There Must Be Some Mistake (2 page)

JILLY'S EX-HUSBAND
Cal was a tough piece of business in his midforties, a guy she had married right out of college. She was twenty-two, he was thirty, and she regretted the marriage instantly. It took her a few years to cut herself free. I never got the details, but she gave the impression the marriage was on the nasty side. Like TV-show nasty, true-crime nasty. And the worst part was Cal was hard to shake. At Point Blank we saw him at office parties, Christmas parties, and whatnot, and he kept coming after their divorce. He got friendly with other people at the office, and with Diane, and stayed friendly. After my divorce he started coming to see me, too, like we had this in common, both of us living alone after marriage. He was always dropping by to commiserate or calling to suggest we grab dinner. A couple years later, when I left and Jilly started visiting, he tracked her to Kemah and stopped by the condo to visit her.

And he liked Morgan too much. I suggested he give her a wide berth, but when she started college in Houston he'd meet up with her and her friends at their hangouts. I tried to discourage this, but Morgan refused to “dignify” my complaints. Cal called it “a little harmless fun” and chuckled in a way that made me want to smack him silly when I talked to him about it. Then he showed up on her Facebook page, which I checked more often than a father is supposed to. There were snapshots of him and the girls at a college bar playing pool. Morgan seemed to be having a good time in the pictures. The girls were always grinning in silly group snapshots and looking as wacky as possible, sometimes hanging around the necks of men, sometimes sticking their tongues out between their first and second fingers, a gesture I tried to not think about.

She said it was just fun. I said Cal was too old to be having fun with college girls. Morgan loved that, of course.

After a while she seemed more inclined to hang out with kids who looked like gas-station employees but had, at least, the virtue of being near her age. It struck me odd that Rice students would look like gas-station attendants, but then I realized everyone under thirty looked like a gas-station attendant to me. Then I realized there weren't any gas-station attendants anymore. On her FB page Morgan was often seen smiling one-beer-too-many big between a scruffy-looking cowboy and three other guys who looked younger than and less reputable than Cal. That or she was with a guy who looked like a teen lawyer, always decked out in suit pants and a really thin tie, like he'd come from the office. I preferred the cowboy.

“Oh please” is all Morgan would say whenever I brought up the guys on her page. “Really.”

A FEW
weeks after Ng crashed his car, a woman at the other end of our development was found in her kitchen, her hands bound with the picture-hanging wire from the back of her prize art print and blue paint smeared all over her. The print and the paint were Yves Klein blue, which everyone recognizes, at least everyone who ever took a modern art class. It was this guy's special blue, sort of French blue, but more so. He was an amusing heretic in the ancient art world of the forties and fifties, and the print was from his Anthropométrie series (so said the note on the back of the frame), in which he used nude women as paintbrushes. A powerful concept. He showed these paintings with performances of his
Monotone-Silence Symphony,
which was a solitary note played for twenty minutes, followed by twenty minutes of silence, thus locating himself among the very first minimalist composers. And there's a famous photograph of him flying over a wall that every art student sees sooner or later. He's known for that, too.

The cops came to interview the victim of the Klein attack. Apparently she was fine but curiously could not remember a thing about the skirmish. She was questioned extensively, but nothing came of it. She recalled answering the door to find a person standing there in a large rabbit mask holding a paintbrush and a gallon paint can. She thought it was a friend of hers. Turned out she was wrong.

The paint, which was water based, washed off.

The woman was Chantal White. I called Diane about the attack, and she said she'd met the woman once or twice and that the woman was snooty.

When I ran into my neighbor Bruce, he said, “This woman is like that nurse Jackie on that TV show is what I hear. You know, the slut drug-addict nurse with a really nice husband? We're supposed to feel for her because she works so hard and is a druggie? That cunt sets every guy's teeth on edge week after week,” he said.

“Never saw it,” I said. I was lying, naturally. I'd seen it. It was hard to figure out what the point of it was, but it was harder to figure Bruce getting upset.

“There's nothing a guy hates more than being cuckolded by his own damn wife,” Bruce said.

“Who better?” I said, then quickly corrected myself, saying, “Amen to that.”

“This guy on the show is so nice and modern with his cunt wife that he never even imagines she'd cheat on him, never gives it a thought. So we gotta deal with that. I mean, I keep pointing at the screen every time the actress screws the pharmacist in the pharmacy, in the car, in a fucking tree.” Here he stopped and sort of got his bearings. He whistled for his dog, an ugly little pug-like something. “Anyway,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn't let the show get to me, huh?”

“Think you're watching reruns,” I said. “This year she's trying to be a better person.”

“Well,” he said.

“So what about the Chantal woman?” I said.

