Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (18 page)

Betty was sobbing loudly now. Frances was shrieking, “All I want is my life back.” Helen was pounding a pillow and chanting, “Die. Die.” Gradually the pain in the room, which was lacerating my heart, gave way to unreserved expressions of anger, as several of the women—nice-looking women with freshly done hair and well-tailored pants suits—started shouting the F-word, and the P-word, and the (pardon me) C-S-word like gospel singers in some devil’s chorus.

Birdie Monti sent me an appalled get-me-out-of-here look. I smiled and pretended I hadn’t received her message.

When the sobbing and shouting and moaning and chanting and cursing had reached a crescendo, Ginger—raising her voice to be heard above the din in the den—declared, “All
right!
You did good You did great. Venting over.”

In just a few seconds the women, their clothes smoothed down and their tears mopped up, had settled back into a state of pre-Venting decorum. After which they turned, under Ginger’s firm guidance, to Resolutions—the next item on the busy AFGO agenda. More clapping was heart as Linda resolved to throw,
her “first time ever without him” cocktail party and Sally resolved to take, a real estate course and Ruth, on a roll, resolved to give up gray and color her hair, plus ask for a raise, plus answer some, ads in the Personals column.

“You’re brave and beautiful women,” said Ginger, after the last of the resolutions was made. “And now it’s time for New Business. Let’s listen to Birdie.”

Seventeen pairs of eyes beamed in on an instantly blushing Birdie, who protectively held up her hand in front of her face. “I don’t think—” Birdie’s voice faded. She cleared her throat and started again. “I really don’t think I have that much to say.”

Ginger walked over and gently tugged her up to the front of the room. “Just say what’s in your heart. Whatever feels comfortable.”

Birdie looked at me pleadingly. “Talk to them,” I mouthed. Her sumptuous body sagged in her gold-and-gray silk. Then, seeing that there was no way out, she straightened her back and lifted her stately head. Her voice now steady and clear, she started to speak.

“I put up with plenty, until I couldn’t put up with any more. So I left. I moved in with my daughter. I cried and I cried. But after two days I stopped crying and two days later I was thinking that maybe I should have left him a whole lot sooner.”

“We hear what you’re saying,” Ginger said, when Birdie, still wrapped in her dignity, finished speaking. “Would anybody like to make a comment?”

“Temporary euphoria,” said Paula, sighing heavily. “You’re feeling good. You’re feeling good. You’re feeling good. You’re feeling good. Then one day you wake up—you’re feeling rotten.”

“The walls start closing in on you,” said Linda. “Time starts hanging heavy on your hands.”

“I don’t know about that,” Birdie said. “I‘m with my grandchildren two whole days a week. I volunteer at a nursing home. I volunteer at a library. I’m taking Spanish. And I’m talking to some florists, about letting me be in charge of their flower arrangements.”

“You better get paid for your work,” Frances warned. “You’re, going to need the money. You may be in for quite a shock financially.”

“I don’t know about that,” Birdie said. “The house, the cars, the stocks, the bonds, the savings accounts? They’re all—for business reasons, he said—in my name.”

“Must be some tax dodge,” said Frances. “But just Wait, he’s going to try to get them back from you.”

“Trying,” said Birdie mildly, “is different from getting.”

Molly, looking pained, spoke next. “I just want to say—and I’m speaking from experience—that this living with your daughter is guaranteed to lead to friction and to heartbreak.”

“I don’t know about that,” Birdie said. “We don’t seem to bother each other. Besides, I’m moving back home again as soon as my lawyer gets Joseph out of my house.”

Betty, eyes brimming over, said, “And once you’re home you’ll see—they hate me to say this—you’ll see you’re half a person without your husband.”

“I don’t know about that,” Birdie said. “I think I was half a person
with
my husband.”

Birdie Monti was given a standing ovation.

When Birdie returned to her seat, Ginger announced,
“There’s another New Business.” Everyone looked around expectantly. “We know she’s a public figure, but she’s got her private pain,” Ginger continued. So come on up here, Brenda, and tell us about it.”

Before I could stop her, Ginger had me up and facing tie group. “No!” I protested. “I’m only here to help Birdie.”

“Birdie,” Ginger said sweetly, “doesn’t seem to need anyone’s help.”

“And I have this funny feeling”—this was Birdie, an inscrutable smile on her face—“that Brenda is needing more help than she is admitting.”

