“Time to stop dealing with suspicion and start looking for facts,” Mildred told her.
“Is the crane gone?”
“The crane, your car, your brother, and Bob. They’re all wet and they’re all gone,” Mildred said. “The coast, as they say, is clear.”
Sylvie threw-the blankets off and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Mildred asked.
“Next door. Back home. I have some research to do.”
Sylvie was sitting in the dimness of her dining room ensconced behind Bob’s desk. In all their years of marriage, she’d never even glanced at open mail on it. Now every pigeonhole and drawer was emptied. She’d even lifted up the blotter, to look under it. She had bits of papers, cards, and receipts spread out around her on the desk top and the dining room table. It had grown dark outside but Sylvie hadn’t bothered to turn on the lamp. She didn’t need to survey any more of this. What she had in front of her was not just a paper trail of betrayal but a sort of First-Time-Do-It-Yourself-Adultery-Kit. Her hands were shaking, but she hoped she had the strength to shoot Bob when he came in the door—if only she had a bullet. Or a gun to shoot it with.
She wouldn’t aim for the heart or the head—she was enraged but not deranged. She didn’t want to go to prison. She would only shoot him in the legs, both of them. Then he’d hurt a little bit, but not the way she did. After he bled and cried for a while, he could drag himself behind her to his damn car and she’d drive it while he bled all over the upholstery. They could go to John, who would discreetly take out the bullets. After that, she’d leave Bob. Maybe she’d start her life over in Vermont with Reenie or alone in New Mexico. She had always wanted to see the desert. A nice adobe house, tumbleweed, and a dog. No, two dogs. Golden retrievers, and both of them female. She’d do a Georgia O’Keeffe thing and maybe, when she was ninety, some young man would come to her, too, and she’d be ready to try again. But not before.
Sylvie got up and went through the darkened hall to her music room—the only place where she could find comfort. In the darkness she sat down at her piano and began to play. The liquid glissando of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 filled the room. She’d played this piece at Juilliard, for a recital. Bob had been there. She remembered his face as he’d congratulated her afterward. They’d made love for the first time that night. He’d adored her then. She’d played well, but now—alone in the darkness—she knew she played better. Her fingers fumbled a few times, but her feeling, her timing, and the heart of the music was better, truer.
When she heard the door open she started, dropping her hands. The shock of hearing the music ending abruptly gave her the energy to turn around to face her husband. She felt her heart thump painfully against her breastbone. But it was only Mildred, standing there in the music room doorway, carrying a sandwich on a plate.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Mildred said. “You have to keep up your strength.” Sylvie turned on the lamp, wordlessly stood up, took her mother by the hand, and led her down the hallway. At the dining room door Mildred surveyed the room, took in an audible breath, and put the sandwich down on the other end of the cluttered dining room table.
“You want proof?” Sylvie asked. “I have it. In spades.”
“So you don’t want the sandwich. You want a pistol,” Mildred said. “Where’s Bob now?” she asked, picking up one of the pieces from exhibit A.
“He left a message. Supposedly he’s working late and then going to a special Masons meeting tonight. But there is no special meeting. I checked with Burt Silver’s wife. And there was no Masons’ meeting yesterday.” Sylvie sat back down at the desk. “I knew something was different,” she said. “It wasn’t just the usual, routine, taking-me-for-granted Bob. It was the new, improved, making-a-fool-of-me-cheating Bob.” Sylvie lifted up a crumpled slip of paper. “Look at this,” she said.
Mildred crossed the room and took the receipt. She scrunched up her eyes and held the bit of paper out but still couldn’t read it without her glasses. “What is it?” she asked.
“An American Express receipt from Weiner’s Jewelry.”
“That thief. You shop there?”
“I don’t. I don’t buy jewelry. But somebody bought a necklace there.” Sylvie’s voice became high with sarcasm. “Who could it be? Wait! Look! The receipt was signed by Bob.” She turned away from her mother.
“Maybe it was a pair of cuff links. You know how he likes cuff links.”
Wordlessly, Sylvie handed her the store sales record. “No cuff links,” she said. “A necklace. And trust me, Bob hasn’t worn beads since college.”
Mildred looked at the transaction record and then looked at her daughter. She sat down heavily at the head of the table. In Bob’s chair. “Maybe the necklace is for you. For your birthday.”
“I got my present. Remember?”
“Well, it could be for Reenie. When she comes home for Thanksgiving.”
“Don’t try and justify my husband’s actions,” Sylvie said. “It was sent to an M. Molensky.”
“M. Molensky? Is that the name of a girlfriend?” Mildred asked. “Sounds like an accountant.”
Silently, Sylvie handed Mildred another receipt. “Save your breath. Read it and weep.”
“Switzer’s?” Sylvie nodded, put her hand to her mouth, and stifled a sob.
Mildred made her way over to her daughter, the final proof of her son-in-law’s infidelity still clutched in her hand. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry …” Mildred looked down and whistled at the amount at the bottom of the bill of sale. “We’re talking some serious lingerie,” she said.
Sylvie was crying full force by now. “And I wear cotton panties I buy myself,” she sobbed.
Mildred sighed. “Don’t men know anything about discount malls?” she asked. She stroked her daughter’s hair. “One of the main differences between men and women is that we brag about how little we paid for something. They brag about how much.”
“That’s not one of the main differences,” Sylvie said grimly. She gestured to the papers and cards. “Women wouldn’t be so dumb as to make calls to their lovers in Cleveland from their home in Shaker Heights. And that’s not all, Mom. When I went through the American Express bills there were dinners, lots of them. No wonder people said they saw me around town. They were expensive too. And he tipped twenty-five percent.”
Mildred nodded her head. “A dead giveaway. Men tip big to make up for other things that might not be.” Mildred lifted two other receipts. “So you didn’t go to Vico’s?”
“No. But Rosalie thinks I did.”
“What was she doing there, anyway?” Mildred wondered.
“She’s dating some guy with nine toes. He probably took her. Anyway, are you convinced?” Sylvie asked.
“Oh yes,” Mildred said. “I’m optimistic, not stupid.” She shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in Bob. So what now?”
Sylvie had wondered the same thing herself. As she had gone through the pile of proof, she’d moved from disbelief to fear to denial and all those other phases that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross had described as the stages of accepting a death, because what Sylvie had been through was not just Bob’s desk but the death of her marriage and the end of all her future dreams. In her heart, buried somewhere deep under her optimism and blindness, there had been a core feeling that had told her something was wrong although she had refused to listen. There, at Bob’s desk, she had had to not only face this reality but decide what she was going to do about it. She had known immediately that she couldn’t pretend, that she couldn’t excuse it, nor could she doubt that it had happened.
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