Think Of a Number (2010) (10 page)

The identical gesture
.

He remembered once asking that taciturn, unreachable man if there was pain in his swollen knuckles. “Just age, nothing to be done about it,” his father had replied, in a tone that prevented further discussion.

His mind drifted back to Caddy. Why hadn’t Mellery told him about his new wife? Didn’t he want him to talk to her? And if he left out having a wife, what else might he be leaving out?

And then, by some obscure mental linkage, he wondered why the blood was as red as a
painted
rose? He tried to recall the full text of the third poem:
I do what I’ve done / not for money or fun / but for debts to be paid, / amends to be made. / For blood that’s as red / as a painted rose. / So every man knows / he reaps what he sows
. A rose was a symbol of redness. What was he adding by calling it a
painted
rose? Was that supposed to make it sound more red? Or more like blood?

Gurney’s eagerness to get home was intensified by hunger. It was midafternoon, and his morning coffee from Abelard’s was all he’d had all day.

While too much time between meals made Madeleine nauseous, it made him judgmental—a state of mind not easy to recognize in oneself. Gurney had discovered some barometers for assessing his mood, and one of them was located on the westbound side of the road just outside Walnut Crossing. The Camel’s Hump was an art gallery that featured the work of local painters, sculptors, and other creative spirits. Its barometric function was simple. A glance at the window produced in him, in a good mood, appreciation of the eccentricity of his artistic neighbors, in a bad mood insight into their vacuity. Today was a vacuity day—fair warning, as he turned up the road toward hearth and wife, to think twice before voicing any strong opinions.

The residue of the morning flurries, long gone from the county highway and lower parts of the valley, was present in scattered patches along the dirt road that rose through a depression in the hills and ended at the Gurney barn and pasture. The slaty clouds gave the pasture a drab, wintry feel. He saw with a twinge of annoyance that the tractor had been driven up from the barn and parked by the shed that housed its attachments—the brush mower, the post-hole digger, the snow thrower. The shed door had been opened, hinting annoyingly at work to be done.

He entered the house through the kitchen door. Madeleine was sitting by the fireplace in the far corner of the room. The plate on the coffee table—with its apple core, grape stems and seeds, flecks of cheddar, and bread crumbs—suggested that a nice lunch had just been consumed, reminding him of his hunger and ratcheting his spring a bit tighter. She looked up from her book, offered him a small smile.

He went to the sink and let the water run until its temperature dropped to the frigid level he liked. He was aware of a feeling of aggression—a defiance of Madeleine’s opinion that drinking very cold water was not a good thing to do—followed by a feeling of embarrassment that he could be petty enough, hostile enough, infantile enough to savor such delusional combat. He had an urge to change the subject, then realized there was no subject to change. He spoke anyway.

“I see you drove the tractor up to the shed.”

“I wanted to attach the snow thrower to it.”

“Was there a problem?”

“I thought we might want it on before we get a real snowstorm.”

“I mean, was there a problem attaching it?”

“It’s heavy. I thought if I waited, you could help me.”

He nodded ambiguously, thinking,
There you go again, pressuring me into a job by starting it yourself, knowing I’ll have to finish it
. Aware of the perils of his mood, he thought it wise to say nothing. He filled his glass with the very cold water now coming from the tap and drank it unhurriedly.

Looking down at her book, Madeleine said, “That woman from Ithaca called.”

“Woman from Ithaca?”

She ignored the question.

“Do you mean Sonya Reynolds?” he asked.

“That’s right.” Her voice was as seemingly disinterested as his.

“What did she want?” he asked.

“Good question.”

“What do you mean, ‘good question’?”

“I mean she didn’t specify what she wanted. She said you could call her anytime before midnight.”

He detected a definite edge on the last word. “Did she leave a number?”

“Apparently she thinks you have it.”

