Don't Worry About the Kids (20 page)

On Saturday morning we went to the library. Carolyn and Timothy were not there. The librarian asked me about my father, whom she remembered from the years when I was a young boy. He died four years ago, I said. Had I heard that Mrs. Kachulis had passed away only two months before? Cancer of the spine. She was sixty-eight years old. What of her daughter Demeter, I asked. The librarian said that the less I knew of Demeter the better. Demeter had not turned out well. The last anyone had heard, Demeter was wandering in the West somewhere. Demeter had not come to the funeral.

Lynne sat at one of the low tables on the far side of the room, her hands clasped in front of her. Was she afraid she would forget Timothy—all they had done together, all he was? Old memories, I wanted to explain to her, are rarely lost, are impervious to anything short of brain damage. New memories, in comparison, are fragile, though about memory itself, its structure and architecture, we still knew virtually nothing. Why is it that almost all children have virtually perfect photographic memories, yet lose these at about the time they learn to read and write? Persisting photographic memory—iconic memory—is much more common in adults of preliterate cultures. Was learning to read and write, then, even as it worked to help us retain what was most beautiful, good, and true about our lives, joined in an eternal bond with the very loss of memory and feelings about those things we wished, by the act of reading and writing, to hold to?

Officer Kelly visited me each night that week. He was the only person who seemed concerned. Friends, neighbors, relatives, and school officials stopped inquiring. Officer Kelly sat in my kitchen and asked me about my day at work, about Carolyn, about my relationship with Lynne. I spoke to him of what I was working on at the office, of theories and mysteries concerning memory, evolutionary change, the origin of time, the riddle of space, the psychoneurological basis of feeling.

We watched ballgames and movies together. He talked to me of his life as a policeman, its banality and violence. I continued to tell him everything I remembered about Carolyn and our life together, but the more I told, the less I felt I knew. It was as if by remembering and naming what had been, I was losing the very things I was hoping to find. On Friday night of the second week after Carolyn's disappearance, Officer Kelly said that it would make no difference to him—to his regard for me—if I never spoke about Carolyn again. He would not think my love for her, or my feeling of loss, any less authentic.

The following morning, when Lynne and I were sitting in the children's room at the library, a young man dressed in jeans and a red and blue checkered sport shirt, came up to us and asked if our children had returned yet. How did you know—? I asked, and then realized that the young man was Officer Kelly, dressed in civilian clothes. He told us that he had resigned from his job as a policeman. He assured us that our cases would be followed up on a regular basis, through regular channels. He sat at our table and began to talk about himself. He had no parents, no brothers and sisters, no wife or ex-wives, no children. Until the age of twenty-one, he said, he'd had only one desire: to be a policeman. He'd fulfilled that desire, and didn't see why, at the age of twenty-five, he should still be bound by a dream he'd had when he was five, or ten, or twenty. He needed some time to reconsider his life. I asked him if he wanted to stay with me. He thanked me and offered, in exchange, to take care of the apartment while I was at work—to do the shopping, the housekeeping, the preparation of meals. When Carolyn returned, he would, of course, leave.

Lynne had supper with us that night. We ate by candlelight and I repeated a saying of my father's, that when you lost the most precious jewel, you searched for it with a candle that cost but a penny. Neither Lynne nor Galen reacted. Our children might be lost, I added, but our childhoods were not. We could talk to one another of all we remembered and when we were done remembering, I said, we could make up stories and give them to one another. Again, neither Lynne nor Galen showed any reaction. They ate in silence, and while they did, I tried to imagine what they were thinking or imagining or feeling. I could not. So I suggested that Lynne consider moving in with us. She could sleep in Carolyn's room and Galen could sleep in the living room. There was no reason, until we knew what would happen next, for any of us to be alone.

What Is the Good Life?

S
O
, I
ASKED
. Are we in love then?

Probably, she said.

Probably?

She laughed. The surface of the Mediterranean was smooth, and I imagined peeling off a thin layer of it, offering it to Aldy—I imagined her furling it around her neck, smiling lovingly at me. I imagined that I could, by such an act, please her in a way no one else had ever pleased her.

