Another You Read online

  At the station house, Marshall drank a cup of lukewarm coffee. He was simultaneously videotaped and tape-recorded, while the blond cop took notes in shorthand and his partner asked every third question. Marshall was tormented about how much to say, how much to tell them about Livan Baker and whatever McCallum’s involvement had been with her. He was surprised to see how withholding he could become; he volunteered nothing, half out of sympathy with McCallum, who might be dying as he sat in the station house talking to the cops, half because he felt sure the cops would do nothing to clarify matters for him, and he thought now, deep down, that McCallum had been telling the truth, that Livan Baker’s involvement with McCallum had been far less than she claimed.

  The questions they asked him were easy to answer, though they zigzagged backward and forward in time so that eventually he began to assume there must be some underlying logic to the way they pitched the questions that he didn’t understand—or were they trying to get him to reveal something besides his own genuine confusion?

  McCallum appeared at the house while he was out on an errand?

  Out getting milk.

  What year had he met McCallum?

  Whatever year he was hired.…

  How would he characterize his personal relationship with McCallum?

  Oh, as a colleague. You know: bantering. He had trouble with his wife, trouble at home.

  Trouble at home.

  The wife was pregnant and McCallum didn’t seem pleased by that.

  How well did he know McCallum’s wife?

  Oh, not at all. Not … perhaps he’d seen her across a room.

  What time did he leave the house that morning?

  Nine-thirty.

  And he had gone out on an errand the night before to get—

  To get milk. Sonja was showing some prospective clients a house; I realized we were low on milk, Marshall filled in, surprised that he felt slightly giddy, an odd mixture of pleasure at pleasing, filling in the spaces, saying something informative: the good student still. Yet he also feared that his nervousness was apparent. He felt himself shifting in the chair, shifting more than someone ordinarily would, when informing people he’d gone out for milk. Well: they didn’t need to know anything about Cheryl Lanier. He could forget Cheryl Lanier. Whom he had dropped off at that house, glowing in the darkness, after she had said that she wanted to spend the night with friends, after he had pulled her close to him in the car. I’m sorry?

  The question was repeated: his wife had been home, she said, for a couple of hours with McCallum.

  Yes, Sonja got stuck with consoling him for quite a while.… He saw the trap: he could not have been getting milk for two hours. Maybe it seemed to her that she talked to him for two hours; probably she didn’t talk to him for two hours.

  “An hour,” the cop said, shrugging. Helping him along. But not believing him. He did not think the cop believed him any longer. He could remember the way his skin felt against the smooth skin of Cheryl Lanier’s cheek, smell Cheryl’s minty shampoo in the chicory-scented steam from the fresh cup of coffee he had just been handed. He was being asked if McCallum had ever stopped by his house before. This did not seem a good question to answer no to.

  I think he meant to, but he never really …

  To clarify: he left at nine-thirty a.m. and McCallum was sleeping?

  Sonja said he was sleeping. This was ridiculous; why were his words suddenly being spoken skeptically? It was true: Sonja had said he was sleeping, they had both gone off, leaving him there. Of course he had been there. What did they think, that his wife had crept in and stabbed him when they were still in the house and they’d heard nothing? McCallum was sleeping in the guest bedroom, he and Sonja went off to work. This was factually true, and a quite simple matter to understand. What was he supposed to do, rouse the man and make him leave, just because they were leaving? It wasn’t as if McCallum were going to loot the house. Not as if he didn’t know the man at all.

  If he had met Mrs. McCallum, it might have been at some large social gathering? Something at the college?

  This was difficult to focus on, because he had already said—hadn’t he?—that he had not met her, that there was a slight possibility he had seen her across a room, but truly: he had no recollection of McCallum’s wife, though the policemen’s questioning had made him suddenly imagine her in their house, and as he saw her, she was a tall, brown-haired woman—a woman who must be carrying a knife.

