Leaving the shop behind, Claude stepped outside onto the street and took a deep breath of car fumes. He wrinkled his nose and finding that insufficient defense, blew it on an immaculate handkerchief. He zipped his new leather jacket, walked toward the subway, then stopped, laughing a little at himself. Habit, old scripts. He had plenty of cards and cash nowadays. He scanned the street for taxis, but saw none. Hands in his pockets, he reflected on the circumstance that had led him into the perfume business. He loved the smell of women. He drank in their radiant skin the way other men guzzled fine wine. His father, trained at the Henri Jacques Parfum House in France, had left him the San Francisco shop when he died, probably worried about Claude. “A man needs an occupation,” he used to scold, “even a gentleman.” After the inheritance, crazy in love with Clea, with an excellent education in French literature but no calling, Claude discovered the latent talent hidden in his untrained but eager nose.
He waved a yellow cab down, got inside, and shut the cold wind out. Today had been unusually successful. Four Asian females, all beautiful, all petite and dark with hair that gleamed like dripping oil, had bought out the majority of his stock of his most precious French scents, the ones he had manufactured especially for his shop. He had a special connection to the factory outside of Eze. The town hovered pretty as a sprawling vacation villa above the Mediterranean, and was very near where his father's relatives all lived, and where he had spent the majority of his childhood until the divorce, when his mother had brought him to the States to live near her family. He thought perhaps something floral would suit them, heavy on the tuberose, beeswax, and rose de May, with a slight tickle of sweet honey.
Bantering, friendly, fun-loving, these Asian customers knew how to make a good day great, how to flirt with a man, how to make him feel-manly. On the way out, the prettiest of the group slipped her business card into his pocket, whispering, “I'll be back at the hotel by eight tonight. Call me.”
Unbidden images invaded his mind. Six years of happy marriage had inured him to such invitations, but recently, he felt pulled in an unfamiliar way. He felt a weakening, a lack of moral musculature where there once was brawn. Still, he did not want another woman. Another woman would not be Clea. He wanted Clea back, the way she was the day he met her.
The trip to their home in Noe Valley shouldn't take more than ten minutes from downtown San Francisco, but tonight, with rush hour in full roar… the halts and jerks of the cab irritated him, obliterating the last traces of his good mood. He began to picture Clea, at the window at home, waiting for him, her beady, unmascaraed eyes never wavering from the street.
Beautiful, she had been, with her flaming red hair, her perfect body and intense intelligence. Passionate, loving, the ideal model for his products, Clea was his vision of female perfection. She looked as she was, like a woman with a career of her own, thoughts, opinions, life, so much life. Everything a man could want, she had been.
No longer.
Now she waited for him, and he felt her waiting like a cable car slipped off the track on Powell Street, going downhill and coming at him. He would show up in the taxi, pay the man, get out, and wave at her face in the window. He would try not to look, but he would feel the onslaught of her need. He saw it coming, and he was paralyzed in its face. He would be flattened, reduced to a blot of blood in the dirt between the tracks.
As he paid too much for the taxi, he steeled himself for the charge, turned, and smiled at the pale moon-face that glowed like a headlight.
For a long time after the accident, he had believed Clea would get better. Her doctors told them there was hope that she would improve over time.
They lied.
Hurting, he watched the changes reduce her. Her skin, once a lovely pink, drained and tinged to blue. The cantering of her mind-they had taken so much pleasure in the evenings together talking by the fire, entertaining each other with tales of their days and the people that mesmerized them like the characters in her films-ceased. Conversations drifted away, sabotaged by a narcotized mind. She slogged behind him now like a snail, leaving a sticky trail of regret for what was, and what would never again be.
Where before, Clea held his heart in her hands, his worshipful attendance on her after the accident had subtly altered the balance of power and thrown the weight of their lives entirely upon him. He toiled in the world, she stayed home. He brought whatever life there was to this house which would otherwise fall rank with decay as a deserted shack. Once upon a time, she could inspire a frenzy of lust with a brush of eyelash upon cheek. Now when her eyelashes brushed her cheek, he felt only relief. Would she fall asleep early? Could he, just this once, sit in his study and read the newspaper, like a normal man in a normal house?
So over time, he who swore eternal love faltered. Grated to shreds with emotion on a day when she had cried inconsolably for two solid hours, he decided to tackle the issue coldly. Like a scientist collecting data, for the past few weeks he had observed his reactions and Clea's; he graphed them, and now he had reached a conclusion.
His feelings had altered, inexorably. His perfect wife had become his gothic madwoman in the attic. Her tiny moans worked on him like screams in a horror movie, making him jump. No matter how well he kept the elements of his life separate, smiling through his days in the city, stronger by the minute in his business, every day when he came home, she shambled from the background into the foreground and choked the screen with her colossal presence.
He hated her.
However, the more he considered, the more he wanted to preserve the idea of them as they used to be. Clea must never know what the graph showed, its remorseless descent. That would break her heart. She deserved love, and he would continue to make her believe in it as a tip of the hat to their past shared happiness.
If along the way the effort had become exhausting, if, in spite of his best efforts, cracks had appeared in his facade, well, he was human. He had seen her tilt the angle of her head at the sight of the new model, for instance. He had seen her moment of uncertainty, and his pity welled at the sight.
As he pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the front door to the claustrophobic miasma of antiseptic, bleach, and sick, he promised himself he would renew his efforts to keep her happy. Later tonight, after she fell into her usual drugged stupor, he would give her a last chance. He would examine the emotional graph one last time, inspecting his heart for dishonor. He would convince himself that killing her was by far the best solution to her problem, and she would die securely in the warm bosom of their love.
Sad, things coming to this. If only he hadn't taken on the role of white knight. He was ill-suited to the position, he knew now.
Right after the accident, Clea had wanted to die. As soon as she had regained some mobility, she tried to overdose on pills, then tried to drown herself in the low laundry sink, holding her head underwater until she passed out and he had found her. She cried nonstop. She tore at her hair. She screamed at him. She hurled herself to the floor, and one time, tried to roll herself down the stairs. After that, they kept her on the first floor. When she couldn't do it herself, she begged him to help her die. Fortunately, or so he thought at the time, she hadn't done any real damage to herself. These incidents, coming during the full flush of his savior complex, made him feel protective. He had thrown all his energy into making her feel cherished so that she would never consider such a thing again.
