The Deep End (11 page)

“I don’t think you mean to,” he explained awkwardly, “at least not on a conscious level.”

“What don’t I mean to?”

“I think that subconsciously,” he emphasized, “it’s your way of binding me to you.”

“No.”

“Joanne, if our marriage has any hope of surviving, you have to give me this chance to be by myself to think things through. You can’t keep finding excuses to bring me back here.”

Joanne said nothing. Was he right? Was she trying to bind him to her? Was she overreacting? The newspaper had been wet and torn; it was true the page number was missing …

“I have to go now. I have clients waiting.”

Joanne nodded, following Paul to the front door.

“I didn’t mean to sound so cold.”

“You didn’t.”

“I think it’s best.”

“Of course. You’re right.”

The phone rang.

“Do you want me to wait?” he asked.

Joanne nodded and ran to the kitchen, picking up the phone before it could ring again. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Hunter.”

Joanne froze at the sound of the familiar voice, her eyes frantically summoning Paul from his position in the front hall. Paul walked quickly toward her and took the phone from her outstretched hand. Joanne held her breath as all around her normal household squeaks grew ominous.

“Hello,” Paul said forcefully. “Who is this?” Joanne waited. Thank God he was here. “Who?” she heard him ask. “Oh yes, yes, she’s right here. I’m sorry, she must have misunderstood.” He handed the phone back to Joanne. What was going on? “I have to go,” he said quietly. “Tell Lulu I’ll pick her up at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll call you Monday about the alarm.”

“Hello?” Joanne asked into the receiver, hearing the front door close.

“Mrs. Hunter?” the voice said again, this time more of a question. “Mrs. Hunter, it’s Steve Henry, the tennis pro at Fresh Meadows. Mrs. Hunter, are you there?”

“Yes,” she whispered, recalling the look that had passed across Paul’s eyes moments earlier. The phone call had only confirmed his suspicions. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize your voice.”

He laughed. “No reason that you should. Not yet anyway.” Joanne wondered what he meant but didn’t ask. “I thought you might like to arrange for another lesson to make up for the one you missed today. I have some free time over the weekend …”

“No, that’s impossible.”

“All right,” he said quickly. “Is everything okay?” He seemed genuinely concerned. “You sound a little strange.”

“I’m fine. A bit of a cold coming on, I think.”

“Drink lots of orange juice and load up on vitamin C. It always works for me. Well,” he continued when she said nothing, “I guess we’ll just leave your lesson until next Friday.”

“That’s fine.” She hung up without further comment.

How could she have made such a dumb mistake? Especially when Paul was there. She’d been so sure. When she picked up the receiver, when she heard the sound of his voice. “Mrs. Hunter,” he had said in that same way.

The phone rang again. Joanne reached over automatically, thinking that it was probably Eve, who’d no doubt been watching for Paul’s car to leave and was anxious to know the outcome.

“Mrs. Hunter,” the voice said before Joanne had a chance to say hello. “Did you get my message, Mrs. Hunter?”

This time there could be no mistake.

“What message?” Joanne asked, knowing the answer. She sank slowly to the mustard-colored tile beneath her feet, her breathing almost still.

“The one I left on your car, Mrs. Hunter. You couldn’t miss it. I left it right across your windshield where you’d be sure to find it. Did you enjoy the movie, Mrs. Hunter?”

“Listen,” Joanne pleaded, trying to be forceful but sounding only desperate. “Listen,” she repeated, “I think you better stop this little joke right now. My husband doesn’t think it’s very funny.”

“Your husband’s gone, Mrs. Hunter,” the voice informed her casually. “In fact, he’s gone for good. Isn’t
that so, Mrs. Hunter? And I know how horny women get when their husbands aren’t around to take care of them, and I intend to see that you don’t have that problem. Yes ma’am, you don’t have to worry about that—before I kill you, I’m going to show you a real good time.”

Joanne let the phone drop, hearing it hit the floor with a sharp crack. She remained in this position, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up into her chest, with the phone buzzing an unpleasantly insistent signal from somewhere beside her, until she heard a key turn in the front door and her daughters burst into the house demanding to know what was for dinner.

