Days Like Today (4 page)

She looked into the mirror and combed her hair a different way. She tried on clothes she hadn’t worn for a while.

No change would make a difference if his thoughts were with someone else. She’d have become an object. She’d be the thing left behind to stay at home and take care of the children and the house.

Never trust a betrayer,
she said to her face in the mirror.
If he
did it once, he’ll do it again.
Maybe that really was true. People tended to stick to familiar patterns of behavior. In his case … But that was nonsense. She knew that he loved her. And the children, too. He wasn’t promiscuous by temperament. This was all silly. What did it mean? It meant that whether he was in danger and under stress or whether he’d just escaped from the fighting and was feeling good, a pretty girl who made a beeline for him was going to hold his attention and possibly his affection too, for a while. But as long as his wife pretended not to notice, he’d never think of breaking up the marriage. Although why she should have to put up with that … and anyway, how could anyone love that girl, Alice, who looked as blank and empty as a doll?

Anybody could love anybody, of course. No rules applied.
But Joan didn’t think it was love. That might develop. It had happened before and then, without any admission or even discussion, it had ceased to be noticeable, and then it was gone.

She stamped her foot at the sight of her reflection. What was wrong with her? Everything was still all right. Why was she scared now?

The one person she could have talked to, who would know about everything, was the first wife: the woman she had wronged. Joan’s part in the business hadn’t been nearly so bad as the wrong Max had done; still, it meant that the two women who loved him could never talk. No trust could be established following an act of such treachery. They would remain enemies.

It was just possible that if Max walked out, then after he became bored with the insipid, fame-hunting Alice, he’d go back to his first wife, leaving everyone else high and dry.

What would she do then? She’d be taking care of the children and doing the laundry for the rest of her life; never having the love, never even having the sex.

Who was it who had once said to her that she’d rather have good sex than love? And the reason given was that love invariably fell apart on you, whereas good sex always gave you a bang. Somebody she’d been to school with. The school reunion. A career girl who liked the footloose life. She couldn’t remember.

The children were in a rare period of unbroken routine. No crisis appeared near, or even possible, and Joan had the
freedom to give in to her worries about herself. When Max was suddenly called out on an assignment again, she was partly taken up with other thoughts.

Bruno would be setting out a week later on the same job, to follow in Max’s footsteps as far as he and his field team were able to go. Max didn’t have the TV cameras, the connection with NATO forces’ equipment and French army food supplies. He had personal contacts among the people who were fighting and killing. He had his eyes, his voice, the two spiral notebooks, two pens, two pencils and the miniature tape recorder. And his charm. And all his lucky talismans: the other charms, worn into battle like the witch doctor’s pouch belonging to a spear-carrying tribesman.

She had to admit that the tiny objects annoyed her. It wasn’t just the fact that her husband treasured things given to him by strangers, that he insisted on keeping them by him in his darkest moments and that not one of them was from her – he didn’t, for instance, wear a wedding ring; her dislike of them had more to do with his need. If he had clung to a memento of her in that obsessed, fetishistic way, she’d have been pleased. But he had to have something else: some source of strength that excluded her. Other people’s presents, and their love, retained a magic property that her gifts no longer had; they were never used up or made ordinary. For him to care so much about them was like telling her that she had no magic.

His need for them also reminded her of their youngest child, who, when he was still a baby, took delight in the bright toys she hung around his crib: his rattle, his twirling
clown, his striped ball and the hanging mobile from which depended eight little blue birds that flew in a circle. And if all those baubles weren’t lined up in exactly the same order and height as usual, with the customary width of spacing between them, he’d scream with rage and then cry as if heartbroken: because nothing was right any longer.

What would happen if Max decided that she was bringing him bad luck? Would he just throw her away, like the dud talismans? Like the first wife?

He went upstairs to begin packing and then came down to make a phone call. As he reached the living room, she started up the staircase with two ironed blouses and a skirt on a hanger.