Stupidity. Clea had been right. She foresaw the bitter ending before he did.
They could not continue like this. He hated the man she now made of him. He hated their life together. But what other life was there for her without him? He had taken the truth away from her. The lie she lived rendered her unfit to participate in these painful deliberations. As he had several times before, he pictured telling her the truth, that he didn't love her. A vision of her face hearing the news flashed before him. This repulsive image filled him with businesslike energy. He would decide what constituted a merciful future for both of them.
He cleared his throat, the better to inject false joviality. “Clea,” he said. “Darling.” He leaned over to kiss her lips, still soft, closing his nose against the smell of her, the dirty-hair smell the nurse had not managed to eradicate, the smell of ointments, emollients, and chemicals, with no aesthetics, no pleasures for a man with an educated nose.
The sight of Claude outside made Clea's heart pound shallow and fast. With him, came pressure. When he leaned down to kiss her, she felt afresh the wheelchair, the indignities of the day, her pain, her fears. She breathed harder, her asthmatic lungs contracting with her emotions. He floated in on a wave of fresh air, smiled, and made her wonder at his horrific tenacity. When had his love become such a burden?
He loved her so much and he so depended on her. Even in her immediate hysteria after the accident, she recognized that she had to protect Claude. Claude was squeamish in a way a woman never would be. He found earthly things squalid. He read the newspaper for its politics and sports, skipping over headlines of mayhem and crime. Everyday domestic demands puzzled him, laundry, dishes, cleaning. They didn't fit in to the picture he had of life, a kind of impressionistic bliss, removed from drudgery. Really, it was lucky, his father leaving him the shop. Perfume sugarcoated his world, keeping it sweet the way he needed it.
Unfortunately, Claude was more figurehead than businessman. The shop operated at a loss, and she did all of its business even now, figuring the accounts, writing his letters, signing paperwork in his name, covering his debts. She never publicly acknowledged his failures. In fact, she collaborated with him on his public pose as a success. She didn't mind. She felt useful in this one regard, and it did help keep Claude happy.
Soon after her injury, after recovering her spirit, she decided to stake out his arrival home from work with unwavering loyalty. She owed him that, even though many days, waiting endless minutes, often in pain, plastering a grin on her face at the sight of him while screeching inside, her daily waits for his return from work had become as much ordeal as tradition. He seemed to love the formal reception, saying once, “I feel so cherished,” and another time, “You are everything to me.”
Clea appreciated his devotion and knew she needed to show an equal commitment, but she wasn't foolish. They would never regain the closeness they had lost. They weren't two peas in a pod anymore. She lived in one, in an arid, harsh garden. He flourished nearby, in another universe where there was shade and moisture. She depended on him for nourishment, for things as basic as water.
She depended too much on him. That eroded everything every day. That compromised her love.
Nowadays the only acting she did was to maintain this sham of a relationship.
Awful the way things changed…
Agitated, as she always seemed to be in his presence these days, her heart continuing its erratic flip-flops, Clea could barely catch her breath to speak. “Claude?”
He nodded, but continued on his way toward the bedroom.
“I need to tell you something. I've made a decision.”
“Okay,” he said. His voice muffled as he went into the bathroom. He closed the door. She heard running water.
She wheeled herself away from the window, where air slipped through cracks and made her shiver, toward the fire. She ran into a plush armchair, one she used to sit in in the evenings, studying her lines and chatting with Claude. Joking, laughing, crying over a lost role, griping about her colleagues. He would sweep her up in his arms, turn on some music, and they would dance… She tried to kick it, but her foot ignored the message of her emotions. She passed by the chair consumed with frustration, settling in as close as she could to the fire without getting burned.
The nurse, an unkind, competent woman named Lucy, started toward her with a glass cup and a handful of pills. “You need to take these.”
“Not now,” Clea said.
“Doctor says,” Lucy began.
“I don't give a damn what ‘Doctor' says,” Clea said. At that moment, Claude came into the room.
“What's this? Ignoring Doctor's orders?” he asked, a tease in his voice, a finger lifting a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“We need to talk,” she said stubbornly, pleadingly. “Those pills knock me out. Claude, I want to talk. I can't stand the way those things make me feel.”
“Doctor says she needs to take them three times a day.” Sensing an ally, Lucy added, “She already put me off an hour. Plus he's been calling and she won't talk to him.”
“He checks up on me. He's a diligent guy,” Clea said. “I'm not sure I need that anymore. And you came home later than usual,” Clea told Claude.
“I'm so sorry, honey,” said Claude. “Today was amazing. I don't think I've had such a major sales day since you were…”
Something showed in her face because he stopped talking, but her thoughts rolled on: Since you were whole, intact, able. Since you were our model, the symbol of beauty for our product.
She had been replaced by Lucia, an expensive Italian model. One day the previous week, during a brief business meeting at the house, Clea had intercepted Lucia's come-hither glance at Claude. On the way out, when Lucia bent down to say good-bye to Clea, Clea had whispered, “Go after him and I'll see you dead. I have friends.” She had no friends, but relied on her stereotypes of Italian culture to make her point. She had smiled when Lucia jumped back and flounced out the door without another word. The threat made her feel powerful again. How she missed that feeling.
After Lucia's brusque departure, Claude wheeled Clea into his study and took her on his lap. “You're my dream of a woman. No one can replace you,” he said. Had he seen the look? Had he heard the whisper? If he knew anything, he had had the grace to ignore it.
“Tell you what,” Claude said now, apparently rushing to change the subject. Any mention of her past life was tricky and she guessed he didn't want to set her off. “Take your pills like a good girl. Have a good nap. We'll talk before bed.”
“But…”
He whispered in her ear. “Remember that summer night when you lit all the candles and we went out onto the deck with our champagne glasses? Hmm? Remember what we said? We will take care of each other and now I'm taking care of you, like I always do…”
His chant had the desired effect. She felt less urgent. Still, they had to talk. She didn't want to continue like this. She had made up her mind. They had had their six good years, a sweet feast of love. Now, in utter rationality, she was ready to say good-bye to Claude and salvage the clean memory of what they had shared before the present ruined it.
She wanted to tell him she could survive alone, now, even in the face of continuing deterioration. She had accepted her disability in a way he never could. In a surprising way, she welcomed the woman she had become, relishing her new self, this mature version of the silly girl she had been. The challenge had been awesome, but she had risen to it, and she was proud. He would never understand this. She didn't expect it. Maybe she didn't want it. He was no longer the man for her. Whatever time she had left, whatever quality of life, she needed to experience it without him.
