Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

“Oh, no you won’t. The car will be here in a few minutes. We’re focusing on each other, no distractions.”

My first impulse was to argue. I didn’t. It felt good to give in, to turn control of things over to someone else for a change.

“Would you like me to play for you until the driver gets here?”

“Maybe later,” I said, pulling her close. “Maybe later.”

I hadn’t been on a date in about a quarter century, so nearly every inch of the night was a revelation. Around our second bottle of old vine Zinfandel, when it became clear that bed had gone from our possible to our inevitable destination, the rate of revelation picked up speed. The odd thing about marriage is that it lulls you into a comfortable forgetfulness. You forget that the dance you do can be nearly the same and yet be almost completely different. You forget what it’s like to discover excitement instead of relying on it. You forget that even awkwardness has its potent charms and that first times do still exist in the universe. You can know in your head that every woman has a different taste, a different scent, a different feel, but to be reawakened to the sense of it was an indescribable and unexpected shock.

Connie Geary was everything I would have wanted for my debut in the world of the recently single. She was good company, familiar enough, but not too familiar. She was comfortable with herself, at ease with me, smart, skeptical, not cynical. She was unembarrassed by her family’s wealth, but not blind or unsympathetic to the plight of the rest of the world. In bed, Connie was eager, sharing, unafraid. She was all of those things and yet I knew I would never visit her bed again.

The night had been both wonderful and hollow somehow. For all the laughs and kisses, wanting looks, flirtatious touches, and orgasms, there didn’t seem to have been an ounce of spontaneity in the entire evening. I don’t want to say it all felt staged-no man wants to think the moans and clenches, the screams and spasms, are the result of careful rehearsal and not passion-but I couldn’t escape the sense of things having been storyboarded, that each step had been premeditated. Even when I got up at five to shower, I knew Connie Geary would follow me in a few minutes later and take me in her mouth. Knowing didn’t stop me from enjoying.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the whole experience was the parting. We had, it seemed, used up all our awkwardness in our twelve hours together. Our farewell was almost business-like: pleasant, courteous, distant. There were no hard feelings, no angry words, no accusations. Pulling down the driveway, I could see Connie in my sideview mirror. She stood at the edge of the portico, giving me a goodbye wave so slight it was barely noticeable. The look on her face was unvarnished and predatory.

Is this, I wondered, what being alone did to you? Had Connie played out this scene over and over again with any number of men? Had they all disappointed her? Was she disappointed even before they showed up? Is that why it was, in spite of all the heat, so empty an experience? Christ, it was all so very odd. Heading back to Brooklyn, I didn’t find myself missing Katy so much as the marriage itself.

I knew the second I walked through the condo door that the world had changed when I wasn’t looking. My phone machine was flashing without pause. I’d never seen anything like it. Reflexively, I reached for my cell and remembered the deal I’d made with Connie Geary about leaving distractions behind. The second I turned it back on, it buzzed. It was an easy choice for me between answering machine and cell. I preferred hitting one button to cell message retrieval.

First message:

“Dad, it’s Sarah, listen… We’ve gotta talk. Something’s up with Mommy. I…I think she’s losing it. I think she’s seeing Uncle Patrick again. Please call me back. I’m supposed to leave for Ann Arbor tomorrow, but I don’t really want to leave with Mommy like this. Call me back as soon as you get this.”

The second and third messages were much the same only more frantic. Sarah was increasingly worried not only about Katy, but by her inability to reach me. The fourth and fifth messages were from Aaron and Carmella, respectively. Both had gotten calls from Sarah concerning my whereabouts and why I wasn’t picking up my cell phone.

Next message:

“Yeah, Prager, this is Detective Feeney. We got a location on Mary White. She never made it outta the Ohio-Kentucky area. The airport cops found her in the trunk of her car in the short-term lot. The tags had been switched. Preliminary report is the old lady was strangled. Give me a call.”

There was another round of calls from Sarah and Aaron, alternating between panic and anger.

Next message:

“Hey, boss, it’s Doyle. It’s weird, but no one on Manhattan Court can ever remember seeing Martello. I even showed his picture around. Nothing. But the minute I mentioned the guy with the eye patch, like ten people knew who I was talking about. And here’s the really weird thing, two or three of the neighbors remember the guy with the eye patch being there the night the kid bought it. Gimme a call. Whadaya want me to do from here?”

I picked up the phone and dialed Sarah’s cell, half listening as the messages continued playing. One ring. The next message was from Sheriff Vandervoort. Second ring. Sarah had called the sheriff’s station and was panicked. Third ring. When Sarah got up and went to check on Katy, she was gone: her bed unslept in. Her car still in the garage. Fourth ring.

“Dad, where the hell have you been? Mommy is-”

“I know, kiddo, I’m listening to my messages.”

“Where have-”

“It’s a long story, Sarah. Tell me what’s going on.”

She pretty much repeated what Pete Vandervoort had described and then started losing it.

“Shhhh, Sarah, calm down, calm down. It won’t help anyone if you lose control. You said you thought Mom was seeing Uncle Patrick again. What makes you say that?”

“She was acting weird, like… like she was before she tried to-”

“Weird how?”

“She was all nervous, always looking over my shoulder when we were together. She started staying in her bedroom all the time, smoking cigarettes. I could smell them through the door. She tried to get me to stay at Robby’s or to come back to your place. Dad, I’m really scared.”

“We’ll take care of it. Your mom’ll be fine,” I said, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. “I’ll be up there in a few hours. In the meantime, put in a call to her shrink, okay? I’m on my way.”

I stayed and listened to the remainder of the messages. They were from Aaron and Carmella, another one from Pete Vandervoort. All wondered where I was and why I still hadn’t picked up my cell. Walking to my bedroom to change, I half-listened to another message, the last message. It was mostly silence, a vague, familiar silence, a chilling silence. Then a snicker.

End of new messages.

I have seldom in my life been thankful for traffic. Being thankful for traffic is akin to joy over an exit wound, but I was thankful for it that day.

With the Belt Parkway jammed in both directions, I hadn’t even gotten out of Brooklyn. And given all that was going on, I’d’ve thought my mind would be cluttered by fear over Katy’s disappearance, worry for Sarah, the news of Mary White’s murder. Then there was the peculiar nature of what Brian Doyle had said about no one having seen Martello on the night of the kid’s murder. Never mind the call from the snickering ghost.

Yet, there in the traffic, the radio blasting “Black Coffee in Bed,” my progress measured by inches, not in miles per hour, all I could think about was Connie Geary and the expression on her face as I drove away that morning. I looked at my sideview mirror as I had earlier, trying to recreate her face with the paint of memory. Her expression was predatory, almost feral. Again, I wondered where it had come from. I wondered if she meant for me to see it. It was always the small details: Connie’s expression, the kid lying to me about his name, Katy seeing… Suddenly, I was short of breath and then the world went away.