She put the clothes in the girls’ room, moving a few dresses along the closet rail to make room for the skirt, which she hung next to her older daughter’s ‘lucky’ blouse. It had taken hours of persuasion and lecturing before the girl had stopped wanting to wear the blouse every day. The most difficult argument to deal with had been the one following the statement, ‘School is definitely a war zone.’

As she passed down the hallway again, she looked through the bedroom door. There on the bedspread was Max’s security belt and, visible through the unzipped opening of its pocket, his special package of charms: a narrow, flat triangle made by folding a handkerchief the way a flag is packed up, and at each crease adding a charm. The convenient shape and firm binding wouldn’t allow anything inside to jiggle around or fall out. Next to the charms
was a pile of handkerchiefs and the front door keys, which Max kept separately and always left at home when he was traveling. Seeing the keys gave Joan the idea. There was an extra set up on the closet shelf.

She brought down the spare keys, took one of the handkerchiefs, flattened it out and began to fold a section of the material until it formed a shape almost identical in appearance to a corner of the original. She wound the keys into the rest of the cloth, making a loose knot that could be mistaken for a natural entanglement: the result of one thing covering up another when all the clothes were being moved. The carefully constructed point could be taken for the remaining lines of ironing.

She slid the substitute into the pocket of the security belt, leaving the zipper still open so that Max could check, just by looking, that the triangle was inside. And she put the one containing the charms up into the closet where the keys had been.

And now they’d see, she thought. Maybe he’d never know. And then afterwards she could say, ‘See how silly that is. You didn’t have them this time and everything went fine.’

If he did notice that the charms were gone, would he think it was an accident and that he’d grabbed up the wrong thing before rushing off to make his telephone call; or that she’d rearranged his packing in an effort to help?

He’d have to think something like that, unless he noticed within the next few minutes and thought she was playing a joke on him. He wouldn’t suspect her of deliberate sabotage. Otherwise, the first thing he’d do when he came back
would be to go straight to Alice’s place, where he’d spend five days talking, relaxing, winding down and of course giving that Alice plenty of what he didn’t seem to think his own wife needed very much of. That was how his first marriage had broken up. She ought to know. First came being taken for granted, then the complaints started. It was always better to stop talking and start doing something that made an improvement.

If he discovered the keys, they might inspire him: he was a man who was stimulated by danger. It was possible that a happy, predictable family life was too safe for him.

Early in the afternoon he looked at his watch. He ran his hand over the outline of the security pocket under his belt. Then he checked that he was carrying or wearing every essential official document and that the two bags were on or under the front hall chair.

He gathered everything up. She opened the door. He moved out on to the step, set the big bag down and put his arm around her.

As she kissed him goodbye, she told him, ‘Don’t forget: you hold the keys to my heart.’

‘Mm,’ he said. ‘Behave yourself while I’m gone. Lay off the ice cream. Don’t speak to strangers.’

‘Bye, darling,’ she answered. ‘Don’t sleep with strangers.’

‘I said, “Speak to”.’

‘I can’t tell you not to do that. It’s your job.’

He picked up the duffel bag again, backed down the front path and waved. From twenty feet away she got the
full force of the famous smile, with the warmth of his personality aimed straight at her. She waved and blew kisses to him, all the time thinking:
Don’t get hurt, don’t go near the
shooting, don’t come back dead, don’t disappear out there, lost
somewhere in a mass grave or a muddy field
.
Don’t go till tomor
row. Let’s be happy a little longer.

That night she dreamt that he was shot, that they sent his body home in a coffin and that she had to go to the airport to pick it up. The coffin came around on the luggage carousel and, when it reached her, all movement stopped. She heard a faint hammering from deep inside, under a large keyhole right over the place that would line up with the heart of the corpse. Max had been put into the coffin while he was still alive: he was trying to get out but the key to the lock had been shut in with him. It was one of the keys she’d wrapped up in the handkerchief that was in his security pocket. As she listened to his struggles, she realized that he was never going to get out; he was going to die and she was to blame.

