And When She Was Good (26 page)

They are wrestling now, rolling over and over on the smooth concrete floor, and Heloise wishes for the first time that she were less orderly, that her garage was a messy hodgepodge of things she might grab and use—a leaf blower, a baseball bat, anything. But tools and toys are put away in their places, mocking her from their labeled boxes and cubbyholes. Although she tries to focus on the gun, Terry's mangled hand keeps distracting her. She struggles to knock the gun from his grip with her elbow even as he reaches for her throat with his bloody hand and attempts to throttle her. But he can't control that hand, which seems to be doing its own macabre dance. She wriggles away, starts to crawl to the door, but it's no use if she can't stand up to hit the code. He overtakes her, throwing his body on her as if she's on fire and he's trying to smother the flames. She rolls beneath him, terrified of being shot from behind, determined to make him look at her. But now he has her waist in a powerful scissors hold with his legs and he's forcing his right elbow into her neck. He's steadying her, she realizes, determined to make sure he needs only one shot. She bucks and rolls, trying to throw him off.

He has the upper part of his right arm across her windpipe now, suffocating her. She's finding it harder to move, but she knows that when she stops moving, she'll be dead. It's not her life that passes before her eyes, only her son's face. Maybe she should have signed the fucking will. She's going to die. She doesn't want to, but she accepts it as her fate. Shelley, Bettina, Billy. Sophie. Martin. Why shouldn't she join the pile? Why does she get to escape Val? She'd go peacefully if only she could be assured that Scott would be okay—

Terry slumps forward, and she feels a gush of warm liquid. Has she wet herself? Has he wet himself? No, it just keeps coming, blood and more blood, in a thicker, steadier stream than the blood from his hand. His body falls to the side—is thrown to the side.

Audrey is standing behind Terry, her chest heaving with her breath, one of Scott's coveted Wüsthofs in her fist.

“My cousin wanted to go to the outlets over on the shore, so I went with her and had her drop me off on the way home. I didn't think you would like being alone this weekend.” She actually looks a little nervous, as if Heloise were going to reprimand her for arriving unannounced. “When I saw Sophie in the hall—”

“Let me guess,” Heloise says, on her hands and knees, panting, keen to retch yet unable to. “You just had a feeling. Like the one about the client you didn't want me to take.”

Audrey bends down. She probably expects Terry to get back up, like some character in a horror film. Then, to Heloise's shock, she moves her face closer to his, so close that she could kiss him. “Heloise—this
is
the client I told you not to take. I recognize him from the photo. He shaved his beard and dyed his hair, but it's absolutely the same guy.”

Heloise nods. That makes sense. If anyone would know how to game her system, it would be Val, the man who loved listening to every detail about the business. She always thought he was simply proud of her. Maybe he was.

T
UESDAY,
F
EBRUARY 21, 2012

H
eloise is nervous. She unfolds her paper, smooths it, looks up, takes a sip of water. Paul gives her a nod, which helps. She begins, “I am here today to testify in favor of Senate Bill 1212, which would decriminalize prostitution in the state of Maryland.”

Paul nods again. After all, he helped to write her statement. The bill has no chance, he has told Heloise. He himself will not vote to support it. But he will treat it respectfully during this hearing and bring it to a committee vote, which will guarantee a small bump of media, even as it's voted down. The bill has a strong advocate on the committee, an almost freakishly lefty woman from Heloise's own county. But the bill will get attention because Heloise is briefly famous as the woman who fought off an attacker in her home on Thanksgiving weekend.

For some reason those two words, “Thanksgiving weekend,” are always attached to what happened to Heloise.
The Thanksgiving-weekend incident, the Thanksgiving-weekend attack.
The implication seems to be that it's bad enough to be brutalized and almost murdered in one's home by a man who has killed another woman right in front of you, but it's particularly blasphemous on a day that's supposed to be put aside for Christmas shopping.

Black Friday. Yes, it was a very Black Friday indeed.

Heloise and Audrey did not call police immediately. Heloise went back to her office and shredded everything in the drawer that had caught Terry—throwing in the will that was still on her desk. She will admit this to police later. Not the part about the will, but that she then shredded everything in a fit of hysteria. That she was so overwhelmed by events that she returned to her office for reasons she can no longer remember. Of course, it's all Terry's blood, but who knows what experts will notice, in terms of splatters and partial footprints. The key thing, Heloise knew, was not to lie. She knew this because she called Tom before she dialed 911. Dialed him on Audrey's cell, which was then soaked in water and disappeared a few days later at the electronics recycling center in Halethorpe. Heloise is nothing if not cool in a crisis.

