Lisa Unger - Die For You

Years after I left home, after I’d graduated NYU and made my first real money, my mother told me about the months after my father’s death, about the staggering debt of which she’d been ignorant, the gambling addiction that drained him of everything he owned, including his will to live. It only took a week for her to discover that our home was about to go into foreclosure, our vehicles about to be repossessed, that everything she thought she owned, down to the new range, belonged to a bank that hadn’t been paid in months.

In the throes of grief for her husband, she was forced to face the reality that during their marriage he had lied about everything, spent all their money and beyond, and then abandoned us to live with his deceptions and mistakes. We were weeks from being homeless.

“I felt as though I’d swallowed drain cleaner,” she told me. “Everything inside me burned . I’ll never forget those nights, how I worried. How angry I was at your father, at myself for being so ignorant and weak. I had nowhere to turn. No one in our family had the kind of money I needed in order to save us. But then, of course, there was Fred.”

He’d loved her for years, she said, respectfully, from a distance. They’d met at church, where my mother had always gone alone on Sunday mornings. He was a wealthy man, came from money, inherited several very successful grocery stores, then made a fortune selling out to one of the big chains, made wise investments. He paid off all the debt my father left behind, the mortgage on our house.

“I don’t know what would have happened to us if it weren’t for Fred.”

“But did you love him, Mom?”

A pause, a sip of coffee where a monolithic emerald glinted in the sunlight. We watched Fred from the window as he filled a birdhouse with seed in their expansive backyard. Their Riverdale home was palatial; I’ve never heard them fight.

“I learned to love him. He’s a good man,” she said finally. “Anyway, it’s overrated, romantic love. Maybe it doesn’t even exist.”

I remember them holding hands while Fred drove us all in the Mercedes to the city for lunch and museums, plays. He was always kind to us. But he was not my father. For years I neither loved him nor disliked him. We did, however, form a friendship over time, a kind of mutual tenderness and respect that was somehow forged by our love for Margie.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Sitting there with her, I suddenly, vividly remembered that night when she told us she planned to marry Fred. These were the things she wouldn’t share then.

“Because you’re a grown woman, just starting out in your life. I want you to know things no one ever taught me.”

She got up and walked to the coffeepot on the counter, warmed her cup and carried the pot back to the table and refilled my mug, too. She was still beautiful; the years hadn’t robbed her of that, though she claimed they had. She complained about her neck, the skin under her eyes. But she was too afraid to go under the knife for vanity. Her words. “It’s like asking God to punish you for your silliness and then laying yourself out on a table for His ease.” She was more regal, more powerful than I remembered her when I was growing up.

“Money is power, Isabel,” she said, looking at something above and beyond me. “It’s freedom. It’s choice. No, it won’t buy you happiness. But it will buy you everything else. Unhappiness is a lot easier to bare when you have money.”

“Mom,” I said. She held up a hand.

“In my love for your father, I turned everything over to him. I never wrote a check in all the years of our marriage. I didn’t even know how much money he made. It seems foolish now, but I suppose I was a foolish girl who went from my father’s house to my husband’s house. I never learned to take care of myself.”

“You took care of us. Not everyone can do that.”

She nodded. “I knew how to do those things-bake cookies and bandage knees, listen to worries and sew up dolls. But this is something more important. Something I have to tell you because I couldn’t show you.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I have my own money,” I said. She reached for my hand and gripped it hard.

“That’s good. But hear this. When you find the right man and fall in love, Izzy give yourself heart and soul, if you must. But don’t ever give him your money.”

She was watching me urgently, the same way she had when she told me never to get in a stranger’s car or never to get behind the wheel if I’d been drinking, the dire consequences of those actions having already played out in her mind. I found myself growing annoyed, uncomfortable. I wasn’t the same kind of woman she was; I didn’t need a man to take care of me.

“Okay, Mom, okay,” I said, drawing my hand back from hers. “I get it.”

STANDING ON THE street with Detective Crowe, I felt the first dawning of a terrible anger. Around me, lampposts were wrapped with green garland, people were carrying festive bags packed with gifts, and an electronics store was blaring “Jingle Bells” from outdoor speakers. I barely registered any of it. The depth and breadth of my husband’s betrayal was opening a chasm to reveal a dark abyss. I found myself ticking back through the years of our marriage and realized that there had been signs for me to see, places where I might have asked questions but didn’t. I had to ask myself now: Had I written the story of my marriage to Marcus, unwilling, unable to see the man I’d cast in the vital role of husband? I found myself backing away from the detective, panic fluttering in my chest like a cage of birds.

“Where are you going, Isabel?” he asked, his voice wary, a warning.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, lifting my arm to the traffic. A yellow cab pulled over immediately.

The detective didn’t move to stop me, though he looked as if he wanted to. I saw his arm lift and then drop back to his side. He seemed still, careful, trying not to frighten a butterfly he wanted to net.

“Stay in touch with me,” he warned. “Don’t make me think I have to worry about your role in this.”

I turned and grabbed the door handle and got into the cab quickly. I saw the detective shaking his head-in confusion, in disapproval, I couldn’t be sure-as the taxi pulled into traffic. He put a hand to his jaw, his eyes still locked on the disappearing vehicle.

“Where to?” asked the cabbie. I could see only the back of his bald head; in his picture on the dash he looked like the Crusher.

“I’m not sure yet. Just drive north.”

Only now, alone, in the quiet of the cab, did I allow myself to look again at the text message on my phone. The second one was not from Linda, but from Marcus.

I DON’T WANT YOU TO THINK I DIDN’T LOVE YOU BECAUSE I DID. REMEMBER THAT I MADE YOU HAPPY FOR A WHILE, THAT WE WERE GREAT FRIENDS AND EXCELLENT LOVERS. AND THEN FORGET ME. GRIEVE ME LIKE I’M DEAD. MOVE ON. DON’T TRY TO FIND ME OR TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS YOU’LL HAVE. I CAN’T PROTECT YOU-OR YOUR FAMILY-IF YOU DO.

My hand started to shake. I knew it was pointless to text him back or try to call. I also knew that was the last communication I’d receive from him. I stared at the words on the screen, still disbelieving that this was happening, still waiting to wake up.

I flashed on scenes, a woman who knew him in a Paris nightclub, who called him by another name and touched him lightly on the cheek before he pushed her hand away and said there had been some mistake. The voice mail from just a couple of weeks ago: Marcus, my friend, it’s Ivan. Just in from Czech. There’s so much to talk about . His tone, light and friendly, still managed to sound ominous. He left a number to call. Marcus seemed to go stiff as I relayed the message, then claimed he had no idea who it might have been. “Erase it,” he said. “Wrong number.” When I pressed him about it, he said, “Who knows? Someone from Czech, looking for a job, wanting something for nothing, thinking I owed something to a fellow countryman. No thanks.” I let it go, even though I was sure there was more to it. If he didn’t want to talk about it, there must have been a good reason.