Life Penalty (37 page)

Gail fished in her purse for her wallet, retrieved it and pulled out her license.

“What’s this?” he asked after she’d handed it over. “My license,” Gail said, confused.

“This is from New Jersey,” he told her, as if she might not have known.

“That’s right,” Gail agreed. “I’m from New Jersey. We just moved down a few months ago.”

“You need a Florida license.”

Gail was silent. She didn’t know what to say. He sensed her confusion.

“Nothin’ to get yourself upset about,” he said gently, looking at his watch. “It’s kind of late now. I don’t think you’d have time to get there before the office closes, it
being a Friday and all, but, look, there’s no problem. I’ll just put the gun away for you, and I’ll keep this here sheet until Monday, and first thing on Monday morning, you go on over to the city hall in Lake Worth,” he continued, rechecking the in formation on her sheet. “That’s the closest one to where you live, and you take your little driving test and you get your Florida license.”

“I have to take a test?”

“It’s just a formality. We already know you can drive. All you gotta do is take a written test and ten minutes later you ‘II have your license. You bring it on down here and you’ll have your gun.”

“I have to wait till Monday,” she repeated.

“Husband gone for the weekend?” he asked. Gail nodded. “Wish I could help you,” he said sincerely. He raised his hands in a gesture that asked, What can I do?

Gail folded her license back into her wallet. “I’ll be back on Monday,” she told him, realizing as she spoke that Mon day was Cindy’s birthday. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

She spent the weekend in the apartment. Her mother called. New York was glorious, if cold. Carol looked wonderful. Stephen was an absolute dream. They had gotten them tickets to two Broadway shows, and each one had been exhilarating. They had eaten dinner at the Four Seasons, where the menus didn’t have prices, and where they spotted David Susskind with a pretty blonde. The bill for the four of them—Steve had insisted on picking up the tab—was over three hundred dollars. Lila asked how Jack was doing, what the weather was like, and if she was still having a good time. Gail answered that Jack was fine, the weather was great, and that she couldn’t be enjoying herself more.

Gail’s father came on the line to repeat the same information from a different perspective. The weather in New
York was miserable; Carol looked tired; Stephen was a pompous bore; the plays they had been subjected to were tuneless and drab—he had barely managed to stay awake. Dinner, he concluded, had been overpriced.

The last speaker was Carol. Their parents, she confided, were driving her crazy and she didn’t know how much more of them she’d be able to take. What was the matter with them? Steve didn’t know what to make of their behavior. They’d tried to make their visit pleasant, she admitted in defeat at the end of the conversation, but nothing seemed to make them happy. Regrettably, she would be glad to see them leave.

The only other people who called were the Sniders. Jack had phoned them from the airport to explain that an emergency had come up at the office with which his temporary girl was not equipped to deal, and he had to return that night. Gail, he had explained, was staying on for a few more days. How was she feeling? they inquired. Did she want to go out for dinner one night before she left? She declined with thanks and told them she would be leaving Monday. Wasn’t it a shame how you couldn’t depend on anybody these days? Sandra asked, and Gail agreed, forgetting to say goodbye before she hung up the phone. She spent the rest of the weekend in bed.

Irv was right—it was a joke.

Gail stared down at the list of questions on the test in front of her. She had as long as necessary to answer twenty elementary questions on driving. What’s more, the questions were multiple choice, and she had been allowed to bring the information booklet in with her. If she didn’t know an answer, all she had to do was look it up. Furthermore, she had been informed when she arrived to take the driving test, she was free to bring someone in with her who could assist her. Gail looked around
the room. There were half a dozen other people taking the test, leaning forward in the old wooden chairs, giving all their attention to the project at hand. One young Cuban was having noticeable problems probably with the language, Gail thought, looking past him to a teenage girl who had brought her father along as adviser.

