Present Tense Read online

  During the rest of the morning I worked hard, cleaning, putting aside the linen and articles I would need to take back to Cedar Hills. I had just had a sandwich for lunch when the doorbell rang. I glimpsed again the lines of a scarlet car through the door-glass, as I went to answer. I knew the car, but the shadow in the doorway wasn’t Donna.

  Marty Kutash stood on the step, rocking slighly on the balls of his feet, perhaps to add something to the five feet five of him that wasn’t already provided by his raised heels. Marty was a managing director, used to respect from a lot of employees. He was rippling his eyebrows, flashing his eyes over his big, splayed nose. I knew what he was about.

  “Donna’s not here, Marty,” I said, blocking the entrance.

  “Yeah, I know. I thought I’d come over, and you know, I mean, be neighbourly.”

  Marty’s pink lips broke open to reveal two rows of dental crowns that looked like bathroom tiles. He made me uneasy. I had joked and chatted with him at parties, or when we went to his house for drinks or a game of cards, but I didn’t like the thought of being alone with him. I could smell the rutting stag. I believed the Kutashs regarded Greg and me as prudes because we didn’t respond to innuendos about swapping partners, or sleeping around. I found it difficult, but obviously necessary, to be genial with the Kutashs. But today I was too preoccupied to worry.

  “How did you know I was here on my own?”

  “Greg spoke to Donna on the phone,” he said, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

  “So where is Donna?” I asked, standing my ground.

  “Aw, c’mon,” he said, making a vague gesture with a square, beringed hand. “I don’t bite.”

  The hell he didn’t bite, I thought. I forced a lightness of tone. “Well, Marty, where is she?”

  “Up at the cabin.”

  “She knows you’re here?” I said, opening my eyes, and giving him a wise-ass look.

  “Sure she knows,” he said, crestfallen.

  I thought that was a lie.

  “I believe you know a friend of ours, Bucky Chadwin,” he said, trying to swerve away from his own embarrassment.

  “You introduced me at the club. Remember?”

  “Naah. Not that. He knows you from way back,” he added, with a nasty chuckle. “One of the good guys, huh?”

  Chadwin had certainly been talking. The shit. And what could he conceivably say about the woman he had raped?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, Loren.”

  “You’re insulting me.”

  “Hey no. I didn’t mean anything, Loren. Have it your way, baby.”

  I was both furious at Marty Kutash’s impudent assumption that I had some kind of sexually interesting past, and wounded at the thought of the lies Chadwin must have told, or at least the grubby inuendos he must have implied. My temper and my hurt, both acidic, seemed to neutralise each other. I stood on the doorstep, impotent.

  Just then over Marty’s shoulder, crossing the road from the sewer to his truck, I saw the County officer. He had advanced to ‘Pine Hill’ as he had predicted. It gave me an idea. I didn’t respond to Marty. I abandoned my defence of the doorway, and stepped past him on to the porch.

  “Hey,” I yelled to the man. “Any problem?”

  The officer turned, waved his free hand, and held up a bunch of traps.

  “Rats!” I said to Marty.

  “Yeah,” he replied, uninterested.

  The rat-catcher moved a few paces nearer to the porch, perhaps thinking I wanted a report. I waited until he was close enough to hear me.

  “Well goodbye, Marty,” I said loudly. “I’m busy right now.”

  “Hey, Loren, wait a minute,” Marty said, as I slipped past him, into the house and shut the door.

  Marty was the type of man who would bang on the door to make a point, but he wasn’t going to do that with the County officer watching. I went into the bedroom, where the rear windows overlooked the parking space. I could see the two men through the tinted windows without being seen. They chatted for a few moments, and then Marty shot a mean look at the house, and got back into his car. Chadwin had been talking to Marty, and Marty had been talking to Donna. And Chadwin wouldn’t have been admitting a rape.

  When it was dark, I heated up a TV dinner in the microwave. After a few unappetising fork-fulls I had another uncomfortable call from Greg.

  “Grace must have overheard some of our call before. I think she wants to speak to you,” he said.

