Calling Mr Lonely Hearts Read online

  There was no lover, of course. She was only pretending so Thad would be jealous. Roxanne had told her it was a stupid idea. But then, Roxanne pretty much hated all of her ideas, and had, well, since forever. She had always suspected that Roxanne didn’t think she was very smart. It didn’t matter, though. She still loved Roxanne.

  The pat-pat of her footsteps echoed just a bit as she passed through the kitchen. Every surface in the kitchen was hard—even the seats of the chairs nestled around the table in the nook at the end of the room. Hard and modern and shiny and new. She had had it designed to her taste, now that her father was dead. Her mother had died back when she was in high school, and for years she and her father had kept everything in the house unchanged. Now, she missed them both, but missed her father particularly. They had been a kind of team after her mother died, frequently traveling and dining out together. Then she’d married Thad, and she’d even insisted that they move into the house when her father’s health began failing. It was her opinion that he’d died so young—at sixty—of a broken heart.

  Just outside the media room, she paused to inch her body-conscious skirt around her waist so that it hung off kilter. Maybe it was too much? She slid it back a fraction. With a smile that she hoped looked casual, she went inside. It was all in fun, this game. At least she tried to tell herself that. If she thought of it any other way, it made her too sad.

  “You’re up late,” she said, speaking up over the noise of the gang fight on the television screen.

  Thad. Sweet Thad, with his soft blue eyes, cowlicked blond hair, and vague, nearsighted look that never seemed to clear, even when he was wearing his glasses. In their wedding pictures—she’d had the best one copied many times and put in all the guest rooms and the living room—Thad looked stunned.

  She was sure that Thad loved her for herself, in a way no one else ever had, but Roxanne had warned her that he was only marrying her for her money. It was the one time she could remember getting in an argument with Roxanne, and she’d come close to throwing her out of the wedding. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t stay angry with Roxanne for very long.

  “The boy can’t believe his luck,” her father had said after the wedding, clapping Thad on the back.

  Now, Alice wasn’t so certain. Thad seemed to be moving away from her, away from their life together. She wanted him back. She wanted that slightly drunk, hesitant young man who had made love to her the night before their wedding, brought to her hotel room by a pair of former frat brothers who had given him a choice between Alice and a hooker. She had surprised herself by letting him in, and, almost eight years later, she still wanted him. They were married and that meant something, didn’t it?

  Thad looked up from his recliner, blinking slowly. On the television screen, blood splattered across the face of a teenage boy in a woolen cap, and he let out an agonized scream. Thad turned at the sound of it, seemed to consider for a moment, then paused the film.

  “You’re home,” he said.

  She crossed the room to drop a light kiss on the top of his head, wondering if he would notice her perfume, and went to sit where she was certain he could get a good look at her. She wasn’t naive enough to think she was a natural beauty, but she’d had a little work done. Her colorist said she wasn’t ready for an allover dye job, so her light brown hair shimmered with golden highlights. While her freckles were regrettable, they seemed to go with her blue-green (more green than blue) eyes and she had recently had her lips enhanced. Of course, the nose job had been important, too. But it was truly the clothes that made this woman, and she knew it. It was her personal theory that every woman should have a seamstress properly fit her clothes.

  She sat at a coquettish angle in the chair, stretching out her legs a bit to show them to advantage. But Thad was looking again at the television.

  Men think about sex for six seconds out of every ten, Roxanne had told her, and Roxanne knew men. There’s something wrong with him.

  “Those women just wouldn’t shut up about that silly book,” Alice said, with an exasperated sigh. “You’d think they’d never read anything else but cereal boxes.”

  Thad’s hand crept toward the remote.

  “I can tell you about it later,” she said. “If you want.” Ask me where I’ve really been, whom I was really with. No one wears shoes like these for a book group!

  He picked up the remote and clicked the television off. A warm glow from the automatic, recessed lights spread over the room. “You obviously want to talk,” he said. “Was it your book group?”

  “Well, you know how they are,” she said. “It’s really just an excuse to drink some wine.”

  In truth, she’d drunk nearly a bottle of Pinot Noir by herself. And there had been no book group, just her, sitting alone at a table at Les Deux Freres.

  “Don’t go if you don’t enjoy it,” he said. “You shouldn’t waste your time.”

  He didn’t like other people to waste their time, though she’d observed that he wasn’t above wasting his own. Witness the evening hours he spent in front of the television. But she knew that the young women in his practice—the hygienists and assistants and clerks—didn’t spend much time goofing off or gossiping. At least she hadn’t noticed them doing so when she occasionally dropped by the office. Sometimes, she thought that maybe she was a little afraid of them. They were all so purposeful. Watching them work made her feel useless and not much better than if she were some decorative object on a store shelf.

  “It’s just something to do,” she said. Her hand slid down her calf to adjust the strap of her sandal.

  His eyes followed the motion.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  He gestured toward her feet. “What’s with the shoes? Have I seen those before?”

  The shoes. They were beautiful shoes. Italian. Though there hadn’t been much leather for the shoemaker to fashion, they were so spare and delicate. A single, narrow copper-hued band crossed over the top of her foot and another rose from the footbed near the front of the spiked, four-inch heel and wrapped around the back.

