A Perfect Crime Page 4

“Dear? Are you awake?”

  Francie slid the painting under the bed, kicked the wrapping paper in after. “What is it?” she said, thinking, dear?

  “Can I come in? Into the matrimonial chamber?”

  “It’s not locked, Roger.”

  The door opened. Roger came in, wearing a Harvard-crested robe over his shirt and tie and carrying two tumblers. “You’re in your nightie.”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  He sat down on the end of it, held out a tumbler. She noticed that his feet were bare; legs under the robe, bare, too. “Care for a drink?”

  “Thank you, Roger,” she said, laying it on the dresser. “But I’m a little tired.”

  He gave her a long look, as though he was trying to communicate some emotion. She had no idea what it could be. “Is something the matter?” she said.

  He laughed, that single bark he’d been using for laughter the past year or so. “We haven’t played tennis in some time, have we, Francie?”

  “No.” He hadn’t played in years. But they’d met on a tennis court: Francie, on her college team; Roger, a few years out of Harvard, helping the coach after work. Francie was a good player, if not in Roger’s class, but good enough so there were boxes of mixed-doubles trophies somewhere in the house. Had he come to set up a match? She almost laughed herself but lost the impulse when she saw him staring at her thighs.

  Roger licked his lips. “I understand you know Sandy Cronin.”

  “We’ve met.”

  “I had breakfast with him today.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Quite well.” Roger took a sip from his glass, a sip that became a long drink. Silence. Then: “Do you know the word putz?”

  “Yiddish for prick.”

  His eyes glazed at the word, or maybe the word coming from her mouth. What was going on? He touched her hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

  That would have been her last guess. The perfect reply, the honest reply, came to her immediately: I’m a one-man woman, Roger. I don’t sleep around.

  “Is something funny?” Roger said. His hand was still touching hers, not holding it, just touching the back. An odd gesture-not friendly, not warm, not erotic.

  “No.”

  “Sit down, Francie.”

  “Why?”

  “Is that a lot to ask?”

  She sat down. His hand covered hers, stroked slowly up her arm: a hard, horny hand, like that of a manual laborer, which Roger was not.

  “Have you been drinking?” she said.

  “That’s not a very nice suggestion,” said Roger. “And inaccurate. I’m feeling uxorious, if you must know.”

  His hand reached her shoulder, jerked quickly down, took possession of her breast. Francie recoiled, but he hung on to her nipple, manipulating it in various ways, as though hoping to stumble on some combination that would change her mood, like a safecracker fiddling with a lock.

  “Roger, for God’s sake.” She tried to push him away. He fell on her-was much bigger and stronger-and as he did she noticed for the first time that although there wasn’t a single white hair on his head, his nostrils were full of them. His Harvard robe fell open, his penis pressed against her, and at that moment-unbidden, ill-timed, insane-the image of Ned’s penis appeared in her mind.

  Roger’s, almost a schematic in contrast, butted against her rigid body.

  “Stop it now,” she said. And then his mouth was on hers, his tongue probing. This wasn’t him at all. She twisted her head, tried to roll away, but Roger got his hand under her ass, pulled her close, forcing his penis against her. At the same time, she felt his finger moving behind her.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Spicing up our marriage. You are my wife.”

  “You’re sick.” Francie struck out at him, barely aware of what she was doing.

  He stopped moving, stopped pressing, raised himself. Four scratches ran across his cheek, blood welling in the deepest. Their eyes met. Roger’s eyes: but behind them could have been anybody, and the face was the face of a man who resembled Roger. It reddened under her gaze; at the same time, his penis dwindled, as though all the blood had drained to his head. He got off her, rose, straightened his robe; his tie remained perfectly knotted. He went to the door, opened it, turned.

  “You may fool other people, dear, but you don’t fool me. Never have. And now you’re a dried-up cunt as well, no matter what anyone else thinks.” He went out, closing the door softly, never touching the wound she had made.