The story was that a man she had dated (true) and broken up with (true) had burst into her home (true), shot her employee (true) who was waiting there to meet with her (sort of true), and then tried to kill Heloise in her office, where she tricked him into reaching into her shredder, saying she had something special for him. Again true. If Terry's connection to Val was discovered—well, she could have claimed with great credibility that their relationship was unknown to her, just as she never knew of his connection to Shelley/Michelle. That is, it was unknown to Heloise as of 6:15
P.M.
on Black Friday. Whatever Heloise and Terry discussed between that time and Audrey's intercession—that wasn't really germane, was it? Heloise was a beautiful woman who had broken up with a man. These things happen. Even to lobbyists and lawyers. Why complicate matters by mentioning wills and common-law wives in Rochester, New York? Heloise reset her mental clock to 6:15, the Friday after Thanksgiving. She learned nothing after that moment. Didn't know of Terry's connection to Val. Didn't know why he had targeted her. Didn't know that Terry had killed Shelley and Bettina.

And now no one else will know either. Their killer is dead, and that's a kind of justice, but what's the use of justice if the victims' loved ones have no idea it's been done?

The last part bugs her, will probably always bug her. She is never going to forget that image, glimpsed in the moment she thought she was going to die. All those bodies. Billy, Martin, Bettina. Sophie, too. Not Shelley, although that name had come to her. The fact that Heloise had planned to write Jolson an anonymous letter once she was out of the country—it didn't matter. None of her good intentions mattered. The dead were dead, a child was motherless. Sophie's parents had lost a daughter, and their estrangement from her probably only made it worse, Heloise was sure. It was a toss-up, who had caused more damage in the world, she or Val.

She has not spoken to Val since the night Terry visited her. She will never speak to Val again. She tells herself she is not the least bit perturbed by the revelations about Ofelia Ocampo, the three kids, the shocking similarities between her story and her mother's. She doesn't doubt that she, Heloise, was the love of Val's life, that he cared for her more than anyone, that he valued her mind, her acumen. So she's Barbara Lewis in this scenario, the first “wife,” the one he can never quite leave. Ofelia's just an
idea
of a wife, far away, raising three children on her own, writing every day of her loyalty and devotion. Easy to be loyal to a phantom who sends you money, takes nothing. Val demanded loyalty and devotion, but he didn't reward it, much less return it.

“Senate Bill 1212 will not make prostitution legal. But it will place it within a legal framework where it can be treated as the victimless crime it is,” Heloise concludes.

The oldest senator on the committee is the first one who wants to question her. Paul has prepared her for this. Like the Reverend Frida, the old senator takes a long time to get to the point, and it's all about him, but he finally finds his way to an actual question: “Why would an attractive young mother such as yourself care about such women? What is your interest in this sordid business?”

She answers as Paul coached her. “For years I have worked here in Annapolis on issues central to income parity for women. But where does parity begin? It begins in opportunity. We live in a culture where women sell their bodies. That's simply a fact. Women have sold their bodies throughout history and will continue to do so. There's no point in creating euphemisms for this, but there's also no point in judging the women who do it. It is, however, humane to protect all members of our society. A drug dealer murdered by a rival does not forgo the right to have his murderer arrested and convicted. If we decriminalize prostitution, sex workers will enjoy more safety.

“I was the victim of a violent crime, an aberration, in my home. Sex workers—and that's what I prefer to call them—are at risk all the time. Are we going to say, as a society, that they are beyond our concern because of what they do? Their crime is not a violent one. It is not inherently harmful. It does not destroy marriages. It probably keeps some together.”

Paul shoots her a look. She has gone off script with that last line.

“At any rate, as some people know, I left Annapolis and lobbying after my experience. It may be trite, but I looked death in the face and decided I would change my life if I were lucky enough to have one. Cut back on my work hours, spend more time in my community, do more volunteer work. It's easy to support popular issues. I wanted to throw my experience behind an unpopular one.”

The rest of the questioning is, as Paul warned her, hostile. Patronizing, too, more questions in the vein of “What does a pretty lady like you know about such things?” Maryland, liberal as it is, is not ready for this. It won't be ready for it in her lifetime, but Heloise doesn't care. With a polite, composed face, she endures the lectures disguised as questions, thanks the committee for its time, and tries not to check her watch. She wants to pick up Scott by three.

She makes it, barely. He's at Coranne's, playing contentedly with Lindsey but happy to abandon the Wii for the adventure that Heloise has promised him.

Coranne says, “I have a plumber scheduled for next Thursday, when Jillian has a pediatrician's appointment. Can you cover for me?”

Heloise takes out a bulging Filofax. She still prefers paper and finds she likes writing things down, now that she has no reason to fear leaving a record. Her new accountant marvels at her precision, her meticulous records. “Yes, I'm free in the afternoon. In the morning I'm meeting an exterminator at the Rileys'.”

“An exterminator?”

“The twins' class had a lice infestation, and she's overreacting. Not for me to judge as long as she pays my rate, right?” Plus, Heloise is already developing relationships with certain local servicemen, who pay her for any business she swings their way. Some might call that a kickback, but she prefers Paul's term: finder's fee.