  Quite frankly, I have no memory of ever having been introduced. Someone may have pointed her out at a department party, or something like that.

  His wife said she did not know Mrs. McCallum either. Therefore, they were only McCallum’s friends.

  You know, I don’t mean to imply that my wife and I are close friends of McCallum. He must have felt close to us—or at least that we’d be sympathetic listeners. You know—to come to the house at all.

  Mrs. McCallum said you all knew one another.

  You believe a crazy woman who just tried to stab her husband to death?

  Two different viewpoints: two people saying they didn’t know her, she maintaining that she knows them rather well.

  I don’t know how I can demonstrate that I, we, don’t know her, but the fact is, if I’ve ever met the woman, which I doubt, it would have been so unremarkable that I have absolutely no memory of that.

  Therefore, there would not be any possibility that either he or Sonja knew that she had murderous intentions toward her husband?

  No.

  Also, in the one or two hours during which he was buying milk, he did not cross paths with Mrs. McCallum or in any way contact Mrs. McCallum?

  Well, I … I spoke to her on the phone.

  She called?

  I called.

  What time was this?

  Oh, nine o’clock, probably. I called from a pay phone outside a convenience store. Because he’d been upset when last I saw him. Because of troubles in his marriage, as we now know. So …

  So what?

  Wanted to see if he was okay. Friendly concern.

  This was at what time?

  Eight. Nine.

  Your wife thought that you returned home about ten-thirty.

  What are you suggesting?

  I’m trying to get an accurate time frame on everyone’s movements the night before the attempted murder. Let me ask: You thought to call from this convenience store instead of from your house?

  I wondered how he was doing.

  Okay. This is at what time?

  This is ridiculous. Am I under suspicion? I’ll need to call a lawyer. Are you saying I’m suspected of—what? McCallum’s wife confesses to stabbing him, and you suspect me of stabbing him, or something?

  I’m still back at the convenience store. You phone him at eight or nine p.m., speak to his wife, though you don’t really know his wife, then speak to him. Then time has to elapse before you find him in your living room, because your wife spends one or two hours talking to him, which would mean they sit down together at eight-thirty or nine-thirty, if we assume your wife is correct about your returning at ten-thirty. What I’m getting at is that McCallum isn’t Superman, this we know, so if you’re speaking to him at eight or nine, by your wife’s account, he would already be in your living room. You’ve gone out to buy … what was it?

  Two-percent milk.

  Much healthier to drink low-fat milk. I’m a very literal-minded kind of guy. You know how it is: you can get fixated on things when there seem to be gaps. The gap in time here disturbs me. I figure you weren’t out buying milk for approximately two hours, but hey: a person can have a private life. I notice, though, that you don’t volunteer information about what you were doing when you weren’t buying milk.

