Known to Evil

1

Don't you like the food?" Katrina, my wife of twenty-three years, asked.

"It's delicious," I said. "Whatever you make is always great."

In the corner there sat a walnut cabinet that used to contain our first stereo record player. Now it held Katrina's cherished Blue Danube china collection, which she inherited from her favorite aunt, Bergit. On top of the chest was an old quart pickle jar-the makeshift vase for an arrangement of tiny wildflowers of every color from scarlet to cornflower blue to white.

"But you're frowning," my beautiful Scandinavian wife said. "What were you thinking about?"

I looked up from the filet mignon and Gorgonzola blue cheese salad to gaze at the flowers. My thoughts were not the kind of dinner conversation one had with one's wife and family.

I have a boyfriend now, Aura Ullman had told me that morning. I wanted to tell you. I didn't want to feel like I'm hiding anything from you.

"Where'd you get those flowers, Mom?" Shelly asked.

His name is George, Aura told me, the sad empathy in the words making its way to her face.

I had no reason to be jealous. Aura and I had been lovers over the eight months Katrina abandoned me for the investment banker Andre Zool. I loved Aura but gave her up because when Katrina came back, after Andre was indicted for fraud, I felt that she, Katrina, was my sentence for the wrong I had done in a long life of crime.

"I saw them at the deli and thought they might brighten up our dinner," Katrina told her daughter.

Shelly had been trying to forgive her mother for leaving me. She was a sophomore at CCNY and another man's daughter, though she didn't know it. Two of my children were fathered out of wedlock; only the eldest, sour and taciturn Dimitri, who always sat as far away from me as possible, was of my blood.

Do you love him? I hadn't meant to ask Aura that. I didn't want to know the answer or to show vulnerability.

He's very good company… and I get lonely.

"Well?" Katrina asked.

Something about those flowers and the echo of Aura's voice in my mind made me want to curse, or maybe to slam my fist down on the plate.

"Hey, everybody," Twill said. He was standing in the doorway to the dining room; dark and slender, handsome and flawless except for a small crescent scar on his chin.

"You're late," Katrina scolded my favorite.

"You know it, Moms," the seventeen-year-old man replied. "I'm lucky to get home at all with everything I got to do. My PO got me workin' this after-school job at the supermarket. Says it'll keep me outta trouble."

"He's not a parole officer. He's a juvenile offender social worker," I said.

Just seeing Twill brought levity into the room.

"It's not a he," Twill said as he slid into the chair next to me. "Ms. Melinda Tarris says that she wants me workin' three afternoons a week."

"And she's right, too," I added. "You need something to occupy your mind and keep you out of trouble."

"It's not people like me that get in trouble, Pops," Twill sang. "I talk so much and know so many people that I can't get away with nuthin' somebody don't see it. It's the quiet ones that get in the most trouble. Ain't that right, Bulldog?"

"Can't you be quiet sometimes?" dour Dimitri said.

Twill's pet name for his older brother was an apt one. Like me Dimitri was short and big-boned, powerful even though he rarely exercised. His skin was not quite as dark brown as mine but you could see me in every part of him. I wondered why he was so angry at his brother's chiding. Even though Dimitri never liked me much he loved his siblings. And he had a special bond with Twill, who was so outgoing all he had to do was sit down in a room for five minutes and a party was likely to break out.

"Leonid."

"Yes, Katrina?"

"Are you all right?"

Even though we'd drifted apart like the continents had-long ago-Katrina could still read my moods. We had a kind of subterranean connection that allowed my wife to see, at least partly, into my state of mind. It wasn't just Aura's decision to move on that bothered me. It was my life at that table, Dimitri's uncharacteristic anger at his brother, and even those delicate flowers sitting where I had never seen a bouquet before.

There was a feeling at the back of my mind, something that was burgeoning into consciousness like a vibrating moth pressing out from its cocoon.

The phone rang and Katrina started. When I looked into her gray-blue eyes some kind of wordless knowledge seemed to pass between us.

"I'll get it," Shelly shouted. She hurried from the room into the hall, where the cordless unit sat on its ledge.

Katrina smiled at me. Even this made me wonder. She'd been back home for nearly a year. In that time her smile had been tentative, contrite. She wanted me to know that she was there for the long run, that she was sorry for her transgressions and wanted to make our life together work. But that evening her smile was confident. Even the way she sat was regal and self-assured.

"Dad, it's for you."