“How's business going?”

“Picking up, every day.” WFEN, the Women's Full Employment Network, is now Wives for Everyone's Needs. “It sounds kinda dirty,” Coranne had said when Heloise told her about the brainstorm inspired by Coranne's catastrophic day.

All Heloise had said was “It does, doesn't it?”

S
he and Scott head north, stopping at their favorite ice-cream place. Scott says again, “Remember when I used to love the ponies?”

“Don't you love them still?” Heloise asks.

Scott thinks about this. “I suppose I do.” It appears to be a revelation to him, the idea that he can still love the ponies now that he's twelve, that one can outgrow something yet keep it in his heart. Heloise hopes he will hold that lesson close for the rest of his life.

In the aftermath of the Thanksgiving-weekend incident—as she shredded the will and briefed Audrey on what they would tell police—Heloise's only concern, as always, was Scott. Would Terry's attempt to murder her break down the divide that had governed her life when she was mere days away from escaping it? Would her past come out? But the wall between her lives proved sturdy. Certainly her customers weren't going to come forward, and neither was Val.

And everyone else who knew the whole story was dead.

More unexpectedly, the story seemed to make people squeamish. The paper shredder, the expert way Audrey had slit Terry's throat, which brought up the old stories about how Audrey had murdered her husband as he slept. Audrey, with her odd voice and appearance, was not what public-relations people call camera-ready, not that she agreed to any interviews. And it was a brainstorm of sorts for Heloise to say she dated Terry. It placed the incident into the niche of domestic violence, just another love story gone wrong. That was something people could understand, or thought they could. Nothing to see here, move along. The sale of Heloise's business went through. She didn't give Val his share of the profits. She actually felt a pang for Ofelia Ocampo and her family, wondered how that devoted woman would provide for her children, how Val would communicate with her now that Terry was dead. Who would carry back the tales of his heroism in remote and evil places.

But it was for Betty Martinez's family that Heloise really grieved. She made an anonymous donation for the boy, giving him much of the money that would have gone to Val. It wasn't enough. All the money in the world wouldn't be enough. But it was what she had.

As they approach their destination, Scott takes in the landmarks with little comment, asking only, “Don't they make Utz potato chips near here?”

“Yes,” Heloise says, “but that's another town. This town doesn't really make anything.”

They walk up a familiar walk; a familiar door is opened; Heloise reflexively checks her image in the old clock with the mirror, which still hangs at the foot of the stairs. She notices a pink Post-it on it. That means her mother wants to take it with her to the new apartment. Not the one in town, but one outside Annapolis, near Turner's Grove.

That's where the rest of Val's money went and some of Heloise's, too. Her mother has an apartment in one of those residences where she can stay the rest of her life, moving into the nursing center when her disease progresses to that point where she can no longer care for herself. There was a waiting list, but Heloise “knew” one of the executives of the company that runs the facility. She “knows” someone at Hopkins, too, a vice president who's going to make sure her mother gets cutting-edge care. It turns out that Heloise knows a lot of people. Most of her new clients are the wives of the men she once served, and if they interpreted her networking inquiries as blackmail, that's on them. Heloise is never going to out her former customers. “Happy wife, happy life,” she tells them. No coercion, no threats. By the end of the year, if billings continue to pick up, she will be in the black. It's a more modest life, but she can manage the mortgage and keep Scott in Turner's Grove.

“Hello, Scott,” Beth says solemnly. She is like a mail-order bride meeting her husband-to-be. Nervous, unsure, but hopeful for the best possible outcome.

“Hello— What should I call you?”

“I don't know. What would you like to call me?”

“Grandma, I guess.”

“Okay, I'll be Grandma.”

She brings out photo albums. Heloise is not even sure she knew that these albums existed, but there she is—as a baby, a toddler, at Scott's age. In her uniform from Il Cielo. There are photos of Hector, too. Those still hurt, but she sees something now that she couldn't see before. He was young. True, Beth was younger still, but he was a young man in a small town with two wives, five children, and no prospects.

Still, she can't find anything in her heart for him. She just can't.

“Why didn't I know about you?” Scott asks.

“Your mother and I lost touch. It happens sometimes.” Heloise doesn't miss the fact that her mother doesn't assign blame for this.

“But you're not the grandmother for my cousins?” Scott asks.

“No. Your grandfather had another wife before me. It's complicated.”

Boy, was it.

Heloise sits gingerly on the edge of the old sofa. Only it's not the old sofa, of course, the one where Hector once reigned. Not even her mother could live with the same sofa for thirty-seven years. Still, Heloise is nervous. She feels as if the house itself is a trap, that it could pull her back and she'll have to live her life all over again, make all the same mistakes. And she's still angry about so much. There's no use pretending she's not.