  I made it sound as though I was delighted. Grace was affected by all the emotional breezes which blew in the household. I had to try to put her at ease, although I doubted if I could.

  I would have looked after my autistic sister whatever happened, but I held her close for another reason as well. I had always questioned whether in some way I was responsible for what happened to her that day in Yonkers. I was the older person, supposed to have some judgement. I was the one who suggested that we should walk through a deserted industrial area. I was the one who could and should have absolutely refused to get in the car. I was the one who didn’t shout loud enough when we were in the car, and we didn’t stop at the Dane supermarket. I was the one who misjudged the mood of the men, and failed to realise they would go as far as they did. Grace had no ability to assess. It was my call all along, and perhaps a more vigorous stand by me would have saved us both. This undermining thought was often behind my dealings with Grace.

  So I said my pacifying words to her. I asked her about her art class. I concluded, “I’ll see you tomorrow night, and I’m already feeling brighter for being up here in the quiet.”

  Later, I tried the television, but the bright lights and raucous voices on the screen – every channel – were incomprehensible. I showered and went to bed. My brain felt heavy, worked and worried to a standstill.

  4

  I packed the Jeep on Sunday morning and headed back to Cedar Falls. There was little traffic and the drive was another opportunity to try to get my thoughts in order.

  Rochester, NY was a big enough city for me to avoid Chadwin indefinitely, but if we belonged to the same country club, and the same business community, and shared even a few acquaintances, he couldn’t be avoided. I would always be on my guard, looking around crowded restaurants, wondering whether he was in the shopping mall. The chance of meeting him might not be all that great, but the possibility would always be on my mind. He would always be on my mind. Another worry was my sister. Grace lived on a fragile edge. Chadwin’s presence in town meant that Grace too might have to confront the past, with serious consequences for her health. But that was probably rather remote.

  A possibility was for us to leave Cedar Falls, get a transfer or new jobs, a long way away. My credentials, and Greg’s, were good enough to do this, and we might even improve our prospects. But I was attached to our Park Drive home, the Cedar Falls area, and Chesterfield. The kids’ school was good too. And my job. Greg was settled and advancing at Insel. Everything fitted neatly. It was part of me. It was me. Inside me, there was something which resisted the idea of running away, a thread of hot wire. Why should we run?

  I still had a vivid memory of Chadwin’s father at the court, a tall authoritative man with a purplish sheen on his cheeks, a dark astrakhan coat and steely hair, very much in charge of their party. He had put his benediction on the police, the prosecutor and the judge. He led the contemptuous sweep of the Chadwin party as they moved out of the court past me, in my neck-brace, my jaw still aching; they were heading to march right over my body in the corridor of the court unless I got out of the way. So I got out of the way, and tried to forget.

  My life had been so tranquil in the last few years that Yonkers only came back in rare moments of weakness – until Greg’s fateful mention of that name in the kitchen. My confused thoughts continued when I arrived home. I tried not to show a sign, but to be the serene, happy wife I usually was.

  On Monday morning, Greg reminded me that
on Wednesday, after work, we were having cocktails at the Garcias’, and on Friday night I was supposed to be joining Kitty Calino’s party for dinner and drinks at the club. The Friday date gave me an uneasy feeling. Abbott’s Point had become Chadwin territory.

  It was Greg’s turn to take the twins to school, and I was in my office at eight-thirty sharp on Monday morning. I ran quickly through the schedule of work I kept on screen, and soon lost myself in a report on marketing costs. I was absorbed until it came to me that my company did business with Chadwin’s. Not that this need ever lead to a link between us; they were both big companies; it was merely an unpleasant taint.

  After work I called the secretary’s office at the club, and asked one of the clerks to read me the list of latest members. Dwight Loughlin Chadwin II was on it; a family name as pretentious as his nickname was childish.

  “The inaugural for those new members is on Friday, at six pm. Would you like to attend?” she asked.

  I missed a heartbeat. As I had suspected, Chadwin was in the face of my date with Kitty Calino. Situations like this could arise again and again.

