The War Of The Roses Part 10

'No,' she said cautiously. 'I'm also a fighter for the things I want.' But he ignored her, still focusing on the cause of his animosity.

'She's just being ornery. A b.i.t.c.h,' he said. 'Maybe it was there all the time. This meanness. But I was too stupid to see it.' He shook his head. 'I can't get rid of the anger. It's like a perpetual flame. Every time I think about it I get mad. Mad at myself. Mad at Goldstein, as if it were his fault that he's putting me through this. Mad at Thurmont because I know the b.a.s.t.a.r.d is advising her. Mad at my kids for not taking my side.' He looked at her.

'Mostly I'm mad at myself for not having been what I thought I was.'

'You're too hard on yourself, Oliver.'

'My ego died a few months ago.' He turned away, and she saw the mist in his eyes. She moved toward him and embraced his head, kissing his hair. She felt motherly, incestuous. Opening her robe, she moved her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to his mouth.

'Let me love' you,' she begged, knowing he was beyond resisting, aching for comfort.

Her cheeks felt hot and the alcohol had rushed to her head. His body shook with sobs.

'Cry, darling,' she urged, caressing him. She felt the power of her womanhood as she reached for his organ, caressing it, undressing him.

'You're beautiful,' she said. He stood up and the joy of seeing him made her s.h.i.+ver with pleasure. Kneeling before him, she kissed him there. His response was immediate.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered.

She drew him down to the couch and snuggled beside him. They lay together, hardly moving. She listened to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

'Thank you,' he said when he stirred again.

He opened the armoire and grabbed a vodka bottle by the neck. Then, taking her hand, he led her up the stairs to his room. She had never been inside it since he had moved into it.

The room was dusty and had a foul, musky odor. It was in complete disarray, with files and papers strewn over all available surfaces. She saw a hot plate on the open desk of the Hepplewhite secretaire and unwashed dishes on the j.a.panned commode. Liquor bottles, some half filled, lay about the room. He caught her expression of distaste.

'What did you expect?'

She embraced him, hoping to soothe him. But he broke away and picked up a Staffords.h.i.+re figure that stood next to the dirty dishes.

'Queen Victoria,' he said, pointing to the figure. 'Like my life, I guess. A forgery. We got stung in Atlantic City. I keep it around to remind me of my stupidity.'

His tone was ominous and she wondered if she had contributed to his mood. She watched his eyes sweep the room.

'Look what's become of my life,' he snapped.

'It'll pa.s.s, Oliver,' she said lamely. But he was not to be placated.

'I have to hide all my personal records in here. I don't want her to overvalue the house. I've had to research all the receipts and insurance estimates. What a waste of time and energy.'

He brought two tumblers in from the bathroom, poured some vodka, then opened the window and brought in a carton of orange juice. He poured some into the tumblers.

He had spent long hours locked in this room. She had been curious about what he did there, and once she had listened at the door. There was no television set. Few books. It struck her as more of an animal's lair than a man's room. Among the odors she picked out was Benny's doggy smell, noting that he had somehow followed them into the room and now lay sprawled on an Art Deco rug beside the bed. Its beige background was stained, dirty.

She went to the bathroom, complete with bidet, which she used, mirrored walls, marble floors, and gold-plated plumbing fixtures. This room, too, was a mess. .

'I'm not much of a housekeeper,' he said when Ann came out. 'I haven't had much practice. My generation depended too much on women.'

'What about the maid?'

'I won't even let her in here. Barbara's ally.' He looked at her strangely. 'You think I'm paranoid?'

The question seemed aggressive and she ignored it, sitting on the high bed.

'So what are you going to do with your life, Ann?' he asked suddenly, as if dismissing his own gloomy thoughts.

'Jefferson is my life for the present,' she mumbled. I'd like to be included m yours, she told him silently.

He looked at her kindly and touched her bare shoulder.

'You're a gift, Ann. A gift to the children. A special gift to me.'

Barbara had offered grat.i.tude as well and it pained her now. She felt a sense of her inferiority, but dared not ask him for comparisons.

'I'm not just giving, Oliver. I'm taking, also.'He stopped caressing her. 'Now you sound like her.'

She felt a wave of panic. She had acquired a sense of independence and a posture of equality. It did not seem queer to voice her affection in those terms. She saw the gap now. He was of a different generation, with a different way of looking at women. So that's it, she decided, feeling odd waves of insight, as well as a sense of alliance with Barbara.