I folded my arms across my chest and made myself perfectly clear. “My husband and I are together, we’re staying together, we’re happy together,” I intoned, each of my “togethers” more emphatic (or was it defensive?) than the last.

“Whatever you say,” said Ginger.

“Whatever you say,” said Paula and Linda and Frances and Helen and Gail.

“Whatever you say,” said all the other women.

“Well, that’s what I say,” I said. At which point the floor and the ceiling tilted, the walls lurched sidewards, the room started whirling around.

“Excuse me,” I said, as my knees gave way and I slowly sank to the ground. “I seem to be having one of my dizzy spells.”

•  •  •

After convincing the AFGO group that yes, I was able to drive—this was after a cup of tea and a lot of advice about vitamin C, acupuncture, and imaging—I chauffeured a cheerful Birdie to Gloria’s house.

“Ginger says I should lead a group. She says I’ve got
the right stuff,” Birdie informed me. “I doubt if I have the time, but I’ll give it some thought.” She paused and looked into, my eyes. “But in the meantime, if there’s some way I can help . . .”

I hastily changed the subject “You know, we never even talked! about Wally and Josephine.”

“You’re right,” she said. “And I think that’s how they want it.”

“Wally and I have a very close relationship,” I somewhat testily told her.

“That’s what I hear from Josephine,” she replied.

“And Jake and I,” I felt compelled to add as I pulled the car into Gloria’s driveway, “also have a very close relationship.”

Birdie smiled and squeezed my shoulder gently. “Whatever you say.”

•  •  •

Heading back home to Cleveland Park, I was feeling a little—how was I feeling?—unsettled. Visions of venting AFGO women—angry, frightened, sad—danced in my head. I admired their brave commitment to making a life, a new life, a husbandless life for themselves. I admired them, but I didn’t want to be them.

I didn’t want to be them because I wanted to be, forever, with my husband, who, thanks to selective amnesia, was looking better to me with every passing mile. Indeed, by 11:30, when I walked through our bedroom door, I couldn’t think of anything but the good . . . great . . . perfect times we’d had together.

Like the winter Jake so patiently taught me to ice-skate on the C & O canal, shouting sweet encouragements—“One small step for a man, one great leap for
mankind”—whenever I stayed on my feet for more than two seconds.

Like the last months of my pregnancies, when he’d join me in the shower and wash my hair.

Like, the day he said we had to see our tax accountant in Maryland, and instead he drove us to Wilmington, Delaware, where (surprise! surprise!) he’d booked us into a deluxe room at the deluxe Dupont Hotel to celebrate our twenty-first anniversary.

Like the time I announced my decision to be cremated when I died, and he said, “Sorry, Bren, I can’t let you do that,” and I said, “That’s for me to decide. It isn’t your decision,” and he said, “I’ve been sleeping beside you almost all of my life, and I want to sleep beside you all of my death,” and I burst out crying and told him, “That’s the most beautiful thing that anyone ever said to me.”

I mean, when I said I wanted to be forever with my husband, we’re talking
forever.

Jake was asleep—or so I thought—when I climbed into bed. I kissed his long-lashed lids, but got no reaction. I pressed my breasts against his back, draped my legs over his thigh, and gently plucked at his richly hairy chest. “I’m lonely. I miss you. I love you,” I whispered softly, bat not that softly, in his ear. “Please be my friend again. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Jake shook me off and sat up on his elbows in what was clearly not a welcome-home mode. “I heard at the deposition today that you paid a little visit to the Tesslers. How—dare—you?”

“This is your response,” I asked, “to a gesture of warmth and love?”

As huffy as one can get lying down, I huffily scooted
to my side of the bed, turning my back away from him but prepared to forgive and forget at the touch of a hand. Instead, Dr. Iceman said, as if I were someone he barely knew and did not like one bit, “This is my response to an offensive and unacceptable intrusion.”

My response to his response was not, I will admit, the most mature. I rolled around and kicked him in the ankle, adding, as he roared with pain and grabbed his wounded part, “And furthermore, you can just go to hell, Jacob Kovner.”

“So can you,” said Jake, moving into full-fledged counterattack. “Maybe that would keep you from butting in where you don’t belong and—as usual—totally fucking up.”

The “as usual” stung. “And suppose I hadn’t butted in about buying those stupid stocks? And suppose I had just stood by and let the contractor put our new tub the wrong way in our bathroom? And suppose, as you had suggested, I had minded my own business and then that widow had ruined your father’s life? You have a short, and very ungrateful, memory.”