Gail picked up the pen beside her and quickly ticked off the correct answers to the questions: An octagonal-shaped red sign meant (a) yield, (b) stop, (c) danger, (d) curves ahead. An arrow which pointed right indicated (a) the road continued straight ahead, (b) the road turned to the left, (c) the road turned to the right, (d) a dead end. Eighteen more of the same. Gail finished and handed her test paper to the woman in charge, who took more time to mark it than Gail had needed to complete it. They must take lessons in slowness, Gail thought, waiting for the woman to finish marking. “You got them all right,” she smiled. “Take this to Mrs. Hartly in the other room. She’ll give you your license.”

Gail thanked her, took her results firmly in her hand and left the room. Just as Irv had predicted, ten minutes later she had her license.

“Here it is, brand spanking new,” Gail said, producing her newly acquired driver’s license and handing it across the counter to Irv. He was wearing another one of those bright Hawaiian numbers, this one filled with pictures of women in grass skirts and bikinis. “I got perfect marks,” she said with some pride, and laughed.

“Good for you,” he said, retrieving her yellow form from the drawer where he had placed it and copying her license number into the appropriate box. “You’re looking better too. Not so sore.”

“I’m peeling like crazy,” Gail informed him. “My legs look like snake scales.”

“Always liked snakes,” the man confided, with a wink at her legs. She was wearing slacks to hide them.

“I’ve never liked them,” Gail shuddered. “I’m afraid of them. I always have been.”

“It’s been my experience,” Irv said, “that the only snakes you have to be afraid of are the ones that walk on two legs.” He pulled the H & R nine-shot .22 out of its box and marked down its serial number and the other required information in the appropriate squares. Then he signed and dated the form.

“You survived the weekend, I see,” he said, returning the gun to its box.

“Barely,” Gail told him. “I was kind of nervous about that stupid test.” It was true. She had always gotten very nervous over tests. In her several years at college, she had often lost as much as eight pounds over a set of exams, and even term tests in high school had thrown her into a panic. She was always prepared, and she always did well, but every year her anxiety increased. Leaving school to marry Mark had been something of a relief.

“Better not forget the bullets,” Gail reminded him. Irv secured the box, located the proper bullets, and put the whole package in a plastic bag before handing it over.

“Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” he smiled.

O
n impulse, Gail stopped at a bakery on the way home and purchased a small birthday cake. “‘Happy Birthday’ will be fine,” Gail told the saleslady when she asked if there was a name Gail wanted added. The cake was round and covered with white icing and pink flowers. Gail also bought a small box of birthday candles. She drove back to her parents’ condominium with the cake and the gun sitting in the seat beside her.

When she got inside the apartment, she set the cake on the kitchen table and unwrapped the box containing the gun. She laid it on the table beside the cake and then changed into her bathing suit and went for a walk on the beach.

It seemed there were fewer people out today, although the sky was as relentlessly blue as ever. There was only a handful of people out by the pool. The three homosexuals had departed over the weekend. The season had another month or so to run, then most of the tourists would disappear, leaving behind the locals. Half the stores and a good number of the restaurants would close their doors until next October. The houses would be boarded up. Hurricane shutters would be firmly in place. Like a cottage closed for the winter, Palm Beach would effectively shut itself up for the summer.

Gail walked along the wide expanse of beach. The sand was hard and good for walking. She had always loved this stretch of beach. Even at its most crowded, its numbers never approximated the hordes of people who flocked to Fort Lauderdale or Miami. Gail moved her eyes from the ocean to the line of low white buildings. The newer condominiums displayed interesting curves and angles, with a maximum exposure to the ocean view, and as much window frontage as the rules allowed. Balcony railings curved around comers; people sat sunning themselves on their private deck chairs, a bottle of expensive wine at their feet. Could life be more perfect than this? they seemed to ask.

Gail continued walking until she reached the bridge at Boynton Beach, marching past the men fishing off its sides, to its tip. The ocean was calm, its waves scarcely more than ripples. Gail watched it, thinking of how calm it had always made her feel, and realized that even now, it was having that effect. Nothing was that important, it said to her. Life was never meant to be taken this seriously.