  “Oh,” she said. “I got them down on the Square. What do you think?” It was a jackpot kind of evening. He never asked her about her clothes or shoes. Sometimes, he commented on her jewelry if it was especially noticeable, like one of the larger pieces she’d inherited from her mother.

  “I knew a girl in college,” he said. “She called shoes like those f-m-p’s.”

  “Pardon?” Alice said.

  “You know,” he said. “Fuck Me Pumps.” He said it clearly and distinctly and she thought his eyes held some kind of challenge.

  She laughed, nervous, but held his gaze.

  “Did you?” she said. She felt her heart beat a little faster.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you have sex with her?” Alice said. “Was she wearing shoes like these?” She stretched out one delicately shod foot toward him.

  What the heck, she thought. Thad watched her without answering as she came over to his chair and climbed onto his lap, sinking her knees into the recliner’s cushion. Her skirt hiked up to the rim of her panties, which were boy-cut but constructed wholly of stretchy peach lace.

  “Alice,” Thad said, leaning back, away from her.

  Ignoring his scolding tone, she worked her fingers into his damp hair. He was prone to taking showers at odd times. Sometimes, he showered two or three times a day. And he always showered after sex. She kissed his forehead so that her breasts brushed against him.

  “I’m glad you like my shoes,” she whispered, saying the words against his skin, pushing her hips against his stomach.

  “You weren’t listening, Alice,” he said. When he took her arms gently and put them away from him, she didn’t resist.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. It was a question she was tired of asking. “Too bored? Too tired? Too angry?” She ticked them off on her fingers. “What is it?”

  “You’re drunk,” Thad said. “I can smell it on yo
u.”

  “If you could do it with her, then why not me? It’s not like you’re going to get me pregnant or anything,” she said. She couldn’t keep the spite out of her voice.

  “We’re done here,” Thad said. “I’m sick of your bullshit, Alice.”

  The chill in his voice alarmed her. It was as though she’d come home to find another man in Thad’s place. They had had their disagreements, but nothing she had ever said had caused a reaction like this one. And he had never before cursed at her.

  He started up from the chair, which sent her tumbling off his lap. But her shoe was lodged in the gap between the chair and its cushion, and when she pulled herself free, she slid to the floor. They both heard her skirt rip up its back seam.

  At a different time in their lives they might have laughed, but now Thad’s face wore a look of disgust that made her feel sick inside. Sick and angry.

  Still, he reached out his hand to help her up. “Get up and stop acting like a brat.”

  Later, she would feel sorry and wonder how she could have done such a terrible thing (of course, he had certainly driven her to it), but at that moment, she wasn’t thinking of the future. Closing her hand around the shoe, she drove its heel as hard as she could against his temple.

  Thad fell back into the chair, grabbing at the side of his head, his glasses pushed to one side of his face. Though he wasn’t screaming, and, in fact, wasn’t making any sound at all, he was obviously in pain. She still held the shoe, as though she might hit him again, but her anger was suddenly gone. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She got up off the floor to try to help him, wanting to take it all back.

  “Oh, my God! Thad,” she said. “I didn’t mean to!”

  “Get the hell away from me,” he said, pulling off his glasses. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just get the fuck out.”

  She took a step toward him. “Let me—”

  He stood up and grabbed her by her upper arms and she could feel the power in his hands. She knew at that moment that she was in some kind of danger, that he could easily kill her. It was there in his eyes. Was that what she wanted? Was she so miserable that she didn’t care?

  “You hate me, don’t you?” she said.

  The anger left his eyes and they almost looked tender to her, which gave her a second of hope. A thread of blood inched from his temple to his cheek.

  “You’re pathetic,” he said. He pushed her away so that she stumbled backward a few steps. “Just get out, Alice,” he said.

  When she hesitated, afraid, he shouted at her. “Get out!”

  She turned and fled to her room.

  Alice sank down into the tub, the water lapping at the rounded tip of her chin. She’d had too much wine, but the shock of the past hour had brought her to a strange state of awareness.

  It wasn’t her fault their life was falling apart. All she’d wanted was a child. One child. But nothing had worked: the surgery, the hormones, the drugs. The endometriosis was still painful and the scarring massive. The unfairness of it all was starting to get to her. Del had Wendy and was planning more children with Jock. Roxanne—well, she still could. It wasn’t fair! She wanted only what was due to her.

  Before their wedding, they’d agreed that they both loved children. Then he began working long hours, wanting to get rid of the debt from dental school. But, thanks to her father’s death, the loans were all paid off, so they started trying. For three years, they had tried to repair and heal her treacherous insides.

  Then he started having trouble sleeping and told her he didn’t want to disturb her and moved into another bedroom. He was slipping away, and she was powerless to do anything about it. He didn’t love her anymore because of what she couldn’t give him.

  When the bath cooled, she got out and pulled the old-fashioned rubber stopper from the drain. She crossed her arms, massaging her triceps with her fingertips. Never in their marriage had Thad laid a hand on her in anger. As she dried herself—dried the body she’d worked so hard to take care of, to improve, the body that had become so useless to them both—loneliness settled over her.