  Francie didn’t start crying until she was in the shower, hot as she could stand, scrubbing and scrubbing, bathroom door locked. Crying: from not being able to stop, to realizing it wasn’t doing any good, to stopping. Getting out of the shower, she saw her wretched face, fogged in the mirror, and turned away. She dried herself, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, but stopped abruptly in mid-stroke: no matter what anyone else thinks. What did that mean? She thought back, searching for some mistake in her spycraft, found none. Then who was anyone else? Sandy Cronin? Was his behavior tonight some form of sexual competition? With a noncompetitor, of course, and still he had lost. Clear in her mind theoretically, the disconnection between sex and rape had now been demonstrated as well.

  Francie put on a fresh nightie-flannel, to her ankles-and went to bed, curled up in a ball. She tried to keep her mind from doing anything, but failed. It went right to her most vulnerable spot. Why wouldn’t it, after what had just happened on the bed, and with the skateboarding girl underneath?

  Francie’s most vulnerable spot, in three acts. Act one: the months of frequent, if not passionate-how could it be passionate when it was regulated by doctors, ovulation calendars, thermometers? — fucking that had preceded the discovery that it was Roger’s fault. Not fault, but contained in his body: low sperm count, and what sperm there were, deformed. Act two: sex in a petri dish, forcing the coupling of her eggs with the best of the deformed sperm-also a failure. Act three: a conversation repeated many times in different words, but first held as they left the doctor’s office for the last time. Francie: I guess that leaves us with adoption. Roger: What would be the point of that?

  That same act three might have done double duty as the beginning of the last act of their marriage as well, a long, attenuated denouement with this twist of Roger’s job loss at the end, and a second twist after that, if you counted Ned. Roger’s question- What would be the point of that? — had illuminated some long-concealed but essential difference between them, masked by Roger’s early dominance: his intelligence, education, worldliness, and his good manners, which she’d perhaps mistaken for kindness. Would a child have made it all better? Francie didn’t know; she just knew she had wanted one, wanted one still. Roger, in the end, had wanted to pass on his genes.

  Francie thought again of Em: how she would like to meet her, even see her from a distance. Her mind moved on to Ned and quite abruptly, like a heat-seeking detector, to that earlier inappropriate mental image of his penis. Magnificent, like those on a Grecian urn-or were they too mannered? The comparison was probably to some simpler art, more robust, more iconic, even primitive: the Sumerians, perhaps; a Babylonian stone carving, for example.

  My God, she thought suddenly. How can I be thinking of sex? But she was. Ned drove everything else out of her mind; he was deep inside her, and not even there. After a while, her body unfolded, her hand came up under the flannel nightie, and she found herself as ready as she’d ever been. What was this all about? The power of love, she decided, strong enough to keep Ned with her all the time, Roger reduced to nothing. A calming thought, but the glowing numbers on her clock kept changing, and still she didn’t sleep. She picked up the phone and called the only person she could call at that hour.

  “Hello?” said a sleepy-sounding man.

  “Bernie?” Francie said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s your last name, Bernie?”

  “Zymanzki, with two Z’s. Do I know you?”

  �
�Put Nora on.”

  Rustling sounds, fumbling, a grunt. And Nora:

  “Francie?”

  “Yup.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Tell me about divorce.”

  “I’m a big believer; you know that. I believe in it more than I believe in marriage.”

  “And in my case?”

  “Unless I’m missing something, it’s long overdue. Stop it, Bernie.”

  Nora paused for a moment, long enough for Francie to supply the missing piece. She remained silent.

  “Francie?” said Nora. “Are you crying?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Pause. “I’ve got a court on Tuesday, sugar, five-thirty. We’ll talk.”

  Francie lay awake all night, got up at dawn. She dressed, packed her briefcase, went downstairs to Roger’s door. She knocked. No answer. She opened the door. The room was dark, except for the glow of the computer screen. Roger sat before it, his back to her.

  “Roger?”

  No reply. No sound but the tapping of his fingers on the keys.

  “It’s time to talk about divorce.”

  No reply. The tapping didn’t stop. Perhaps he bent a little closer to the screen. Francie closed the door and left.

