A Farewell to Legs (15 page)

“Your daughter-in-law is half
enemy
, Louise,”
I helpfully pointed out. “That makes your grandchildren one-quarter
enemy
.”

I snapped up the tape recorder, hitting the “stop”
button, turned on my heels, and headed for the door. “Thanks a
lot,” I said to Louise. “I think I have enough background on Louis’
family. Lester, if you ever want to get in touch, Steph has the
number.” With no better exit line, I walked out, Lester trailing
closely behind.

Once in the hall, Stephanie appeared as if she’d
been listening at the door. Her face was pale and her eyes wide.
“Aaron,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m just glad I didn’t kiss her ring,” I said.

“What?”

Lester appeared behind me as if Steph had twitched
her nose and made him appear. “Tucker,” he said. “There was no need
for you to agitate her like that.”

“Agitate her! How, by being circumcised?” I was
seeing, you should pardon the expression, red.

“My mother is of the old school,” he said, spreading
his hands. “She’s of another generation.”

“The word is Reich.”

In his new role as peacemaker, he ignored that,
“She’s been through a horrible ordeal. There’s nothing worse than
burying your own child. Surely you can understand that,” Lester
said.

I hated to admit it, but he had a point. “That
doesn’t explain her out-and-out. . .”

“No,” said Stephanie. “It doesn’t. But that’s always
been part of her, and she uses it as a weapon.” Lester looked—not
appalled, not shocked—annoyed. Steph wasn’t following the script
he’d written, and he didn’t appreciate it.

“Mr. Tucker, to answer your question, which is the
one I assume you came to ask,” he went on, “my brother had many
political enemies, but I can’t think of any who would resort to
violence when there were other, nastier tricks to pull on him. I
can only assume this was”—and he didn’t even glance in Stephanie’s
direction—“a crime of passion.”

“So you don’t know of anyone to start with,” I said
hoarsely.

“I’d start with the last bimbo and work my way back,
if I were you,” he said. “You’re bound to hit pay dirt somewhere
along the line.”

Without another word, he turned and walked back into
his mother’s room. Stephanie waited until he was completely out of
sight and behind the door, then she looked at me and rolled her
eyes.

I chuckled. “Has it been this much fun the whole
time, or did they decide to spice things up for the rabbinical
student?” I asked.

“Well, the bigotry is a new wrinkle, but that’s
pretty much been the atmosphere around here,” she said. “I’ve lived
with it since Louis and I got married.”

“Well, look on the bright side. She only hates you
half as much as she hates me.”

Stephanie laughed, and hugged me. It wasn’t a
friendly hug, and I didn’t understand it. She was trying much too
hard to make sure her breasts pressed against my chest.

“Hey, Steph,” I said. “Take it easy. I’m still
married.”

She leaned back. “That’s you, Aaron. You’d never do
anything wrong, would you?”

Maybe I could distract her. “You’re the second
person this month who’s accused me of being incorruptible,” I told
her.

“Who was the first?”

“Gail Rayburn.”

Stephanie smiled. “Gail Rayburn wore push-up
bras.”

“Okay, now we’re in the area of way too much
information.” I started to reach into my pocket for my car keys.
“I’ve got to go pick up the kids,” I said.

“From what? It’s only twelve-thirty.”

“Half-day,” I lied. “Millard Fillmore’s birthday, or
something.”

Stephanie put a hand over her mouth and giggled.
“You’re running away from me, Aaron,” she said.

“Think of it as walking away in a brisk manner,” I
tried.

“You’ll be back.”

“If this is a recurring dream, I sure will,” I said,
and reached for the doorknob.

By the time I had reached the Midland Heights
borough limits, I was relatively sure Stephanie had killed Legs
Gibson. I just couldn’t figure out how she’d done it.

With all this information rattling around in my
brain, I did the only thing a sane man could do: I printed out a
copy of my freshly completed screenplay, and mailed it off to my
agent. By the time I was back from the Post Office, it really was
time for the kids to get home. I dealt with the homework soap opera
of the day, listened to the stories, read the note from Wilma,
Ethan’s aide (she has a separate notebook in which she reports to
us on how his day
really
went), and actually wrote a
750-word piece for the
Star-Ledger
on the boating business
“down the shore.”