'n.o.body wants to be dependent anymore,' he said gloomily. 'Whatever happened to man the hunter, man the protector?'

'Some people just don't accept the idea of males being lord and master anymore.'

'I wasn't, really. We were a team. I was supportive of all her attempts at independence. How could I have known that the b.i.t.c.h was lying to me all those years? It was an act.' His features became rigid. 'Maybe this is an act as well.' He pouted.

'It's no act,' she said, determined to overlook his anger.

'I'm a little wary of the sincerity of women.' He sighed.

'Now you're generalizing,' she replied sensibly, scolding} yet trying to keep an air of lightness between them.

'Maybe so,' he agreed. 'I haven't known too many women. And the one woman I thought I knew I didn't know at all. That's what bugs me the most, the imprecision of my understanding of her, of what she was feeling and thinking all those years.' He looked at Ann, then gave a sigh of resignation. 'I don't think I'll ever again be able to believe what a woman tells me, or shows me.'

'I can understand that,' Ann said. 'We're a clandestine gender. Lots of dirty little secrets that we've been conditioned to suppress.'

'So have men,' he replied quickly.

'Well, then, now that we understand each other . ..' She reached out to him and drew him to her. They made love slowly, tenderly, with less greed and transience than before. This time he did not preempt the act. Finally, he rolled over and lay beside her, their fingers locked together. Turning toward him, she watched his eyelids flutter.

'There is one thing,' she whispered. 'Why the house? Why? Considering that the family has already been split apart. It's only a thing. And all the possessions inside it are things. Why all the pain over the house?'

His eyelids fluttered open.

'A thing? You don't understand. It's the whole world. Why should I let her take the whole world with her?'

'But it's also part of her world,' Ann said gently.'It can't be shared any longer. Not like this.''Then why don't you simply sell it and split the value?'

'I'm willing to give her half the value. I paid for it. My brains. My sweat. Christ' Christ'

He was frowning and she had the impression he was talking by rote, like an actor going over his lines in rehearsal. Suddenly he stopped talking and was staring at something on top of the bed canopy.

'What is it, Oliver?' she asked. He moved leisurely from the bed and crossed the room. Slowly, with quiet deliberation, he moved a chair to a corner of the room and stood on it. He was naked and the act seemed odd and incongruous. She lifted herself on one elbow to observe him, but before she could speak he shook his head and put a finger to his lips. Stretching, he peered over the canopy's side, then stepped down again. He took a robe from the closet.

With a ringer still on his lips, he quietly opened the door and went into the corridor. By then she was too curious to stay and she followed him into Eve's room, which was next to his. Ignoring her, he kneeled and began to feel along the baseboard. Then, finding a wire, he traced it along the side of one of Eve's bookcases. It snaked through a tiny hole near the floor.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' he muttered, crawling, following the wire. It led from Eve's room, along the baseboard of the corridor, then upward again, to the window overlooking the garden. He bounded down the back stairs. She followed quickly behind him. He was lost in concentration. She watched him select a big knife from the wooden box on the kitchen island. Curiosity gave way to fright. She hung back in the shadows while he pa.s.sed in front of her again and slowly opened the door to the garden.

When it was fully opened he sprang out and, crouching, ran across the yard to the garage, flinging open the back door. She heard noises, groans, then silence. A light was switched on,, bathing the quiet garden in a yellowish haze.

Disregarding the cold, she padded along the moist gra.s.s to the garage window. What she saw choked a scream in her throat. Oliver had a knife to a man's throat. He was a little man in gla.s.ses, pale and frightened. She could see the indentation where the knife point pinched the skin.

He drew the man alongside a beige van, with an open side door, through which she could see lighted television screens and tape-recording equipment. Barbara had taken her station wagon and the van was parked in its place. Next to it was Eve's Honda and beside that, encased in its cover, Oliver's Ferrari.

She saw the two men disappear into the van through the side door.

Then she saw the tape reels come cras.h.i.+ng out of the van, unraveling on the cement garage floor. The man was screeching in protest. When they emerged again, Oliver held the man in a hammerlock, the knife pressed to his throat.

'. . . just doing my job,' she heard the man cackle in fear. Oliver said nothing. A vein palpitated in his forehead. She had never seen him in this state.

