The Guilty One (10 page)

She managed to sweep the kitchen and the bathroom before her aching muscles and back finally throbbed dully with exhaustion. There were now nine trash bags on the curb, and the smell of garbage was very faint, overlaid with bleach. The apartment was still far from perfect, but she could start with the kitchen and bathroom floors tomorrow. There was satisfaction to be had in the thick gray dirt transferring to the rags, the streaks of clean floor showing through as she worked.

In the bedroom, she stripped off her pants and shirt and shoes in the dark. As she folded the clothes, something fell from the pocket of her pants and skittered across the floor. Maris got down on her hands and knees and felt under the bed, coming up with the tiny square of glass that she'd picked up from the street so many hours ago.

She held it in her hand, turning it this way and that, seeing it sparkle under the overhead light fixture. She set it gently on the windowsill that she had carefully cleaned, next to the borrowed fan.

Her body was slick with sweat, her own odor in her nostrils. She left her hair in its ponytail and lay down on the mattress in her bra and underwear. Through the top of the window, above the fan, she could see the back of the neighbor's house, where a light still burned in an upstairs window.

A night owl, an insomniac, or just someone who needed a lamp left on for company? Maris had been all three in her life. She closed her eyes.
Babygirl, my babygirl,
she whispered. The fan whispered back, scenting the room with jasmine. It almost felt like comfort.

THE SOUND OF
knocking penetrated her featureless dream and Maris came up gasping for air, the way she had so many times before. Her stomach churned and she pushed off the sheets, ready to run and check the locks on the doors, the drapes pulled tight at the windows, keeping them out, all of them with their endless questions and false sympathy and simpering greasy solicitations, the reporters and sensation peddlers anxious to flay her open and expose her beating heart and seeping lifeblood.

She blinked, once, twice. This room. This place. This faint smell of bleach and rot, her own stink rising from her body. The knocking came again, not loud but insistent.

Maris pulled on yesterday's clothes. The pants were creased and ringed with dirt, the shirt wrinkled and reeking. She shoved her feet into her sandals and walked to the door stepping on the leather backs, seeing on the linoleum floor the smeared places she'd tried to clean last night.

Pet stood outside, holding a brown paper Safeway bag in one hand and a small white paper sack in the other. “Hey, you survived your first night,” she said. “I saw your car out front. I figured either you took the room or someone stole your purse and they'd find your body in Lake Merritt. Joke,” she added, almost apologetically.

Maris was acutely aware of how she must look and smell. “I would invite you in . . .” she tried.

“No, no, I have to run, I've got class. I just thought you might want to borrow some clothes for today. And hey, I'm working again tonight, the place next door has a chicken wing special on Wednesdays, they're good. It's $8.99 for wings and fries and all that pickled shit they serve with it. I'll buy you a beer if you come.”

Why is she being so nice?
the voice in Maris's head demanded. Distrust had become her resting state, another toxic pebble rattling along with her grief and anger.

But she couldn't bear to wear these wretched clothes another second. “Thank you,” she said, accepting the bags.

“That's a bagel,” Pet said, handing her the white bag. “Place a few blocks from here. They're supposedly ‘Brooklyn style,' whatever that means.” A mirthful giggle bubbled from her. “Brooklyn by way of Oakland. I read somewhere they're saying Oakland's going to be the next Brooklyn. Hipsters and baby strollers and shit. Anyway. Hope to see you if you get a chance.”

“I really do appreciate this,” Maris said. “I'm going to do laundry and pick up some things today, and then I can return this to you.”

Pet waved. “It's just old stuff.” She peered around Maris unself-consciously. “You got a lot done last night. I saw the bags on the curb. It must have been pretty bad, right? That guy.” She shook her head, whistling.

“I think there's still a long way to go.”

“Well, you're only here for a couple of weeks, don't go too crazy. It's not like Norris is going to cut you a break on rent for it.”

A couple of weeks
. It echoed in her head, stirring up anxiety for the future that Maris couldn't deal with right now.