When dinner preparation time rolled around, I had
almost exorcised the weird events of the day. And then the phone
rang.

“Aaron, I’m so sorry,” Stephanie was saying, even
before I was sure it was Stephanie. “I don’t know what came over
me— okay, I
do
know what came over me.”

“I know it wasn’t my animal ruggedness,” I said.

“Don’t discount yourself, but actually, it was the
tranquilizers I’ve been taking since Louis. . . died,”
she said. “I increased the dosage to deal with Lester and Louise,
and it made me. . . I was-n’t myself.”

All right, maybe she hadn’t killed her husband.

“I don’t know who that woman was,” I told her, “but
if I show up in a room with her again, I want to have an elephant
gun with me.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” I told her. Then, lowering
my voice because the kids were in the next room, and listen only
when I don’t want them to, I said, “I am married, and I intend to
stay that way.”

At that very moment, the door swung open, and
Abigail walked in. The kids swarmed around her, as they always do,
and she smiled and kissed them and did everything she always does.
But there was something different. The look in her eye.

“I have to go, Steph,” I said into the phone. “My
wife is going to kill me now.”

“Don’t joke with me about things like that, Aaron,”
Stephanie said. “It hits a little too close to home.”

“I’m not joking,” I said, and hung up.

I walked over to my wife, who was hanging up her
coat, and reached over to kiss her. She ducked and walked away. I
foresaw scintillating dinner conversation.

We ate, and glared, and didn’t talk. The kids
noticed—okay, Leah noticed, and Ethan might have caught a loose
vibe here or there through his prattle about
The
Simpsons
—and ate quickly. They left us in the kitchen
alone.

Abigail stood and started to clear the table. “I’ll
do that,” I said, but she went on doing it. I stood up and got in
her way on purpose.

“Okay. As boneheaded plays go, this was my best
all-time. I was way off base, I never should have done it, I’m a
complete idiot, and you should divorce me before the evening is
over. Does that about cover it?” She walked around me and put the
dishes in the sink. “Abby!”

“I’ve never been this mad at you before, Aaron, and
you’re not going to be able to charm me out of it,” she said, not
looking in my direction.

“I’m not trying to charm you out of it. I’m
admitting that it was unconscionable. I was wrong, I’m apologizing,
and promising that nothing even remotely like this will ever happen
again.” I took her hands, and she let me, although she wouldn’t
look me in the eye.

“If anything had happened to you. . .” she
began, and put her head on my shoulder.

“To
me?
Nothing was going to happen to me. I
was there trying to make sure nothing would happen to
you
.”

She held me tight and started to tremble just a
little. “You’re such a jerk,” she said.

“I think we’ve established that.”

“You go through your life thinking you’re the one in
this marriage who loves the other one more.”

It took me a minute to navigate that sentence.
“Well, I am. I love you more than you love me. It’s only
natural.”

“Why? Why is it natural?” She stood back enough to
look me in the eye. Hers were a little damp.

“Because you’re the more attractive person in the
relationship.”

“So it all has to do with looks?”

“No, I mean attractive in the literal sense of the
word. You attract people more than I do. I tend to irritate them.
You’re the one everybody likes. You’re the one all the men follow
with their eyes. . .”

“You want men to follow you with their eyes?”

I ignored that. “You are, in the case of this
marriage, the ‘catch.’ You even make a lot more money than I do.
And I had, as you know, a bit of trouble finding women who wanted
to know me before we met.”

“I’ve heard the history.” She rolled her eyes a
bit.

“So it’s natural that I should love you more. You
are top-of-the-line Porsche, and I’m a used Pontiac. You saved me
from the junk heap, and I adore everything about you. Don’t you
think I see all the dents and dings I’ve accumulated, physically
and emotionally, over the years? But you’re still a cream puff.” It
was, without question, the analogy I have most regretted using in
my life.