“She's a hydrologist,” he said. “Divorced. One child grown and gone. Was a nurse, gave it up, and studied water somewhere. Got a degree and then I think she was EPA for a while. Bought that restaurant and bar down the coast. Velodrome, it's called. Used to be a bike racetrack or something. Under fifty, dates around pretty good. Nice-looking woman.”

“Man, you got the inside track on this thing,” I said. “Did anybody see anything? What about the paint?”

“The paint was blue,” he said. “Splashed all over her supposedly. Cops were over there taking pictures when I went by. Newspaper guy was there. He's like sixteen or something. It's shit who they got writing the news these days. The
Sentinel
is not one of our great papers.”

“They're all small these days,” I said.

“They ought to rename it the
Wynden Weekly,
” Bruce said. Wynden Drive, where Ng had his accident, was the prominent boulevard that ran over toward Clear Lake.

“She wasn't, you know, like, messed with or anything?”

“Apparently not,” Bruce said. “She's good as gold is what I heard. Tough cookie.”

For a few weeks the police were all over the neighborhood like mice. They were asking questions, coming in twos to everyone's door, inviting themselves in, sitting on the edges of sofas and wing chairs with their little tablets, little flip books where they took notes whether the interviewees knew a thing or not. I said I didn't know the woman and wouldn't recognize her if I saw her on the street, but still the questions. How often did you…Do you remember seeing anyone who…Did the victim have any habits that you…All this was oddly reassuring. Like your life imitating television—murders and drive-bys and robberies and whatever happening to people all around you. Chantal White put me in mind of the creepy guy attacking the hoodie kid in the Florida gated community. He kills the kid and the fucking guy walks. Go figure.

This woman Chantal wasn't around much after the incident, but she was widely discussed. There was speculation that she had something to do with Duncan Parker, the president of our homeowners' association. He was a loudmouth many Forgetful Bay folks didn't like all that much, but he wanted to be president of the HOA and almost nobody else, other than Roberta Spores, did.

Jilly was staying over when the cops came for their second visit and she made coffee and they wanted to talk to her. She told them she was a friend of mine and didn't know the neighbors, but that didn't faze them. I stayed out of it. Didn't even listen from the next room. I was out on the deck with the iPad, playing Monkey Pong Duets.

At the homeowners' meeting the following Monday, a monthly meeting I hadn't attended since Diane left, I joined an overflow crowd of residents eager for news about the rash of events at Forgetful Bay.

Parker ran the meeting. He was a short ex-marine with too many years in the service of his country to ever forget his service to his country, or at least that's what he told anyone who would listen or who happened to walk by his house when he was out working on the grass, which was anytime weather permitted. His grass got an awful lot of attention, and water, not to mention bags and bags of food and close scrutiny from the neighbors. All this was not lost on the grass, which always presented itself in dress greens, with military precision. The neighbors would routinely endure Duncan Parker's political and economic views, which were something short of enlightened, and his vision for the future of this great country of ours, which was plain terrifying, in order to get a little advice on how to get the brown socks off their grass, how to deal with birds pooping in the yards, how to get that glistening green that he managed to muster almost year-round, even in dead of winter.

“As most of you know, we've had some problems lately,” Duncan Parker said, wiggling a finger at some slackers still busy chatting at the back of the small room in the community clubhouse, a miniature house that had once been the sales office. “And I thought we'd better gather to talk about things, try to defuse some rumors, and generally clear the air.” Here he paused, waiting again for the full attention of all who were present. Finally he lost patience. “Hilton,” he said, waving at a short fellow with a beard at the back of the room. “Could you save it for later?”

“Sure thing, boss man,” Hilton said, grinning and sitting up straight in his folding chair. Hilton Bagbee never behaved, at meetings or elsewhere. He was a happy man, said to be wealthy, family money, but also said to be something of a gambler—casinos, horses, football. He had one of the fanciest condos in the group and felt this warranted special privilege. “I'm ready,” Hilton said. “Fire away.”

Parker waved a thanks, shuffled some papers in front of him, and started again. “We've had this problem. Chantal White, whom many of you know personally, was cruelly assaulted in her home a few days ago, by an unknown intruder.” He lavished a lot of praise on that word, “intruder.” It was as if he couldn't keep it in his mouth long enough, didn't want to let it go, and, when he did, wanted to pause a good while after to let the word dash around the room.

Eventually we heard about Ng, Chantal, a couple other inexplicable things, and got no new information. Nobody knew anything. Ms. White's wounds were bruise and paint oriented. The police were investigating. There were no leads. Parker said he preferred that we channel all neighborhood information through him.