She took my hand. But here, she said. Here, Carl. Come. This is the place I wanted to show you—where the car plunged through. It landed down there.

She pointed to a spot about forty feet below, told me that Doctor Duplay, head of neurosurgery at Nice Hospital, was convinced Stephanie had tried to pull up the hand brake. There were other stories—that Stephanie, and not her mother, had been the one driving; that Prince Rainier covered this up since Stephanie was under age; that the Prince's marriage, twenty years before, had been part of a deal whereby the United States—with the French about to withdraw militarily from NATO—would secure a strategic base in this part of the world; and that the death itself was not accidental—that it was, instead, merely the last bit of a long and lousy piece of foreign intrigue. Aldy believed none of these stories—she believed that Stephanie had, in fact, tried to pull up the brake and save her mother's life.

Will you say so?

Yes. God, but the press went after her—not because she survived and her mother died, but more, I think, because she didn't attend the funeral.

I kissed the back of Aldy's neck, watched the frail gold hairs there uncurl. I thought of how peaceful I'd felt the night before, driving home from Nice airport, along the coast—of how happy I'd been, knowing Aldy would be waiting for me.

I've never felt this way before, I said. I never imagined I could love anybody the way I love you. I'm still surprised.

That you love me?

That someone like you finds me interesting. Sometimes I just want to tell you
everything
—all I feel, all I've done.

The height must be getting to you, she said. It's eight hundred feet above sea level here.

Don't, I said. Please. Don't make light of what I say. Tell me instead. Tell me what
you
feel.

You're the dearest man I've ever known. She kissed me gently, on the mouth. I'm surprised, Carl. Astonished really, by what you make me feel.

She turned away from me again, so that she too was looking down at the sea. We stood close to the wall of the Moyenne Corniche, and she leaned back into me, then reached behind, slipping her hand under my shirt, letting it rest against my stomach.

This is the way it was, she said. The gear shift was in drive. The parking brake was up three notches. Grace lay unconscious in the back seat. They pulled her through the rear window of the car. Stephanie suffered a hairline fracture of one of the vertebrae on her neck, but that wasn't what kept her from the funeral.

Shock?

Yes. She'd taken it in the neck before—no pun intended—for absenting herself from obligation: she stayed away from the grand ball the night before her sister Caroline's wedding. Why? Because her mother had denied her request to wear slacks.

So then, I asked,
are
the rich different from you and me?

I wouldn't know, she said. I'm very rich.

And very beautiful. Sometimes, even when we're together, I don't believe it—that a woman as beautiful as you cares for me the way you do.

Stop. She pulled away. I've told you not to tell me that anymore. Why should I value what I didn't cause and can't help?

I didn't apologize for what I'd said. I lifted her chin, kissed her. Aldy spoke: Here's what Stephanie said—“I don't understand why people are interested in me. I want to be an ordinary girl. I can't stand for my friends to call me princess.”

But you're not her friend. You're a writer—a reporter.

I have an appointment with her tomorrow. And I'll interview Caroline next week, while you're away. Which reminds me—my father wants to meet you. He'll be here this weekend.

Then he approves?

Princeton
uber alles
, Carl. She moved her hand down, below my belt buckle. I grew hard at once. You like it when I do this—here—don't you?

Yes.

I'm doing this at the very spot where Grace Kelly's favorite car, her brown Rover 3500, an eight-cylinder automatic, plunged through the crash barrier. Are you thinking of Grace Kelly?

No.

Do you still love me?

Is this a trick question?

In third grade, at the International School in Geneva, I was madly in love with a Danish boy named Peter. I sat behind him and slipped notes to him, under my desk and through the opening to his seat. “Do you love me? Please answer yes or no.” When he wrote “yes” and passed the note back I'd write a new note: “Do you
still
love me?”

Her white blouse shone in the sun as if, I thought, it were made of fiberglass. I moved a hand to her breast, but she pushed it away.

I asked you a question and I expect an answer: Do you still love me?

Yes.

I touched her, at the hip, leaned on her there, for when she began to make love to me like this, I became dizzy. She lifted my hand. Don't move, she said. Don't touch me. I used to dream of doing you this way. Even at Princeton. Her mouth was at my ear. Some dreams do come true, you see.