  Abbott’s Point was called a golf and country club. It had a golf course of national tournament standard, and regularly hosted matches of that calibre. It also had tennis and squash courts, pools and a gymnasium. A jogging track wound through the tens of acres of forest and around the lake. There was a café and two ‘fine dining’ restaurants. The membership committee, according to Greg, were open about race and religion, but there was an undoubted bias toward business executives and professionals from the upper ranks. The club was expensive, and it provided an exclusive venue for its hundreds of members which could be a focal point for family enjoyment, business and discreet politics at the same time. People who were members and lived in Cedar Falls would regularly find themselves either attending, or being invited to attend functions there. Chadwin’s membership of Abbott’s Point was therefore a serious worry to me.

  I hadn’t finally decided, but I was thinking of finding a reason to stay away from Abbott’s Point on Friday. I found it impossible to make any clear plan to deal with Chadwin. I had to follow my instincts, and they were to stay as far away from him as possible. I was obviously perfectly well, but I could pretend I was ill on the night. I couldn’t raise any objection to meeting Kitty. Her husband Dick was a colleague of Greg’s at Insel. The Calinos had made us feel very welcome when we first moved to Rochester.

  I turned the possibilities over, and decided to sound out whether Greg might call in at the club on Friday. I didn’t want him at the club if I was going to be there on this occasion. On Thursday night I said, “Are you going to stop by Flinty’s tomorrow?”

  Joel Flint was an old buddy from Greg’s New York State days. It had become a practice for Greg and a few of Flinty’s other cronies, to have a few beers, and a hand or two of poker, at the back of Flinty’s bookshop in Chesterfield on a couple of Fridays a month.

  “Yeah. I’m about due.”

  “I’ll be with Kitty at the club.”

  “First guy back home opens the refrigerator!”

  On Friday morning I was still indecisive about the date with Kitty. I swayed between apprehension and annoyance with myself. The annoyance barely resolved my decision. I was wearing a light grey suit for the office, but I selected a pair of tan slacks, a striped shirt, and some low-heeled buckskin moccasins from my wardrobe, and put them in a bag. After the crowd left the office – very promptly on a Friday – I could change in my room without interruption. That evening, as I looked at myself under the spotlights in the washroom, I had no reason to lack confidence, despite the damage Chadwin had done. My wheat-coloured hair framed my face. I didn’t wear glasses or contact lenses. I had a healthy, sporty look, although I’m not an outdoor woman. The slight tan came from a bottle; too many of my golfing friends were beginning to look like dried walnuts. My figure had probably benefited from not having children; it was shapely in the waist yet rounded. I filled my clothes. I wasn’t the bony racehorse type. I’m not overtly sexy. I never used my sexuality ever, except with Greg. But here I was, preoccupied with my looks as though I was going into a beauty contest. I asked myself if I was dressing up for Chadwin – that would have been incongruous and repellent; but I expect that there was an element in me that wanted to show that I wasn’t a beaten-up Tarrytown broad any longer.

  “Keep your head down, and see how it goes,” I said to the mirror when I was ready.

  “You can’t go on like this,” the mirror seemed to retort, but I ignored it.

  I drove quietly on automatic pilot to the Abbott’s Point parking lot, and sat in the Jeep watching the minutes flick by on the digital clock. At six-ten pm I locked the car and walked across the lot, up the steps, and into the lounge like a sleepwalker. The inaugural meeting was happening in one of the side-rooms. From the open doorway, I could see the golden back of Chadwin’s head, and the dark bouffant hair of the woman with him.

  At the bar I met Kitty and her friends, ordered a martini, and tried to lose myself in various conversations. After twenty minutes, I noticed the people from the new members’ meeting drifting into the room. I was sitting on a high stool, watching the room in the mirror that backed the bar. I had an opportunity to see the woman I thought was Chadwin’s wife, thin-lipped, sharp-featured, older than him, over forty. She had a sallow skin, and a lean figure. On her wedding finger, a thickness of rings glittered. Socialising carried Chadwin away from her, to the other side of the room. It wasn’t difficult to keep my eye on that golden head.