T
he two men from Ace Alarms Incorporated arrived promptly at ten o’clock the following Thursday morning to begin installation of the new alarm system for Joanne’s home. Paul had arranged everything; all that was required of Joanne was her presence.

“I guess I should show you around,” Joanne told the two men, both brown-haired and muscular, divided by perhaps a generation. Possibly they were father and son, Joanne thought, remembering that Paul had been disappointed when their second child had been another girl. Maybe if she had given him a son …

Stop this at once, she scolded herself, smiling at the men and fighting the urge to flee to the sanctuary of her bedroom. Masking a growing uneasiness, she tried unsuccessfully to recall exactly what Paul had told her she was supposed to do. He said so many things when he had telephoned late Monday to inform her of the arrangements he had made: that conversations with various friends, acquaintances, and partners over the weekend had convinced him that Ace Alarms was the best, if not the cheapest, way to go; that his own discussions
with representatives from various firms had confirmed this impression; and that he had already worked out with the men who would be coming the type of system that would best suit their home. Anything else he had said had been lost on Joanne, who remembered clearly only the reference to their home as if it were somewhere that he still lived, or to which he was some day planning to return.

“Your husband didn’t think it was necessary to install wires around all the windows,” the more senior of the two men—Harry, he’d said his name was—informed her as she led the way into the kitchen. “Just the ones downstairs and around the front door, and the sliding glass doors. There’s another one downstairs like this one, right?” Harry knelt at the base of the sliding kitchen door, examining its construction. “That’s quite a mess you’ve got out there,” he added, his eyes directed at her backyard.

“They’re pouring the concrete today,” Joanne told him. “I’m hoping that means they’re almost finished.”

“They’re never finished,” Harry said matter-of-factly. “Once you start with a pool, there’s always something. More trouble than they’re worth, if you ask me. But I guess if you like to swim …”

“I don’t swim,” Joanne told him. “I never learned.”

“Well,” the man continued, undaunted, “I guess it’s one way of insuring that you’ll see more of your kids this summer.”

“The girls are going to camp,” Joanne said, growing giddy. “My husband swims.” Of course, my husband doesn’t live here anymore, she wanted to confide, but didn’t.

“You gonna show us the door downstairs?” Harry asked.

“Oh, certainly,” Joanne answered, hearing her suddenly high-pitched voice. The men followed her into the hall. “You saw the front door,” she squeaked, clutching her hands together to keep them from shaking. Why was she so nervous?

“When we came in,” Harry said drolly.

“Yes, of course.” She led the two men down the stairs to the bottom level of the three-story house, constructed so that all three floors were above ground.

“We’ll replace the locks,” Harry told her as they entered the family room at the back of the house beneath the kitchen. “The ones you’ve got are strictly Mickey Mouse. It’s a wonder you haven’t been broken into already. All it would take to open that front door is a good, swift kick.” Once again he bent down to examine the sliding glass door that led to the backyard.

Joanne caught a glimpse of the dark-haired skinny worker who Lulu said gave her the creeps. He was staring at her from the side of the pool, but quickly looked away as their eyes connected. Joanne likewise turned around, only to find herself confronting the dark, almost black eyes of Harry’s son, who, as far as she could remember, hadn’t said a word since he had walked through the front door. She felt a shortness of breath and told herself to breathe deeply. She wanted to sit down on the gray corduroy sofa but her feet wouldn’t budge, sharp needles plunging like knives through her toes and heels to nail her to the dark wood floor. What was happening to her?

“We’ll put Charley-bars across these sliding doors,” Harry informed her, “and a deadbolt on the front one. That won’t necessarily keep anyone out, but it’ll sure
make them work a lot harder to get in. Most crooks don’t like to work that hard. Where’s your fuse box?”

“I don’t know,” Joanne said, realizing that she didn’t. “Where are they usually?” This brought a laugh from Harry’s son. He thinks I’m a dumb housewife, Joanne thought. And he’s right. I
am
a dumb housewife. Why don’t I know where the fuse box is? Eve would know where her fuse box is.

