I felt peculiar, off-kilter. I had a routine for moments when I felt especially vulnerable, like the time my wallet was lifted on the crosstown bus. Close down. Eat comfort food. In the city I would have ordered takeout, wonton soup and spare ribs. Here I scavenged through the refrigerator, locating one of the many hero sandwiches I kept on standby for Sam. I did not dine at the sink, where I consumed most lunches. Instead, I cut the sandwich into small pieces and placed them on a favorite plate with a border of pansies. I lit a Duraflame log in the living room fireplace so I would feel warm and toasty, and stretched out on the couch under a quilt, with the plate and a cup of chamomile tea nearby on the coffee table.
Chewing slowly (part of the rehabilitation involved proceeding at a leisurely pace), selecting bits of marinated pepper and dropping them onto my tongue, I reviewed events at the summer house. My mind drifted to them and was very happy there, stopping first at the moment of shock when I realized the bedroom was inhabited, and by a nude woman in a state of glorious abandon. Those toenails looked like squares of paint in a watercolor box, a bit of dubious taste on a body that was otherwise exquisite. I remember sensing McKee’s stepping in behind me, his body shutting off the flow of air. The prosaic aroma of his aftershave became a fragrance of intoxicating sensuality. Our rush down the stairs. As if we’d bumbled into something ominous. My upper arm still tingled from the pressure of his grasp. I thought about him nervously spinning that Mynten wrapper—his hands, rough, with chunky fingers, incongruously twirling a strip of waxy paper, while he chided me. I was out of line, had inadvertently put both his business and his job in jeopardy.
McKee had a trash-compactor grip, that handshake when we parted was brutal—my fingers nearly welded together, then mercifully released. My gold ring, set with the single pearl, had been turned sideways, and I examined the memento of our parting, a round indentation in my pinkie where the flesh was almost punctured.
Time flew by while I was in this reverie. I liked reexperiencing events more than experiencing them, because they were safely over. I was in charge then, mulling, speculating, examining. I could embroider, imagine things that hadn’t happened, enjoy the possibility that they might have, and be relieved that they never, ever could. Say, for example, McKee and I, overcome by the unexpected peep-show thrill, retreating to his car and having passionate sex. Clothes and his weapons (as well as reserve, restraint, common sense, even lack of affinity) would be shed as easily as leaves off a tree.
In the short time since I’d moved here, my tendency toward elaborate postmortems had grown. My eyes were not trained to appreciate the outdoors, and spectacular foliage reminded me of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles that I used to complete as a child, dense autumn treescapes and me hunched over a folding table trying to find the interlocking match for each piece. Being unfamiliar with nature, living with my taciturn son, having only the ephemeral e-mail connection to my previous city existence had put my brain in overdrive. I was on a mental treadmill, running miles every day.
At four in the afternoon, I was still on the couch, now dozing, when Jane called. “I heard you lost it in the market,” she said.
“Who told you?”
“Let’s see. I stopped at LePater’s to buy cheese, so Matt at checkout and Lionel at the counter. Ginger, at work, heard it from Coral at the café, and then I stopped at the post office to mail food packages to Simon and Carrie, so Leanne there—”
“Okay, enough.” I couldn’t think how to explain myself. The word “misspoke” did cross my mind, but since I wasn’t running for office … I admitted it. Blamed it on the pain. On Baby.
“That is a wretched little dog,” said Jane. “I’ve seen him through the window yapping at customers. He acts like he’s about to eat their feet.”
I heard the front door. “Sam?”
“Yeah.” There was a thunk, probably his backpack dropping to the floor.
“Upstairs,” he said, not to me.
“Hold on,” I told Jane. I lifted myself up on my hands, still treating my ankle as if it had sustained a major injury. Over the couch, I could glimpse the front hall and a slice of person disappearing up the stairs. The tread was almost as heavy as Sam’s. Boots, I concluded. “Sam brought someone home.”
“I knew he’d make friends,” said Jane.
“I just said he brought someone home.”
Jane didn’t argue. “So you called the cops shits.”
I started to correct her, to point out that, in fact, I’d called them idiots, but then I wondered which was preferable—to have called them shits or idiots. Shits, I supposed. More general, less insulting professionally. So I let it stand. If “idiot” was lost as it traveled the grapevine, that was to my advantage. But would McKee forget? He might be someone who collected resentments. Did I care? Momentum was building. For every line of conversation with Jane, there were sixteen with myself.
“Are you going to sue?” she asked.
“Who? Claire? The cops? I’d really sue the cops. That would cement my popularity. Not to mention that I cover them, so if they refused to speak to me, I couldn’t work. Of course, they may not be speaking to me already. Besides, I have a butterfly bandage. Don’t I need at least one stitch to sue?”
“You could say you had attack-dog nightmares.”
“I’m—” I started to say “fine,” but finished the sentence with “okay.” “Okay” was not really a synonym for fine. It was less spunky.
I have always been worried that I am spunky. Like girl gymnasts. However clumsily they land, flying off that vault, they immediately snap up proudly, arms aloft; toes pivot into a perfect first position. Like them I’m small, only five-one, and although thin and agile, I am completely unathletic. I’ve always tried to counteract any spunky tendencies by being irritating—slightly grating, often provocative—to keep the cute adjectives at bay. I am resilient, however. Which is a very spunky thing to be. Like girl gymnasts. That’s how I ended up in Sakonnet Bay. Believing problems have solutions, which is dreadfully naive.
“How did you get to the hospital?” Jane asked.
This was the opening. The time to spill the secret, the time to turn raconteur. “One of the cops drove me, and I took a cab back to my car afterward.”
“You have to rest?”
“Just for a day.”
“Call if you need anything.”
“Thanks, I will.”
I hung up. I had told Jane nothing, and I had no idea why.
From my horizontal position, I called to Sam. I lay there bellowing. No response. His door must be closed.
As I was about to hobble upstairs, my editor phoned to ask what had happened, in a tone that indicated he already knew. Art was solicitous. In his weary, patient voice, he inquired how I was feeling, then announced that he wanted me to write up the incident and be photographed in front of Claire’s Collectibles with my ankle bandage showing. It would be the Sakonnet Times picture of the week.
I explained that I wasn’t inclined to write it, at least my part in it, but I could hear Art’s chair clanking.
The office desk chairs, all with swivel seats, had been purchased at a close-out sale. Whenever an employee shifted his or her weight, there was a loud noise and the seat tilted. Art’s passive-aggressive method of persuasion was to shift back and forth without saying anything until his victim agreed to whatever Art wanted.
“I’m not the story. Baby’s the story.” I did not want to be the picture of the week. Last week’s had been a basket of newborn rabbits with bows on their ears. He kept clanking, an effective gambit, even over the telephone. “How do you expect me to handle it, exactly?” I asked.
“What?”
“My rudeness to the police.”