Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“I walked down to Seventy-second and Third. I was supposed to meet Bibi Shea, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I called her and canceled.”

“So you were by yourself at the movies?”

“I didn’t feel like talking.” Shit.

“You walked there?” Nod. “It was a cold night.”

“I wanted the air.”

“Did you pay cash for the ticket?” Another nod. “What was the film?” Stephanie told me the name, and the time she thought the show had started, and the time it had gotten out. She didn’t remember the previews. “Did you see anyone you knew?”

“No.”

“What was David doing all that time?”

“As far as I know, he was home. He was here when I left, and here when I got back, asleep- or passed out.”

I paged through my notebook and ran her through the dates and times once more. Then I looked up.

“Besides her questions, what else did Holly say?”

She shook her head. “You asked me that already, and I told youshe didn’t say anything.”

“She didn’t tell you anything?”

Stephanie shook her head impatiently. “No.”

I took a deep breath. “She didn’t tell you she was pregnant?”

Stephanie’s brows came together and her lips pursed. “No,” she said after a while.

“The police dropped that on us yesterday. David didn’t mention it?”

Stephanie touched her fingers to her neck. Her smile surprised me. “It must’ve slipped his mind,” she said, and she chuckled bitterly.

“They want to know if he could be the father. And I imagine they’re wondering how you would’ve reacted to that news.”

“Did David have an answer?”

“He said it wasn’t his, and that if Holly had said so, you wouldn’t have believed it.”

“He wasn’t lying about that; I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Because he’s sterile?”

Stephanie’s brow went up and she nodded slowly at me. “It’s not the word the doctors used, but it amounts to the same thing. His sperm count is low, and the few that he has don’t swim, and they die if you look at them funny. He told you?”

“David doesn’t tell me much. I guessed.”

“We got tested a few years ago. We’d been trying and…” She shook her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she said quickly, and her eyes narrowed. “Clearly, it’s worked out for the best.”

I paged through my notebook one last time. Stephanie stood and dug a brown plastic bottle from the pocket of her jeans. She popped the lid, and tipped a white pill out.

“He’s got vodka; I’ve got Ativan. But at least mine’s prescription.” She put the pill on her tongue and drained her glass and set it on an end table. “Are you through?”

“I am,” I said. But Stephanie wasn’t. She folded herself in the chair again and looked at me.

“Did he say anything about why?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Why this whole thing. Why these women? Why the lying? Why he’s bound and determined to turn his life- our lives- into shit?” Her voice was firm and steady, as if she’d rehearsed her questions. She didn’t wait for an answer.

“You know what surprised me as much as finding out about the women? It was realizing that David wanted me to find him out. He was like a kid with a secret, squirming to tell. I don’t know if he wanted to see what I would do- if I would get mad, or leave, or forgive himI don’t know what he wanted. I just know there’s a part of him that’s been waiting for all this.”

“For all what?”

“For this. For some kind of punishment.”

“Punishment for…what?”

“You think I understand it?” she said, shaking her head. “But he’s been this way as long as I’ve known him- one part thinking that he’s forever been shortchanged, and another that thinks any good thing that happens is more than he deserves. And that’s the part that’s been waiting- to get caught, to be punished.” Stephanie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “It’s a twisted quid pro quo with him: every good thing matched with some self-inflicted pain. I should have known something big was coming when he finally got the M and A job.” She looked up and studied my face.

“You have no clue, do you?” she asked. I shook my head. “Of course you don’t- how could you? All you Marches, in your own little worlds.”

“Have you talked to David about this?”

“Not for years now,” Stephanie said, and her mouth curved angrily. “Maybe Holly had better luck- she was good with the questions. I’m still working on the one she asked me: why I put up with it.”

“Why do you?”

If she’d told me to go to hell, or just kept stiff-faced and silent, it wouldn’t have surprised me, but I didn’t expect the quiet, level voice, or the answer that I got.

“It’s the deal I made, isn’t it? Or what’s left of it. It’s what I’ve negotiated down to.” Her hands found each other in her lap, and they held on tight, but her voice stayed even. “When you look back on it- when you look at it all together- it seems crazy, I know. Crazy to stay. But it didn’t happen all together. It was a gradual process, like erosion.

“Little by little, things turn out to be less than you thoughtevery year, always a little less. So one day you realize there won’t be any children, and another day you realize your husband doesn’t really like you. Later on, you find you don’t like him much, either, and wonder if maybe he’s not a little crazy. And that takes the sting out a bit when you think about the children you won’t have, and when you find out about the other women. It helps you care a bit less.

“It’s a slow whittling away, but with each new disappointment, with each hope you abandon, you strike a new bargain with yourself. You’ll trade up to a larger apartment, you think, maybe in a better building, or you’ll buy a larger beach house. You’ll spend an extra week on St. Bart’s this year, or throw yourself a bigger birthday party. You’ll go for the seven-sixty Beemer, instead of the five-fifty. And after a while, leaving becomes…tricky. Apartments, houses, vacations, all the friends and acquaintances…In the end it comes down to money, I guess, and that leaving is so expensive and complicated. So scary.

Peter Spiegelman

JM03 — Red Cat

“There were times I thought I’d reached the end of my rope- I thought so when I heard her voice on the telephone- but each time I found the rope had no end. There’s always another strand you convince yourself to cling to, however frayed. And it just keeps unraveling, miles of it, year after year…down, down, down.”

Outside, the sun had shifted in the sky, and a bright beam came through the window. The unfiltered light fell on Stephanie’s face and turned it to a mask, taut, Kabuki white, and brittle. Only her will, and maybe the Ativan, kept it from crumbling. She looked at me.

“I’m used to the erosion, John, but this is…too fast. We’re not ready for it, David and I- we’re not ready.”

I was on hold for Mike Metz when Clare came through the door. She had a cell phone in her ear and newspapers under her arm.

“Yeah, Amy, Berkeley’s heaven on earth, you’ve been saying it for years. But it’s so crunchy granola, and besides, what would-” Amy, whoever Amy was, was saying something, and Clare put down her papers and slipped off her coat while she listened. She smiled at me and ran a hand through her hair, which rippled like a silk sheet. She pulled up the sleeves of her black turtleneck, and her arms were white and smooth. Mike Metz came on the line.

“You spoke to her?” he asked. He sounded slightly out of breath. I carried the phone into the bedroom, along with my notebook, and I told it all to Mike. When I was through, he had questions, and when I’d answered all of those he was quiet.