Authors: Linda Lee Peterson
Edited to Death (6 page)
“Watch out, boys. Mom’s been having an uptown afternoon in the city. She’ll be full
of books and gossip. Too rich for the likes of us.” He stopped and caught sight of
my face.
“What’s wrong,
cara
?”
I shook my head, lifted Zach’s solid little body and gave him a fierce hug. “Later.”
Michael’s face darkened.
“Really, truly, later,” I said over Zach’s sweet-smelling head.
He shrugged. “Okay. Why don’t you wash up? We’re ready to eat. I’ve got hungry hordes
on my hands.”
By the time I’d returned to the table, everyone was seated. The boys fidgeted for
grace to be over and dinner to begin.
It was Zach’s turn to ask the blessing, a custom we’d evolved in yet another attempt
to integrate Michael’s Italian Catholic upbringing with my laissez-faire secular Judaism.
“Thank you, God, for making it October and Halloween soon, and thanks for chicken
because it has two legs and two of us like legs in this house. Amen.”
Later, the kids bathed, cuddled, and in bed, Anya at her loom in the basement, Michael
and I sat in front of the fire in the living room.
“Okay,” he said. “You didn’t eat. You spilled your wine twice. And cried when you
tucked Josh in. Please tell me what the hell is wrong.”
I told him. I told about finding Quentin and about Madame and Inspector Moon and Calvin.
Michael listened without comment, except for a quick intake of breath when I described
the sight of Quentin slumped over his desk. Throughout my story, he peeled a red pear
carefully, so carefully that the peel came off in one long, burgundy-golden spiral.
When I finished, he went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of cognac.
He handed me one, pulled me up out of my chair and into his lap.
He touched his glass to mine. “You know what we say at weddings and bar mitzvahs,”
he said. “
L’chaim
.”
“
L’chaim
,” I whispered back. “I’m all for drinking to life tonight.” I looked around the living
room. We loved this room, both of us. It was the first room we finished when we’d
moved in ten years ago. Somehow, in the intervening years, the decorators had caught
up to us, and the deep gold walls were now fashionable. But family clutter saved it
from serious trendiness—books, games, art projects, whistles, yo-yos, and neglected
houseplants. Still, it was a comfort to sit in a room I knew with someone I loved
and admire the cats as they watched a pear being peeled in front of the fire.
“What now?” asked Michael.
“I don’t know. Now that the shock is wearing off, I’m feeling—bewildered. This happens
in books, not in real life.”
Michael sighed. “It’s awful, Maggie, and terrible that you found him. It happens in
real life every day. One of the joys of urban living.”
“No,” I said. “That’s drugs and crime and domestic violence. That’s what happens in
the papers.”
“So it’s understandable in a book? In the papers? But not in your life? Maggie, listen
to what you’re saying. You think we live behind some invisible, magic shield?”
I remembered watching my family through the window. “I guess I do think that, or at
least I did.”
Michael sliced a piece of pear and offered it to me from the side of the knife.
“Guess again,
cara
.”
I waved the pear away. “Fine, there’s no shield. It’s a dangerous world. But that
still doesn’t answer a lot of questions.”
“Like?”
“Who could possibly want Quentin dead? And just where the hell was Stuart when this
awful thing was happening in the flat? And here’s the really petty, unattractive,
narcissistic part. Already, I’m wondering, what about
Small Town
? And what about my great breakthrough story?”
Michael grinned at me. “You do get yourself into a dither, don’t you?”
“And another thing,” I said. “How come you never told me you played hockey with a
homicide cop?”
He shrugged. “We don’t talk about work much,” he said. “I mean, I know John’s with
the police, but most of the time we’re either out on the ice or talking about the
game.”
“Just out of curiosity, what does he play?”
“Front line, left wing. He’s very aggressive, very fast. Hard guy to check. You don’t
want to get in his way.”
“He seemed so reserved, so gentlemanly,” I said.
“Everybody changes on the ice,” said Michael. “That’s what you always say to me.”
I rearranged myself on his lap, draping my legs over the arm of the chair.
“I wonder,” he said, stroking my hair, “what about right now? What do you feel like
doing?”
I looked at him, at this kind, funny man who could peel a pear flawlessly. I managed
a smile back.
“Are you suggesting that on the evening of Quentin’s death I could be consoled by
earthly pleasures?”
“Yep. And I’m just the man for consoling.”
“Got anything special in mind?”
“Here’s what Dr. Michael orders: Let’s take these glasses up to bed, smoke a little
of that exceptional Belize breeze Quentin gave us, and fuck our brains out.”
A part of me felt sick and tired, wondering what had happened, and skirting one terrible
speculation—that Quentin’s death had something to do with me. In the face of that,
and with the sight of Quentin’s body still fresh whenever I closed my eyes, Michael’s
suggestion sounded blasphemous, trivial, and escapist to me.
But that’s exactly what we did.
The phone rang early the next morning. Michael rolled over with a groan and handed
it across to me.
It was Stuart. He sounded tight and controlled and very ragged around the edges.
“Maggie. The cops say you found Quent.”
“I did, Stuart. God, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too—also pissed as hell and scared to death.”
I could hear Stuart’s breathing, uneven and hoarse, on the other end of the line.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing, I guess. I don’t know—just come sit with me at the service.”
By the time I’d finished with Stuart, Michael was up and rattling around the bathroom.
“Well,” he said, “where was the lovely Stuart when Quentin was being done in?”
“Michael! I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.”
“Yeah, well, I bet the cops asked him.”
