Crazy in Love (3 page)

Mona Tuchman had acted, not planned. Hers was a crime of passion, brought off in mere seconds. Sources said they doubted premeditation. In the heat of the moment, she had grabbed a butter knife and driven it into her friend’s ribs. How much better it would have been for Mona in the long run if she had simply fantasized killing the other woman. Perhaps nothing could stop the romance, but at least she wouldn’t have to go through life known as the woman who tried to kill her husband’s lover. And a laughingstock as well for having used a butter knife. Why did I care nothing for Celeste Stone, the other woman? Alone in my room I could have cried for Mona Tuchman, but for the woman who lay injured in her hospital bed I thought only, “Homewrecker.”

I reached for the Manhattan white pages. There were listings for Richard Tuchman MD and Tuchman Country Quilts at the West Seventy-fourth Street address. From past experience I knew that today was the time to call her. In a week she would figure out how to ditch the interviewers: change her phone number, move out of town, refuse to comment. But for now she would answer obediently, as if cooperation would improve her luck. I dialed the business number.

“Tuchman Country Quilts,” the voice said.

“May I speak with Mona Tuchman, please?” I asked in my most respectful tone.

“This is she.”

“Mrs. Tuchman, this is Georgiana Swift calling from the Swift Observatory—”

Long pause. “This is my business line. Are you calling to order a quilt?”

“No, I’d like to interview you.”

“I know, I can tell from the tone of your voice. Reverential, you know? The way you talk to someone at their mother’s funeral. I’ll bet you write for a women’s magazine, you’re after the sisterhood angle. You’ve got the sensitive approach.”

“I don’t write for a magazine. I’m doing a study.”

“Well, get off my fucking business line. I’m taking orders today.” Her voice cracked into a sob, and the line went dead.

I sat very still, holding the receiver and shaking all over. What kind of a creep was I? I felt like the paparazzi who followed the Royals down the slopes at Klosters, who hounded the families of murder victims. Who was I to envision Mona Tuchman curled into a pitiful ball, hiding from the world? She was trying to keep her life together. She was conducting business. She was an ordinary woman. She had just tried to kill someone.

Driven to violence for love of husband

Loves so intensely she’d kill for it?

What about her kids if she goes to jail?

How does her husband feel about her now? her kids?

Family at all costs

Breakup unthinkable

Brave lady, but crazy

I sat there writing notes about Mona Tuchman, listening to the storm gathering force. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, writing about her. I put myself in her place: if Nick had an affair, wouldn’t I want to attack his mistress? That stopped me for a moment because of course the answer was no, I would want to attack him.

Then I remembered that Celeste Stone had been a close friend of Mona’s. They had met at their daughters’ nursery school. How sordid that made it seem, the image of adultery combined with images of pitch pipes, colored construction paper, poster paints, rocking horses. After our father had died, Honora had told me and Clare that he had been unfaithful with the mother of one of our friends. Then she had refused to tell us which friend. Also she had refused to tell us how she had felt about it, except to give us the message that men, even good men, should be watched carefully and not quite trusted. The fact that she had stayed married to him, had not tried to stab anyone with a butter knife, said something. Why did I think that interviewing Mona Tuchman could tell me what?

I COULD HARDLY REMEMBER
my father, but I know I loved him. When he was alive we lived in Woods Hole. Timothy Swift was a top geologist-geophysicist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, and Honora was a weather girl with a red-and-blue uniform and a stage name—Wendy Swift. She also did a series called
Weather Woman
, now a camp classic, in which she played a good character able to affect events by controlling the weather. Her beauty and eccentricities made her a natural for the talk-show circuit. Every time she appeared on television, my father, Clare, and I would watch. We witnessed her forecast hurricanes and clearing trends, we saw her banish the Princess of Heat Waves to Lapland, we watched her on
Live at Five, Midday Talk,
and, at the height of her fame, on
The Dick Cavett Show
. “That’s my wife,” my father would say out loud in a puzzled voice, but we knew he was proud. He took care of us on all her publicity trips. When she was gone he let us stay up late; sometimes he let me stay in his office instead of going to school.

My father’s office was just across Eel Pond from my school, and I remember waving to each other every morning at eleven. The few times he forgot, I felt terrible. My teacher would tell me he forgot because he was a “dedicated scientist.” In Woods Hole the greatest compliment anyone could bestow was “dedicated scientist.” They all accepted that my father, with his books and yellow pencils, deserved the appellation, but most felt that Honora, with her glamorous job and stage name, did not. Clare and I assumed they were jealous that a dedicated scientist like our mother could make so much more money than they could, get picked up in a black sedan, and be recognized at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis. Even now, as adults, we couldn’t believe that our father could have found any woman in Woods Hole more attractive than she. But of course that’s not what adultery is about. Need is what adultery is about. It has taken me all this time to find out.