He refilled his glass with icy water and drank it, taking ruminative pauses between mouthfuls. The Sonya situation was emotionally problematical, but he saw no way of dealing with that, short of abandoning the Mug Shot Art project that formed the basis of his connection with her gallery, and he wasn’t ready to do that.

Given some distance from these awkward exchanges with Madeleine, he found his awkwardness, his lack of confidence, perplexing. It was curious that a man as deeply rational as he was would get so hopelessly tangled up, so emotionally brittle. He knew from his hundreds of interviews with crime suspects that guilty feelings always
lay at the root of that sort of tangle, that sort of confusion. But the truth was that he had done nothing to be guilty about.

Nothing to be guilty about
. Ah, there was the problem—the absoluteness of that claim. Perhaps he had done nothing
recently
to feel guilty about—nothing substantial, nothing that came quickly to mind—but if the context were to be stretched back fifteen years, his protestation of innocence would ring painfully false.

He put his water glass down in the sink, dried his hands, walked to the French doors, and stared out at the gray world. A world between autumn and winter. Fine snow blew like sand across the patio. In a context that went back fifteen years, he could hardly claim to be guiltless, because that expanded world would include the accident. As if pressing down on an angry wound to judge the state of the infection, he forced himself to substitute for “the accident” the specific words he found so difficult:

The death of our four-year-old son
.

He spoke the words ever so faintly, to himself, hardly more than a whisper. His voice in his own ears sounded eroded and hollow, like someone else’s voice.

He couldn’t bear the thoughts and feelings that came with the words, and he tried to push them away by seizing the nearest diversion.

Clearing his throat, turning from the glass door to Madeleine across the room, he said with an excess of enthusiasm, “How about we take care of the tractor before it gets dark?”

Madeleine looked up from her book. If she found the artificial cheeriness of his tone disturbing or revealing, she didn’t show it.

M
ounting the snow thrower took an hour of heaving, banging, yanking, greasing, and adjusting—after which Gurney went on to spend a second hour splitting logs for the woodstove while Madeleine prepared a dinner of squash soup and pork chops braised in apple juice. Then they built a fire, sat side by side on the sofa in
the cozy living room adjoining the kitchen, and drifted into the kind of drowsy serenity that follows hard work and good food.

He yearned to believe that these small oases of peace foreshadowed a return of the relationship they’d once had, that the emotional evasions and collisions of recent years were somehow temporary, but it was a belief he found hard to sustain. Even now this fragile hope was being supplanted, bit by bit, moment by moment, by the kind of thoughts his detective mind focused on more comfortably—thoughts about the anticipated Charybdis phone call and the teleconferencing technology that would let him listen in.

“Perfect night for a fire,” said Madeleine, leaning gently against him.

He smiled and tried to refocus himself on the orange flames and the simple, soft warmth of her arm. Her hair had a wonderful smell. He had a passing fancy that he could lose himself in it forever.

“Yes,” he answered. “Perfect.”

He closed his eyes, hoping that the goodness of the moment would counteract those mental energies that were always propelling him into puzzle solving. For Gurney, achieving even a little contentment was, ironically, a struggle. He envied Madeleine’s keen attachment to the fleeting instant and the pleasure she found in it. For him, living in the moment was always a swim upstream, his analytic mind naturally preferring the realms of probability, possibility.

He wondered if it was genetic or a learned form of escape. Probably both, mutually reinforcing. Possibly …

Jesus!

He caught himself in the absurd act of analyzing his propensity for analysis. He ruefully tried again to be present in the room.
God help me to be here
, he said to himself, even though he had little faith in prayer. He hoped he hadn’t said it aloud.

The phone rang. It felt like a reprieve, permission to take a break from the battle.

He heaved himself up from the couch and went to the den to answer it.

“Davey, it’s Mark.”

“Yes?”

“I was just speaking to Caddy, and she told me she met you in the meditation garden today.”

“Right.”

“Ah … well … the thing is, I feel kind of embarrassed, you know, for not introducing you earlier in the day.” He paused, as if awaiting a response, but Gurney said nothing.

