Acts of Love (41 page)

She twisted her legs free from the tangle of the quilt, worn thin where she had always clutched it to her mouth. Her right arm had fallen asleep and she shook it until the tingling dissipated. She wiped a loose strand of hair from her eyes and put both feet on the ground, standing cautiously, as if unsure of her own legs. Running her hands along the wall, she walked in small steps from her room, down the hallway, and into her parents' bedroom. Finally home.

She turned up the switch by the door, and the light by her mother's side of the bed flicked on, a yellow glow beneath its ruffled shade. The bed was tightly made, without a wrinkle. She climbed onto the lavender floral bedspread and sat cross-legged in the very center. The night table on the right had a striped box of tissues, a magazine, a pen. The night table on the other side was empty. She remembered how, when her father had first moved out, the room always felt that it might tip over, the dresser, the closet, the bed itself so full on the right, so clean and barren on the left. She lay down and pulled a pillow beneath her head. Emanating like wisps of smoke was the ghostly sweet smell of her mother's perfume. She held the pillow closer and shut her eyes, wanting only to stay in this house forever.

She dreamt of dirt.

The dirt they had covered her mother with while she watched, shovel by shovel, until she disappeared from view.

Dirt filled with worms and snakes wriggling free, wriggling toward her.

Dirt rising in mounds at her feet, her ankles, her knees, her waist, rising, rising.

Dirt covering her eyes—she hadn't seen a thing.

But that no longer mattered.

 

A
LOUD NOISE BELOW WOKE HER
, pulling her back inch by inch. She listened as footsteps approached and she pulled the bedspread completely over her head. Her breath beneath the tight tent was too hot, too noisy. She heard the footsteps grow closer, then stop.

He pulled the cover from her eyes.

“Hey there,” John said, smiling.

She squinted up at him.

“What are you doing here, honey?”

Still she did not speak.

“You've got people pretty worried.”

Her face was ridged with indentations from the pillow and the sheets.

He sat on the edge of the bed and reached over to stroke her forehead softly. “Come on, Ali. We have to go.”

She shook her head sleepily,

“You can't stay here,” he said gently.

She looked up at him another moment, and a slow and peaceful smile flitted briefly across her mouth. She did not protest as he lifted her body, heavy and heated, from the bed.

He held her tight to his chest as he descended the staircase, his arm muscles at first tense, knotted, as if fearful of dropping her. Slowly the warmth of her body seeped into his, relaxing him. He placed her carefully in the passenger seat of his car, and then, just before walking around to his own side, he bent over and kissed her on the forehead, his eyes, like hers, shut.

 

H
E CARRIED HER
, sleeping once more, or pretending to, into Sandy's house.

“Where was she?”

“Home,” he said.

“How could she have gotten in?”

“She broke a window in the back.”

Sandy nodded. “How did you know where she'd be?”

He shrugged and began to carry her upstairs, swaying slightly with each step.

When he came back downstairs, he started immediately for the door.

“Wait.”

He turned to Sandy.

“Please,” she added. “I'll make some coffee. Don't go yet. Please.”

He was suddenly too tired to resist. He followed her into the kitchen.

“Before you say anything,” she said as she measured out the grounds into the conical filter, “just listen to me, okay? I want you to know how sorry I am.”

“For what?”

“What do you mean, for what?”

“I mean, I want to know what exactly you're sorry for. Are you sorry for fucking your sister's husband? Are you sorry for lying to me? Are you sorry Julia saw you? Are you sorry Gorrick is an ambitious little turd? Tell me, Sandy, what exactly are you sorry for?”

She started to cry. “All of it, okay? All of it. You have no idea how sorry.”

“Obviously I have no idea about a lot of things. Is there anything else I should know? Or should I say, anyone else I should know about?”

She stared at him disconsolately. The water continued dripping loudly.

“How could you?” he went on in a pained voice. “How could you?”

“I don't know. I've been asking myself that question for the last year. It's like another person did it.”

“Well, it wasn't another person. It was you. Tell me how it happened. I mean, exactly. Tell me how, exactly, you came to sleep with your sister's husband.”

“You want life in these nice neat little boxes, everything clearly marked,” she retorted bitterly.

He pushed his chair back and continued to glare at her.

When she began to speak again, it was in a vague and distant voice. “They were having problems…”

“Oh, please. Don't hand me that.”

“He came over to borrow a book. I don't know, one thing just led to another.”

“See, that's it right there. That's the part I don't get. In my world, one thing and another thing does not lead”—he motioned wildly—“to this.”

She poured them each a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. Her voice was sanded smooth, meditative. “I could give you a million reasons, and they'd all sound like excuses. Maybe I wanted what Ann had. Maybe I wanted to see if I wanted what Ann had. To prove to myself once and for all that I didn't want it. Everything always seemed to come so easily to her. She'd never been alone a day in her life. She always seemed to do everything right. I don't know. Everything just happened so gracefully for her, you know?”

“You're right. It does sound like a bunch of excuses. Crappy ones, at that.”

“Maybe it had nothing to do with Ann. Maybe it was just us.”

“Us?”

“Me and Ted.”

John flinched.

“We hated each other all along,” she said. “Hated each other for what we were doing.”