I could hear my heart pumping, could feel blood swirling through me. I closed my eyes, saw blood pouring down the mountain, rushing past cypress and wild olive trees, circling the highway from Roc Agel to La Turbie, from La Turbie to where we were, and then down again, down into the green sea.

Do you recall what she looked like? Aldy asked. Do you remember her in
Rear Window?

No.

She was flawless. Pure Irish cream. Would you like it if I looked like her? Or like Stephanie? I could talk with Stephanie about us getting together—getting it on together, to be exact. Stephanie trusts me, you see. Why? Because she fears I may find her uninteresting. Aldy stopped.
Rear Window
—it just occurred to me—they pulled her through the rear window. Character is fate, yes? So tell me. Tell me what you want, Carl. I want to give you everything you want.

I want
you
. I want—

She placed her free hand over my mouth. No, she said. Tell me something else: Will you talk with my father about how I lusted after you when we were at Princeton? My father saw you play against Yale and Colgate. He said you had a superb spin move—that you could stop and turn on a dime. He said you were amazing in the open court, that you had a marvelous sense of where you were. Like Bill Bradley. She leaned her cheek against my chest. I love to hear your heart, she said. I love to know how much I excite you. I'll do anything for you.

Just love me.

Shh. Princess Grace dated the Shah of Iran when she was in acting school, Aldy said. She dated Onassis. She was a guest on his yacht, where the bar stools were made from the scrotums of whales. Frank Sinatra was her close personal friend. Frank Sinatra's close personal friends sell crack and heroine to children on street corners.

Why are you telling me this now?

She pushed me against the wall until I felt the warm stone cut into the small of my back. She dated and fucked the scum of the world, Aldy said. She was President of the local Le Leche League. She had two miscarriages. She said that a woman's natural role is to be a pillar of the family. It's their
physiological
job. The emancipation of women, she stated, had made them lose their mystery. Am I still a mystery to you, Carl? In what ways do you
not
still know me?

I said nothing. I watched her eyes, the strange glazed surface, the fire below. Aldy kept talking, whispering in my ear: When Marilyn died, people in mental hospitals went berserk. When Grace died, nothing. Flowers and diplomats. Grace would never have done to you what I'm doing now.

I dug my nails into her back. Grace didn't drink and she didn't smoke and she didn't take pills and she worried about her weight. Women only work, she claimed, to avoid their true responsibilities. She was as dull as coal dust in a dark Pennsylvania mine.

You know why I love you? I asked.

Tell me.

Because you do your homework so well.

Aldy smiled. I'm considering a series: Marilyn, Liz, Jackie, Madonna, Jane. You've heard of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”? My series will be called “Leftovers of the Rich and Famous.” We photograph the insides of their refrigerators. We run elaborate layouts of their bathrooms and bedrooms. The back seats of their cars. When they're gone. When they're dead.

Her touch was gentler than her voice. Are you happy, Carl? she asked. I like hearing you breathe against my neck. Will you come in my hand? I want you to. Now, Carl. It was a safe life for you here until I showed up. That's what you said to me, our first night together—afterward. Remember? You said you'd had a safe life here until I entered it. Now you don't.

The villa Aldy's father was staying in for the weekend was in Cap d'Antibes, less than a quarter mile from the villa that had once belonged to Somerset Maugham. I sat on the patio, gazing at the green sea, Aldy beside me, while her father poured wine for us, talked to Aldy about the Riviera, about who—Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall, Francoise Sagan, Graham Greene, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Marais, Jimmy Baldwin, the Countess Tolstoy—had lived in which villas and which villages, about who she would write about when she was done with the royal family. Aldy said she was going to write about me, of course. She was going to interview me to find out what a gifted and graceful athlete imagined life would be like when his playing days were over. What would he think and feel during those hours and years when his body could no longer do what it was born to do so well? After me she would interview Baryshnikov and Michael Jordan, Nureyev and Magic Johnson and Martina and Gretzky and Flo Jo. She already had a title for the series—“Life after Grace.”