My father was tall and solid. He rowed around Eel Pond every morning at dawn to keep from getting fat. Sometimes he would take me and Clare in the boat. I remember his oars splashing the still surface, making too much noise. We felt thrilled with embarrassment that he might be waking the town. He had a wonderful black moustache that turned up at the ends, so he always looked like he was smiling. Honora called him “Timmy.” Pem called him “Tim” or “Tim dear,” but we all knew she resented him for keeping us in Woods Hole instead of at Bennison Point in Black Hall.

I must have sensed some trouble between our parents, because I was always praying they wouldn’t get divorced. I prayed and found comfort in Catholic rituals and symbols, the secrets and mysteries, the story of Mary, the concept of an all-loving God who kept families together, the beautiful tales of Lourdes and Fatima. The church in Woods Hole had a Mary Garden, a peaceful place planted with flowers whose names were associated with Mary. The Madonna Lily; Saint Mary’s Tree (rosemary); Lady Never Fade (wild strawberry); the Dear Mother’s Love (wild thyme); and Lady’s Cushion (thrift pink). I felt dizzy in that garden. I’d walk carefully around the grass walk wishing for Mary to appear to me the way she had to the children at Fatima, praying for everything to be “all right.” I never defined “all right,” but I knew it had something to do with my parents staying happy together. Or at least together.

Then my father took the job with Ordaco. Leaving research for a high-paying job with an oil company was perceived in Woods Hole as selling out. Honora told us one day, “Your friends might tell you that Daddy has ‘sold out,’ but that is because their parents are envious of him. The way they are of me. So hold your heads high.” He spent a lot of time in Texas and Scotland. For some reason his absence was a relief to me. It seemed entirely job-related, nothing like the emotional separation I had feared. Development had begun in the North Sea; his involvement caused great excitement for Honora, Clare, and me. We couldn’t wait for his letters, his phone calls. Oil gushed at a tremendous rate. He studied new sites, new sediment samples, and determined whether the company should dig. Honora told us he was “in charge.”

Off the coast of Scotland he lived on an oil rig equipped with movie theaters, restaurants, and a health spa. He wrote that the men could order anything they wanted, including North American lobster, and the chef would prepare it. He wrote that he was getting a little fat without Eel Pond to row around. Even though Clare and I were young, we could see that Honora loved him more after he started his glamorous job. He would return from Texas with cowboy hats and Indian jewelry, from Scotland with tweed and shortbread. Honora paid more attention to him than she had when he was doing research, but I still sensed trouble. It came from him. He never seemed peaceful in our house. His letters were wonderful, full of love, but at home his eyes betrayed that he wished he were elsewhere.

Then a North Sea gale, Force 10, had swept away the oil rig and all the men on board. For years I had nightmares of tidal waves, great whirlpools sucking the men underwater, murky black seas that reflected no light from the sun or stars. I kept picturing my father treading water, waiting to be rescued, wind screaming in his ears. Sometimes I thought that if he had wanted more than anything to come home to us, he would have been saved. He drowned. Lying awake on certain nights, I would think of his eyes, darting to the window, the door, the chimney. On those visits home, only his moustache smiled. I would think of him leaving a hole in our family, and I would drown him all over again. Perhaps that was why I couldn’t forget Mona Tuchman. She couldn’t bear her husband leaving her, leaving a hole in her family. She would rather kill someone than let that happen.

2

THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY WAS MY TURN TO
have the family dinner. That night I was happy. I remember it so well. Everyone was gathered together under my roof. Nick walked around passing nuts. Honora and Pem sat at opposite ends of the sofa with Eugene and Casey between them. The boys grew restless with embarrassment watching their parents lip-synch “Strangers in the Night.” Nick came to sit beside me on the floor. One big pillow of faded cotton paisley leaned against the french doors and we rested our heads on it. Sitting outside the circle of direct light felt intimate, and I pressed closer to him.

“We all ought to be home where we belong,” Pem said crossly. Naturally she meant we should all be at her house.

“The family’s together, Mother,” Honora said. “Georgie’s cooked a lovely dinner. Can’t you smell the lamb?”

“I’m glad I got off easy today,” Donald said. “I almost had to fly to Zurich.”

“You boys are ridiculously devoted,” Honora said. “I know that’s what it takes to make it on Wall Street, but still. Am I being a boring mother-in-law?”

“Yes,” Donald, Clare, Nick, and I said at once.

“It’s cold in here,” Pem said.

Nick walked over to her, shook out the black shawl I kept folded on the bannister, and laid it across her shoulders. She nodded but started to rise. Anticipating her mission, Nick pushed her down. “Sit down, Pem,” he said. “I’ll get you another martini.”