“It's not like I have anything better to do,” she said, forcing a smile that felt like someone else's.

The Oakland Target wasn't like the one in Linden Creek. The checkout clerk asked if Maris had brought her own bags and she felt guilty saying no. The plastic bag ban hadn't reached Linden Creek yet—the affluent were slower to adopt the measures that gave Northern California its reputation for environmental fervor.

In Pet's denim shorts—Maris checked the label, suspecting they were men's shorts, awkwardly long and much washed—and faded T-shirt with the logo of a cereal brand that Pet couldn't possibly be old enough to remember, Maris felt shabby. She'd washed her sandals under the sink and the leather was unpleasantly damp against her skin. Her hair had air dried into a frizzy mass, but at least it was clean, and she'd scrubbed her skin until it was pink and raw, cleaning under her fingernails with the sharp corner of the toothpaste tube. In the mirror she looked like her mother's friends back in Kansas: plain, graying, middle-aged professors and attorneys who claimed not to care a bit about their appearance.

Four hundred and eighteen dollars later, Maris had purchased two pairs of shorts, two sleeveless shirts, a six-pack of underwear, and a bra. A full set of bedding, the comforter and sheets and bed skirt all in one bag. Lightbulbs and a pillow and towel and hand towel and two washcloths and a shower curtain. On a whim, a romance novel with a pretty embossed cover—the book that had been stolen from the car was a dense, dull book-club pick that she hadn't been able to get through. And all the toiletries and basic makeup to get her through until she figured out her next move. Makeup was a hell of a lot cheaper here than at Nordstrom, a fact Maris knew but hadn't thought about for a while. It had been such a pleasure to take Calla to the makeup counter at fourteen and help her pick out her first mascara, her first blush. Now Maris had a plastic sack full of Cover Girl just like she'd bought with her own money over thirty years ago because her mother was too busy and didn't believe in makeup anyway.

She bought a coffee at the Starbucks counter wedged in the corner of the Target, and pushed her cart to a table along the wall where there was an outlet. Peeling off the packaging of the phone charger she'd bought, she plugged it in and then wiped off the table with a paper napkin. The phone buzzed a series of sounds as it powered up, the emails and texts arriving in pings and chimes as Maris sipped. She closed her eyes and focused on the rich black coffee, imagining the caffeine entering her bloodstream, cutting through her torpor like the harsh Comet dissolving the sticky grime on the floor last night. She could do this—she was already twenty-four hours into the abrupt U-turn she had made of her life, and she was still breathing, still moving forward—she'd even, possibly, made a new friend. Although she had been passive in that—Pet had been dropped from the sky, a gift. Still. It was a reversal worth noting—for the last year, most of Maris's relationships had shrunk and withered until she was left only with the ones who had no choice.

Like Alana. Maris took another sip and then picked up the phone. The dense string of texts made her heart sink, especially when she saw that most of them were from Jeff, not Alana.

Call me.

Please give me a call when you get a chance.

This is really important.

Why did he care? As far as Maris knew, he'd been back to the house only the one time, two days ago, to pick up the things he'd forgotten in his haste to move out. And before that, he had been as absent as her—more so, even, because he'd been honing his secret-keeping skills for so much longer.

Jeff knew—she had made sure he knew—how much she loathed him. How much she blamed him. And he hadn't fought back, he wasn't the type. He was a retreater, an abdicator. A coward.

This is really important or I wouldn't bother you.

At one time, such a text would have meant one thing only to Maris:
Calla, oh my God, something has happened to Calla.
That was gone, and nothing else mattered. But it wasn't wise to ignore Jeff for too long. He had a vindictive side few saw, a petty vengefulness he unleashed in private. Probably his text had to do with the stock sale, and yes, she should have asked him first. After all, she'd DocuSigned his name, since she still knew his passwords at the brokerage. Sloppy, really; if it had been her, she would have cleaned up better after herself. But then again, Maris had never shattered anyone's life before. She was always the one being blindsided.