  Roger stopped typing, leaving twenty-nine across-hell, in ideal form-blank. He went upstairs, into her bedroom-their bedroom-suddenly felt dizzy, sat on the bed. As the dizziness passed, Roger noticed torn wrapping paper sticking out from underneath the bed, investigated, found a painting. He studied it for a few moments-an amateurish effort-and put it back.

  Divorce: unthinkable. Loss of job, breakup of marriage, what a hideous cliche. And he’d devoted most of his adult life to Francie, was certainly responsible for that polish of hers that so impressed the Sandy Cronins of the world. Plus they’d done so much together-at that very moment, he remembered a gorgeous running top-spin lob she’d made to win a key point in the Lower Cape mixed-doubles championship ten, perhaps fifteen, years before. Those legs of hers, like a dancer’s, and she was still beautiful, in some ways more than ever, as the Sandy Cronins pointed out. The bastards envied him. Corollary: she was an object to be proud of. Perhaps they’d hit a bad patch, but didn’t every marriage? As soon as he landed a suitable job, everything would be all right. Until then, that fifty grand she brought in was essential. No, divorce was out of the question. He would be ready with an apology the moment she got home. He could swallow his pride, up to a point, even though denied his marital rights. And perhaps there’d been something wanting in his approach last night, probably due to rustiness. That, too, could be fixed.

  What kind of flowers did she like? He thought of calling one of her friends to find out, but he didn’t really know her friends. Except Nora, whom he didn’t like, and Brenda. Where was Brenda? London? Paris? Rome? All easily reached by phone. He found Francie’s address book in her kitchen desk.

  Brenda. Rome. He dialed the number, heard a female voice: “Questa e la segretaria telefonica di…” Roger had no Italian and wasn’t aware that he’d reached an answering machine until he heard the beep. He hung up without speaking.

  Tulips? Petunias? Gladioli? Probably not gladioli-weren’t they associated with funerals? Roger’s mind leaped to another thought: what if something happened to Francie? The fifty grand would be gone, and while he had life insurance, she did not. Who was that insurance peddler-Tod? Tad?

  Roger put on a suit and tie and went out to hunt for flowers. It was snowing, fluffy snow that quickly spread a thick carpet on the sidewalk. Roger’s ankles were cold; he glanced down, saw he was still in his slippers. He stepped back inside, put on his L. L. Bean boots, decided to try Brenda again. God was in the details: the flowers had to be right.

  “Pronto,” said a voice, again female, but not the answering machine. He felt a change in the way his luck was running.

  “Brenda?”

  “Si?”

  “This is Roger Cullingwood.”

  “Roger?” Pause. Then: “Is Francie all right?”

  “Very much so. I’m having a little dinner for her tonight, in fact.”

  “I can’t possibly make it on this kind of notice, Roger.”

  He laughed and heard the echo of the laugh in the line-a strange barking sound, surely distorted by the Italian phone system. “I know that. The problem is I can’t remember her favorite flower.”

  “And you called me in Rome? Aren’t you sweet. Lilies, of course.”

  “Lilies. Thanks very much.” He was about to say good-bye when she asked, “How’s the cottage, by the way?”

  “Cottage?”

  “You know-Francie looks in from time to time. I hope.”

  “I wasn’t aware.”

  “On the Merrimack. In it, rather.”

  “In it?”

  “I’ve got another call, Roger. My love to Francie.”

  When Francie came home from work, there were lilies on the hall table and in the kitchen, lobsters steaming in the pot, champagne on ice. The dining room, unused for at least a year, maybe longer, was lit with candles, the table set with the Sevres that had belonged to Roger’s grandmother.

  “My apologies, Francie,” said Roger. “I don’t know what got into me. I was drunk, as you said, but that’s not an excuse. I’m deeply sorry.”

  Francie was speechless. She hadn’t even expected to find him upstairs.

  “No need to say anything.” He sat her down, filled her glass. The scratches on his face were invisible. Francie saw he’d covered them with face powder, probably from her drawer, since it was too dark for his complexion. “Recognize this champagne?” he asked.