“Another? It’s my first,” she said, indignant.

“It’s your second,” Eugene said. It didn’t matter, since Pem’s martinis were now one tablespoon of gin floating in a glass of tonic water.

“I’ll get it,” Nick said. Pem started a little boxing match, but Nick turned it into a waltz. She rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes rolling as though she wanted us to see she thought it was a big joke, but everyone knew she was enjoying the dance.

“Make it a good one,” she said as Nick headed to the kitchen for her drink.

“Have you read about Mona Tuchman?” I asked.

“The woman who tried to kill her husband?” Honora asked.

“No, she tried to kill his mistress,” Clare said, “though I question how seriously she wanted to. She used a butter knife.”

“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” Donald said. “Is she the subject of your latest study?”

“I’m interested in her, yes. I called her. How do you think she’d sound on the phone?”

“Weepy,” Honora said.

“No, quite strong. I was a little surprised.”

“Women whose husbands cheat on them can find amazing reserves of strength,” Clare said. “You shouldn’t make it out to be the end of the world, Georgie.”

I watched Honora for her reaction, but there was none. Her hands rested on her lap, palms up. She seemed to be avidly watching Eugene jiggle two ice cubes in his glass of lemonade.

“Do you think she’ll go to jail?” Clare asked.

“Doubtful,” Donald said. “Her lawyers will use the classic ‘heat of passion’ line of reasoning. She’ll get off.” Donald had a stiff way of speaking; he always sounded like a lawyer, even within our midst, but after Nick he was the best man I knew.

“How can you remember that?” Nick asked, coming into the room with Pem’s drink. “I haven’t read a criminal case since law school.”

“I don’t know anything—I’m just bluffing. Trying to sound like a wise lawyer.”

“They’ll use the ‘extreme emotional distress’ defense, don’t you think?” I asked. Nick and I had married between his first and second years of law school, and Criminal Law and Evidence had been my favorites of his classes.

“Why don’t you hang out your shingle?” Honora asked, her eyes sparkling.

“The mere matter of no law degree,” I answered. “No law degree, no college degree—thank heavens I didn’t decide to snub education until after I’d finished high school.”

“Why do you say that?” Honora asked, frowning. “What did you need high school for? You’ve always had your eyes open, sweetie.” She turned to Eugene and Casey. “When your auntie was your age she knew more about fish than any kid in Woods Hole. Not to mention birds, seaweed, rocks, and electricity. She could make you a battery right now—out of materials in plain sight in this room.”

“This morning we saw a scarlet tanager,” Casey said.

“Now your mother, on the other hand,” Honora continued, smiling at Clare, “was quite different. She got straight A’s in math, English, history, everything. Also, she was a very good sculptor. But she wasn’t so interested in nature.”

“That’s why she had the time to get two PhDs,” I said. Everyone laughed, and Clare gave me a secret smile. Even with her advanced degrees, I knew she valued knowledge and the task of learning more than diplomas. She had never used her art and biochemistry degrees professionally. In another family that might have been considered a strange waste of time and talent, but Honora had come to understand Clare’s decision to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. We had been taught that learning mattered; it was essential, but whether we wanted to use our accrued knowledge in careers or in the most private way was up to us.

Still, no matter what Honora now said, she had railed and gnashed her teeth when I had refused to go to college. My decision terrified her. Perhaps she had doubted one could learn without the structure of a university. I glanced at Clare’s small smile and figured she was thinking of Honora’s evolution.

On Bennison Point, Pem and I represented the unschooled. I tried to get her attention, but she was engaged with her weak martini.

“You know, Mother,” Clare said, “I was interested in nature, but that was always Georgie’s province. Georgie was the nature lover, I was the bookworm. Georgie was the tomboy, I loved pretty dresses. It’s strange how we attribute different characteristics to each child. Even here,” she said, casting a significant glance at her two sons, playing with drink coasters. “One is the scamp, the other the gentleman.” I thought I saw Eugene, the scamp, sharpen when he heard that, but he continued to play.

“I think Georgie would be a good lawyer,” Nick said. “She knows a lot of law. She sat through the bar review with me, and I know she could have passed the bar exam. In some states you don’t need a law degree—you serve an apprenticeship, then pass the bar.”

Honora leaned forward, grinning. “I’m just waiting to see what happens with the Observatory. I think it will put the Swift name on the map.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. For no matter how plain I saw Honora, she was still my mother, and I wanted her to be proud of me.

IN A WEEK THE
weather was clear and fine. I lay on the floor of my workroom, reading old newspapers. The sun had come around the Point and was streaming through the tall windows. It glittered on the bay. Shorebirds appeared in bold relief against the brightness. By their silhouettes I recognized mallards, mergansers, buffleheads, brants, loons, and cormorants. The kingfisher perched on the pier. I found no updates on Mona Tuchman. The phone rang.