  This is all just some confusion—my confusion about what time I left the house, I suppose. In fact, I was going in to school to pick up a book I’d forgotten, but the weather was bad and I turned around. I phoned McCallum. I guess I talked to him longer than I thought.
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  When the cop shrugged and opened the door without comment, Marshall walked to the waiting room, haunted by the cop’s sarcastic words. Bothered that McCallum’s wife would lie and say she knew him and Sonja when she didn’t, but more upset that because he was unwilling to mention anything about Cheryl Lanier, some cop who prided himself on his professional skepticism had cornered him, revealed him to be a liar, then let him go as if he were throwing back a small fish. The cop had made him feel small, and slimy. He wriggled uncomfortably on the bench, filled with shame, though he knew there was no objective reason why he should feel that way, knew that all he was guilty of was having touched his lips to Cheryl Lanier’s in a dark car, and what was that in the long run? What was that compared to people like McCallum …? But McCallum was in the hospital, in serious shape, and he didn’t want to think bad thoughts about McCallum. He wanted Sonja to emerge from the room where she was being questioned. It was ridiculous that they were keeping either of them so long, ridiculous because the police had a confession, they must have found fingerprints on the knife, he and Sonja weren’t the kind of people who should be questioned about where they were and what they were doing every second of what would have been a perfectly ordinary evening if not for their goodwill, their only involvement in the whole horrifying affair having been a willingness to extend themselves to two people who turned out to be murderers and assholes—McCallum was at least an asshole, whatever self-righteous justification he offered about the time he’d spent with Livan Baker. When Marshall exited the room where he’d been questioned another policeman walking by had told him that McCallum was in intensive care. They had operated for over three hours to repair his damaged kidney. Jesus: the woman had stabbed him in the kidney. She had been hurt herself, also—something Marshall hadn’t even thought about. McCallum had fought her off, hit her, but then he had collapsed, and if she hadn’t confessed to—could that really be what they said? a post office employee?—if she hadn’t confessed, he might have bled to death in the house. That was what Green Eyes was now saying to him; that he and Sonja could not return to the house, because it had been sealed off. The cop was asking him if it would be a problem to find somewhere else to spend the night, and he was saying—realizing as he spoke that he was telling another half-truth—that of course they could stay with a friend. They could stay at a motel, he said. That would probably make more sense, even if they did have friends, but the notion of being in some motel, shut out of their house, which was probably bloodier than he wanted to imagine, depressed him, as if he and Sonja were two stray children with nowhere to go. He tried to pull himself together, he was sinking so fast into self-pity; he began fabricating something he suddenly wanted to be the truth: him and Sonja starting over, united by their having been victims in someone else’s drama, McCallum, strangely enough, having done them a service by bringing them closer as his own marriage collapsed. This whole nightmare now seemed so protracted, so ultimately silly; if not for McCallum’s wife’s frightening insanity, it could simply serve as a lesson in not being dragged into other people’s problems. Like falling dominoes, now Cheryl Lanier had learned that lesson from getting involved with Livan Baker’s problems, and he had learned that lesson from getting involved with McCallum’s problems. Cheryl was young and inexperienced—easy to see how she was taken in—but he had helped no one, had not even been genuinely concerned, as Cheryl had been, about anyone’s well-being: in the end, McCallum had pressed himself on him; Livan Baker had interested him only to the extent that Cheryl was troubled by her behavior, and some part of him had wanted to help Cheryl. At least that had been genuine. To what end, though? To settle her problems so he could then extricate himself from the situation, or to try to help so she’d be impressed, grateful—so he might become closer to her? That was the answer, he suspected: otherwise, why was he constantly reminded of the smell of her freshly washed hair, why was he troubled—increasingly troubled—that he had left her off at a house in Dover and driven away? He had instigated something—or had he finalized something—when he drew her to him in the car. She would be horrified when he called and told her what had happened. He should be the one to break the news to her about McCallum; though she didn’t know him, he’d come to influence her life, he’d indirectly caused her worry and trouble and pain, and although what had happened to McCallum had nothing to do with what he did or did not do to Livan Baker, still Cheryl should know what had happened to this man she’d been made to think so much about. He could do it now, call her, except that he did not want to be overheard talking to her in the police station.

  Sonja came down the hallway to where he sat on a bench in the waiting room. Pale and sullen, she wordlessly slipped her hand in his. He was sure he could read her mind, sure that, like him, she wanted only to be gone from the police station. The two reporters waiting outside came as a surprise to them both. In this small community, two reporters were waiting to interview them? The younger reporter might have been a student at Benson; he was red-haired, his mouth the same color as his hair, which he kept sweeping out of his eyes. “Is Mr. McCallum dead?” the reporter wanted to know. The other reporter was older and wore dog tags with a picture ID, but Marshall did not want to focus on him. The younger man took a photograph of Marshall and Sonja, arms interlocked, with a small Instamatic camera. These people were here because someone’s wife had tried to kill him? Didn’t that happen every day in Harlem? Detroit? After all, McCallum was alive, his wife in custody—to his surprise, Marshall heard himself telling them that McCallum was alive and well, as Sonja tried to hurry him along.