In the morning she still felt shaken. After getting the children off to school, she telephoned three friends and two relatives, telling them that she might have to park the kids on them at some time during the next few days. She started to organize a list of clothes to pack into the children’s travel bags.

She was standing in the kitchen and about to put a load of laundry into the machine, when she sensed that something wasn’t right. She caught no faintest smell of smoke or gas, no sinister tiny dripping or cracks or creakings that
sounded out of place. And yet something was wrong. Her uneasiness increased. She turned slowly, going all the way around in a circle – not really looking, but just checking her surroundings – and stopped. The answer came to her: Max.

She raced to the bedroom, opened the closet door, snatched up the handkerchief with the charms, stuffed it into a drawstring bag she used for her makeup, grabbed her jacket and keys and ran downstairs again.

She had her hand out for the front door when she turned back to make a telephone call. In her hurry she bumped into a table. Then she pushed the phone buttons too fast and had to start over from the beginning.

She counted six rings.

A voice answered, ‘Yeah?’

‘Bruno?’

‘I don’t believe it. My dreams come true. Hi.’

‘Bruno, this is an emergency. Are you going to be at the office for an hour or so?’

‘Sure, but I could come to you.’

‘No, that’s no good. I’ve got to give you something Max left behind. I’ll explain when I see you. If you’re going out, would you tell your secretary –’

‘You stay there. I’ll come right over.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, and hung up.

She was bucketing through a wide, suburban street before she noticed that her foot was on the gas as hard as it could go. She slowed down and took a few deep breaths. Everything was going to be all right: panic would only make things worse.

She drove to the area where she’d lived when she was still single and, parking the car in the place she’d always used, took the subway in to the center of town.

She entered the building, running. And she was out of the elevator, pushing past the secretary and barging into Bruno’s office before she’d thought out what to do or say. As she arrived, breathless, he was getting up from the chair behind his desk. She didn’t even give him the opportunity for a kiss on the cheek. She stuck out her arm and presented the pouch, saying, ‘Bruno, I’ve done a terrible thing. I still don’t know how it could have happened, but Max’s good luck charms were all folded up in a handkerchief and there was a set of keys right next to them, with some other handkerchiefs – and he went off with the wrong bundle. Can you get them to him?’

He wanted to take her out to lunch, to cancel meetings: to make all sorts of preliminary moves towards isolating her with him.

She shook her head and retreated.

He said, ‘You owe me a hell of a meal for this one.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she said, rushing away.

After handing over the charms she felt better. She even felt that she’d averted any possible danger. Her relief was as great as if Max already had his possessions back. She had passed on the responsibility. Bruno hadn’t meant just a candlelit dinner, of course; he thought that he really had a hold over her now. But when the time came, she’d say that this had been a favor to Max, not her. Max would be home first, anyway. She could explain everything and whatever celebration they
wanted to plan as a thank-you would include him.

The next day she wondered: what if Bruno didn’t hand over the charms? What if he decided not to, guessing the effect it could have on Max to find himself vulnerable in a moment of uncertainty? Anything could happen.

She took a shower, packed an overnight bag and put it in the hall. She didn’t know what to do next, so she decided to pretend that everything was all right and that she ought to tackle the normal chores like the dusting and the children’s rooms.

She kept doing the usual daily tasks as she waited, but she was so sure something was going to happen that when the telephone call came she was ready: the children’s bags were packed and her overnight case was in the car.

She reached the hospital ahead of the reporters, twenty minutes before the helicopter carrying Max was scheduled to land on the roof.

She knew that things must be serious because the nurses kept everyone else out. When at last one of them let her see Max, he was unconscious: about to go into the operating theater. She kissed him. She squeezed his hand. She whispered into his ear that everything was going to be all right and that she loved him. ‘That’s all, now,’ someone told her. She backed away.