“It’s me,” said Nick.

“What’s cooking?”

“Tonight will be very late. I won’t make it home.”

“I’ll make a reservation,” I said. Whenever Nick had to stay so late that he would miss his flight, I would book a room at the Gregory and take a train into the city.

“Georgie, are you sure you want to? It’s going to be late, and I mean late.”

“Don’t ask such a ridiculous question,” I said.

“Ah, well.” He paused, then said, “Project Broadsword is taking off. A corporate raider is getting into the act.”

Corporate raider. I thought of the language of tender offers: white knight, golden parachutes, shark repellents, scorched earth, sale of crown jewels. It had a poetry that belied the brash doggedness of the participants. “Don’t tell me the details. Discretion is paramount. Someone might have your phone bugged.”

“Which train will you take?” Nick asked, ignoring my sarcasm. I couldn’t stand the way he used those phrases, like a boy playing King Arthur or Arabian Nights, playful little phrases that trivialized his work and made too light of the disruption it caused in our lives.

“The next one. The one that gets in at two-thirty.”

“I’m sorry about this. It’s just that meetings are scheduled all day, and then I’ll have to turn the agreement around. They need a final version tomorrow morning.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We can have a late dinner tonight. Clare gave me a book about New York restaurants open after midnight. There are more than you’d think.”

Nick laughed. I pictured him leaning back in his brown leather chair, his back to the window facing Trinity Church’s dark spire. I knew exactly which glen plaid suit he had worn that morning, which navy foulard tie, which socks. His white shirts were interchangeable; even I could not tell them apart. The instant a fray appeared, he would give me the shirt to wear on the beach. I found his dislike of frays endearing.

“Should I call you when I get in?” I asked.

“Of course. Leave a message with Denise if I can’t come to the phone.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you.”

I love you
: We said it so often I sometimes expected the words to lose their meaning, but they never did.

We had a regular room at the Gregory, a small hotel on West Twentieth Street named for Yeats’s Lady Gregory. Before the west-side marshes had been filled in, the hotel had stood at the edge of the Hudson River. Now you couldn’t even see the water from our room on the top floor. A ten-minute walk from the river, and I felt landlocked. The hotel had a genteel shabbiness: faded brocade draperies, mahogany walls and lobby furniture, polished brass lamps, leather chairs at the writing tables, sad-eyed portraits of Lady Gregory. Nick sometimes suggested we stay at a fancy hotel on Central Park, but I liked it here. I felt totally anonymous. The bellman barely greeted me; I carried my own bag upstairs. In the dark shadows of Manhattan, I tried to not feel anger about leaving bright, sparkling Black Hall. Wasn’t it my choice to join Nick? He had never insisted that I come to town; in fact I could not remember him actually suggesting it. He was happy that I wanted to, but the idea was mine.

I paced the room for a few minutes. The desk was antique, in need of new brass drawer pulls. I used a plastic pen cap to pry open one drawer, to check whether the previous tenant had left anything behind. Once I had lost four sketches of marine life in that very drawer, but today it was empty. I spread my papers across the desk. My first quarterly report was due in a month.

I called Nick’s office and left a message with Denise. Then I picked up the Manhattan phone book. I called Mona Tuchman’s number. She answered.

“Hello, this is Georgiana Swift calling from the Swift Observatory,” I said, expecting her to hang up.

“Mmmm.”

“I wondered whether I could interview you.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. What does the Swift Observatory want with me?”

“To ask you a few questions. Talk to you awhile.”

“I notice you don’t have the rapid-fire approach. You could have already asked me some questions.”

“I thought we could meet. You could come to my hotel, or I could go to you. Whichever you prefer.” I could hardly believe I was arranging a meeting with Mona Tuchman. After our last conversation I had been steeled for an attack.

“You might as well come here,” she said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, already planning my subway route.

She lived in a big building on the Upper West Side where stone gargoyles, angels, and rams leered from rooftops and lintels. A brilliant green patch of Central Park was visible around the corner. A terra-cotta planter of begonias stood outside the entrance. The doorman directed me to the eighth floor.

She was waiting in the foyer. I had been right about the dark hair; short and curly, it framed her round face. She wore tortoiseshell glasses. Gentle lines indicated that her face was accustomed to smiling, but it was at that moment expressionless. She wore a full green corduroy jumper over a nylon turtleneck. I wondered whether she was pregnant.

“Entrez,”
she said, preceding me into the apartment. We introduced ourselves.

“What is the Swift Observatory?” she asked, gesturing at a brick-red wing chair. I sat, watching her settle herself onto a straight-backed desk chair. The decor was vaguely colonial. Patchwork quilts hung on two walls.