“Is that supposed to make it better?”

“No.”

“And is that what's behind all this?” John asked.

“All what?”

“Your conviction of Ted's guilt. Are you getting back at him?”

“No,” she lashed out. “He did it, I know he did it. John, he threatened me. He said that if I didn't get Ali to change her story, he'd come forward with this.”

“You've been in touch with him this whole time?”

“No. Yes. Sort of.”

“Oh, God.” He rolled his eyes. “Sandy, if he threatened you, that's tampering with a witness. Why didn't you go to the police?”

“What about the girls, John?” she said, exasperated. “Don't you see, I'm all they've got left. I'd have done anything for them not to have learned about this. I was trying to protect them.” She laughed hoarsely. “What a joke. How was I supposed to know Julia saw us?”

“Can you imagine how she must have felt all this time?”

Sandy did not respond. “Look,” she said at last, “there's another thing. He once threatened to kill me. At the end of our”—she glanced down—“whatever, he said if I ever did anything to hurt Ann, he would kill me. John, there was something about his eyes…”

“If you were so sure he was capable of being violent, why didn't you warn Ann?”

“I wish I had.”

“When were you going to tell me this, Sandy? Ever?”

“I tried.”

“No you didn't. If you had wanted to tell me, you would have.”

“You don't always make it easy,” she said, looking over at him.

He didn't say anything.

“John, it was a mistake, a bad one. But it was a long time ago. It was before you.”

He remained motionless.

“What happens now?” she asked softly.

“I don't know,” he said sadly. “I don't know.”

She nodded. “Thank you for finding Ali.”

He rose to leave.

She walked him to the door and held it open for him. She looked up at him, red-eyed. “Please don't hate me.”

“I don't hate you.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Don't push your luck.”

She smiled partially, nodded.

He looked at her a moment, and then left.

 

T
ED CALLED LATE THAT NIGHT
. “Did you find Ali?” “Yes.”

“Where was she?”

“At the old house,” Sandy said.

“She's okay?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say anything?”

“About what?”

“About tomorrow.”

“No. She hasn't said a word about anything at all.”

“So you don't know what she's going to say?”

“No.”

There was a pause. Julia's name was on both their lips, but neither could bring it out.

Ted grunted and hung up.

All of the lights were on in the apartment. Everything was in place, dusted, repositioned. He had, in the last long hours, scoured the kitchen sink, the bathtub, and the toilet, and moved the refrigerator three inches from the wall and scraped off the line of brown grease left behind.

He ran his fingers round and round his drink glass, and then against his taut thighs, as he paced the length of the apartment and back.

He stopped on his last lap just long enough to retrieve the drawings for his house in the hills from the empty bureau drawer, where he kept them covered in tissue paper, smooth and protected and cherished like a charm, a talisman. He took them to the counter, and he began, slowly, methodically, to erase and redraw the finest of lines as he waited for the morning.

 

T
HE SENIOR OF THE TWO OLD MEN
had been at the courthouse for over an hour before the bailiff, sipping from a yellow-and-brown container of Yoo-Hoo, arrived to open the doors. The old man passed quickly through and took his favorite seat in the deserted room. He had dressed for the day in a blue-and-white-checked polyester blazer with faint yellow stains on both lapels, and his straggly, grizzled hair had loosened from the bald spot it was supposed to cover, sticking out on either side like wings. He had been too anxious about the day's proceedings to sleep the night before. When his friend, the second to arrive, slid in next to him, he opened his bag of dried apricots, and the two sat quietly munching as the room filled up and people jostled for position.

At exactly nine-thirty, Sandy led Ali, dressed in a navy pleated skirt and white sweater, to the front row. Ali's new shoes bit into her heel and slid on the marble floor as she walked past the rows of curious eyes. Sandy held tightly to her hand, as much for her own benefit as for Ali's, as they settled into their seats. Ted turned around gradually and looked at his daughter, clean and fresh and startled. He smiled gently, and he saw her lips begin to twist into an expression he could not decipher. Sandy, noting the exchange, bent down and smoothed Ali's hair to distract her, and Ted returned to Fisk, whispering a final suggestion in his ear. Fisk nodded warily. Despite a number of calls to Sandy, he had never managed to get her to bring Ali into his office. His foot tapped in uncontrollable rapid jerks against the marble floor.

Judge Carruthers had already been seated when the door swung open one last time. Sandy turned to see John squeeze into the last row. Directly in front of him, Gorrick sat with pad and pen in hand. She glared at his impassive face as the court was called to order, but he did not respond.

“The defense calls Ali Waring.”

Sandy gave Ali's hand a firm squeeze and whispered, “Just tell the truth.”

Ali walked in tentative steps to be sworn in, then climbed onto the stand.

Judge Carruthers turned to her, smiling encouragingly. “Hello, Ali.”

“Hello.”

“Can you tell us how old you are?” the judge asked.

“Eleven.”

“A good age, as I remember. And where do you live, Ali?”

“I used to live on Sycamore Street. Now I live on Kelly Lane.”

“Who do you live with?”

“My aunt Sandy.”

“Ali, do you know what the truth is?”

“Something that really happened?”

“Very good. And do you know what a lie is?”