  While I carried on trivial talk with Kitty and my friends, the realisation had seeped through me that I didn’t have the nerve, or the objectivity to face Chadwin. I had half thought that I wanted to test his attitude toward me. He had obviously recognised me, and said or implied to Marty that there was some previous connection between us. More than that, he must at least have hinted at a sexual connection. But what had he actually said? I wanted to try to reach some kind of understanding with him; we had to live in the same town. But I was breathless with nerves. My hands trembled. I had to lock my fingers around the stem of the glass. My expression, as I glimpsed it in the mirror, was a rictus.

  I suddenly wanted to get out of the club, get home to Greg and the twins, and rethink all this. I made my excuses to Kitty, saying I was having a tough time at work. I slid off the stool, and pushed through the forest of bodies toward the door. In my distraction, I still had my martini glass in my hand.

  “Oh, sorry!” a man’s voice said, as he jolted my elbow, and splashed the few drops left in my glass on to the carpet.

  Chadwin was turning, and rearing before me in the press of people. I ignored him and tried to press on.

  “My fault,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  I didn’t look at the man. I could feel his eyes all over me.

  “I’ll get you another.”

  “I’ve finished. I’m going,” I said, but he was blocking me.

  “I insist.”

  “No,” I said, for the first time meeting his casual stare.

  He dropped his voice. “I was coming to see you…”

  He moved before I could manage a dazed reply. He took my elbow, trying to steer me to the bar. I shook his fingers off instantly, but I yielded. He had moved to intercept me. Perhaps he, too, thought that we would meet eventually, and therefore the sooner the better.

  Chadwin asked the barman for two martinis, and as the drinks were mixed, he maintained a loud monologue as though we were old acquaintances, about the club – how good it was, how much he disliked Rochester, and the problems of finding a suitable house. All this time, Chadwin was running his whitish eyes over me like a pair of hands, and keeping a lookout in the bar mirror for the approach of his wife. My voice had dried in a parched mouth.

  “We have to meet again,” he said, imperatively, his voice intimate under the babble of conversations around us.

  “Never,” I whispered. />
  “When are you usually here?” he asked as though I hadn’t spoken.

  I should have said, yes, it was reasonable that we meet, for the sole purpose of reaching an understanding that we would live as separately as we possibly could, but the man overawed me. I shook my head negatively.

  Chadwin glanced hastily in the mirror and stiffened.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Bucky?” Mrs Chadwin said, arriving in a cloud of gin and lime, and Christian Dior perfume.

  Chadwin introduced me to Eve, and explained that he had accidentally spilled my drink.

  “He’s always doing that to young women,” Eve Chadwin replied, languidly.

  I participated dumbly in the exchange. Chadwin continued to ramble. There was an undertone. I understood Eve Chadwin’s concerns only too well. After a few moments, Eve turned away brusquely to another group, irritated I suppose that her husband had cornered another female. I stepped away from Chadwin, intending to leave my drink, and walk out. I had hardly spoken a word. He clamped his hand on my arm again. His grip was firm – and I hoped invisible to the other people clustered around the bar.

  “It’s no use trying to avoid me. This is a goldfish bowl.”

  I jerked away, and pushed through the crowd to the door. The cold hit me at the entrance. I ran across the car park. When I slid behind the wheel I felt the strain of what had happened. I was weak. A meeting with Chadwin might be right; it was a mature approach. But I couldn’t face him.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said aloud to myself, as I started the engine.

  5

  The following Wednesday, I arranged for Rosanne to look after the twins as soon as Grace brought them home from school. I left work early, and drove aimlessly for a while, ending up at Monroe County airport. I parked, and sat in the coffee bar there, sipping an espresso and reading a magazine – actually just turning the pages, until six-thirty pm. I had to be in a neutral environment where time could tick away without affecting me, and I could think. The constant movement of the travellers left me in soothing isolation. I thought I had performed fairly well as a wife and mother and a financial executive since last Friday, but going to Abbott’s Point again brought my worries to the surface.