The following week, on Sunday morning, a woman—not a resident of Forgetful Bay this time—was found at first light, dancing dreamily in Duncan Parker's driveway to some music on her iPhone. She was decked out in a black slip and heels, and Duncan Parker, when summoned from his bed, said, “I don't recognize her. Maybe she's from the rental-management office?”

His wife, Ella Maria Parker, was not heard on the matter.

This event joined the Chantal White attack and the Ng crash as topic one at Forgetful Bay. People chattered about it in groups of two or three, standing in driveways, by mailboxes, in yards.

I started catching up on the Scandinavian noir movies and TV shows everyone had been talking about and had to order an all-region DVD player from Amazon to play the import DVDs. I was also making small drawings, a thing I'd started again after being run out of the workplace. I was doing these pieces on the Mac and printing them on Frottage's Photo Rag Duo 276gsm paper on a fancy Epson I'd swiped from the company. I was having a good time.

Jilly often called from Houston to say good night, which was fun. Once we got to talking about Morgan and Cal, and the dangers of being young and good looking, and she said I should stop worrying. “Morgan is going to do what she wants. There's no messing with that. Besides, I thought she was off Cal and on to younger things.”

“She is,” I said. “But she won't listen to me anyway.” I was combing through my mashed potatoes with the tines of my fork. I had been eating mashed potatoes when she called.

“Call her mother.”

“In the great beyond,” I said. “I told you.”

“Duh. I was thinking of her other mother.”

“Oh. I guess I could do that.”

“You want me to talk to Morgan for you?”

“No. I'll call her.”

“That would be good practice for you,” she said.

I thanked her for that. We talked a little more and I told her what I knew about recent events, bits and pieces I'd picked up from neighbors, and pretty soon it was time to quit the conversation.

“I'll make you some gravy one day,” she said.

“Got plenty gravy,” I said.

“Right. OK. Well, I gotta hop. Call you tomorrow?”

“Sure. You coming down sometime?”

“Probably Friday,” she said. “Can you wait that long? Are you OK?”

“Why do you always ask me if I'm OK?”

“Just checking,” she said.

And she hung up, leaving me sitting there on a stool at the kitchen counter staring at my reflection in the dark sliding glass doors that led out to the deck. I got up and went to the pantry to see if there was any gravy there.

The next week Cal was picked up by the police for having sex with a minor, one of the Facebook girls whose picture Morgan pointed out to me on the computer. An acquaintance, not a friend, she reported. Morgan was staying with me for a few days.

“We always knew she was creepy,” she said. “She was always after something from Cal.”

“She got it,” I said.

Morgan did a big eye roll. “Uncool, Dad.”

I changed the subject. “I've been thinking that I want to go to church,” I said. “I'm thinking this is a good time to bring it up. Are you interested? I think Jilly's interested. I've talked to her about it.”

“What church?”

“Catholic church. I was raised Catholic, and my brother Raleigh tells me there are now twenty-two recognized and approved versions of Catholicism around the world.”

“Your brother Raleigh tells you,” Morgan said. “Huh. Well, it is the one true church.”

“Yep. In twenty-two divisions, apparently. Papally sanctioned. It's a new world out there, and I'm thinking about joining.”

“So, what are they? The versions?”

“No idea,” I said. “I'm reporting what Raleigh said. He's a Marmonite or something. Mallomar. I don't remember.”

“Did he come to you in a dream? I think you gotta get serious about this if you're gonna do it,” she said. “How long since you been to church?”

“Thirty years plus,” I said. “I'm that guy in the Clint Eastwood movie who says it's been thirty years since my last confession.”

“Seen that a hundred times. Say seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys.”

“They don't do that anymore,” I said. “You stand at the back of the church where nobody can see you and you apologize under your breath for all your sins. Silently. Presto-change-o you're good as gold.”

“At least that saves us the confessional scenes in movies,” Morgan said. “Dangerous priests behind ornate grillwork. You're not really going, are you? You even know where a church is?”

“Mmm, not really. Probably look it up. I used to love going to churches. They smelled good.”

Morgan got up and twisted her hair into a thing, pinned it up. “I don't think they're like that these days. Not the churches I've been to.”

“Which?” I said.

“Can't remember. Maybe Episcopal. They're sort of semi-Catholics anyway, aren't they? Without the hard parts?”

“We don't have hard parts anymore. Too discouraging.”

“You can go to mass on TV,” she said.

“Done it. Grotesque. Like Howdy Doody mass, you know? Howdy Doody? Buffalo Bob? It's like they're in a dry cleaners.”

“I know who Howdy Doody is,” Morgan said. “He's cute.”

“He's great,” I said. “You want him praying for you.”