Such poignant truths, but she was scared to death to tell him. She did not want to puncture the illusions that kept him going.
She opened her mouth to speak but he and Lucy were intent upon their task. A red pill made its way toward her, onto her tongue and down her throat, to be followed by a blue one, a green one, etc. She closed her mouth obediently upon each pill, swallowing, her gums shriveling from the sour flavors.
Before she passed out completely, they lifted her onto her bed. Claude left for a moment to find her hairbrush, and Lucy, ever ready to undertake the chores Claude could not face, rose to the task, gently changing Clea into a fresh knit gown.
Clea entered a new state, close to sleep but not quite there. The drugs ripped crudely through her body like tiny dynamites. They hurt her all over in order to help her, or so “Doctor” explained.
“A broken back is cataclysmic,” he had said. And so it was.
For the first several months, they had encased her in a body cast. During that enforced rigidity, she explored in excruciating detail the moment when her whole life went bad. Her anguished regrets were equal to her pain, and could not be anesthetized. They woke up with her. They sang her to sleep at night.
Why? Why had she done it?
The answer wasn't hard. She had it the instant she posed the question. Hadn't she acted a dozen roles where the outcome of the story hinged on this very same tragic character flaw?
She fell victim to hubris and ruined a beautiful happiness.
She had been such an athlete when she was young, fleet of foot, coordinated, and although her schedule eliminated many opportunities for her to maintain that toned physique and physical grace, she hung on to an athlete's most useful trait too long: physical risks did not scare her. She was fearless.
That May, the whole crew spent a week up at Strawberry Lodge, many complaining about the empty swimming pool and noise from the traffic. Others loved the area and went for hikes when they had precious time off. Claude had stayed behind in the city. Her room had yellow walls and a view of trees and a creek in back, and she called him every night to talk for an hour, missing him.
The scene on that Wednesday morning was set for Pyramid Creek. The crew hiked up single file, most still sleepy-eyed, quiet, but everyone in a fine mood in spite of the heavy equipment they were packing. This beat the studio, they all agreed. While the crew set up the camera and sound, and quickly storyboarded revised camera angles based on the stark sun and shadows, she had drunk coffee from a silver thermos, sitting on a rock, swathed in down. Because this was spring, a few hardy high-altitude flowers were struggling up. She picked a purple lupine still glittering with melted snow.
When they were ready for her, she stripped down to shorts and a T-shirt. Suddenly, through the magic of film, it was summer and the cold breeze was a hot one, and the long slanting sunlight harbored scorching heat. Her skin did not know this, however. The director decided to make the longest shot fairly wide to include them both, fortunately. The goose bumps on her arms would not show then, or later when they moved on to close-ups on her face.
She knew her lines. Her “husband” was rocky, however, so they did several takes of the violent argument that took place at the end of the trail. Evan, her costar, had smiled and thanked her for her patience. “My wife's pregnant and nervous. It's our first child. She kept me up all night last night on the phone.”
Evan was strong and handsome in his hiking boots and khakis, and was also one of the least self-conscious actors she knew. He treated his looks as a joke and the adoration of the press as aberrant. She remembered thinking, someday Claude and I will have a baby, too. I will keep him awake all night and he will calm my fears.
Their argument scene took all morning, and at one point, when Evan pushed a little too hard, she ended up puncturing her shorts on a sharp boulder. She changed into another pair, and then they ate chicken sandwiches with avocado and tomato and drank lemonade for lunch. The sun rose in the sky, warming the day slightly. After lunch, they would film action to follow the argument. She would run into the creek, crying, stumbling. She would turn and shout at her husband, who would notice that, in her rage, she had gotten too close to Horsetail Falls. He would swoop down, intending to rescue her, but his sudden movement, her suspicion of his motives, and their unresolved argument would inspire her to step back even farther. Then, the script read, Evan would reach her and rescue her. They would reconcile, all the discord of the past erased in their shared recognition of this nearly fatal moment.
The camera crew set up the shot, and everyone took their positions. And the stuntwoman who was due to replace her after her first rush into the stream started throwing up.
“I can't breathe up here. It's like there's no air,” she said, crying.
The director stomped over, talked with her, found her a drink of water, waited for her to recover. She threw up again. The director said she had better get down to the lodge. One of the crew offered to accompany her, and the director, by now unable to speak directly to the stuntwoman, nodded, his face purple.
As she stuffed a small bag with water and a snack bar, everyone sympathized. They agreed it was the altitude and dehydration. Once she was safely out of sight down the trail, they grumbled about the amount of wine she had consumed the night before.
The director, able to talk again, pitched a fit. He had funding problems, timeline problems. They were wimps, shits, losers. They now had a full crew and no shot, and did they have any idea the cost of this setup, this day? He was so screwed.
So she had stepped forward to save the day. A hero.
An idiot.
She ran into the creek once, twice, three times. They shot again and again. The director stroked his chin, shaded his eyes, suggested some minor adjustments in the camera angle. They shot until her legs froze up and wouldn't move. They warmed her up and shot again.
And then he announced a final take. The last take, he swore it. The light was fading. The shot looked beautiful, though. They had to get down the hill before dark. He called for action.
She ran into the creek, crying. She turned, shouting at Evan. He chased into the water after her. She stepped back, stumbled, and fell one hundred feet.
When she woke up, she had tubes in her nose and a room full of flowers. The doctors told her how lucky she was that two men on the crew were experienced climbers, and somehow managed to get her out of the pool she fell into. As mindful of her injuries as they could be under the circumstances, aware of the grave risks her battered body faced, they lashed her to a makeshift gurney and rushed her back to the lodge.
“They did everything they could do. You could have died.”
She wished, then, that she had died.
Claude came and cried with her, and begged her to live, not to leave him.
When, at last, the cast came off, they had all hoped so much… the surgeon's face had told her right away. As each instruction he made to her failed to elicit the proper action, the corners of his mouth dipped and solidified a little more. The look on Claude's face when she could not move her body from the waist down had crushed her.
Now, observant but druggily detached, she watched as Claude pulled the cover up to her chin, and kissed her cheek warmly. “Love you forever and forever,” he said, as he always said.