“Dave?”

“I’m here.”

“Well … anyway, I wanted to apologize for not introducing you. That was thoughtless of me.”

“No problem.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m not unhappy—just a bit surprised that you didn’t mention her.”

“Ah … yes … I guess with so much on my mind, it didn’t occur to me. Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“You’re right, it must seem peculiar I didn’t mention her. It just never crossed my mind.” He paused, then added with an awkward laugh, “I guess a psychologist would find that interesting—forgetting to mention I was married.”

“Mark, let me ask you something. Are you telling me the truth?”

“What? Why would you ask me that?”

“You’re wasting my time.”

There was an extended silence.

“Look,” said Mellery with a sigh, “it’s a long story. I didn’t want to involve Caddy in this … this mess.”

“What exact mess are we talking about?”

“The threats, the insinuations.”

“She doesn’t know about the letters?”

“There’s no point. It would just frighten her.”

“She must know about your past. It’s in your books.”

“To a degree. But these threats are something else. I just want to save her from worrying.”

That sounded almost plausible to Gurney. Almost.

“Is there any particular piece of your past you’re especially eager to keep from Caddy, or from the police, or from me?”

This time the indecisive pause before Mellery said “No” so patently contradicted the denial that Gurney laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know if you’re the worst liar I’ve ever heard, Mark, but you’re in the finals.”

After another long silence, Mellery began to laugh, too—a soft, rueful laugh that sounded like muted sobbing. He said in a deflated voice, “When all else fails, it’s time to tell the truth. The truth is, shortly after Caddy and I were married, I had a brief affair with a woman who was a guest here. Pure lunacy on my part. It turned out badly—as any sane person could have predicted.”

“And?”

“And that was that. I recoil from the mere thought of it. It attaches me to all the ego, lust, and lousy judgment of my past.”

“Maybe I’m missing something,” said Gurney. “What’s that got to do with not telling me you were married?”

“You’re going to think I’m paranoid. But I got to thinking that the affair might in some way be connected to this Charybdis business. I was afraid that if you knew about Caddy, you’d want to talk to her and … the last thing on earth I want is for her to be exposed to anything that might be connected to my ridiculous, hypocritical affair.”

“I see. By the way, who owns the institute?”

“Owns? In what sense?”

“How many senses are there?”

“In spirit, I own the institute. The program is based on my books and tapes.”

“‘In spirit’?”

“Legally, Caddy owns everything—the real estate and other tangible assets.”

“Interesting. So you’re the star trapeze artist, but Caddy owns the circus tent.”

“You could say that,” Mellery replied coldly. “I should get off the phone now. The Charybdis call could come anytime.”

It came exactly three hours later.

M
adeleine had brought her bag of knitting to the sofa and was engrossed in one of the three projects she had in various stages of completion. Gurney had settled in an adjacent armchair and was leafing through the six-hundred-page user’s manual for his photo-manipulation software but was having a hard time concentrating on it. The logs in the woodstove had burned down into embers from which wisps of flame rose, wavered, and disappeared.

When the phone rang, Gurney hurried into the den and picked it up.

Mellery’s voice was low and nervous. “Dave?”

“I’m here.”

“He’s on the other line. The recorder is on. I’m going to switch you in. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

A moment later Gurney heard a strange voice in midsentence.

“ … away for a certain period of time. But I do want you to know who I am.” The pitch of the voice was high and strained, the speech rhythm awkward and artificial. There was an accent, foreign-sounding but nonspecific, as if the words were being mispronounced as a way of disguising the voice. “Earlier this evening I left something for you. Do you have it?”

“Have what?” Mellery’s voice was brittle.

“You don’t have it yet? You’ll get it. Do you know who I am?”

“Who are you?”

“Really want to know?”

“Of course. Where do I know you from?”

“The number six fifty-eight didn’t tell you who I am?”

“It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Really? But it was your choice—of all the numbers you could have chosen.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“There is one more number.”