Red Cat

30

The maid met me at the door. Her lined face was empty of expression, but her blue eyes were anxious and more than a little curious. I knew how she felt. She led me through the foyer and down a hallway, and left me to wait in a khaki-colored room. The walls were mostly bookshelves, and the furniture was low-slung and leather. The views were of the park, a wedge of the Guggenheim, and blue, blue skies. It was ten-thirty, and traffic was contentious on Fifth Avenue, but no street sounds intruded on the apartment’s thick quiet.

David, I knew, was at work, though from the message Liz had left me, I doubted he was working well.

“He started drinking at around six, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I stayed until eleven, at which point he passed out and I went home. He’s a bad drunk, and the whole thing left me wishing I was an only child. You and Ned owe me, and an explanation of what the hell is going on would be a good start.”

Around six: that would’ve been after he’d spoken to Stephanie. I could only imagine how that conversation had gone, and reaching for a bottle wasn’t an incomprehensible reaction. And what had he made of Stephanie’s insistence on talking only to me? Mike had repeated it twice, and I still didn’t get it.

I shook my head and wandered around the room. The bookshelves were filled with slender, buff-colored volumes of identical dimensions. They were all about modern architecture and all in Italian, and to the best of my knowledge David was ignorant of both. Of course, I’d learned lately that when it came to my brother- and his wife- the best of my knowledge wasn’t very good. Maybe he was fluent in Italian, and had a thing for I. M. Pei, or maybe Stephanie had. Maybe it was just the decorator. What did I know?

There were photos on some of the shelves: David and Stephanie smiling stiffly at a black-tie function; Stephanie in the yard of their East Hampton place, looking washed out against the red front door; David, Ned, and Liz in the cockpit of Ned’s sailboat. They were soaked, and Ned and Liz were grinning widely. The door opened and Stephanie came in.

She was pale and barefoot, and dressed in jeans and a gray wool sweater. She wore her hair loose. It fell in a dark wave to her shoulders, framing her sharp features and softening them. Her eyes were red and shadowed and larger than ever, and her face had lost its typical tics and tensions. She had instead a remote, distracted look, like a convalescent, preoccupied with the waxing and waning of her symptoms and pains. Her steps were stiff and careful across the room, as if her bones were hollow and a sudden gust might carry her away. She curled in a deep chair and tucked her small white feet beneath her. She had a glass of water, and she sipped from it and held it in her lap. There was something almost shy in the way she looked at me.

“It’s not a conversation I expected to have,” Stephanie said, and managed the thinnest of smiles. There was a tremble in her voice, and a deep fatigue.

“You and me both,” I said.

“It’s hard to believe the mess he’s made of everything- that woman, the videos, and now this. I should be worried about the police, but I keep thinking of TV, of all things- the way the cameras chase people down the street…what they’d do to us. I try to think of who would still speak to me, whom I could look in the eye.” Stephanie shook her head and picked at a seam on her jeans. “Do you know why I wanted to talk to you?”

“Not because we’ve been so close.”

Stephanie shook her head. “It’s more because we never pretended to be,” she said. “We’ve never liked each other-” I started to speak but she waved it away. “Don’t bother, John, not now. We’ve never liked each other, but we’ve never faked it, either; we’ve never lied to each other that way. In fact, you’re the only one in this nightmare who hasn’t lied to me.”

“Mike Metz-”

“I don’t know Mike Metz from Adam. Maybe he’s as good a lawyer as everyone says- I pray to God he is- and maybe when I get to know him I’ll trust him. But right now he’s just a voice on the phone, and I don’t have it in me to talk to a stranger about this, not yet. What I want now is someone I know, and someone who won’t bullshit me.”

“Even if it’s someone you don’t particularly like?”

Again a fragile smile. “Strange, huh, trusting a person you don’t like?”

“Not the strangest thing.”

The little smile turned rueful, and then disappeared. “Not as strange as being married to a person you don’t trust, for instance.”

“It happens,” I said, and I took a deep breath and took out my notebook. “There are questions I have to ask.”

She nodded. “And I don’t want to be arrested. So if that’s the price, go on.”

If only it were that simple, I thought, and then I asked and she answered.

