“Pretty much. Um, have the police been in touch with you?” I asked hesitantly.
“The police?” she repeated. “Why would they want to talk to me?” Her green eyes sharpened. “God, your friend Kevin, he’s not pressing charges, is he? I didn’t hit him that hard. Why, I’ve half a mind to press charges myself.”
“Relax, Mary-Alice. Kevin’s not pressing charges. I doubt he even remembers you hit him. I think you over-reacted a bit, though, if you want my opinion.”
“I don’t. What would the police want to talk to me about then?”
I told her about the dead man. “Do you have any idea who he was?”
“Certainly not,” she replied indignantly, as though she was offended by the very idea that I thought she’d actually know someone with the poor taste to pick my roof deck to die on. “What was he wearing?” I told her. She said, “I think I may have seen him in the kitchen.”
“What was he doing? Was he talking to anyone?”
She shook her head, golden blond hair swishing across her cheeks. “Not that I recall. He was getting ice out of the freezer.” She was quiet for a moment, eyes unfocused, mouth pinched, then said, “What would a man you don’t know, and who doesn’t carry identification, be doing at your birthday party?”
“Well, I don’t suppose he was having a good time, all things considered.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Her cheeks reddened and she swallowed dryly. She took a sip of wine, then said, “Do you think he could have been a private detective?”
It had occurred to me that Linda might have hired a private detective to build a case for custody, but I’d rejected the idea; she’d seemed prepared, if push came to shove, to let Hilly stay with me while she and Jack were in Australia. Nevertheless, I said, “Sure, Mary-Alice. Why not?”
“Oh, god.” Mary-Alice drank more wine, emptying her glass. She looked genuinely alarmed.
“Geez, Mary-Alice. Relax. I didn’t mean it. Yes, I guess he could have been a private detective, but what would a private detective be doing at my party? More precisely, who or what would he have been privately detecting?”
“He may have been privately detecting me.”
While Mary-Alice had always looked younger than her years — she’s three years younger than me — she was wearing more makeup than usual, in spite of which the lines around her mouth and radiating from the corners of her eyes were deeper and more plentiful than I remembered. She was still trim and fit, from a careful diet and hours in the gym every week, but she looked tired and drawn.
“What’s going on, M-A?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”
“As it happens,” she said, “no, everything is not all right.”
Before I had a chance to ask what was wrong, our food arrived, along with Mary-Alice’s second glass of wine. She picked it up as soon as the waitress departed and gulped a third of it down. I knew from experience that Mary-Alice did not hold her wine well.
“Are you driving?” I asked.
“Oh, fuck off,” she snapped, reminding me that she only looked ladylike and demure. She put her wineglass down. “Sorry,” she said.
“All right, what’s wrong?”
“Well, for starters, David is having an affair with his nurse.” David was Dr. David Paul, Mary-Alice’s husband, a highly respected proctologist, if there was such a thing, who was old enough to be Mary-Alice’s — and my — father.
“If that’s true,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Of course it’s true.”
“How do you know he’s having an affair? Jesus, you didn’t hire a private detective yourself, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how do you know he’s having an affair?”
“How does any woman know?” she replied.
I sighed. “Just like Mom knew Dad was having an affair with Maggie Urquhart.”
“Okay, so she may have been wrong about that, but I’m not wrong about David.”
“Linda knew I was having an affair with the photo editor at the Sun,” I said. “I wasn’t. So, I repeat, how do you know David’s having an affair?”
“I thought it was Bobbi you were having the affair with,” Mary-Alice said.
“I wasn’t having an affair with anyone,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t even know Bobbi at the time. But that’s — ”
“ Have you slept with Bobbi?” Mary-Alice interrupted.
“Jesus Christ, Mary-Alice.”
“Okay, I can’t be absolutely certain David’s having an affair,” she said. “But I know he is.”
“All right,” I said with an exasperated sigh. “That’s it. I’ve had it. Go home, Mary-Alice. And when David gets home tonight, meet him at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap and give him the goddamned best blowjob he’s ever had in his life. According to a Cosmo I saw in the supermarket — or was it Good Housekeeping? — men don’t leave women who give good head.”
“Tom! That’s disgusting.”
“You do know how, don’t you, Mary-Alice?”
She stared at me for a handful of heartbeats, green eyes blazing and the heat rising in her face, mottling her cheeks. Then she laughed.
“Okay,” she said. “I deserved that. But that’s hardly the way you’re supposed to talk to your little sister.”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“For what?”
“An answer.”
“Forget it.”
“I’ll rephrase the question, then. I have it on good authority that you’re a fairly attractive woman.” She smiled. “And you certainly haven’t let yourself go.” Her smile widened. “So what’s David’s nurse got, or do, that you haven’t, or don’t?” Her smile evaporated.
“Goddamnit, Tom,” she said. “I thought you’d be on my side in this.”
“What on Earth gave you that idea? You weren’t on my side when Linda divorced me and married the Fat Food King of Southern Ontario.”
“I thought you divorced her.”
“See what I mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” She said it loud enough to turn the heads of the diners at the nearby tables.
“Mary-Alice,” I said patiently. “If David’s having an affair, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive — ”
“Humph. You come by it naturally.”
“ — but men don’t usually have affairs for no reason. Does David have a reason, or think he has a reason?”
“He must,” she said.
“Look,” I said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“Too much, obviously.”
“Are you having an affair,