“It's been so hard for you,” she said, only the words slurred.
“Go to sleep,” Claude soothed.
She saw her early past, her first high school part in The Importance of Being Earnest. She had flubbed her lines, but got laughs in the right places. Arsenic and Old Lace, off-Broadway, she played one of the elderly aunts in a wig that itched. She took her clothes off for a revival of Hair and sang in Les Mis. She ran through her lines, reinterpreting.
Claude got up and the bed moved as he rose. She awoke and opened her eyes. “Comfy?” he asked her. “I'll turn off the light.”
“Lonely,” she said, “don't go. I have to tell you something…” She realized she had forgotten what. What was it she needed to tell him, something important? She tried to apply her mind to the problem, but the problem slipped away with Claude, on tiptoes. The light went off and she returned to her dreams.
Lucy left at nine. She had a family and didn't like staying so late, but she had a stolid sense of obligation. She was a saint, unlike Claude, who closed the door behind her, sighing with pleasure at a moment's solitude.
He drank a strong whiskey with ice and poked at the fire. In a flash, like the flash of a dry ember igniting, he realized he had already made his decision, and that it was the right one.
Clea should die.
She should die knowing she was loved. The falsity of his feeling would never get strong enough to penetrate the soft cloud of her belief in him.
The decision fell over him as gently and moodily as rain. He knew it was the proper choice under the circumstances. Clea would want him to have a happy life. Her love was unselfish and pure, unlike his. If only the full picture of the situation would not cause her such emotional harm, she would concur, he was certain.
The only question left was how?
He pondered alternatives. Suicide-there was plenty of evidence that Clea had been suicidal in the past, so why shouldn't she be suicidal again? Their neighbor Mrs. Winters had helped him get Clea fixed up after she had tried to drown herself when the nurse was out to lunch. She could testify. Lucy would, too. She didn't like Clea, he suspected, but it would have to happen off her watch so that she didn't look bad. Maybe Clea stockpiled pills? He liked the peacefulness of pills. She would go quietly, kissed on the forehead by him, loved to the end. But sometimes people threw them up, didn't they? Sordid thought.
A knife? During those early scenes, right after she got out of the cast and into the chair, they had taken pains to keep knives out of her reach. Since then, they had relaxed vigilance. A large knife like one used to slice a melon? Something with a sharp tip.
Ugh. He didn't think he could stab her, not even if he put her to sleep first. The police would be very suspicious with a stabbing.
Hanging? He got out of his chair and wandered around the entire downstairs. Hanging was out. She couldn't reach anything high enough that would hold her. A doorknob? No.
He had a baseball bat, and had played in high school. He knew one fell swoop could deck her. Then, push the wheelchair down the stairs. But she didn't go upstairs anymore, everyone knew that, and those clever forensics people might be able to identify a bat indentation or something.
Okay, asphyxiation. Didn't people tie plastic bags over their heads or something when they wanted to self-asphyxiate? Clea had the ability to do that.
But it was so ugly!
Yet this idea drifted like feathers into something better. Yes, he thought, suffocating her would solve a number of problems. With her asthma, the doctor would have no trouble assuming a natural death. Her memory wouldn't be sullied by suicide, and he could grieve normally, a real widower.
She would die believing in the integrity of their love. Didn't this ending do proper justice to their incredible romance?
Excited, he decided it would. He would serve up a lovely dinner, then death. Something elegant was at work, something which would move the poets and playwrights she worshipped.
Clea awoke at eleven, a terrible time. If you had nightmares, eleven was too early to provide a useful buffer from a night of misery, and too late to promise simple sleep. Lucy was gone. She tried to maneuver herself into her chair, a daunting, if not impossible, proposition. She could not turn over at night, worrying that she might end up facedown on a pillow and unable to shift, but sometimes she could find the strength to haul herself out of bed. Moving the covers off her body, she scrutinized her lower legs, wasted-looking, and dragged herself into the chair. The effort took several minutes, in darkness, without support. She wheeled herself into the bathroom and applied the unusual blackberry-colored lipstick and blush he had brought her recently while on a business trip to France. She needed to look her best for tonight. She required feminine courage. She listened for something from the study but if Claude was in there, he was very quiet.
Primed, minutes later, she appeared in the study.
“Hi, you,” Claude said.
“Hi, you, too.” Somehow, he didn't notice she had put herself into her chair. He missed seeing what strength she had, and that, more than anything, had finally decided her. He saw her as weak and helpless and he seemed to love her more daily. She was his weakling patient, his darling small child, vulnerable being.
She had to put a stop to all this… nonsense, even if it broke his heart.
She settled near the fire. She felt tuned. Once, years ago, she had taken speed with an aspiring actor and stayed up all night, clearheaded, doped to the gills, unreal but blazing with sensation. That was how she felt now. The only uncontrollable thing was the way her heart shuddered in Claude's presence these days, never relaxed or steady, ever alert to the tiniest change in the size of his pupils, or the distance between his brows. She didn't know when that had started, but it affected every thing about every day. He came into her placid pond and stirred up a swirling maelstrom.
“Clea,” he said.
Preamble to what? She didn't want to deflect herself from her own thoughts by reading something into his tone. “Um,” she said. “Got any whiskey?”
“Is it okay for you to drink?”
“Das machts nichts,” she said, an old joke they used to share, that's irrelevant, who gives a damn no matter how serious the situation.
He poured her a minuscule whiskey.
“More.”
He poured another dollop.
She picked it up and drank. “Ah, now that's a drink.”
He cleared his throat raucously, something he did more often now, kind of like her old grandpa used to do. Living with her was aging him prematurely. He didn't deserve that.
An image of herself in black stockings and nothing else, Claude astride her, both of them drunk as skunks, music loud, bed rolling on castors across the floor, assaulted her. They hadn't made love properly since before the accident. When she tried to talk about it, he sloughed her off. “I love cuddling,” he would say, his eyes guileless. “It's enough for me.” She didn't know if he believed the kind white lies or merely wanted her to believe them.
She drank some more, letting the liquid ooze down her pipes, heating her insides. “So, you had a good day.”
“Yes.”
He sounded surprised. She didn't know how to get to the topic at hand. Sober and not seriously doped-up at this point, she entertained the brief delusion that he would understand and accept her decision without argument.
