The Ninth Step (15 page)

Edgar stood with Martha next to her old Malibu.

“That would be completely and wholly inappropriate. I couldn’t possibly even think of speaking to you in regard to Helen.”

For some reason, when he looked into her eyes, Edgar felt that just the opposite was true. Her eyes seemed to be saying that she actually wanted to tell Edgar something, but something—
was it honor?
—was holding her back.

“I understand, but that’s not good enough. Something is wrong. Why would she sell her wedding ring? And then lie about it. We’re not rich, but we’ve certainly got enough that we
don’t need to pawn our belongings for cash. She’s hiding something.”

“So you came to me?”

Again, her tone was one of derision, but her eyes seemed to say,
Of course you came to me, because I do know
.

“Tell me who I married.”

“You married an alcoholic. Live with it.”

“I have been. And now I need help. Helen needs help.”

“If Helen’s gotten herself into some kind of trouble, then that’s between you and her. And God.”

“You think she’s in trouble?”

“I really wouldn’t know.”

Edgar felt certain that if he could just find the right word combination, Martha would open up.

“Of course you would. You’re a con woman. A criminal.”

“I never tried to hide who I am. Or who I used to be.”

“Are you saying that Helen is trying to hide who she used to be?”

“I’m not saying anything. But I will say this: Sometimes it seems like we spend the second half of our lives trying to hide who we were during the first half. And that’s doubly true for an alcoholic.
Comprende?
”

Frustrated, Edgar slapped his palm against the hood of Martha’s car. It wasn’t a particularly hard blow, but when he drew his hand away, the edge of his wedding band scraped the paint, leaving an ugly scratch.

“I’ll be sending you a bill for that. This is a classic 1979 Malibu. And I just had it painted.”

Embarrassed, Edgar trailed his finger along the damaged area. The paint job was old, pitted, and flaky. That was why it had scratched so easily.

“Just another lie,” Edgar mumbled.

“Speak up, dear.”

“What have you gotten her involved in? Why is she… Have you gotten her involved in something illegal?”

“Illegal? Helen? Please. I’m no angel. But Helen is.”

Martha got in her car and started it. Before closing the door, she said, “And be on the lookout for the bill for the paint job.”

Edgar paced between the kitchen and the living room. And Mitzi followed him back and forth. Molly watched from a shadowy corner, waiting for him to sit down so she could nestle in his lap.

He held Helen’s wedding ring, stopping sometimes to inspect it, consider it, study it like a math problem. Circles, he remembered, were the pursuit of madmen.

He replayed the conversation with Martha over and over in his mind. She had seemingly told him nothing, but her eyes had sparked, tantalizing him.

We spend the second half of our lives trying to hide who we were during the first half.

And be on the lookout for the bill for the paint job.

Edgar went to the coat closet in the foyer and pulled out his long-unused tablet of wall chart paper. He tore out a blank page and spread it out over his desk, pushing the computer to the side to make room.

Edgar drew two columns, one labeled
Helen
, the other
Judy
.

He drew lines matching up items from the two lists. He circled
BLACK CAR
and then opened his filing cabinet. He thumbed through the files, coming to one tabbed
Automobiles
. He pulled out title transfer papers from Helen’s old car.

He opened an Internet browser window on the computer and Googled the term “VIN history.” He tried a few of the results, but they weren’t quite what he wanted. Then he selected a site called VIN Power that offered free vehicle identification number history searches.

Edgar entered the vehicle identification number from the title transfer paper. The results came up: 2005 Honda Insight.
It included body style, odometer reading, number of owners, engine size, and interestingly enough, exterior color. It was red.

Edgar crossed out
BLACK CAR
in Helen’s column and replaced it with
RED
. He drew a connecting line from it to the entry
RED PAINT ON OUR CAR
under Judy’s name.

Edgar dug back into his files and found printouts with automobile statistics along with his notebooks filled with car counts from his earlier research.

He tore out a clean sheet of chart paper and began the process:

Edgar pulled out yet another of the bulging files of auto statistics that he had accumulated.

Although no repairs were listed in the report, Edgar felt that it was reasonable to assume that the car had been repainted during the course of repairs. But why to a different color? He hunted through the papers, scattering them. He found the figures he wanted and continued his list.

Edgar looked over all of this information. He stared at the last line. Under it, he wrote:

It took her three tries to get the key into the front door.

She didn’t see how she was going to be able to continue to hide this, but she was going to try. Any eventuality was better than seeing this dark knowledge reflected in Edgar’s eyes.

The front door swung open into the dark house, leaving Helen silhouetted in the pale glow of the streetlight. She could make out Edgar sitting at his desk. If not for the dim light reflected off the familiar shape of his glasses, she would have thought that she’d walked in on an intruder.

“Why are you sitting in the dark? Are you okay?”

Edgar nodded.

“I had an emergency. I had to use cash. It was Kelly. She—”

Edgar stood up and held something out to Helen. She took it.

“You bought me a new ring? Oh Edgar.” She flipped on the lights. “It’s my ring. You found it? My ring. How?”

She looked up from the ring and saw the room. Papers strewn everywhere. Notebooks, bar graphs, statistics, printouts, formulas.

And then she saw the final equation.

HELEN = MURDER.