  Laurent Perrier Rose: they’d drunk it to celebrate the end of the hiking trip he’d taken her on in the Cevennes, following the route of Robert Louis Stevenson. That had been years ago, not long before the petri-dish phase. Francie was amazed that he would remember, amazed by the candles, the lilies. It was all perfect, and unreal, like a Cary Grant movie; and pathetic, which Cary Grant never was. That-the pathetic part-and the secret fact of Ned, undermined the righteousness of her anger.

  He cracked a claw. “Remember that summer, Francie?”

  “Of course.” She saw that he was without a tie, almost the first time she’d seen him that way since he’d been fired.

  “We had fun, didn’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not eating. I didn’t overcook it, did I?”

  “It’s just right.” She took one bite, could barely get it down.

  “That’s better,” he said, beaming. “Here’s to France. And Italy, too, for that matter.”

  They drank to France and Italy. “What’s this all about, Roger?”

  “Just dinner,” he said. “No agenda. A quiet marital dinner.”

  “Did you hear some news today?”

  “News? What sort of news?”

  “About work.”

  Roger kept smiling, but his eyes no longer participated. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Nothing definite. But I’m optimistic.”

  He went back to the hiking trip, bringing up details she was sure he would have forgotten: the shepherd with the steel teeth, the one-eyed dog that had followed them for days, the blue-black cherries they’d picked off a tree, eating until they could eat no more, cherry juice dripping off their chins. All true. But what had become of that Roger, and how responsible was she? Too late to go back-or even think about it-but would there be dinners like this in some future with Ned, candlelight in his eyes, melted butter on his fingers, time?

  “And now for dessert,” Roger said.

  “None for me.”

  He came in with a pecan pie, her favorite. “Just try it,” he said.

  Again one bite. Had she ever tasted better? But still she could hardly swallow.

  “I went heavy on the butter and added a little maple syrup,” Roger said.

  “You baked this yourself?”

 
; He nodded.

  “But you don’t bake.”

  “I followed the recipe in one of your books. It’s really not that complicated, is it?”

  He tilted back his head, waiting for an answer. The candlelight illuminated the patch of face powder and the white hairs in his nose. All at once, Francie felt she was about to vomit. She pushed back her chair.

  “If you’ve got work to do or something, don’t let me keep you,” Roger said. “I’ll clean up.” He swirled the champagne in his glass, forcefully, into a tiny pink-and-golden maelstrom. “And Francie? About this divorce business-could you give it some thought?”

  “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “That’s all I ask.” He raised his glass to her, champagne slopping over the side.

  5

  Nora had a 5:30 court, but Francie got stuck in traffic and arrived ten minutes late. Nora was already in the bubble, hitting with the assistant pro against a woman Francie didn’t know. Nora hadn’t said anything about doubles, Francie preferred singles-and weren’t they supposed to have a talk? Francie changed and hurried onto the court, stripping the cover off her racquet, apologizing. The women met her at the net.

  “It turned into doubles,” Nora said. “Why don’t you play with Anne? Anne Franklin, Francie Cullingwood. Francie, Anne.”

  They shook hands. Anne was pretty, slim, fine-complected, and didn’t quite look Francie in the eye: no doubt the shy hausfrau Nora had mentioned. “I’ve heard such good things about you,” Anne said.

  “Who’s been talking?”

  Anne blinked. “Why, Nora.”

  “Don’t believe a word she says,” Francie said. “What side do you like?”

  “Forehand,” Anne said. “But if that’s your side, I could…”

  “Not a problem,” Francie said, going to the backhand, swinging her racquet lightly, trying to make her arm feel long. She always played better if her arm felt long.

  “Hit a few, Francie?” called Nora from the other side of the net.

  “Serve ’em up,” Francie said, not wanting to delay the game any more.

  The assistant pro went to the net and Nora got ready to serve. “Better stay back on the first one,” said Anne. “I have trouble with her serve.”