“These ladies from Taipei,” he said. “Shit. They do spend. Coming back later in the week, too. They want something exotic. Challenging. I told them I have a new shipment coming in. You have such a nose, Clea. Any suggestions about what might arouse them?”
She wanted to say, we have enough money. You don't have to kowtow to anybody, but the words stuck in her throat. The money was hers. Naturally, he took pride in what little the shop contributed. She put excitement in her voice for his benefit. “Big money?”
“Ummm,” he said, as if savoring a particularly delicious slow-melting chocolate.
The sound unaccountably brought up a moment from the first night they had shared. Confessing to a failed relationship, he had kissed her on the nose. She had wondered what the hell. Why her nose? Endearing, she had decided. A small, touching gesture that reached into her in a way a more expansive move would have pushed her away. Only later did she realize the fundamental nature of the nose in Claude's world, and only now did she see that kiss for what it was, sensorial, not sensual, as mindful as his reaching down to pet a cat.
“Claude?”
“You know what I would like,” he said, reaching over to hold her hand.
“What?”
“Simplicity.”
Before she could react to that mysterious sidetrack, the phone rang.
Claude picked up the phone and looked at the display. “Your doctor.” He pushed the button. “Hello?”
She rolled over and pushed the button down.
“Why'd you do that?”
“Because… I want to talk to you. Right now.”
He put the phone down, looking puzzled but patient.
“Do you remember?” Clea said, getting ready for the next line, which would tell him something was happening, and he didn't know what it was.
Did he, Mr. Claude.
He pulled the lines of his mouth up into a sort of smile. “I remember. All of it.”
The full force of his words stopped the torrent of her thoughts momentarily. They both remembered the good, but how well did Claude recall the bad and the ugly? He seemed to frolic in a yellow glaze of sunshine while her days alternated between gray, the bad, and bloody red, the ugly.
Why was this so hard? “I was going to say, do you remember Lucy said the doctor was trying to call?” she said.
“Oh? Well, we can call him back tomorrow. Unless it's an emergency?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why won't you talk to him?”
She said honestly, “I get so tired of focusing on my health. I like to think I'm normal.”
Sympathy flickered in his eyes. Just what she didn't need. “But… Clea. Darling. Of course.”
“No, you don't understand, do you? I just saw him yesterday, and I'm sick of seeing him and talking to him and chewing over every word he says. All this attention on my body saps me. I want to be strong.”
She could read it in his eyes, the patronizing flicker of pink-cheeked health as he reflected upon her afflictions and the hopelessness of her case. That's the way he saw her, a drowning kitten, helpless in a bag, scratching and biting her way all the way to the mucky bottom of the pond. Hell, sometimes she thought he actually liked her weak! He enjoyed taking the lead and having all the control…
No, stop this, she commanded. You are trying to get yourself mad enough to do this thing you have to do, and it isn't necessary, and it isn't fair. He doesn't deserve this anger. “I've been thinking about us, Claude.”
“It's been so beautiful,” he said, his face suffused. “And I hope you know, my feelings have never changed. In spite of everything that's happened, I love you with all my heart. You believe that, don't you, Clea?”
Oh, this was her fault. She had set herself up for this. To punctuate his statements, he leaned down for a kiss, which she gave without hesitation, leaving a slight berry stain beside his mouth. Then she remembered she hadn't brushed her teeth since the medications she had taken earlier, and how they must smell to him.
Oh, God, she wanted him gone. He made her uglier and more miserable than her circumstances ever could.
“Don't you?” he asked again.
“I do believe it,” she said, “but… Claude, you must know this. You married a different woman. I'll never be the person I was again, no matter what happens to my health from here on out. And sometimes I think… you love her, not me.”
“Silly!” He ruffled her hair. “I love you. Warts and all.”
Another old joke, remarkably ungraceful under the circumstances, but it just pointed out how upset he was by the direction she was taking. His charm was buried behind the urgency of the moment.
Still, she plowed onward. “And your love is so strong, I'm knocked down by it. It's too big for me, the woman I am now. I can't stand up to it.” Literally, she thought, her pulse stuttering. This was the closest she had come to honesty in months, and she felt the gusher ready to pour out a flood of real feelings. With effort, she restrained herself and stopped her mouth.
“You don't have to stand up alone. I'll help you. I'll be with you to the end, Clea. Now, please. Stop these dark thoughts. Have you been taking those antidepressants they prescribed? Because…”
“You've made me so happy, as happy as a man could make a woman. You're a wonderful man.” Damn her traitorous emotions. She jabbed at the tears with a knuckle, continuing in her mind what she found impossible to say: “I find our relationship draining. You hold me up higher than I need to be held, and I pretend, God help me, wishing that I could love you the same. I can't. I'm not capable. We're no good together.”
Too late. He had seen the tears. He licked them like salt, greedily. She could almost see his body puff up with purpose. “I'm here by your side, like always.” He stepped in closer, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Tell you what. Let's talk to your doctor tomorrow and together we'll get things straight, okay?”
“Don't do this…”
“I'm making us some dinner,” he said. “You must be starving. I know I am.” He squeezed her shoulder.
Leave this house, she thought.
If only the strength of her decision could communicate itself through her thoughts, but except with perfumes, where every subtlety registered, Claude was not a sensitive person.
If she had the guts to make the demand, how would he react? She knew. He would be grieved that she could make such a suggestion, then he would suggest calling the doctor sooner, to get a read on where the medicine was failing, because it had to be failing or she could never entertain such thoughts.
And then, if she could make him listen long enough to register that she meant what she said, he would refuse to leave. He couldn't imagine her living without him.
The house belonged to her. She could make him leave legally. She imagined calling the family lawyer, the scenes. Why, they might even call in psychologists, because she must be insane to think she could make it without this loyal, loving man.
And then there was the injury she would inflict on his heart… how could she find the words?
In their shared silence, they both remembered it all.
He plucked the empty glass out of her hand and headed out of the room. “Let me get you some water, darling, to wet down that whiskey. I don't think that was such a good idea. I've got halibut, artichoke, lemons. Sound good? Let's see what other goodies Lucy has stocked for us. Good food will get us back on track.”
She watched his back go and her glass bobbling away.
In the kitchen, rendered immaculate by Lucy, Claude rinsed his mouth, and then his face all the way up to the roots of his hair. That kiss… but, on the whole he felt things had gone rather smoothly. He had said the right words, communicated the heartfelt commitment he felt to her, maybe for the last time. Her tears proved she was with him, entirely with him, as she should be.