  She lay down on her bed, her head pounding. It seemed like a hundred years before that she’d lain in a different bed in the enormous house, isolated and afraid to make new friends. Back then, Roxanne had become her friend. Roxanne had rescued her, even when she was just six years old. Roxanne, who’d even fancied herself a kind of witch when they were young, had fixed a lot of things. But Roxanne couldn’t fix this. She felt herself falling into despair, which she knew was the worst of sins. Thad definitely wasn’t coming to her tonight. After what she’d done, he might never again.

  She rested her cheek on the pillow, and listened to the traffic passing on the road between the house and the park. She closed her eyes.

  What if ? Her favorite game.

  What if one of the cars out on the road slowed and pulled into the driveway? What sort of car would her lover drive? She hadn’t thought of that before. She decided it would be sleek and black, like her lover’s hair.

  What if he looked like an angel?

  Hadn’t she had enough of angels long ago? She remembered the other angel, the one who had almost ruined their lives.

  But she couldn’t stop herself. She pressed her hand between her legs and felt the warmth spread through her. This angel wasn’t pale and golden, like an angel in paintings, but like Michael, the Archangel, an avenging angel with a strong-boned face and dark, serious eyes. Eyes that would read her so completely, that would look so far into her soul, that she might feel ashamed at what he saw there.

  What if his body were heavily muscled, with a hint of strain at his shirtsleeves? A man with scars, perhaps. A man who had lived.

  What if he chose her out of all the other women in the world that he might have?

  He would let himself into the house with the key she’d given him, and perhaps even walk past the media room, causing Thad to turn his head, listening, uncertain if someone had been there or not.

  He would make his way up to her bedroom and stand in the doorway, watching her, wanting her. And she would be waiting.

  CHAPTER 5

  Week 17 1/7

  In the bathroom Thad peeled back the bandage from his temple. The wound was no worse than one he might have gotten as a kid, messing around. Overnight it had changed from a throbbing mess to a yellow bruise with a web of dried blood and skin at its center. He touched it gingerly, and decided to leave it unbandaged. There would be questions at work, but he knew he could make something up.

  If there had ever been a moment in their marriage when he had wanted to kill Alice, it had happened last night. Why hadn’t he killed her? Because he was smart, and because he had too much to lose. Whatever had held them together, tenuous for so long, had finally snapped. He was free.

  It didn’t take him long to get cleaned up and to throw a few things in the carry-on bag he kept beneath the bed. A couple of his favorite shirts and some khakis, a navy sport coat, workout gear, his leather toilet kit (a long-ago gift from his father-in-law—venal bastard that he’d been, he’d had good taste), as well as his passport, an envelope of cash he kept in the inner pocket of a once-worn white dinner jacket, his Ruger 9mm (not out of need, but to keep it the hell away from Alice in case she got ideas), and the framed snapshot of Pilot, the Irish setter he’d owned when he’d married Alice. Why shouldn’t he have believed her when she’d told him Pilot had pushed past her to jump out of the car in the grocery store parking lot and run off? He’d been that sort of dog. Lovable, but capricious.

  Downstairs, the house was quiet. Alice, he knew, would be upset, embarrassed for a few more hours. She’d probably taken a sleeping pill. But he stashed the carry-on in the stairway leading to the basement and garage beneath the house, just in case. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to leave without her knowing, but that he wanted to keep it to himself. He wanted to savor it.

  He made coffee and poured himself some cereal. It was a celebratory day, one tha
t called for steak and eggs and biscuits and gravy—the chicken gravy his grandmother had often made would really have hit the spot. He imagined for a moment making such a breakfast, waking Alice, seeming to forgive her, then not coming home that evening, leaving her more confused than she already was. The idea appealed. He thought of Alice lying in her bed, alone, her skin cool to the touch (her skin always seemed cool when he touched her—Alice had no warmth). He could wake her with a kiss, startling her, reassuring her. It would be almost like old times, when he’d been blinded by her father’s money into thinking she was a real woman, a woman he could hold. In the end, though, he couldn’t stand to hold Alice. Holding Alice was like trying to caress a stick—a beautifully dressed, manicured stick. Tucking into his cereal, he decided that he wasn’t that much of an asshole, no matter how many times she’d treated him like a servant, sending him back out to the car to fetch her wrap, telling their friends that Thad just didn’t understand that it was hard, hard, hard growing up with money, that it gave a person certain obligations. No, he wasn’t such an asshole.

  He wouldn’t miss this house, with its dignified little shrines to Alice’s dead parents, the pseudo-casual studio shots of Earl and Sheila Lambert, with a young, whey-faced Alice crammed between them. He wondered if Alice would have turned out better if the stout, smiling Sheila had lived.

  “Do you still love me?”

  Alice had crept halfway down the kitchen stairs and was leaning over the railing, wearing only a bra and underwear. Her hair was mussed from sleep, and her eyes were red. She was human, he knew, but he couldn’t scare up a spit’s worth of sympathy for her.

  He finished rinsing out his cereal bowl and put it, with his coffee cup and spoon, into the dishwasher. Old habits die hard.