The War of the Roses (14 page)

'But kids bring luck,' she had said. 'They're incentive.'

She had sat on his lap, smothering his face with kisses.

'I was worried sick you'd scold me. But here you've come up with that fabulous job. Perfect timing.'

'The Gift of the Magi,' he had said, hugging her. 'A little love child.'

The feeling of uncertainty quickly passed and he remembered how by the end of that Christmas Day they had become incredibly happy. Their future had begun.

He dried the dog and turned on the sauna. Leaving Benny to dry in the workroom, he went upstairs for his robe. The sauna relaxed him, sweated out his terrors, and the dry heat and wet cold that the shower provided left him mellow and relaxed. As he passed the sun-room on the way back to the sauna he noted that the browning had increased on the orchids' petals and the stems had begun to bend. Looking closely, he inspected the plants, then dug his hands into the soil. The odor on his fingertips was vaguely familiar, like the foam that had spewed out of the fire extinguisher. It couldn't be. Another sniff confirmed his suspicion. Not Barbara, he thought. Hadn't she loved his orchids? Cimbidium was one of the few species that could be nourished indoors, and getting them to grow had been both a challenge and a chore. Not Barbara. Was she capable of that? Again he smelled his fingers. The odor was unmistakable. The confirmation removed his doubts. They were his orchids.
His.
For him to be the recipient of her wrath was one thing, but to vent one's frustration on a defenseless orchid was criminal. She's a murderess, he told himself. And a murderess must be punished.

He stormed about the house, thirsting for revenge, seeking a fitting punishment for this hideous crime. He went into the kitchen. Her domain. Opening cabinets, he looked over the myriad arrays of cooking equipment and foods, searching for something, although nothing specific had occurred to him.

Then he saw the neat silver bricks in the refrigerator. Removing one, he unwrapped it and sniffed at the meat. Of course, he thought with anticipatory pleasure. He contemplated the labels on. the spice rack, removing containers of ginger, curry powder, and salt. Then he poured huge quantities over the loaf, kneaded them into the mix, and reshaped it to fit the tinfoil. He repeated the process with the other six bricks, using different spices, substituting sugar for salt, relishing the impending confusion as Barbara's customers argued among themselves what it was that had polluted the taste.

In the sauna he mourned the orchids, but the manner of his revenge had more than assuaged his sense of grief. He lay back on the redwood slats and felt the delicious heat sink into his flesh. For a moment the emptiness receded as he thought of the answer he had given to her message of death.

14

Harry Thurmont bore the brunt of her rage. Barbara had hurried over to his office after a most debilitating conversation with the Greek ambassador's wife.

'She said her guests were polite until
two of them vomited, one directl
y on the table.'

'That must have put a damper on things,' Thurmont said, unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile.

'You're not taking this seriously, Harry. It's sabotage.'

She was trying to control herself, to be cerebral rather than emotional. But her morning had been awful, absolutely awful. She had been summoned to the embassy at seven
a.m
. The Ambassador and Mrs. Petrakis met her in the dining room, which smelled unmistakably of vomit. Without a word, they led her into the kitchen to view the evidence.

'Taste,' the ambassador ordered. Their faces were dead white, their eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Barbara sniffed at the loaves, from which emanated peculiar odors.

'Taste.' The ambassador
repeated his order. From his
wife's face Barbara could draw no pity, and she dutifully put a lump of meat in her mouth, spitting it out immediately.

'A caterer. You call yourself a caterer. You poisoned my guests.'

She was too shocked to offer any explanation. Besides, her throat was paralyzed from humiliation.

'At first I thought the Turks had put you up to it.' 'The Turks?'

Then I decided I wouldn't dignify this sort of thing by putting it on the level of a diplomatic incident.' His anger was accelerating. 'It tastes like shit.
Shit
,'
he began to shout as his wife tried to calm him.

Barbara had run from the house in tears.

'I really believe we have an actionable issue here,' she said calmly to Thurmont. 'It's what we've been waiting for. He deliberately ruined the food.' The memory made her stomach turn. 'Not to mention the damage to my business. The loss of a client.'

Thurmont stroked his chin.

'You have proof?'

'Who else could it be? I believe in Ann.' She found herself strangely hesitant as the memory of Ann on Christmas Eve floated into her memory. Something barely detectable had surfaced and her mind fished for it. She had, she remembered, sensed the presence of Oliver in the library, a fleeting sensation, just below the level of consciousness. She let the idea pass for the moment as Thurmont interrupted her thoughts.

'It won't hold up, Barbara. We could harass. But we won't win in a way that will satisfy you. It won't get him out of the house.'

'He'll admit it. He'll have to admit it under oath.'

'Barbara, do me a favor. Stop practicing law. Becoming an object of ridicule won't help your case.'

She felt the provocation and her anger erupted.

'The orchids weren't a big deal. Not in comparison.'

‘
The orchids?'

She hadn't intended to tell him, but now her words overflowed. She had told about the Christmas-tree fire but had left out the matter of the orchids.

'Christmas was ruined. I was throwing out buckets of foam. I saw the orchids and they made me angry. I'm afraid it wasn't very rational. Besides, I didn't know the stuff would kill them. That is, I wasn't sure. I wanted them injured. Not dead.' He looked at her and shook his head in mock rebuke. She wondered when he would point a finger at her and say, Shame, shame.