“Where’s your furnace room?” Harry smiled indulgently. “You know where your furnace room is, don’t you?” He said it as a joke, but as with many jokes, it came attached to a sharp undercurrent of truth, which gave his words a bitter coating. Still, his face was gentle, almost playful, and Joanne ignored the implicit condescension of his remark.

Joanne led the men toward the furnace room. The large metallic fuse box, located prominently on the wall facing the doorway, mocked her with silent menace. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Joanne offered as father and son set about examining the assorted fuses.

“That would be real nice,” Harry agreed. “Leon, how about you?” Leon nodded but said nothing. “Cream and sugar for me. Black for my brother.”

So they were brothers, Joanne thought, returning to the kitchen to prepare the two cups of coffee. There was quite an age difference, she calculated, her mind conjuring up a plausible history for the two men: the family had split up; probably the father had left Harry’s mother for a younger woman when Harry was a boy—yes, that was the most likely story—and after a few years, Harry’s dad had started a new family, and Leon was the result; at first there was much for Harry to adjust to, but as they
matured, the two brothers, same father, different mothers, learned to love one another and eventually went into business together. So in the end, everybody was happy. Except Harry’s mother, the wife who went along only to be left behind, who would always remain an ex and a hyphen away from the respectable new family unit.

Joanne watched as the coffee dripped one slow drop at a time from the filter into the glass pot of the Mr. Coffee machine. If Paul were to remarry in the next year, she further calculated (allowing time for their divorce), and if he started another family (add on another year), well then, in less than two years, Robin, who would be going on eighteen, and Lulu, who would be thirteen, could have a new baby brother, because of course the baby would be a boy …

There was a knock on the sliding door. Joanne swung toward it as if she had been struck. The tall worker with the dark hair who gave Lulu the creeps was smiling at her from the other side of the glass. “I need to use your phone,” he mouthed.

Joanne walked hesitantly to the door and pulled it open. The man, in his late twenties or early thirties, she estimated, stepped in immediately, his eyes falling across the pink cotton shift she wore as if it were a flimsy negligee. “It’s there,” Joanne said, realizing as she spoke that he already knew where it was.

“Thank you.” He smiled out of the side of his mouth, his eyes seeming to take in each detail of the room as he ambled across the floor and picked up the phone. Leaning back against the white-and-yellow flowered wallpaper, the fingers of his hands leaving another trail of dirt across the recently cleaned face of the white phone, he pushed
down on the appropriate buttons. “Got a new number, huh?” He indicated the new number printed in the center of the phone.

Joanne nodded, trying not to listen to his conversation, noisily removing several mugs from the cupboard, retrieving the cream from the fridge and the sugar from its shelf, uncomfortably aware that his voice carried familiar traces of a slight rasp.

Her eyes locked on the back of his head at the same instant that the man turned away from the wall, so that they found themselves staring directly at one another. Casually he replaced the receiver and almost provocatively relaxed his posture, making no effort to leave. “Your husband home?” he asked. The same words he had used the previous week, a different tone.

“He’s at work,” Joanne answered, realizing he had probably overheard at least part of her conversation with Lulu and had already figured the situation out for himself.

There was a sudden loud knock on the front door and Joanne jumped. “Busy day,” the man said, his lips twisting into a knowing smirk. Joanne squirmed uneasily, the tingles in her feet that had immobilized her downstairs returning to root her to the spot. She wanted to move but couldn’t. The man’s smirk broadened into a grin. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Don’t be silly, Joanne silently admonished herself, finding her feet and moving toward the front door. Just because the man looks creepy, that doesn’t necessarily mean he
is
creepy. How many times had she warned her daughters when they were little that bad people didn’t always look bad, that appearances could be deceiving? Many people’s voices were vaguely hoarse. It didn’t mean
anything. She was being ridiculous, letting her imagination run away with her. Everyone sounded raspy. Everyone appeared sinister.

She opened the front door.

“Mrs. Hunter,” the short, pear-shaped man standing before her said.

“Mr. Rogers,” Joanne greeted him in return, recognizing the man who owned and operated Rogers Pools.

“I was wondering if you could move the truck in your driveway. My men need to get in so they can start spraying the concrete.”