“That is correct, detective,” Tom answers. “I didn’t perceive it to be a concern. However, Seth was extremely intelligent. And if he was truly determined to end his own life, then he would have deliberately kept that from me.”
“I suppose so,” says Detective Hendricks. This time, the detective stands up first.
Tom puts out his hand, and the man holds on for too long.
As soon as the detective’s car is out of sight, Tom goes down to the unfinished side of the basement. He reaches his hand behind a shelf and pulls out several sheets of white paper. He kept his notes on “Marianne” separate from all else he and Seth talked about. The moral ambiguity of his decision to keep it confidential, and the unique nature of the affair-well, that’s what he’d done anyway. It’s no crime to keep something on a separate sheet of paper.
The night that Seth died, before the police arrived, he’d gone downstairs and removed those pages. He did it almost without thinking-it was a reflex of self-preservation-and now, here they were, stuffed behind a dirty tool shelf.
Tom stands there, reads through every word, and then burns them in the utility sink with a kitchen match.
The answer he gave Detective Hendricks is technically sound. If Seth had taken a lot of Xanax it might have helped him to stay calm through the experience, more so if he’d also been drinking. He might have even passed out and fallen in. Tom should’ve said that.
It’s a decent theory, but he doesn’t want it to be true. As soon as he admits that to himself, the dam breaks, his instincts rush in, and suddenly he is swimming in them. He must see Amelia.
Tom leaves the house out the back door, the one reserved for his patients, and walks directly to Amelia’s house. He resists the urge to run so as not to attract attention.
When Amelia answers the door she is crying. She has changed into a sleeveless red dress that grazes the tops of her knees, paired with the same turquoise earrings, as if she had planned to go out.
Tom touches her face, sensitively, to see if she’ll accept his comfort. She doesn’t pull away.
He steps inside, draws her to him, and they are kissing. He’s surprised by how much he wants her; his desire has its own inertia, like a feverish fit or a drunken tirade. Amelia wants it too, he can tell, but in her own way.
“Don’t stop,” she says.
He holds her tighter. She doesn’t want him to be anything he isn’t, he reminds himself.
After, Tom is getting dressed. There is no postcoital relief. Neither wants to hold the other. Tom goes into the bathroom to wash up and checks her medicine cabinet. Xanax.
In that bazaar of a living room, Amelia is lying on the couch in her bra and panties, smoking a cigarette. Tom looks down at her.
“Did you do it?” asks Tom.
“Do what?” she says.
“Kill him. Fuck him then kill him.”
“No I didn’t kill him. What the hell’s wrong with you?” Amelia stands up and starts collecting her clothes. She touches one ear, feels her earring, and then touches the other and finds a bare lobe.
“Wrong with me?” Tom yells, “Nothing’s wrong with me! How am I supposed to know what you’re capable of?”
“Listen to me,” Amelia says in a tone that indicates that actually, she is capable of a lot. “Seth killed himself. He went to you for help and you didn’t help him. Why the hell else do you think he ended up in your pool, of all places? He wanted you to know you failed him.” Amelia sits down on the sofa, looking at her dress crumpled in her lap. “You know,” she turns to look at Tom, “people always say that this sort of thing isn’t anyone’s fault. But you and I both know the truth. It’s always someone’s fault. Every single time.” At this, Amelia straightens. “Get out of my house.”
Tom is standing over her. He looks at her face, expecting to find either vengeance or guilt, but she is expressionless. He has never known her to lie.
He turns to leave, and in the foyer by the door he sees Amelia’s other turquoise earring lodged in the carpet. He picks it up, slips it in his pocket, and slams the door behind him.
The following day, Detective Hendricks tells the Middletons they’re going to drain the pool. Detective Hendricks comes to supervise a crew of crime scene investigators dressed in navy-blue jumpsuits and latex gloves. It takes half a day for the water to drain, siphoned out onto the street and running down the hill into the gutter. Tom and Jackie watch from the deck as the men sweep the cement and unclog the filter. The last remnants of summer combed together with the early signs of fall give the yard the look of an unvisited cemetery, the diving board marking the head of its only grave. Tom squeezes Jackie’s hand, knowing that after today he will have to deny almost everything, and knowing, too, that she will believe him. Satisfied, Tom watches a young man, not much older than Seth, reach his hand into the drain at the bottom of the pool and pull out a piece of jewelry that catches the light, ever so slightly, through its scummy exterior.
PART III. THE FAKER CITY
FISHTOWN ODYSSEY BY MEREDITH ANTHONY
Fishtown
Megan stepped out of her fashionable red door in the trendiest part of Fishtown, drinking in the cold, clear afternoon air. She stood on the stoop, locked the door behind her, and turned, putting her keys in her handbag, juggling her Kenneth Cole overnight bag. She walked down the first of the three steps that led to the sidewalk and stepped on a woman’s hand.
Megan shrieked. The woman shrieked. Megan stumbled and, for a moment, thought she might fall.
“I’m so sorry. So sorry,” she said, apologizing reflexively as she righted herself. Luckily, she was wearing snow boots instead of her strappy high heels or she would certainly have fallen. And why she should apologize she didn’t know, since the woman, old and dirty, had no business lounging on Megan’s well-kept steps. She shrugged to settle the Michael Kors cashmere coat on her shoulders, pulling it together against the cold.
“That dress is too young for you. You’re not that young,” snarled the old woman malevolently, rubbing her injured hand, having caught a glimpse beneath the coat of the bronze metallic sheath that Megan had bought for an extravagant price the week before.
“Excuse me,” Meg muttered, losing all sympathy with the old crone. “I’m in a hurry.” She went down the rest of the steps, giving the woman a wide berth.
“You won’t be the prettiest one there. Or the youngest,” the old woman called after her.
“Jesus,” Meg breathed. “What a bitch.” But she shook off her irritation. Nothing was going to spoil her mood. Today was the high point of her year.
The Daggers’ New Year’s Eve extravaganza was, for Megan, the party to end all parties. First, it was a truly great, well-planned gathering. Drinks at seven, buffet dinner at nine, desserts and coffee at eleven for a little jolt of caffeine and sugar, watch the ball drop at midnight, karaoke and drunken dancing after that. The party ended with a hot breakfast the next morning, where bedraggled women avoided meeting the eyes of the friends whose husbands they had made out with in dark corners of the enormous suburban house. Second, it was a social coup to be invited to the best New Year’s eve party on the Main Line. Most important, for Megan, it was a taste of the life she wanted, the life she was working toward, the life she was destined for.