“And you, my dear, have a very self-serving one. You want to talk about Cookie Beckerman growing a mustache because you knew more about hormones than her doctor? You want to talk about our water heater almost exploding because you knew more—”

“No, I want to talk about the Tesslers. I thought that I could reach them on a human heart-to-heart level and make them see that they should drop the suit.”

“In other words, you thought you knew more than, the lawyers.”

“No. In other words, I was trying to help you.”

“Some help,” said Jake. “The Tesslers think I sent
you to see them. They think I’m running scared. We were hoping to shake them loose. But now—and for this I give you full credit—they’re really dug in.”

Jake’s voice was arctic. I gave him arctic right back.

“They’re dug in,” I said, “because Joseph Monti is helping them with their legal bills.”

I suddenly had his attention, “They told you that?”

“No,” I said smugly. “Joseph Monti told me.”

Instead of asking what else Mr. Monti had said and why he was financing these lawsuits, all Jake wanted to do—the rat!—was reproach me. “Didn’t it ever occur to you”—his words were curt and clipped—“that Marvin Kipper might want to know about this?”

“I figured it wouldn’t matter once I’d had my talks with the Tesslers and die Ma—”

“Don’t tell, me”—Jake glared down at me—“Don’t tell me you’ve also been talking to the Malones.”

I pulled the blanket up to my shoulders and answered, “Just Mrs. Malone. But if I want to talk to Mister, I will. This lawsuit affects me too, you know. It isn’t just your lawsuit. I’m your wife.”

Jake brought his Jewish Sean Connery face very close to mine. My heart leaped. He was going to kiss and make up. Wrong again. “Your hubris,” he said to me softly, “is apparently unalterable. But just remember, your marital status is not.”

•  •  •

At Jake’s unpleasant insistence, I telephoned Marvin the next morning and told him about Mr. Monti and the malpractice suits. Marvin, who’s one of those lawyers to whom everything alien is human, was not impressed. “The man’s a nut case,” he said. “But there are lots of
folks out there using the courts as an instrument of destruction. It’s dirty stuff, for sure, but not illegal.”

“Just as I thought,” I snapped. “The law lets everybody get away with everything unless you’re two seconds over on your parking meter.”

‘Now Brenda—” Marvin protested.

“No,” I argued with him, “it’s true. I’ll bet if a person threatened to harm some perfectly innocent person, you’d say that there was nothing the law could do.”

“People make threats all the time,” Marvin said. “We have to wait until a crime is committed. And then . . .”

“And then,” I said grimly, “it’s. too late.”

When Marvin and I hung up, I tried to write a column about the women of AFGO. Instead I found my self writing a column entitled U
NLESS
Y
OU
M
EAN
I
T
, D
ON’T
T
HREATEN
D
IVORCE
. I didn’t finish writing it because I had to get dressed and meet Vivian Feuerbach. I also didn’t finish it because I kept thinking of what Jake had said last night and wondering, Did he mean it? Did he mean it?

•  •  •

I was almost out the door when the telephone rang and a gravelly voice asked for Wally Kovner. I explained that he was at school and said I’d be happy to take a message. “Then listen carefully,” the voice replied. I started to shiver even before I heard the jeering words, which made me completely forget my marital woes. “Tell Wally Kovner,” the messenger said, sounding sincerely sinister, “that Sunday was fun day but pretty soon it gets serious.”

The caller slammed down to phone before I could ask him who was speaking and how “it” and “serious” were being defined. But why did I have to ask? I
already knew. I knew that a sentence of death had been pronounced upon my son. And I knew that. the pronouncer was Joseph Monti.

I never cancel appointments, but without a moment’s thought I canceled my dates with Vivian and Louis. I told them I felt really sick and was going to bed for the rest of the day, but only the first half of the tale was true. For though I was feeling as if I’d been injected with stomach flu, I dashed out to People’s Drugstore to purchase assorted body lotions, two bottles of hair oil, some medicated eye pads, and foaming bubble bath, stowing them in the trunk of my car along with the wig and the uniform and the other essentials that I had purchased on Monday. Buying these items seemed, at the moment, more urgent than persuading Vivian Feuerbach to buy Jeff’s properties over in Anacostia. And now that I was equipped I intended to spend the rest of the day reviewing my plans for murdering Mr. Monti.