'The name of the game is discipline, Barbara.'

"It's easy for you to say.'

"And I can't be available at every little crisis.'

'
Little
crisis.' She glared at him. 'Harry, I can't lock up my food. I intend to make this business my livelihood. Why should he interfere with that? It's
..
. it's cruel, heartless.'

'It's just that you need something more
..
. more damaging. More bizarre.'

'You didn't do much with breaking and entering,' Barbara huffed. But what he said had triggered the errant thought again of Ann and Christmas Eve.

'Something with moral turpitude,' Thurmont continued. 'You need a real hook.'

'Like another woman?'

'Not necessarily.' He looked at her shrewdly. 'You need something that is damaging enough for a judge to say he'd better get out. It's a bad influence on the kids. A danger.'

Oliver was there. In the library on Christmas Eve. She was certain. She had sensed it, dismissed it. Little, innocent Ann.

'At least one good thing has come out of this,' Thurmont said. 'Oliver can be provoked. If only the provocation wasn't so obvious. The thing you must avoid is the appearance of tit for tat. Judges don't appreciate that. It puts everything on a lower plane and the tendency is to compromise, which is exactly what we want to avoid.'

'All right, Harry,' she said smugly. 'I won't be obvious.'

What was obvious was that Harry Thurmont and the law could provide only the most limited of options. She was beginning to understand the process. He came around from his desk and stood before her.

'I have absolutely no objection to your driving him crazy, Barbara. But if he knows you're trying to drive him crazy, he won't go crazy. Do you understand that?'

'Perfectl
y.' She smiled demurely, thinking about her new idea. He studied her in silence for a long moment.

'You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.'

'Not swallowed, Harry. I've just discovered it chirping in its cage.'

She had never really thought of the conception of Eve as an act of deceit. Loving, she had believed once, was more than just being together. Loving needed something tangible to validate it. And family wasn't real family without children. It was difficult now to reassess her state of mind at the time. It was too foreign to the present, to the end of love.

What she concluded was that her deliberate conception of Eve had not been out of love but out of fear. Perhaps it was merely intuitive at the time. Perhaps too, subconsciously, she had been frightened that her marriage was all there was or would ever be, a long, endless plateau of sameness. Oliver, off to school each day. Soon he would be off to a job, with meeting people, colleagues and clients. She loved those words, so exotic, full of promise and adventure. He, doing marvellous, exciting things. She, off to work at some dead-end job, doing silly things like demonstrating kitchen gadgets or selling ladies' underwear. Then, off to home, to prepare their dinner, to wait for her sun to rise.
Him
.
The world was him. At the time, she must have thought it was the most wonderful way to live a life. Yet something, she must have sensed, was missing.
Something
.
She was so sure then that it was a child. What was a woman's life without a child? Nature had decreed it to happen, hadn't it? It became her most pressing ambition. To have his child.
His.
That was why she had named the baby Eve. Joshua had come after that time had passed, merely because it seemed indecent to have an only child, and it was carefully planned that he would arrive just when Eve started nursery school. It was a time to be practical.

Looking at things in retrospect wasn't really fair, she decided, deriding the idea of 'fair.' Nothing was fair. Even the thought came to her in Harry Thurmont's voice, because he had said that to her and she had been immediately convinced.

'Fair is weather. Fair is not so good. Fair is a shindig. But fair is not life.'

'Do you think he has any ladyfriends?' she had asked Ann one day. Her back was turned as she labored over a huge colander in one of the sinks, laying out leaves of romaine lettuce for a batch of
salade nic
oise
she was making for a luncheon later that day. It was morning. The kids had just been sent off to school and Ann was lingering over a second cup of coffee.

Ann did not respond.

'Ladyfriends,' Barbara repeated. 'I mean it seems logical. What do you think he does every night? After all, a man is different from a woman.'

When Ann still hadn't responded, Barbara turned toward her. 'What do you think?' she pressed.

'I have no idea,' Ann answered avoiding Barbara's eyes. Clever bitch, Barbara thought.

'He's still a man.'

*I haven't had much experience.'

Barbara sensed Ann's discomfort and proceeded cautiously.

'Do you suppose he's seeing prostitutes?' she wondered aloud. 'I doubt that.'

The response was whispered, almost furtive.

'You do? Why so?' Barbara turned again to watch her cope with her confusion, sure now that Ann was responding to the bait.

'He just doesn't seem like that kind of person,' Ann said, her face flushing. Barbara pressed on.

'Men don't really care where they put it. They seem to have a very low threshold of pleasure compared to women. I never did understand it. That thing of his. Always saluting. How do they carry that around with them all the time? Like a popgun ready to go off.'

She had gotten up and brought the cup and saucer to the dishwasher, sliding the rack out and placing them on it. -

'I hope I'm not embarrassing you, Ann,' Barbara said. 'I suppose he's unhappy as hell. Probably thinks I put a detective on his trail. Not so. It doesn't really matter. He could even have an affair in this house and it wouldn't matter.' She held her breath.

'It's none of my business,' Ann protested, unable to hide her irritation.

'I know, Ann.' She paused. 'Actually, I wish it would happen. Another woman might solve things for us.'

'What about another man? For you?'

Barbara laughed.

'I'm not going to fall into that trap so easily again.' 'Trap?'