He carried a tall glass of ice water in to Clea, handing it to her without a word.
Rooting around in the refrigerator, he found a few things he could use, some fresh herbs that smelled of garden parties, fresh salmon, which smelled of the sea. That would go down even better than halibut. Humming to himself, he grated some bread crumbs, mixed them with dill, rosemary, and a number of other more obscure spices she loved, and set the salmon on to broil. Ordinarily, he would grill the fish, but it was very late. He could see from the bags under her eyes Clea was tired. She would not make it much longer. He wanted this dinner to wow her. He wanted the last image on her eyes to be its beautiful color, its smell to wrap her in all the enticing spices life had to offer. He wanted the last thoughts she had, the last tastes she savored on her tongue, to be his perfect creations.
While the food cooked, he set the table in the dining room very carefully, using the ironed white cloth, the hammered silver candlesticks, the best silver, her family silver. He lined the implements up neatly beside porcelain plates and studied the results. Something missing… out in the backyard, with the help of a flashlight, he discovered a few silver-colored roses drooping on a bush, at that perfect, ripe point in their existence, redolent with the heat and lazy summer days past. He stuck his face in the bouquet and drank their scent before arranging them neatly in a clear glass vase.
“Darling, it's ready,” he announced.
Clea rolled up to the table. “I'm not very hungry,” she said tentatively.
He understood, oh, he did. Overcome by the emotional weight of the moment, she felt unable to carry it. Ignoring her worries, he served up the dinner along with some good gossip, calling up his most entertaining self. She ate hungrily, like someone unable to resist, eyes on him, smiling here and there at his jokes.
He felt satisfied.
She would go to bed full. She would go to bed with all her recent, unsettling foolish notions put to rest, emotionally and psychically fulfilled.
Only one more thing to make a perfect happy ending.
She did as much as she could to prepare herself for bed without his help. She wheeled herself into the accessible shower, a concession to her disability she thought Claude would never accept but which her mother had insisted upon. She brushed her teeth ferociously, but retouched her makeup, remembering nights long ago when she never went to bed without renewing it.
Putting on her easiest nightie she waited for him to help her heave herself onto the left side of the bed.
He splayed an arm there, awaiting her head.
Hell.
Do I open the conversation, or not?
Do I allow the time to pass? Because many nights, in spite of her own obligations, the nurse stayed. Claude paid her enough to stay, stay, stay.
They were not alone so often.
The salmon balled in her stomach like sludge. The salad, made of the freshest ingredients, made her think she might need the bathroom.
She resisted. This fight she could wage. She needed to control things, her digestion, her wasting limbs. Why, lately, she had enjoyed a faint reminder of her old life, when her foot would jerk or a leg would feel tired. She knew the doctor called this “phantom,” and what an apt description that was.
“Claude, are you awake?” She thought she could detect the quiet of his non-sleeping.
“Mmm,” he said.
“Have you ever thought of living without me? How it would be?” Silence. “You could be free again.” No response. She assumed he was listening by the expectant hush of his breath. “You don't have to worry. I would give you money.” This crass reduction of her complicated feelings to words made her cringe with self-disgust. After speaking lines of grandeur and wisdom all her adult life, when it came to providing her own script, she bombed. “I don't mean it that way,” she said. “That's not what I mean. I mean, we've been happy, haven't we? And now, it's time to move on. This is not about me being depressed, or you leaving some feeble woman behind. This is about us moving on, making new lives and new happinesses. Claude?”
She hated him for his silence. Rigid as a plank on the floor she awaited his reaction. Now in the pureness of a dark room, without the distraction of color and light, he could hear her clearly. He could react honestly, without defensiveness.
Nothing.
His breathing was so soft, she must have missed it, the tide rolling in and out. He was asleep.
She reached over his chest and spread a hand over it. Usually, that was enough to wake him. But nothing changed. She couldn't remember. Did he drink more than usual tonight? Yes. Well, it had been a long day.
She felt very alone. She lay in the dark with her eyes open, drowning in the bottomless well of her unhappiness. How could she put herself through another day like today, waiting to speak? Then the delicious dinner wine worked on her, and the blackness of the room deepened. She dreamed about the waterfall, the one she didn't recall in real life. She dreamed of falling.
Claude drank orange juice, unsettled. His idea of the final act had been quite different from the reality. He remembered falling asleep to a murmuring, like a bedtime story being told, words slipping over him like a refreshing breeze from the window. About four in the morning, when no one was up to hear, and nobody did anything but dream dreams bad and good, he awakened, picked up one of her pillows, placed it gently over her face, and pushed down.
How she struggled.
How she fought.
She tried to scream, and he heard cries like a mewling baby's through the feathers.
Witch.
She had never, ever, been easy.
In the morning, after he awoke on the couch in the study from the stupor that had overtaken him, he peeked in on her.
Eyes closed but without tremor.
Skin, once translucent, a blue-white opaque.
Unmoving.
The smell-actually, he had feared that the most, that there would be something putrid happening by morning. How long did it take? He thanked his lucky stars that the night was chill, and her death seemed storybook and odorless.
He could not bring himself to touch her or to get too close. He thought he sensed just the tiniest bit of deterioration. Before bed, he had noticed she smelled of the perfume, Entracte, he had had specially formulated for her as a gift years ago, an aromatic citrus-herbal mix of jasmine, cardamom, tangerine, and cedar moss. He would never again sell that perfume in his store. What a perversion that would be, to sell the smell of her death.
After the juice, he felt the need for coffee. He drank deeply.
She slept like the baby they never had, he decided. She slept peacefully, in the full knowledge of his love.
He picked up the phone. Weirdly, there was no dial tone. In fact, he heard a sound of waiting.
“Hello?” he said.
“Did you try to call me?” an amazed voice asked.
“Who is this?” he said.
“Dr. Bartholomew.”
“Clea's doctor?”
“Yes. I'm out of town and…”
“You've been trying to reach us.”
“Yes.”
“You must have called just when I picked up the phone. Strange, it didn't ring.”
“You're Clea's husband? You're Claude?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I'm glad we're in touch because…”
“I'm so sorry. I don't have time to talk to you right this second,” Claude said.
The word the doctor uttered sounded like the outcome of an unexpected punch.
“I need to make another call. It's urgent. Sorry.”