“I guess I’ve known, in a general way, for a while,” she said. “I didn’t catch him in bed with one of them, or anything, but he gets a certain tone, irritated and guilty at the same time, when I ask an inconvenient question about where he’s been or where he’ll be. And he has a certain look sometimes when he comes home, furtive and a little smug. It took me a few years to catch on, but eventually I did. I suppose there was a part of me that didn’t want to know. Not surprising, I guess.

“I found out about this one not long after New Year’s. She left a message-‘David, why don’t you call?’ or something like that. David had seemed more tense than usual, and he’d been drinking more, and I knew something was eating at him. Then I heard that message, and I knew what.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

She managed another smile, this one bitter. “You think there’d be much point to that?”

“Probably not.”

“I didn’t think so, either, but I tried anyway. He actually got angry at me- he got angry at me-and then he just lied. ‘Nothing’s wrong, busy with the new job,’ things along those lines. I knew it was crap, but…” The muscles in Stephanie’s jaw tightened as she worked her anger back into its pen.

“How did you meet her?”

Her face darkened, and she shook her head. “She was downstairs, if you can believe it. It was a Thursday night and I was coming back from yoga. I came up to the front door, and there was a woman in the lobby, shouting at the doorman. Her voice was all breathy and theatrical, but it was familiar too, though I didn’t know from where. For some reason, I stayed out on the sidewalk and listened. And then I realized she was shouting about David.

“ ‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me he’s not home when I just saw him go in. March- Apartment Ten-A.’ She sounded crazy, and then I knew who it was. She stormed out after that, and passed right by me. I was shocked by how she looked…how beautiful she was.”

“You spoke to her?”

“Not then.”

“Then how-”

“I followed her,” Stephanie said, and her cheeks colored.

“Followed her where?”

“To Eighty-sixth Street, and onto the subway, and then I followed when she got off in Brooklyn, all the way back to her apartment.” Stephanie saw something in my face and shook her head. “I didn’t plan it- it just happened. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I…had to do it.”

Shit. “Is that when you spoke to her- at her apartment?”

“That was the next day. All that night, I thought about…” She paused, and squeezed her eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She said something under her breath- a curse maybe- and looked up. “David was worse than ever that night, snapping at everything I said, and drinking… When it was all abstract, when the women were faceless, it was easier to pretend. But hearing her voice, seeing herI couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the two of them, and I had to do something. So the next day I went to see her.”

“What happened?”

“It was terrible. She was laughing, and…I never saw a camera, but David told me she recorded it.”

“We only saw a part of it. I need to know the whole thing.”

Stephanie hunched her shoulders and drank some water. “I said my name in the intercom, and she knew who I was right away, and started laughing. She let me in to her apartment, and I sat, and for the longest time she didn’t say anything. She just stared at me and waited. The apartment was horrible- tiny and dark- and that building…But somehow, the way she looked at me, she made me feel- I don’t know- as if I were underdressed or something. Finally, I just said what I had to say.”

“Which was?”

“I told her to leave David alone. I told her to find her own husband and to stop harassing mine. She didn’t say anything for a while; she just kept watching me, as if I were some sort of specimen. And then she laughed again. I got angry- angrier- and said some other things.”

“What things?”

“I cursed at her, and she laughed harder. Finally she started talking.”

“About what?”

Stephanie looked out the window, at a solitary figure slowly circling the reservoir- a plodding black shape against the blue-white snow. Her face stiffened and ridges appeared at her jawline again. “She asked questions…about me and David.”

“What questions?”

“She asked why I let my husband fuck other women.” The words caught in her throat and a red patch appeared on her neck. “She asked how I could be married to him and let that happen- why I’d married him in the first place if I was going to let him do that. Why I stayed married. Why I put up with it all.

“Then she asked if I’d driven him to it, if a part of me liked the idea…liked to picture him…” Stephanie’s throat closed up and she shook her head and looked at me. “She asked if I even knew what David…liked, if he talked to me about what he did with his women. With her. If he ever did those things to me. She said she’d tell me about it, if I wanted. She said she’d teach me.”