Squinting into the glare of the naked garage bulb, viewing this sense of repressed rage and violence, she saw everything in isolation, without connection to herself. Oliver removed the knife point from the man's neck and looked into the cab of the van. From its seat he grabbed an object, which Ann recognized as Barbara's electronic door opener. He looked at it for a moment, shrugged, then pointed it toward the heavy door, which opened with a rumble. Then he ordered the man into the driver's seat. The motor of the van caught and accelerated. A cloud of exhaust filled the air as it backed out of the garage. Reversing quickly, it headed full speed down the alley.

But as it moved, tires squealing on the asphalt, a shattering scream rent the air, a sound of deep pain. The van did not stop, but the sound had shocked Ann into movement and she ran along the gravel path around the garage, ignoring the sharp pain on her bare feet. Oliver was standing over something, a still, black shape.

'The son of a b.i.t.c.h has run over Mercedes,' Oliver said, and knelt beside the dead animal.

The events were jumbled in her mind. She was frightened and the distorted, broken animal made her suddenly nauseated and she had a spasm of dry heaves.

'Serves the b.i.t.c.h right,' Oliver muttered. She could not recognize his voice. He stabbed his knife into the air and, winding up like a baseball pitcher, flung it into the darkness.

He sent Ann up to her own room and spent the next few hours dismantling the television equipment and removing the wire. Then he smashed the camera with a sledgehammer and threw the pieces into the kitchen garbage compactor. When everything was sufficiently flattened, he carted the refuse out to the trash cans in the alley.

He had worked in a sustained rage, unthinking, not conscious of his actions. As the heat of anger abated he felt himself unstiffen. His mind began to clear and his reason returned.

Stripping the cover off his Ferrari and removing the fibergla.s.s top, he climbed in, felt the cool leather, and breathed deeply, savoring its aroma. Opening the glove compartment, he removed the key, placed it in the ignition, and flicked it. The eight cylinders caught almost immediately and the engine purred, soothing him.

It was a toy, really, but it gave him pleasure and he mothered it like a baby, changing its plugs, keeping it s.h.i.+ned and covered. It was three years old, a work of art, and he knew its value was appreciating rapidly. Fifty thousand dollars' worth of car.

Perhaps, he thought, he should take this one acknowledged personal possession and ride off into the night, a lone cowboy, in search of new adventures, a new life, leaving the old behind. Me and my little red Ferrari, he thought, feeling the wheel, the close, warm security of the tight driver's seat. He stepped on the accelerator, listening to the satisfying whisper of the 205-horsepower engine. A 3,200-pound magic carpet.

Finally, reality intruded. He remembered Mercedes. Surely Barbara was responsible for its death. He climbed out of the Ferrari and shoved the cat into a plastic bag. Putting the crushed body into the seat beside him, he carefully backed the car out and sped over the darkened streets. The wind felt good, relaxing him. Momentarily forgetting the incident, he let himself merge with the. Ferrari's power, savoring the sense of freedom. An escape. When he reached Memorial Bridge, he stopped, grabbed the neck of the plastic bag, and flung it into the Potomac River.

By disposing of Mercedes, he a.s.sured himself, he would spare the children any embarra.s.sment over their mother's wanton act. She had used their child's room for her filthy spying. That was a crime worse than the spying itself, a disgusting act. It was no wonder that Mercedes had been killed. It was retribution. Let them think the cat was lost.

When he returned, he tucked in the Ferrari. Then he gathered up the tapes and burned them in the library fireplace. Nixon should have done this, he thought, watching the plastic curl and turn quickly to ashes. He wished it were Barbara.

At seven in the morning he called Goldstein and told him what had happened.

'Meet me at the delicatessen on Grubb Road,' Goldstein said, responding to Oliver's agitation. 'We'll put some Jewish soul food in you. It will calm you down.'

Goldstein was waiting in a booth, smearing globs of cream cheese on a dark brown bagel, on which he then placed two strips of Nova Scotia lox. His mouth was full and he pointed to a platter on the other side of the table.

'I want to take her to court. Invasion of privacy. Something. Anything.'

Goldstein continued to chew without pause. 'Well, what you intend to do about it?' 'I'm thinking.' 'You're eating.'

'You think it's impossible to eat and think at the same time?'

'Nothing's impossible.'

Goldstein quickly finished all the food on his plate and lit a cigar.