“No-” said the doctor. But Claude hung up.
Claude called the emergency number, watched the ambulance arrive, smelled antiseptics along with the soapy clean of uniforms. “Can you save her?” he asked, watching them carry her out, confident that they couldn't.
“We'll see, sir,” they said. “Now please, make way.”
Standard response to a dead body, Claude realized, stepping out of their path. Don't fry the relatives with news that will change the outcome of their lives. “She doesn't look good,” he noted for the record. “Please tell me she won't die!”
He watched the emergency technician figure out what to say next. They told him not to lose hope and advised him to follow them to the hospital in his car. He told them he couldn't come immediately, he was too shaken. He would come along later. The hospital will be in touch, they said kindly. Get someone else to drive you, okay?
Instead, he made toast and sliced a grapefruit. She would never come back. The one great love affair of his life was over. He had a good cry, saying good-bye to her, whispering last words of love. Oh, Clea.
He avoided making calls to relatives and family, unable to face their suffering. He didn't answer any calls until late afternoon when he felt he could muster appropriate responses. He almost didn't answer then, but Lucy had shown up, pitching a fit when he had to fire her without notice, and he wanted the distraction, so when the phone rang in the middle of her harangue, he picked up, expecting a sepulchral voice verifying Clea's death.
“Claude?”
Shock ran through him like a ragged shard of glass. “Who is this?” he asked. He waved Lucy out of the room and shut the door in her face.
The voice was weak, but undeniably hers. “It's Clea.”
Speechless, he sat down in the desk chair, feet on the ground, one hand clutching the desk for support. “Clea? But… they took you away. I thought…”
“Can you come get me, please?”
Clea hung up the phone. Claude had thought she was dead. To all appearances, she had been. The doctors said she had survived a massive asthma attack. When she stopped breathing at one point, her heart had stopped, but they had somehow miraculously managed to revive her. Now that the attack had been controlled with medication, she could go on, out of danger for now. They advised her to see her own doctor as soon as he returned from his vacation, and to keep her inhaler close by in the bedside table.
She did not remember the asthma attack. When she thought back to the moment when everything stopped for her, she saw Claude's face hovering above her, then the pressure over her face, a pillow pressing down.
A nightmare?
Had she filled that consoling, longed-for peace with this-hideous manifestation? Did she create this evil being out of her resentment of Claude's pity and kindness to her?
Tubes up her nose and a needle in her arm, she told no one about these images. Once she regained her sense of equilibrium and was breathing normally, they removed their equipment and said she could go when she felt ready. She let a couple of hours go by while she reflected. Should she revisit their past together, reinterpreting? Were his kisses obligations, his eyelid twitches, the ones she thought were his way of controlling his pity, cringes? Was the past year all lies and betrayals? Had he tried to kill her the previous night?
She was filled with disbelief, even horror, at her suspicions. Should she believe the evidence of her own senses or had her psyche become as frail as her body? She pondered telling the doctors about these dark thoughts, even imagined a conversation with the police. They might not believe her. She didn't believe herself. Should she subject herself and Claude to outside scrutiny, and perhaps misunderstanding? No.
Did Claude want her dead? The idea bounced around, bruising everything inside her. He would be happy to control the money at last. He would know the doctors would put her death down to natural causes, asthma or some other health problem.
If she had died, he would have gone on living without her. The women would flock to console him, because he would mourn her deeply. He would convince himself that he had loved her dearly, to the end, then tell himself her death was for the best. Yes, that was Claude. He saw her deteriorating. Her face, once lean, was now bloated, porcine, from the steroids. Her body, well, no need to make comparisons. They were obvious. He probably thought she hated herself as much as he must hate her.
What an eligible widower he would make, with his charm and her money.
What perfidy, these traitorous thoughts. He had been nothing but kind, and this was how she repaid him, with doubt, suspicion.
Fear assailed her, confusion.
Swallowing water, letting the cool liquid flow into her living body, hoping for cleansing, the dark moment returned.
Pillow pressing down on her face. Those eyes of his, gleaming, black as a raven's. Breath gone, agitated heart stopping… Yes. Clea's eyes squeezed shut, her mouth trembled. He would certainly try again.
Claude made quite a fuss over Clea's homecoming. Lavish flower arrangements graced every vase, and he had only the warmest, murmuring, loving things to say. He wanted a quick bite, then bed, but she nixed the idea. “I have chores.”
“Leave them to Lucy,” he said. But she wheeled into the kitchen and began wiping the counters.
Well, let her squander her last moments on trivia, Claude thought, stomping out of the kitchen. So be it. Ignoring the ringing telephone, he sat down with the newspaper, aware he would try to kill her again that very night, but not obsessing over the fact. Why drag things out? So the first attempt ended badly-so what? Clea was a ghost to him now. The decision had already been made; she was as good as dead. There in the study, considering his options, rather worn out from the ordeal of the past night and day, he waited for the phone to stop ringing and ordered take-out Thai for dinner. Clea loved sesame noodles.
“I've been a good wife to you, haven't I?” Clea spoke these words after dinner, gazing across a candle at him, decaf coffee untouched before her.
Actually, Claude felt miffed. Clea had eaten almost nothing. She had, in fact, been terribly nice all evening. She made things so difficult, with her capricious moods. He had a simple plan for the night. He would use her very own suicide stash of pills, oh, yes, he had found those long ago. He would crumble them into a hot bedtime drink, and she would go peacefully to sleep. No need to go through that awful struggle of the last attempt this time, or a reprieving vomit. He would prevent nasty surprises by using enough to slay a horse. Confronted with an overdose, he would admit to her serious depression, and he would not admit knowledge of the extra pills. Lucy would confirm Clea's previous suicide attempts.
“Clea, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. You always have been. You always will be,” Claude said, tired of saying this sort of thing, but rallying for one more try.
She nodded. She must be satisfied with the sentiment.
Lucy had left a few hours before, with a malevolent glance in the direction of Clea's room. “She's alive. What a miracle. How we should thank God.” The words held a cold affect of which he did not approve. He wondered if Lucy would regret her attitude tomorrow.
“You've had it hard, Claude,” Clea now said. “You've never liked involving yourself in the running of a household, have you? I guess you were raised that way.”
Oh, why did she have to get into this now, too late? Why not spend these final hours in calm realms beyond the irritating day-to-day? “No,” he said firmly. “Everything about us is right.” He approved of the statement, so simple, so encapsulating.