  “Over here,” Tony Hembley hollered, beating the side of his car as he shouted out the window. Of course; he’d driven Sonja, who was so terribly upset, and all this time he’d been waiting. His outstretched hand seemed to symbolize their escape. Marshall thought: Oh yes; of course I have a friend. Then he and Sonja rushed to the car, away from the still-popping flash on the little camera, ducking their heads as if they, themselves, had something to be ashamed of.

  Martine,

  Truly, you have been most generous with everything you have thought to do. Please do not think I mistake it for mere duty, as I am quite aware that no check can compensate for your endless goodwill toward the boys, and toward Alice and me. I am delighted that Amelia was able to stop by on her trip North. She reported to me only after the fact that she had made the journey, and I do hope you were not inconvenienced by an equally impulsive arrival on her part. She does live quite simply in New York, but I know from experience that almost nothing can be deduced about people’s personalities once they have escaped the city limits. In a way, New York breeds a kind of anonymity. It is not until they are elsewhere that you really come to know them, I think, which is very different, for example, from the way one comes to know people in other large Eastern cities, such as Boston. I know she was eager to report to Alice that all was well, the flowers growing, the children prospering, you, yourself, bearing up well. But she was only able to speak to me, as the doctors continue to refuse her any visitors except—Martine, you will not believe what I am about to tell you now. The doctors, who are quite curt with me, and one of whom always accompanies me when I visit Alice in the sitting room—these men have granted the most ridiculous request Alice has ever made, to my knowledge (when do I not have to qualify my remarks these days, humbled, as I am, into admitting I may know Alice very slightly, indeed?). When the weekly bill was mailed to me at the Waldorf, I scanned the itemization of charges and found a visit from a Madame Sosos who, upon my questioning them, turns out to be a fortuneteller! I find that this defies belief, that men of science would allow a fortuneteller to have exchanges with Alice, while they stand like policemen when her own husband comes to visit. A fortuneteller! It is enough to make one wonder if circus performers would be admitted, if Alice decided a high-wire act was just the thing to lift her out of her depression! I am afraid that I was so aghast, I made the mistake of speaking to the head doctor when I was in a rather overwrou
ght state—why, she has never put the slightest stock in such nonsense, as you know—and the doctor became quite inappropriately analytical of my overreaction. Then began my recent travails. I see that while Dr. St. Vance was quite happy to admit Amelia to his office, on the spur of the moment, he, like the doctors, has insisted upon taking a firm line with me, insisting not only that he prefers to communicate in person, but in fact sending word that he will no longer respond to my letters, as it is necessary for us to discuss all matters face-to-face. I have explained to him the difficulty of this, but he is unwavering in his position and has even written the doctors in Connecticut to inform them that he has told me this. I am not this man’s patient, I am the beleaguered husband of one of his former patients, yet he refuses to be in any way flexible, and will correspond not even with Alice, apparently, but only with the hospital doctors. I am, of course, most unhappy about this, as I felt he could provide valuable assistance directly to Alice, but when a doctor makes a decision, other doctors inevitably rush to their colleague’s side to support whatever decision has been made, as we all know.

  How I wish I had a happier report, but she seems remote, tired, preoccupied. I know I am an impatient person, but I am beginning to question whether she is in the right place, and have phoned a former Yale schoolmate who is himself a neurologist to see if he might consult with the doctors in Connecticut to assure me that he thinks they are proceeding correctly. I thought to tell him about the fortuneteller, but felt I would hold that card until the last, because if he pronounces these doctors good professional men, I can then ask him to consider that opinion in light of my new piece of information. A fortuneteller! Who has ever heard of such a thing, in a hospital for disturbed people? It is as if the world’s gone mad.

  My love to all, my thanks, and do, please, smell the roses for me. Maine has become in my imagination even more of a paradise, and you the presiding angel.