'Now I'm finished thinking,' he said, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. Goldstein puffed again and began to speak.

'The strategy was as follows. Remember the objective. The house. The whole house. To make their case better, they want you out. Anyhow, any way. They catch you red-handed with the governess -'

'Not really a governess. Sort of an au pair au pair girl.' Oliver was surprised at his odd defensiveness, as if he wanted to raise her in his own esteem. girl.' Oliver was surprised at his odd defensiveness, as if he wanted to raise her in his own esteem.

'But involved with the children.''You might say that.'

'I did say that. They go to the judge and say you have been shtupping shtupping their child's governess. You are an unfit father, a moral threat to the children. their child's governess. You are an unfit father, a moral threat to the children. Shtupping Shtupping her under their noses, so to speak. Such an immoral action is dangerous to the children's welfare, et cetera, et cetera. They get an injunction. You go. The governess goes. You're finally out of the house.' her under their noses, so to speak. Such an immoral action is dangerous to the children's welfare, et cetera, et cetera. They get an injunction. You go. The governess goes. You're finally out of the house.'

'It's ruthless. She's an innocent.''Sounds to me she's not so innocent.'

'I don't mean that. She's only a bystander. She doesn't have to be hit with a bag of s.h.i.+t.'

'Anybody within spitting distance of a divorce gets slopped with it. It can't be helped. Don't be such a dummy. Your lovely wife set you up. Leaving you alone in the house with a young, attractive girl. Am I right?'

'Yes.''You are a s.e.xually deprived man, right?'

Oliver pointed a finger directly at Goldstein's chest. 'That's entrapment. I want her in court.'

'You want to have the gumshoe testify. Then what's-her-name. And the press comes. Before you know it, it's the plot for a p.o.r.nographic movie. You want to subject your kids to that?'

Oliver looked down at his plate of lox, cream cheese, and bagels. His stomach turned. He reached into his pocket for a Maalox and popped one into his mouth.

'Anyway, you destroyed the evidence. So they have nothing to go on. It was their move and they blew it.' Goldstein looked covetously at Oliver's plate. He pointed with the cigar. 'You gonna have that?' Oliver pushed the plate toward him and Goldstein began to eat.

'The inhumanity of human beings depresses me. And when I get depressed, I eat.' Goldstein sighed through a full mouth, raising his shoulders to fill his lungs with air. Oliver waited for him to swallow. The process seemed interminable.

'It is a kind of theater of the absurd.' Oliver sighed. 'They do it with technology. Gadgets. Divorce is now show business. Nothing is sacred anymore.'

'Only marriage is sacred. Not divorce.'

Goldstein's philosophical homilies tried his patience. He is practicing his ex-profession on me, Oliver thought, realizing that Goldstein's self-image was a far cry from the stubby little man with drooping eyelids, heavy jowls, and a paunch like an inflated balloon under his pants. He wore his pants high, a black leather belt strapped around what seemed to be his chest. Naked, Oliver speculated, he must look like an overstuffed cherub.

'When you talk like that, I have to look behind you to see if you sprouted wings,' Oliver said. He knew Goldstein was winding up for a sermon.

'You can destroy the legal basis for the family,' he began. 'But the biological basis lives on. Thurmont has no regard for the human equation. Ess iss nisht gut fur der kinder. Ess iss nisht gut fur der kinder. It is not good for the children. A It is not good for the children. A shanda. shanda. A shame.' Goldstein shook his head; his bald pate glistened beneath the overhead lights. 'My advice now is as follows.' He paused, drew in his breath. He saw himself, Oliver was certain, as Moses the lawgiver coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets clutched to his breast. 'Ignore it. It never happened. They tried. They lost. If she doesn't bring it up, you don't bring it up. I'll talk to Thurmont. If someone brings it up, the children get involved. If the children get involved, they'll try to show you're a bad influence, which is what they tried to do in the first place.' A shame.' Goldstein shook his head; his bald pate glistened beneath the overhead lights. 'My advice now is as follows.' He paused, drew in his breath. He saw himself, Oliver was certain, as Moses the lawgiver coming down from Mount Sinai with the tablets clutched to his breast. 'Ignore it. It never happened. They tried. They lost. If she doesn't bring it up, you don't bring it up. I'll talk to Thurmont. If someone brings it up, the children get involved. If the children get involved, they'll try to show you're a bad influence, which is what they tried to do in the first place.'