My stomach twisted and my neck prickled with cold sweat. Stephanie sniffed, and drank some water. “There was more, but I think you get the drift.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

The little smile came again, and lingered. Stephanie’s eyes held mine. “She was sitting there, smiling, so beautiful…it was hideous. She was hideous, and I wanted to kill her. I wanted to hit her with something, or wring her neck, and if I’d had a gun then, I would have shot her right there.”

My mouth was dry and it was hard to get the words out. “What did you do?” I asked again.

Her laugh was bitter and angry, an echo of a more familiar Stephanie. “What I did was cry, John. I cried like an infant and I ran out of there. I ran until I found a taxi, and I cried all the way home.” Stephanie shook her head and wiped a hand across her eyes.

“When did you see her again?”

“I didn’t.”

“Never?”

Stephanie squinted at me. “Never.”

“You didn’t fight, there in her apartment? You didn’t hit her?”

“No, for God’s sake. I wish I had slapped her- I wish I could’vebut I didn’t touch her.”

“There was no violence?”

She sat up and her face hardened. “I said I never touched her.”

“Did you threaten her?”

“I…I was angry. I yelled and cursed and told her to leave us alone. I might have said some other things-”

“What other things?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you threaten to harm her? To-”

“I told you, I don’t remember everything I said.”

I nodded. “Did she have any signs of injury that you saw? Any bruises or cuts?”

She squinted again. “No, nothing like that.”

“What else did she say to you, besides the questions?”

She shook her head. “That was all. There was nothing else.”

I looked at my notes. “Did you tell David what you’d done?”

“I…I was embarrassed.”

“Did her calls stop?”

“I don’t think she called here again, but it didn’t seem to help David much. He was worse than ever, almost panicked. I didn’t know what to do, and then he went to you.”

“How did you know about that?”

Stephanie stared at the rug. “I saw you together, at breakfast. I…followed him.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of that.”

She colored again. “I’m not proud of it. I was frantic- I didn’t know what was happening to him, or what to do. Then I saw the two of you, and I thought that you were involved somehow with all this- that you had somehow dragged David into it. I don’t know- I wasn’t thinking straight.” She looked up at me. “It was pitiful, I know.”

I took a deep breath. “Tell me about that Tuesday,” I said.

“Which Tuesday?”

“Three weeks ago yesterday. It would’ve been the Tuesday after you saw Holly- the day before you saw David and me at breakfast. Take me through that day.”

And, with starts and stops and stumbling, she did. Like David, she’d spent much of that day downtown- in and out of her office, at meetings, and on conference calls. And as with David, it was her after-work hours that were more difficult to account for. Presumably, there were people from her yoga class who could testify to her presence there, but would the clerks in the shops on upper Madison recall her- another well-dressed woman who’d browsed but hadn’t bought? Would they swear to it in court? And then there was her trip to the movies.

“I walked down to Seventy-second and Third. I was supposed to meet Bibi Shea, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I called her and canceled.”

“So you were by yourself at the movies?”

“I didn’t feel like talking.” Shit.

“You walked there?” Nod. “It was a cold night.”

“I wanted the air.”

“Did you pay cash for the ticket?” Another nod. “What was the film?” Stephanie told me the name, and the time she thought the show had started, and the time it had gotten out. She didn’t remember the previews. “Did you see anyone you knew?”

“No.”

“What was David doing all that time?”

“As far as I know, he was home. He was here when I left, and here when I got back, asleep- or passed out.”

I paged through my notebook and ran her through the dates and times once more. Then I looked up.

“Besides her questions, what else did Holly say?”

She shook her head. “You asked me that already, and I told youshe didn’t say anything.”

“She didn’t tell you anything?”

Stephanie shook her head impatiently. “No.”

I took a deep breath. “She didn’t tell you she was pregnant?”

Stephanie’s brows came together and her lips pursed. “No,” she said after a while.

“The police dropped that on us yesterday. David didn’t mention it?”

Stephanie touched her fingers to her neck. Her smile surprised me. “It must’ve slipped his mind,” she said, and she chuckled bitterly.

“They want to know if he could be the father. And I imagine they’re wondering how you would’ve reacted to that news.”

“Did David have an answer?”

“He said it wasn’t his, and that if Holly had said so, you wouldn’t have believed it.”

“He wasn’t lying about that; I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Because he’s sterile?”