An animalistic grunt escaped from Edgar’s tight lips; his eyes were sorrow and rage. And Helen had to look into those eyes and feel the despicable knowledge that they now shared.

Her worst nightmare had come true.

Unaware that she was even speaking, Helen began to chant almost inaudibly, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus—”

The violent crack of Edgar’s palm striking her face rang in the room like an accusation.

“Why?”

Edgar’s hands squeezed into fists.

“Why?”

Helen scrambled backward, away from him. Her feet tangled in the thick paper folds of an overturned wall chart, and she fell to the floor.

Edgar towered over her, fists poised to strike.

“Do it.”

He reared back.

“Do it.”

This was what she wanted. Had wanted for so long. Punishment. Flagellation. Redemption. Her chance to finally be clean again.

But Edgar denied her. He was not yet capable. He lowered his fists.

Sobbing, Helen crawled away, struggled to her feet, and opened the sliding glass door to the backyard. Mitzi, who was watching the struggle from outside, nudged her owner. Helen pushed the dog away. She had only one objective. Punishment. She had to punish herself. She had to cauterize the flow of emotion that she could not bear to feel. If she had a gun, she would gladly put it to her temple and squeeze the trigger.

But there was no gun. There was the pool. And in its dark depths, she knew there would be redemption. True redemption.

Helen squeezed the trigger and jumped. The winter pool cover was in place. She landed squarely on the heavy-gauge plastic, jerking it loose from the side moorings. The thick tarp encased her descending body like a dry cocoon. And then the water penetrated, setting off chlorinated memories. She was hopelessly tangled now, submerged. She sank to the bottom of the pool where utter silence and final release awaited her.

She had been afraid. Afraid for so long. Afraid of the water. Afraid of Edgar finding out who she really was. And now he had. And now she embraced the water. And she had given Edgar what she knew he had always needed.

She opened her mouth and took the water deep into her lungs.

He felt nothingness. There was no anger. No sorrow. No revelation. Only nothingness. Like Helen, he had sunk to the bottom of an abyss, but Edgar did not find release there.

He was vaguely aware of the dog barking in the backyard. That was a familiar sound and stood no chance of penetrating the abyss. But the barking had changed. There was an urgency to it. A differentness. It communicated emergency. It communicated that something was very wrong, and Edgar unwillingly climbed out from the nothingness to a conscious state.

He sat there, unable to move, his body not yet caught up with his mind. The barking grew ever more urgent, ever more insistent. He was finally able to break the inertia and ran for the back door.

Mitzi was perched at the edge of the pool, barking frantically at the water.

As he approached, Edgar saw bubbles coming up from the water. And Helen’s murky, inert form floating face down, the thick plastic sheeting twisted around her.

Later, he would tell himself that it was only for a millisecond that he paused. That he dismissed the thought that flashed through his mind as soon as it made its unwelcome appearance. That he should do nothing. Let it be. Return to the house and call 911. Report an accidental drowning. Problem solved.

The baby. What about the baby?

But when Edgar later allowed himself to reflect on this dark moment, he knew that what had stopped him, or what had spurred him into action, was, yes, the baby she carried inside her, but also the knowledge that he could not allow himself to add to his already crushing burden of guilt.

He jumped into the pool.

He untangled her from the heavy tarp and dragged her body to the shallow end, heaving and pushing her up over the edge onto the cement decking. He straddled her, moaning and crying with rage and fear. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose shut, and blew air into her lungs.

It took only four rescue breaths before Helen’s body responded. Her heart had never stopped beating. She was very much alive as her body convulsed and expelled the water she had taken in. She curled up on her side, racked with a coughing fit. Over and over. She vomited. Soon, she was gasping in watery, raspy breaths.

When she finally had a bit of strength, Helen crawled away like a wounded animal. She pulled herself under a patio table, curling her body around the base. And they both sat there, shivering in the night air, neither knowing what was next.

Thirty minutes had passed before Helen broke the silence. Her voice was a raspy, creaking wreck.

“I wanted to give back what I took.”

Edgar was unable to respond, his face trembling with emotion. But he had to respond. It was time he unburdened himself. Not to her, not to Helen, but it was time to admit to himself why he had focused so much of his time and energy into finding the other driver. Why he needed someone else to be pronounced guilty.

“No.”

“What?”

“No. You didn’t kill her. I did. I wasn’t watching the road. I was bidding on a puzzle box I wanted. I wasn’t even looking at the road.”

Later, out of their wet clothes and into warm pajamas, they sat at the kitchen table. Edgar made some decaffeinated coffee.

The wound had finally been lanced. Now it was time to probe and push, to get all the infection out. To be thorough.

“It was my fault. I’ve always known that. My fault. I could never admit it, but I’ve known it. So much easier to blame someone else. Or chaos. Randomness. I think some part of me felt that if I could track down the other driver, then I could stop blaming myself.”

“I was drunk. Drunk out of my mind. When I saw my car the next morning. And the news. It was like I just turned into a robot—programmed with just one objective: Cover it up. And I did. I didn’t think. I didn’t feel. I just did.”

Edgar nodded, listening.

“It was only later that I allowed myself to feel again. And when the emotions came, I couldn’t live with them. I couldn’t live with myself. I tried to kill myself. That didn’t work. So I got sober. That worked. That worked.”