Laura Lippman: Hardly Knew Her

“What can you get out of the house without him being suspicious?” my shrink asked me in early March.

“Myself,” I said. “Maybe a laptop.”

“You can’t take a few things out, over several days?”

“No,” I said. “He’d notice.” And it was only when I said it that I realized it was true: he was keeping an inventory. He was going through my closet while I was at work, checking my underwear drawer, looking under my side of the bed. He was spying on me as surely as I had spied on him when I went looking for the gun he never bought. All those things-the CDs, the books, the shoes, the clothes, the Volvo-were meant to weigh me down, to keep me in place. That’s why he had allowed me to have them. He was piling bricks, one by one, in front of the exit, burying me alive.

“Then it will have to be just you and your toothbrush,” my shrink said. “Call from your sister’s house after work and tell him you’re not coming back.”

I came home from that session planning to do just that. But my husband knew me too well. He could see it in my face, in my eyes. He backed me into a corner in our bedroom that night, demanding to know why I was unhappy, how I could turn on him. Forever and ever, I had said, I who valued words and vows above all else. How could I think of leaving? He did not touch me. He didn’t have to touch me to scare me. He demanded every secret, every fear, every moment of doubt I had ever experienced-about us, about myself. I sat in the corner, knees to my chest, shaking with sobs. I began to think I would have to make up confessions to satsify him, that I would have to pretend to sins and lapses I had never experienced. He stood above me, yelling. Somewhere in the house, our dog whimpered. I would have to leave him, too. Leave our dog, leave the car, leave the clothes, leave the CDs and books, lose the opera, and La Bohème was next. Of course, it would have to be La Bohème. It was always La Bohème. The fact is, I’d even have to lose my toothbrush. He was watching me that closely now. I’d be lucky to get out of the house with my own skin.

I did the only thing I knew to do: I capitulated. I asked for his forgiveness. I brought him the bourbon bottle and he poured me a glass of my favorite wine, a Chardonnay he usually mocked for its lack of subtlety. We drank silently, pretending a truce. We crawled into bed and watched one of his favorite DVDs, a Sergio Leone Western. I would start to doze off, then pretend to be wide awake when he asked if I was sleeping. He didn’t like me to fall asleep with the television on. He resented the ease with which I slipped into sleep each night.

On our television, a boy stood beneath his brother, who had a noose around his neck. If the boy moved, his brother would die. Henry Fonda stuck a harmonica in his mouth. “Play,” he said, “play for your ever-lovin’ brother.” Of course he couldn’t stand there forever, harmonica in mouth, hands tied behind his back. He staggered forward, and his brother died.

By the time the sun came up, I realized an unpredicted snow had been falling all night, and the streets were near impassable, even for a brand-new Volvo.

But I had to go to work or be docked a day’s pay, snow or no snow, binge or no binge, Sergio Leone or no Sergio Leone. I said good-bye to my husband’s slumbering form and headed out the door. I wore jeans, snow boots, a black turtleneck, the new winter coat, suede gloves, and a felt hat. I turned the key in the lock. I wanted to take it from my ring and throw it in the nearest drift, but I knew I couldn’t. I’d have to come back. I walked to the train. I did my work. And that night, when the train stopped at our station, I wasn’t on it. I was at my sister’s house. She wasn’t approving, but she was sympathetic. She listened as I called and told him, in a choked voice, that I was never coming back. He didn’t say anything. The line went dead in my hand.

He didn’t have a gun, after all, so there was no blood on the walls. But there was all that booze, and all those pills, his and mine, squirreled away for the sleeplessness we had never tried to cure. Because I didn’t go back for forty-eight hours, things were pretty bad. The dog, luckily, had survived, and without resorting to anything desperate or disgusting. I had filled his kibble dish the morning I left. Still, it was bad, and everyone felt sorry for me, wanted to ease my guilt. So sorry that the suburban police said it must be an accident, and the coroner agreed, and the insurance company gave up fighting after a while, so the mortgage was paid off in one fell swoop, with the life insurance. There was no suicide note. And while there were all those threats, dutifully reported to all those mental health professionals, they proved nothing. He had mixed booze with pills, despite warnings. True, it was suspicious he had taken so many pills, but I was able to report in all honesty that he had often ignored dosage advice, taking two, three times what was recommended. He also had an amazing capacity for liquor.

It never occurred to anyone that he was probably dead the morning I left, that my phone call home that night, overheard by my sister, had been completely for show. Or that the pills had been chopped up and dissolved in his bourbon bottle days ago, in hopes such an all-nighter would come again, and soon. It had been hard, waiting, but it was worth it. I had not noticed the snow falling because I was lying in bed, listening to his heart stop.

He always said he would kill himself if I left. All I did was hold him to his word.

You won’t believe this, but this really did happen to me just last fall, and all because I was five minutes late, which seemed like a tragedy at the time. “It’s only five minutes,” that’s what I kept telling the woman behind the counter, who couldn’t be bothered to raise her gaze from her computer screen and make eye contact with me. Which is too bad, because I don’t need much to be charming, but I need something to work with. Why did they make so many keystrokes, anyway, these ticket clerks? What’s in the computer that makes them frown so? I had the printout for my e-ticket, and I kept shoving it across the counter, and she kept pushing it back to me with the tip of a pen, the way I used to do with my roommate Bruce’s dirty underwear, when we were in college. I’d rounded it up with a hockey stick and stashed it in the corner, just to make a pathway through our dorm room. Bruce was a goddamn slob.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stabbing that one key over and over. “There’s just nothing I can do for you tonight.”

“But I had a reservation. Andrew Sickert. Don’t you have it?”

“Yes,” she said, hissing the s in a wet, whistling way, like a middle-school girl with new braces. God, how did older men do it? I just can’t see it, especially if it really is harder to get it up as you get older, not that I can see that either. But if it does get more difficult, wouldn’t you need a better visual?

“I bought that ticket three weeks ago.” Actually, it was two, but I was seeking any advantage, desperate to get on that plane.

“It says on your printout that it’s not guaranteed if you’re not at the gate thirty minutes ahead of departure.” Her voice was oh-so-bored, the tone of a person who’s just loving your pain. “We had an overbooked flight earlier in the evening and a dozen people were on the standby list. When you didn’t check in by nine twenty-five, we gave your seat away.”

“But it’s only nine forty now, and I don’t have luggage. I could make it, if the security line isn’t too long. Even if it’s the last gate, I’d make it. I just have to get on that flight. I have…I have…” I could almost feel my imagination trying to stretch itself, jumping around inside my head, looking for something this woman would find worthy. “I have a wedding.”