She called him back. As she waited for him to answer, she wondered idly if what she'd done was illegal. Probably. Even though they were still married, at least legally. It had amused her, this year when she did their taxes by herself for the first time, to discover that there was something called an Innocent Spouse Relief form. Jeff had never been innocent. So maybe the last twenty years of their returns were all built on lies, like their life. But now she was committing sins of her own, and the stock sale was only a minor one. So all the lines were blurred.

Jeff picked up. “Maris. Jesus. I've been trying to get you.”

“It hasn't even been a day,” Maris said, her voice chilly.

“You didn't go to Alana's. She has no idea where you are.”

So Jeff had talked to her sister. It figured. The old resentment, all of her family circling around Jeff whenever the two of them were having issues, stirred inside her. Even now.

“I'm staying with a friend,” she said. “It's just for a few days.”

“A friend
where
?” It wasn't just exasperation in his voice, but that other thing too, that supercilious condescension. As if she had no friends, no one who would be willing to take her in. Jeff had always been proud of his own long-standing friendships, his connection to people going back as far as elementary school. Once a friend of Jeff's, forever a friend.

The irony of
that
thought made her expel a bitter laugh. “A friend you don't know,” she said.

“Look. Mar. We need to talk.”

“We
are
talking.” She could afford this petulance, this immaturity now. He didn't own her anymore. The upper hand had cost her, God, had it cost her, but now she might as well use it. “Is there something in particular you need to tell me?”

“Well, you might be interested in knowing that they're appealing.”

Stuck on his mincing annoyance, it took Maris a second to catch up, and then she absorbed what he was saying. “The Isherwoods?” she asked faintly.

“Their new attorney called. His office. As a courtesy.”

“Oh, God . . .”

“It's not definite,” Jeff said, relenting, now that he'd regained the upper hand. “I don't know if you've been paying any attention to the news, but Arthur Mehta got picked up on a DUI with some skag in the car. Gives credibility to an appeal if they go for incompetent defense.”

Maris said nothing, the possibility taking shape in her mind like a gaping black maw, ready to swallow the small progress she'd made. An appeal meant the case being back in the public eye, Calla's memory brutalized all over again.

“Anyway. That's not what I called about. Look, let me get straight to it. You cashed in the Pfizer stock.”

“Yes.” She drew a shaky breath, recovering. She would think about the implications later. Without
him
. “I did. I needed some cash. We can sort it out when we meet with the mediator. Take it out of my half.”

Jeff swore, a muttered epithet that surprised Maris. He didn't approve of cursing, said it was the sign of a lazy mind—Jeff, who'd had Maris proof his papers in grad school, whose malapropisms she'd long since become inured to.

“I'm sorry, I know I should have checked with you first. But you haven't exactly been very present lately.”

“Look, Maris, I need you to transfer half of it back to me. You obviously have an account I don't know about, which, I mean, that's a whole other subject. But just put half of it back, okay? Today would be good.”

“Today would be
good
?” Maris felt her anger rising in her chest. “Why, you have a big date tonight? Need to buy a corsage?”

“That isn't—”

“If you haven't noticed, I've been dealing with a lot myself. I didn't just leave our house yesterday, the house I thought we'd live in forever, the house where I was going to have
Thanksgiving
with my
grandchildren
. My car got broken into yesterday. They took everything. I had to file a police report. I'm in a Target buying drugstore
body
lotion.”

There was a silence. “I'm sorry,” Jeff finally said, his voice tight. “We both have a lot on our plates. We both have a lot to deal with right now.”

“Just take it out of one of the other accounts,” Maris said, suddenly weary of the whole conversation, her anger dissipated, replaced by the old familiar numbness. The coffee roiled in her stomach. She needed to eat something; she'd only been able to manage half the bagel Pet brought her. “Keep track, we'll settle it up later.”

“Maris.” A pause. “There
are
no other accounts.”

“What do you mean? Just use the BancWest one.”

“Haven't you been looking at the statements? There was about two hundred dollars in there after we paid Kurtzman's last bill. I closed it.”