The Best Revenge (25 page)

I knew he would lead me to the bedroom. The light was on, the drapes were open. There was an acre of glass for people to look through. He didn't care. Like the gypsies who fornicated in the cattle cars on the way to the gas chambers, we made love in full public view.

24

Mary

My sister-in-in
-law Connie is a perfectionist. Her macramé is perfect. Her petitpoint is faultless. Her crocheting is impeccable. Her Sunday dinners are unsurpassed. Connie is also the world's best grown-up babysitter when she swoops down on our house. But if her husband Sean is to be believed, in sex she'll never be a contender.

When I called Connie to say could I drop over to her place, she said, “Sure, sure, wait'll you see the afghan I'm crocheting,” but when I showed up with all three kids and suitcases, understandably she seemed surprised.

Quickly I said, “I hope it's okay. It might be overnight.”

“Sure,” she said, her “sure” less sure than it was before.

“It's very temporary,” I said. “We could go to a hotel.”

Connie was immediately all over my kids, hugging and kissing. “With my spare bedrooms, what do you need a hotel for?” And then pulling me aside said, “You and Nick fighting?”

I assured her we weren't.

“Then what's up?” she said.

“Later,” I said, and held a finger to my lips and glanced at the children.

I assumed Connie's problem about us arriving with suitcases was her chronic toothache over the way Sean acted with me. According to Connie, he doesn't treat me like a sister-in-law, he treats me like a woman. He pats me on the fanny in front of her, he kisses me on the earlobe instead of the cheek, that sort of thing. She once said to me she didn't know how I stood Nick's fooling around, she wouldn't let Sean do that for one second with another woman.

I hope Connie is never surprised the way most wives are at one time or another. It would blow her immaculate world apart. Clean floors call for a clean husband and to Connie sex is dirt.

Once Nick and I were there for a Sunday visit, the main event a showing of Connie's latest, a wall hanging she had painstakingly crafted for over a year that was supposed to have been inspired by a color photo of French renaissance tapestries she clipped out of a magazine. It was Queens Boulevard gauche. After a moment's admiration, I excused myself and said I needed to catch something on PBS. Nick, a good guy to his sister, stayed to hear all about the fine points of imitating art.

Sean drifted downstairs and found me sitting on the playroom couch in front of the TV. It was a long couch, but Sean sat down so close his right thigh was touching my left thigh and straight out, no cue, no reason, described their sex life in four words. “Connie just lies there.”

Was I supposed to say I'd give Connie lessons?

Then he said, “You and me, we've always got along, Mary.”

“Sure.” What was I supposed to say?

“If Nick doesn't always make you happy…”

“Stop right there, Sean.”

“…maybe I could.”

I started to get up from the couch, and only then did I see what Sean was doing.

“Are you crazy?” I said. I headed for the stairs, and Sean the fast engineer was instantly behind me letting me feel in my backside what I saw. I turned around and said, “Sean, you're a nice guy, but this family is Italian. Connie's Italian, Nick's Italian, I'm Italian, you've got to be real careful because Italians get upset very easily about family intrusions.”

He echoed “Intrusions?” as if he'd never heard the word before. “It isn't incest, Mary,” he said. “You and I aren't related.”

I was already up the stairs.

Sean had crossed a line it wasn't easy to retreat back over. And I had crossed a line by my curt dismissal of his pass. What was I supposed to do, keep family relations intact by patting Sean's thing on the head and saying now be a nice boy and stay where you belong?

If I played with Sean, it'd be to send a message to Nick. He wouldn't care about me. He'd care enough about his ego to kill Sean.

*

I'm glad Sean wasn't home when I arrived with the suitcases. What do I do if he comes into my bedroom at night? I went over to the door. No lock.

I was lying back on the bed alongside my not-quite-unpacked suitcase when I heard the phone ringing somewhere in the house and then a knock on my door, Connie stage-whispering, “It's Nick, for you.”

Nick's voice was all gravelly.

“Mary,” he said. “I don't have time for a lot of explanation. I want for you to get dolled up fast. Bert Rivers is picking you up. We're having dinner at the Four Seasons.”

“With Bert Rivers?”

“Mary, I haven't got time to hang on the phone. Bert's just driving you into town because I can't. We're having dinner with a man named Ben Riller and his wife.”

“The producer?”

“That's the guy.”

“You thinking of becoming an actor, Nick?”

“I haven't got time for jokes, Mary. Please.” He disconnected, but that
please
hung in the air.

“Trouble?” Connie asked.

“I've got to get dressed to go into town, Connie. Nick's got a meeting he wants me to be part of. At the Four Seasons, can you imagine?”

“Oooh, are you lucky.”

“Do you mind? About the kids, I mean?”

“No, no, you just go and have a good time.” She looked relieved. Because I wouldn't be around when Sean came home?

There was a lot to do in a hurry. Connie got the kids settled in front of the TV while I saw what I could make of myself with what I'd brought, not having counted on needing real dress-up clothes. Nick always jokes about the black dress I take whenever we go on a trip, saying I'm just like the other Italian ladies, always ready for a
funeral. I'm going to shove that joke right in his face because that black dress plus pearls, plus pumps and a bracelet and the mirror tells me I'll do for the Four Seasons.

I was checking my hair when Connie came up behind me and said, “You look terrific, Mary,” and I thanked her just as the front doorbell rang, the timing was that close.