“Aaron,” Abby said, shaking her head and sitting on
a kitchen chair. “I fell in love with you. I married you. I have
two kids with you. Do you really think I’d do all that with some
guy because I felt sorry for him? I’m lucky to have you, and I
thank the heavens every day that we met. You don’t love me more,
and I don’t love you more. We love each other. That’s why our
marriage works.”

“So you’re not going to kill me?”

“No. But I might maim you a bit. That was the
stupidest thing you’ve ever done, and nothing like that must ever
happen again, you understand?” I knelt beside her chair and
nodded.

“It won’t ever happen again, Abby. I swear.”

She bit her lower lip, a sign that she’s going to do
something she thinks she shouldn’t. “So, what’d you think of
Preston Burke?” she asked quickly, before she could censor
herself.

“At first, I thought you were insane,” I told her,
“but after a while, I saw how he could come across as
dangerous.”

“Do you think he threw the rock and made that phone
call?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Just
when I convince myself it couldn’t have been him, I recall the look
in his eye when he realized I wasn’t who I said I
was. . .”

“Aaron!”

“Don’t worry. He doesn’t know anything about us
being married. The fact is, Abby, we’ll probably never hear from
him again.”

And, of course, the phone rang.

I picked it up, and somehow, I already knew the
voice would be muffled and masculine. I wasn’t sure what the words
would be, but they weren’t going to be words I wanted to hear.

“I know where you live,” he said, and hung up.

I hung up the phone, and looked at Abby. “You know,
the kids have Thursday and Friday off for the Teachers Convention,”
I said. “You think you could take those days?”

“I think so,” she said. “Why?”

“I was thinking maybe we’d take a long weekend and
drive down to D.C.”

“
A
dog?” I was saying to
Abby. “What, the lizard thing worked out so well that now you want
to get them a larger, more demanding animal?”

Wednesday night, we were packing in our bedroom for
the trip to Washington the next morning. It had taken some doing,
but I’d managed, through my friends at AAA and my influence with a
certain celebrity Washington widow, to find accommodations at a
hotel we could actually afford. In fact, we even had a suite, with
a separate bedroom for the kids, booked in Georgetown at less than
half the usual rate. Sometimes, it pays to know the wife of a
prominent dead conservative.

Steph had actually offered to put us up in her
house, but I thought that considering her recent behavior, that
would be, to say the least, horrifyingly awkward. I politely
declined without actually discussing the suggestion with my
wife.

“I’m thinking about a dog
because
the lizard
thing worked out so badly,” Abigail said. “Do you think I need a
bathing suit?”

“If you’re going to be swimming with anyone besides
me, yes,” I answered. “You know, I understand the hotel has a pool,
but we’re only going to be there for what amounts to three days,
and I’m. . .”

“. . . You’re going to be working much of
the time, I know,” she said. “And while there are plenty of
wonderful sights to see in our nation’s capital, the kids like
nothing better than a hotel pool, so we’re going to spend at least
some time there.” She took a one-piece suit and a bikini out of the
assemble-it-yourself piece of furniture she uses for a closet.
“Which of these is better?”

“If you’re going to be swimming without me, you’d
better wear a complete dive suit and an overcoat,” I said. “The
one-piece. And I’m still waiting to hear how the lizard fiasco
makes a dog a good idea.”

Leah had flatly refused to feed E-
LIZ-
abeth
since the infamous biting incident, but burst into tears anytime it
was suggested the little beast might be better off in another home,
like the one across the street, where it could play with another of
its kind. I had tried to feed the lizard once, managed it without
throwing up, and then bravely placed the responsibility in the lap
of the person whom I considered most deserving. But Abby didn’t
want to pluck worms out of a plastic margarine container with a
tweezer and watch a refugee from Jurassic Kiddie Park gobble them
up, either. So Melissa had been very gamely helping out for a few
days.

“You recall that the idea of the lizard as a pet was
to encourage Leah’s interest in animals,” she began.

“I recall that’s the excuse you used, yes.”

“You know, I still haven’t completely forgiven you
for the Preston Burke thing. You might try to be a little more
agreeable on this.” Abby put the bikini in her suitcase.