“I’m sure they did,” I said. I remembered the exhausting conversation I’d had with
one of Inspector Moon’s investigators yesterday afternoon. Under her persistent questioning,
I had explained and re-explained how I knew Quentin, what our lunch date was about,
why I’d met him at the flat instead of the office, how
Small Town
wasn’t exactly the kind of magazine to earn the editor serious enemies. “Unless it
was for a really, really bad restaurant review,” I’d joked nervously. “Only then,
wouldn’t you expect to find him with a vegetable parer to the heart?” The investigator
looked up from her notes, jolted by my wisecrack, and then we stopped to watch Quentin’s
body, zipped into a bag stenciled “SF Coroner,” carried out the door. It was my last
joke of the afternoon.
Even though it was a tight fit in our bathroom, I wedged in behind Michael to survey
him in the mirror.
I don’t know how marriage survives modern housing. Two sinks in up market master bathrooms
mean you don’t have to duck and weave around each other in order to shave or put on
eyeliner. During years of living in ancient houses, Michael and I had evolved a morning
sink-time gavotte to cope with closet-size bathrooms. He shaved while I did non-mirror
activities like tooth brushing. He combed his hair by feel while I put in my contacts.
We have some of our liveliest talks over the sink.
“I’m going to wear a hat to the funeral, Michael,” I said.
He stirred up shaving soap with his brush and didn’t say anything.
“You know, I’ll bet Quentin really was the last man who liked women in hats.”
Michael was silent.
“Don’t you think that’s true?”
Michael clicked a new blade in his razor. “I think he was the last man who
loved
women in hats.”
Michael’s voice sounded cool and impersonal. I felt a little prickle on the back of
my neck.
“What do you mean?”
Michael’s eyes met mine in the mirror. He held his cheek taut and began to shave.
“He loved you, Maggie. And you loved him.”
“That’s true, I did. He was a wonderful editor, and a wonderful friend.”
Michael rinsed his razor. “Was he a wonderful lover, too?”
I could hear the boys downstairs, squabbling over whose turn it was to feed the pets.
But they sounded miles away. I felt light-headed and leaned against the shower.
“What are you talking about?”
Michael splashed water on his face and turned to me, dripping. His eyes were contemptuous.
“I knew, Maggie. I knew all about it.”
He looked steadily at me.
“It’s okay. I could have killed you for it—or Quentin, for that matter. But I didn’t.
I’m trying to get over it. I hope to hell you do, too.”
I thought about his tireless lovemaking the night before. Just before I’d fallen asleep,
he’d pulled me close and begun all over again. I thought he was trying to comfort
me, to block out what I had seen. Suddenly, it seemed less loving, more territorial,
as if he’d been trying to block out some tape in his head—or trying to brand me.
“Michael,” I faltered.
“Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it. I never wanted to talk about it.
I’m bringing it up now because I want you to do me the enormous favor of thinking
twice about speaking so fucking well about the dead in the next few days. Can you
do that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can do that.”
“Thank you. I’ll go help Anya with breakfast.” The razor clattered into the mug. And
he was gone.
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Still me, still there, and still wondering
who that woman was who betrayed her husband.
Couldn’t have been me. I’m the good girl. “A real good girl,” I said to the reflection.
“Just swell.” And turned on the shower—very hot.
Saturday morning meant “Vintage Sounds” on our local public radio station. While I
scrubbed I listened to Fats Waller sing, “There’ll be some changes made.” I began
to cry when I cut my leg with Michael’s razor, and watched the blood mix with the
shampoo and the soap. I thought about Quentin and I thought about Michael and I wished
I were still a good girl.
With the hot water sluicing over me, I leaned against the shower and felt my insides
go cold with memory. Actually, I had two versions of memory. One was hopelessly self-deluded
and quite romantic: Dashing, enigmatic editor sweeps impressionable young writer off
her feet.
The other, more truthful, more painful, was that I was not so young and not so swept—just
a little restless, curious, and flattered that I’d stirred something in so cool a
customer as Quentin.
If I were on the stand, I could testify to an eyelash how it happened, just eighteen
months ago.
Quentin had invited me to cover the Junior League model tryouts at Saks. “Come watch
with me,” he said. “I promised Claire I’d send someone and you’re my revenge. You’ll
write something vicious and she’ll never ask me for coverage again.”
So we went. And after two hours of watching what lots of time and attention can do
to the affluent female form, I wasn’t feeling vicious. I was depressed. I looked at
the back of my un-pampered hands and imagined I could see liver spots forming in front
of my very eyes. “Is this how it starts?” I asked Quentin. “One day you’re a hot chick,
the next day it’s stretch marks and station wagons.”
“Chick?” he said. “My, my, how un-feminist, how politically incorrect.” Then he steered
me downstairs to millinery. “Cheer up, Margaret,” he said. “Let me spend some money
on you. You’ll feel better straightaway.”
Under the amused eye of a millinery saleswoman, all in black from head to toe, I tried
on hat after hat. Quentin sat on a stool, one leg elegantly crossed over the other,
and shook his head. Finally, she brought out a fawn-colored cloche. It hugged the
back of my head perfectly. I looked in the mirror and caught Quentin’s eye. “That’s
it,” he said. He slipped off the stool, came close and turned me around. “Let me fix
the veil. Don’t fidget.” I stood as still as I could while he gently tugged the veil
into place.
He put one hand on my cheek. “You are one beautiful chick, Margaret.” I felt beautiful.
Impulsively, I pulled his hand to my mouth and kissed it. A smile I’d never seen drifted
across his mouth. Quentin handed the saleswoman his credit card. “Thank you,” he said.
“You can put this on my account.”
Then Quentin took me by the arm and led me past the elevator into the stairwell. When
the door closed, he took me by the other arm, pulled me to him and gave me the kind
of kiss I thought detached, distant men of fiftysomething didn’t have in them.