“This is Nick's lawyer, Mr. Bert Rivers,” I said very affirmatively. “My sister-in-law, Connie.”

“How do you do?” is all Bert said.

I saw Connie's eyes thinking this could be a story, that Bert was taking her sister-in-law out, so I whispered to her, “If I was cheating, Connie, I'd pick a taller one.”

You can't joke with Connie. She took it as confirmation, not denial. Premature matron Connie stood in the doorway of her large house, watching her sister-in-law drive off in sin with the funny-looking man, but she wasn't going to spoil things between our families by not waving bye-bye to us. I waved back from the car and thought, Connie, don't just lie there.

I felt good about how I'd looked in the mirror. With Bert Rivers driving his Eldorado along Queens Boulevard, I wanted to hang a sign out saying the short, bald man in a not very dressy business suit is not my date, he's just driving the car. My date, I thought flying, was not Nick Manucci, it was that man I'd seen on TV and in the papers, Ben Riller.

That's who was bicycling around in my brain when Bert said, “Mary, I have some not so good news. I want you to remain calm.”

Nick's been killed.

“There's been a problem at your home.”

“Nick's there?”

“No, Nick's in his office.”

“He's okay?”

“Sure. It's the house.” He looked at me for just a second. “There's been a fire,” he said. “A bad fire. It may still be burning.”

I can't believe it. We were just there four, five hours ago?

“I don't know the facts yet, Mary, but Nick had a call from the police chief. It was a real conflagration, very fast. His guess was that it was set, some combustible, probably gasoline.”

Something was rushing around in my ears.

“By the time someone turned in an alarm it must have been a beaut.”

“On purpose?”

Bert nodded.

“Yes or no?” I said.

His voice was a croak. “Yes.”

“That man who came around with the message for Nick, is that it?”

“Or someone else from the organization.”

I guess it was
organization
that got me going. You know how you hear your husband is seeing other women and your first reaction is you don't believe it. It's like that with the mob. You hate what you see in the movies and on television, it makes it sound like all people of Italian extraction are in it somehow—which is a lie against my parents and people like them—and then you remember what's-his-name who later got killed in Columbus Circle in a mob of thousands of people, how he got on television and said there was no mob, it was all a fabrication, and his own death proved the lie, but you felt your husband, whatever he did, he wasn't one of them. But if you're insisting he isn't, aren't you admitting they are? And it's like waking up to the fact that your husband really is seeing other women, but you still don't believe until you find the woman's scarf in his car and you can't alibi yourself anymore. It exists. And they do things like this, set fires, kill people.

Bert said, “I'm sorry to have been the bearer of bad news.”

If I tried to talk, maybe the words wouldn't come out. “I'm thinking of moving back to Minnesota,” I said. “With the kids.”

“I'm sure you'll want to talk this over with Nick,” Bert said.

“Fuck Nick.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nick didn't need a second mortgage on those computers to make a living. He didn't need to rub Barone's face in something for the excitement.”

I wanted to tell Bert to drive to the house instead of to Nick's office. It's like hearing about a death. You want to see the body before you really believe it.

Bert said, “Your husband is a remarkable man, Mary. He's really taking this all very well.”

“His wife isn't taking it so well,” I said.

“It's harder for women.”

You bet your ass, Mr. Rivers.
“Actually,” I said, “having taught retarded children for quite a few years, I've developed a pretty tough skin, Bert.”

“I didn't know that.”

“With those children,” I said, “it was always a case of trying to improve. I don't consider a threatening visit from a hoodlum a potential improvement.”

“They're trying to get to Nick because he's got guts.”

I've got guts, Bert. I'm married to him.

I said, “I don't like the business my husband is in.”

I shouldn't have said it out loud. Not to his lawyer. I've been so careful all these years, thinking but not saying.

“Nick's a respected businessman.”

“Respected by whom? The people he lends money to at those rates? Don't they call that usury?”

Bert gave a little laugh, and turned away from traffic long enough to give me the smile that went with the laugh.

“That's a common misinterpretation, Mary. We don't like words like
usury.
It's the price of Nick's product, which is money. Another businessman wants to accomplish something he needs cash for, he doesn't have cash, Nick provides a product, that's all it is.”

“Whenever my father needed tide-over money for his business,” I said, “he went to the bank, and he was usually able to get what he needed at decent interest. All the women I know, their husbands borrow from banks. Why don't the people Nick deals with go to banks?”

“I think your husband treats his clients much nicer than banks would treat those same clients. When he makes sure that the collateral covers his risk, he's being prudent for your sake, really, and the kids, to make sure your family capital increases at a rate greater than the inflation rate. He's a smart man, Nick, and a good man.”

Smart? Good? You take him to bed, Bert, just once. You see how smart he is. You see how good he is.

“I'm glad to be working for him,” Bert said.

I'm working for him, too. He doesn't understand reciprocity. He makes each private transaction a deal, tat for tit.

“I didn't hear you, Mary. It's all that traffic noise.”

“I wasn't saying anything.”

When those retarded children learned something new they were so grateful they kissed your hands. You wanted to kiss them instead because you were grateful. That's what marriage should be like. When Nick took me to Bermuda, I thought he was through with the other
women, and I warmed to him again for one week, and then we were home again, back in business.