Stephanie’s brow went up and she nodded slowly at me. “It’s not the word the doctors used, but it amounts to the same thing. His sperm count is low, and the few that he has don’t swim, and they die if you look at them funny. He told you?”

“David doesn’t tell me much. I guessed.”

“We got tested a few years ago. We’d been trying and…” She shook her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she said quickly, and her eyes narrowed. “Clearly, it’s worked out for the best.”

I paged through my notebook one last time. Stephanie stood and dug a brown plastic bottle from the pocket of her jeans. She popped the lid, and tipped a white pill out.

“He’s got vodka; I’ve got Ativan. But at least mine’s prescription.” She put the pill on her tongue and drained her glass and set it on an end table. “Are you through?”

“I am,” I said. But Stephanie wasn’t. She folded herself in the chair again and looked at me.

“Did he say anything about why?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Why this whole thing. Why these women? Why the lying? Why he’s bound and determined to turn his life- our lives- into shit?” Her voice was firm and steady, as if she’d rehearsed her questions. She didn’t wait for an answer.

“You know what surprised me as much as finding out about the women? It was realizing that David wanted me to find him out. He was like a kid with a secret, squirming to tell. I don’t know if he wanted to see what I would do- if I would get mad, or leave, or forgive himI don’t know what he wanted. I just know there’s a part of him that’s been waiting for all this.”

“For all what?”

“For this. For some kind of punishment.”

“Punishment for…what?”

“You think I understand it?” she said, shaking her head. “But he’s been this way as long as I’ve known him- one part thinking that he’s forever been shortchanged, and another that thinks any good thing that happens is more than he deserves. And that’s the part that’s been waiting- to get caught, to be punished.” Stephanie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “It’s a twisted quid pro quo with him: every good thing matched with some self-inflicted pain. I should have known something big was coming when he finally got the M and A job.” She looked up and studied my face.

“You have no clue, do you?” she asked. I shook my head. “Of course you don’t- how could you? All you Marches, in your own little worlds.”

“Have you talked to David about this?”

“Not for years now,” Stephanie said, and her mouth curved angrily. “Maybe Holly had better luck- she was good with the questions. I’m still working on the one she asked me: why I put up with it.”

“Why do you?”

If she’d told me to go to hell, or just kept stiff-faced and silent, it wouldn’t have surprised me, but I didn’t expect the quiet, level voice, or the answer that I got.

“It’s the deal I made, isn’t it? Or what’s left of it. It’s what I’ve negotiated down to.” Her hands found each other in her lap, and they held on tight, but her voice stayed even. “When you look back on it- when you look at it all together- it seems crazy, I know. Crazy to stay. But it didn’t happen all together. It was a gradual process, like erosion.

“Little by little, things turn out to be less than you thoughtevery year, always a little less. So one day you realize there won’t be any children, and another day you realize your husband doesn’t really like you. Later on, you find you don’t like him much, either, and wonder if maybe he’s not a little crazy. And that takes the sting out a bit when you think about the children you won’t have, and when you find out about the other women. It helps you care a bit less.

“It’s a slow whittling away, but with each new disappointment, with each hope you abandon, you strike a new bargain with yourself. You’ll trade up to a larger apartment, you think, maybe in a better building, or you’ll buy a larger beach house. You’ll spend an extra week on St. Bart’s this year, or throw yourself a bigger birthday party. You’ll go for the seven-sixty Beemer, instead of the five-fifty. And after a while, leaving becomes…tricky. Apartments, houses, vacations, all the friends and acquaintances…In the end it comes down to money, I guess, and that leaving is so expensive and complicated. So scary.

Peter Spiegelman

JM03 — Red Cat

“There were times I thought I’d reached the end of my rope- I thought so when I heard her voice on the telephone- but each time I found the rope had no end. There’s always another strand you convince yourself to cling to, however frayed. And it just keeps unraveling, miles of it, year after year…down, down, down.”

Outside, the sun had shifted in the sky, and a bright beam came through the window. The unfiltered light fell on Stephanie’s face and turned it to a mask, taut, Kabuki white, and brittle. Only her will, and maybe the Ativan, kept it from crumbling. She looked at me.

“I’m used to the erosion, John, but this is…too fast. We’re not ready for it, David and I- we’re not ready.”