his mouth a dozen times but he couldn’t make himself eat it. ‘I can’t squeeze the trigger, Bobbie Jean, I can’t make myself eat it.’ His exact words.”

Don’t be surprised if you hear I ate my gun. And most handgun suicides by cops and ex-cops did go that way — barrel in the mouth, squeeze the trigger. A chest shot wasn’t Eberhardt’s way, the hard-line retired cop’s way. It had never seemed quite right to me, despite Jack Logan’s arguments. Join me for a midnight snack? Let’s eat. Lodged in my subconscious and manifested in the recurring dream.

I knew what Bobbie Jean would say next. And waiting for it, I was cold all over and filled with emotion like a viscous fluid clogging my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“He begged me to help him,” she said. “I told him no. I tried to talk him into giving me the gun, coming home with me, but he wouldn’t listen or he was too drunk to listen. He drank what was left in his bottle, threw it on the floor and cried and begged some more. I kept saying no and then, real foolish, I made a grab for the gun. He turned ugly. Laid the muzzle against my temple and said he’d kill me first, kill me sure if I didn’t help him. He meant it. Dark in the car, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I heard the truth in his voice. He’d’ve shot me if that was what it took to shoot himself. That’s how much he wanted to die.”

“You had no choice,” I said thickly. “No other choice.”

“I didn’t see that I had. Maybe if... oh, Lord, I don’t know. I was so scared and he’d made me hate him for everything he’d done to me, to himself — I wanted him dead right then as much as he wanted it. He put that gun in his mouth again and I let him take my hand and fold it over his hand, my finger over his finger on the trigger, and he mumbled ‘Squeeze, squeeze’ but I couldn’t. In my mind I saw his head exploding and I couldn’t do it, not that way. ‘Not that way, Eb,’ I said, we were both bawling by then, and he took the barrel out of his mouth and pressed it against his chest, his hand and mine, and said ‘Squeeze’ and I couldn’t and he said ‘Do it, please, for both of us, squeeze’ and I squeezed...”

“Jesus, Bobbie Jean.”

“The shot was so loud... I jumped and I think I screamed. But after that, it’s crazy but I was real calm. Drug-calm, you know? As if I’d had a shot of something. I went from his car into mine and drove home just as if nothing’d happened. It wasn’t until I was in the house that it came over me he was actually dead and I’d helped him die. For a long time I was hysterical. But by daylight, when the police called and said he’d been found, I was calm again. I thought I could tell them, but I couldn’t. I thought: I’ve been through enough, I can’t go through anymore. But I’m still going through it, over and over. That kind of thing just tears you up inside. And the worst of it is, I don’t even know if I murdered him or not. Did I?”

“No,” I said. “He murdered himself.”

Her dark, dry, haunted eyes searched mine — the kind of look a supplicant might give to a priest. “You don’t hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Sometimes I hate myself.”

“You shouldn’t. Him, if anybody.”

“Funny, but I don’t hate Eb. Not anymore.”

Me neither, I thought. Maybe I never did. Maybe all along I was enraged at him for being sick, disappointed in him for being weak and flawed and culpable. And maybe I’d wanted to hang on to some of my belief in the old Eberhardt, the fantasy Eberhardt, even though I knew better. Some illusions die harder than others, and the ones closest to your own soul the hardest of all.

I said, “Look at it this way, Bobbie Jean. He felt he’d rather be dead than hurt you any more — and that’s a form of love, isn’t it? Bitter and twisted, but still love. So is what you did for him. An act of love as much as any other kind.”

“It’d be a comfort to really believe that.”

“Better than carrying the weight of him on your shoulders as long as you live.”

“Someday,” she said. “Someday.”

The energy-high kids rocketed by on their bikes, yelling. A woman being half dragged by a standard poodle appeared on the sidewalk, stopped when the poodle stopped, and looked on with benign obliviousness as the dog lifted its leg and peed all over one of the Hoyts’ yew trees.

“What happens now?” Bobbie Jean asked.

“Now?”

“You, me. Where do we go from here?”

“You go to work; it’s almost one o’clock. And I drive back to the city and do the same.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know. The fact is, I haven’t seen or talked to you since last week. Any conversation we might’ve had after that is strictly imaginary.”

The haunted eyes probed my face again in that seeking-sinner way. Her mouth opened slightly; her throat worked.

“Don’t say it, don’t say anything. Whatever it is I couldn’t hear it because I’m not here.” I pushed off the railing, leaned down and kissed the papery skin of her cheek. “Forgive yourself, Bobbie Jean. I already have.”

And I said good-bye for the last time and left her sitting there and walked out of the rest of her life.