Richard loosened his tie. “What word did they use?”
“ ‘The witch make Toof fwowe up.’ ”
He half smiled. “What witch?”
“Madeeda.”
The smile died. “What?”
I blinked. “Madeeda. That’s her name. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He bent over to untie his shoes. The hair on top of his head was thinning; how had I never seen this before? “Where’d they come up with that?”
“The name? I have no idea. I’ve asked the neighbors if it sounds like anyone who lives around here, and I’ve Googled her, using different spellings. Among other things, I found a South African soccer player and a dessert recipe from Sudan.”
Richard eased off his shoes. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you Googling her?”
“Because… I think, you know… she’s haunting us.”
Richard rubbed his eyes, then opened his briefcase. “I think your next call should be to Dr. Iqbal.”
“Why? I feel fine. The baby feels fine.”
He brought out a folder of papers and closed his briefcase. “Sweetheart, you think a soccer player is poisoning the dog and the plants. You call me at work, expecting me to do something about it. I want Dr. Iqbal to say it’s some hormonal thing. I’d feel better.”
And I hadn’t even told him about the cracked kitchen window. “You can’t be that worried,” I said. “You never returned my call.”
“It was a bad day. Big meetings. If you’d said it was an emergency, Jillian would’ve put you through.”
“The meetings just now finished, at eleven p.m.?” I hated the edge in my voice.
“I’m sorry, I should’ve called.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, briefcase and papers still on his lap. “We’re on a triage system at the office. Life-and-death matters get handled. Everything else waits, and…” There was a pause. Was he asleep?
“Wake up!” I screamed. “This is a life-and-death matter.”
Richard’s eyes flew open, and he looked as shocked as I felt. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a screamer. I was a happy camper, a team player. And why was I screaming, anyway? Tooth was better. My African violets were positively hearty. I made my voice calm. “Do you want dinner?”
“Uh-” He was at a loss now, not knowing which comment to respond to.
I sighed. “Okay, never mind all that. What’s with work? Why was it a bad day?”
He closed his eyes again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t care if you want to talk about it. I want to know.”
“I don’t want to worry you.”
“Well, there’s a wrong answer. Now you have to tell me.”
He shook his head.
“Richard,” I said. “Don’t make me come over there and sit on you. I’ve been tiptoeing around this for days, around you, and I’m not in the mood anymore.”
With an agonized squeak, the recliner flattened out, moving my husband backward until his feet dangled off the floor. He looked like he was waiting for a root canal. Just as I was about to yell again, his eyes opened and contemplated the water-stained ceiling. “A few weeks ago I was working on an account. I had a question about the California tax code, so I looked at the books of another account, just as a reference. A big client. Somdahl’s biggest.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Clarien Industries. Pharmaceuticals. Anyhow, I looked through the Clarien profit and loss statements and compared it to their tax returns and came across… irregularities.”
“ ‘Irregularities.’ Like, math errors?”
“That would be one interpretation.” Tooth’s tail thumped on the wood floor. We both looked at him. Fast asleep. Dog dreaming. “I brought it to Werner’s attention.”
“And?”
“He said he’d look into it. Mention it to Somdahl.”
“And?”
“I didn’t hear anything, so I brought it up again. With Werner. Then Somdahl himself summons me into his office. Offers me coffee, tea, fucking cappuccino, like I’m his best friend, like a prospective client. Then he blames the whole Clarien thing on Fenwick. The guy I replaced. Says Fenwick had a substance abuse problem and was unreliable, and that’s why he was let go. But now Somdahl is stuck with this Clarien problem, and what are we going to do about it? If we come clean, we’re talking millions in penalties, for them, maybe for us. We don’t just lose the client, we get sued for malpractice, other clients think ‘sinking ship,’ and they jump. The firm wouldn’t survive it. We’re already down 46 percent from last year. Layoffs up another 7 percent last month. I’m doing the work of four people. We all are. Probably what drove Fenwick to drugs.”
My body was shaking. How had Richard kept this to himself? The clues had been lying around for weeks, like dust bunnies under the furniture, too troublesome for me to seek out. Somdahl & Associates, the job we’d left the East Coast for, the dream partnership, the hot corporation, the write-up in Fortune magazine, the big break. The opportunity of a lifetime, the one that, when it knocks, you throw open the door so fast the glass shatters. Richard hadn’t needed to think twice. That was my job, the second-guessing, but I’d packed up our life, sold our house, walked away from family, friends, history, a neighborhood filled with other kids. Other moms.
“Richard.”
“What?”
“You can’t be part of a cover-up.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, “I don’t have to. I just forget I saw it. Then Somdahl’s secretary misfiles Clarien.”
“That’s the definition of a cover-up. You don’t have to be running the paper shredder to be part of it.”
“Who do I tell? The SEC? And what if they don’t respond? Nothing comes of it. But there goes my career.”
“Somdahl seems to think they’ll respond-”
“Somdahl can’t take the chance.” Richard rubbed his face. “And what if it happens like he says? The firm goes under. Everyone you met last month at the picnic, all those people unemployed. Stocks worthless, pensions gone. Because of me.”
“Not because of you, because of stuff that happened before you got there. Don’t let them guilt you into a conspiracy-”
“Nobody likes a whistle-blower-”
“I like you, I’ll-”
“There’s no profit in it, no percentage-”
“Goddamn it, Richie, you’re sounding like them.” I felt the edges of hysteria closing in on me. “And isn’t it illegal, by the way? What they’re hiding? What you’re hiding now? Because the thought of you behind bars is frankly scarier than who likes you or doesn’t like you at fucking Somdahl & Associates.”
Richard was staring at me now openly. I hadn’t used the F word since the birth of the boys. “I don’t need you coming unglued,” he said. “That’s not helping. And I’m not making any decisions tonight.”
Yes, you are, I wanted to scream. But I saw myself reflected behind him, in the mirror over the fireplace mantel. Big-bellied and wild-eyed. Paranoid. Hormonal. Hysterical. Sees witches.
I took a deep breath, as deep as the baby pushing against my diaphragm would allow. Enforced calm. “Want some beef bourguignon?”
Richard shook his head, still staring at me. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
I went into the kitchen, Tooth trailing me. I unplugged the Crock-Pot, dumped its contents into a colander, turned the faucet on it full blast, picked out the beef, and threw the rest in the compost bin. I fed the meat to Tooth, a piece at a time. He rewarded me by licking my fingers clean and not throwing up.
I felt ill. I wanted to rewind the clock, go back an hour to when my biggest problem was witches. I wanted to know less, or I needed to know more. I needed sleep. I looked at the bay window, and all thoughts of sleep fled.
The window was perfect. Uncracked.
I walked, shaking, back to the living room. Richard was snoring now. I bent to put an afghan over him, then read, through his splayed fingers, the cover page of the report on his lap. “Somdahl & Associates Internal Memo-do not photocopy or distribute.” I began to ease it out of his hands, but he stirred, so I let it go. I covered him with the afghan and climbed the creaking stairs.