Gail turned around abruptly and headed back for the apartment. When she reached the pool, she glanced up at the clock and calculated she had been gone over two hours. Her legs were sore and she’d gotten more sun. Oh well, she thought, jumping into the pool to cool off, she would look glorious in death. She looked so well, she could hear them mutter as they filed past her open coffin. No, she thought, coming up for air, her coffin would undoubtedly be closed. Most people would not like to witness a head half blown away by a bullet, no matter how deep the tan on the remaining flesh.

She laughed out loud, feeling silly. A woman, she noticed, was making motions at her from the side of the pool. Gail swam toward her. “Yes?” she asked, shaking her head to get the water out of her ears.

“I said you’re supposed to take a shower before entering the pool,” the woman repeated testily, pointing at the nearby sign. “It says so right in the rules.”

Gail made herself a nice salad for dinner. There were some shrimps that Jack had bought before he left, and Gail wondered if they were still good. She smelled them, couldn’t be sure, and added them to the salad. Then she removed a bottle of her favorite white wine, Verdicchio, from the fridge. She uncorked it and poured herself a tall glass. Then she sat down with the salad, the wine, the birthday cake and the gun in front of her.

“Cheers,” she said.

She ate her salad. When she was finished, she took the plate to the sink and washed it. She didn’t want to leave any dirty dishes. The apartment would be spotless for whoever found her. Who would find her? she wondered, finishing off her glass of wine and pouring herself another. Most likely the superintendent. Someone would report they hadn’t seen her. Perhaps someone would phone and become concerned when no one answered. She hoped it wouldn’t be her parents. No, that was unlikely. Someone would find her before her parents were scheduled to return. They would search through the rooms and ultimately find her in the bathroom, in the shower. That way there would be the least amount of mess. She didn’t want to leave a mess. Her suicide was probably against the rules as it was.

She sat down with her second glass of wine and contemplated leaving a note. What would she say? Goodbye; cruel world? I took you too seriously. I leave you to your monsters. I don’t want to live in a world where children die before their seventh birthday. She looked toward the cake.

There was no need for a note. Everyone would know her reasons. They would remark, correctly, that she just hadn’t been the same since Cindy’s death. Laura would blame
herself for her ill-conceived remarks; Nancy would say that she had tried to make herself available, but that Gail never phoned. She would not attend the funeral, although she would doubtless send a huge arrangement of flowers. Laura would send food. Her parents would be numbed, but perhaps her death would propel them back toward each other.

And what of Jennifer? She would be devastated by her mother’s suicide, would bear the scars of it all her life. She would blame herself, just as Gail had blamed herself after Cindy’s death. If only she
hadn’t
done this, if only she
had
done that. Guilt—the most useless of all human emotions, and the most pervasive. Gail prayed that Mark and Julie would be able to help Jennifer, convince her that what her mother had done was beyond anyone’s control. They had all tried so hard to help her.

And Jack. How would he feel? What would this do to him? Like Jennifer, he would blame himself. If he hadn’t left her, this never would have happened. If he’d stayed and been the friend he always claimed to be.

It wasn’t true, and Gail hoped he would recognize that fact in time. He’d never meant to leave her she knew that. He hoped only that this last desperate measure would pull her to her senses, force her to confront what she was doing to everyone, but mostly to herself.

She pictured Jack sitting on their bed in Mrs. Mayhew’s house in Cape Cod. What had he said? Something about Cindy’s killer. Don’t let him take everything. Words to that effect.

She was going around in circles, she thought, rubbing her forehead and pouring herself another drink. She was also getting drunk, she realized, admonishing herself to be careful. When she fired the damn gun into her brain, she didn’t want to miss and shoot the shower curtain instead.

Gail stumbled to the counter and located the small box of birthday candles. She pulled out eight—one for each
year and one for good luck. She arranged them around the circumference of the cake, placing the one for good luck right in the center, and then rummaged through the drawers looking for a match. She found a matchbox from a place called the Banana Boat and managed to light one of the candles before the match burned down to her fingers. It took one match per candle to finally get them all lit. “Make a wish,” she said to herself and then complied. “I wish I was dead,” she said.