“Sure it is,” she said.
In the study, post-dinner, she offered him a brandy, insisting on getting the bottle and pouring it herself, refusing his offer of help. She poured two glasses, and took one. “You used to love brandy,” she said. “Remember how we danced the tango, and how drunk you were, and how I fell to the floor when you let go?”
He laughed obligingly, hating the reminder of himself at another time in another state of mind. He drank the brandy, mindful of these final statements. Would he spend the rest of his life going over this evening? He thought not, but you never knew.
“Tell me this, Claude,” she said, fixing steady eyes on him.
Her insatiable needs hurtled toward him once again, too fast, and he felt suddenly shot with fear. He would be glad never to see those beady eyes open on him again. “What is it, darling?”
“Have you ever sorted one load of laundry in your life?”
He had to laugh.
What an ending to their six years of love and trial. He had expected more of her, he really had.
The funeral home had wanted to know, did she want a graveside ceremony or something more traditional? Did he wish to be remembered some other way?
She instructed them, and went all the way down to the city cemetery to pick a discreet granite gravestone, paying with a check from her own account.
On this day, the day Claude would be buried, she arrived early, wanting it all to go without a hitch. His family, the French and the American sides, wailed like people in a melodrama when they saw the casket hovering above the hole. His friends and acquaintances, mostly lovely customers, were even less restrained in their mourning.
While a priest who had never known Claude eulogized him, book in hand, Dr. Bartholomew drooped a weighty arm upon her shoulder.
“So especially sad,” he whispered, “considering the circumstances.”
Clea heaved an appropriate sigh, thinking about how hard it had been, crushing so many pills, mixing them in the brandy.
“I'll always feel just a little at fault,” the doctor went on. “Please forgive me for asking, but I understand he left a note. Why would a man like him, in his prime, take his own life?”
She examined the doctor's face for suspicion, but saw only a disturbed sadness in it. “Apparently,” she paused to choke the words with emotions she did not feel, “he felt terrible about some rather serious business losses. He had hidden so much from everyone for a long time.” Handy, her acting ability. Handy, her signing all those letters for all those years. His signature on the suicide note, and his motives had not been questioned. If the police even once suspected her condition had anything to do with her husband's unfortunate death, they had generously kept it to themselves.
“I've been calling,” the doctor said, looking strangely relieved, as if he, too, found the contents of the note reassuring. He put a hand to his beard and pulled. “Why didn't you call back?”
“What does it matter now?”
“Because I don't get many patients like you. Patients who survive a fall like that.” He cleared his throat. “I imagined you might be our spokesperson. Yours is such a success story. That kind of injury to the back, well, there's not usually such a stunning outcome.”
The priest had stopped talking. People threw flowers on the casket. Clea, admiring the pretty colors and the largesse of the splashy bouquets, barely registered his comments.
“I mean, usually patients like you die or otherwise screw up. It's not easy to adjust to such massive injury when you're so young.”
“I feel myself going downhill,” Clea said, sure of herself. “Do I have long to live? Am I dying?”
The doctor started. “What?” he said. “Not at all.”
“Doctor, there's no room in my life for pretending anymore. I'm getting worse. There's such pain, more every day. My emotional problems are affecting me physically. Although I've been pretending to myself that I am a strong person because I've needed that to go on, in reality, I feel less physically able every day.”
“You don't know?” he said, shaking his head. “You really don't know? I hoped maybe you suspected. I thought you refused my phone calls because you needed time to adjust to the thought.”
Clea squelched her irritation with the man. No wonder she had avoided his calls.
“I tried calling to tell you the results of our last tests. Remember? You complained of phantom pain in your paralyzed legs.”
“Yes.”
“Well, although some pain is normal, yours seemed exceptional, and the fact that you described it as growing… I had my suspicions, which I didn't share, but I needed to do some more sophisticated analyses. You remember the most recent round of tests? I believe you found them rather grueling. I'm sorry about that. I guess you suffered. But the results were so astonishing… I wish I could have told you earlier. I regret your husband never knew…”
“Astonishing?”
“You're in full recovery,” the doctor said flatly. “You're a textbook case of spontaneous recovery. The pain you feel in your limbs? Part of the healing process. Your limbs aren't permanently paralyzed. You were laid up for such a long time, there was some debasement in your functioning that will take a lot of physical therapy to overcome.”
“But… my legs don't do what I want them to do! I can't even move them!” Clea cried.
“Now that you know you can, it will be easier, I promise. I expect great progress from here on out. I didn't want to confirm with you until I was sure. I guess it wouldn't have changed what has happened. Life's so unfair. I'm so sorry about your loss.”
The doctor stepped back as two men took hold of the ropes that kept the coffin aboveground and lowered it until it hovered just above the neat dirt hole. Clea concentrated, watching as Claude descended, feeling regret, not for his death, but for the months they had both wasted. Someday, she would reminisce about the good times, she hoped, but in the meanwhile, she had to admit it: her husband's absence left her lighter. Her heart beat steady and strong, her breath came in long, refreshing draughts.
She smelled earth. Expecting something rancid at the scene of a burial, she was pleasantly surprised by a scent like one in their garden, a piquant freshness.
As the men paused, everyone stepped forward for a last good-bye before the coffin would be lowered below the surface. She tossed a silver rose at Claude, inhaling the clean, grass-perfumed air. She needed to move on, and something about the day, the clear air, its sweetness, suggested just the scent to enthrall the Asian ladies Claude had said would be coming back, her favorite, Entracte. Cheeky and green, like today, and so perfect because, although only today could she fully appreciate this, her life with Claude had been an interlude, hadn't it? Only that. She would call the shopgirl with advice as soon as she got home.
So many flowers decked his coffin, all kinds, carnations, gardenias, roses, lilies, some in fussy arrangements, many flung loose, too many scents intermixed, so untrue to Claude.
Could the doctor be right? she wondered, gazing one last time upon the mahogany box that held her husband's cold body. Could she be getting better? The idea was so big, she couldn't approach it with anything less than staggered wonder. She rolled in closer as the coffin paused, half in, half out. She looked down at her thin leg. She commanded her foot.
The kick, as slight as a twitch, left a smudge on the satiny wood. Then someone pulled her wheelchair back, but she was still watching, fascinated, as the curtain fell.