Sunburn: A Novel Read online

  The necklace makes her smile and he feels as if he’s won the lottery. “This is exactly my kind of thing.” She puts it on right away. But being happy for even a moment seems to make her sadder. She doesn’t want to eat anything, drinks only one beer. Some day off this is.

  * * *

  The sun is almost down by the time they hit Annapolis. “Pull off here,” she says, pointing to the last exit before the bridge, where there are a couple of fast-food places.

  “You hungry? We can do better than this.”

  “I want to drive your truck across the bridge. Maybe in something this big, I won’t feel it.”

  “Do you really feel the bridge move?”

  “I think I do. That’s all that matters.”

  They change places in a Roy Rogers parking lot. She doesn’t get out, just crawls over and sits in his lap, making him squirm out from under her to get to the passenger side. She is literally white knuckled, but otherwise composed. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t try to change the radio, despite the song that’s playing, the one about chasing waterfalls. Not his thing, this song. Toward the end, as the bridge flattens out and delivers them safely back to land, she exhales as if she’s been holding her breath for the entire five-mile span. He’s not surprised when she glides off at the first possible exit on the other side.

  He is surprised when she keeps driving, going deeper and deeper down the country road. The world has gone dark around them. Two minutes ago, there was a fiery sun in the rearview mirror, flattening on the horizon, made more brilliant by today’s clouds. Now the sky is blue black. She pulls over next to a cornfield, unfastens her seat belt, and lifts up her skirt. Look at that. She’s wearing the kind of gear she normally disdains. The whole megillah, although there are no stockings connected to the garter belt, which is weird.

  “You’re not the only one who went shopping today,” she says, crawling on top of him. She pulls down her top, so he can see the matching bra. It’s coral, almost the exact same shade as the rose now nestled between her breasts. They both know what suits her.

  He wonders what happened to the underwear she was wearing this morning, did she put it in her purse? Can you say in a lingerie store, I’ll just wear this out—and then he stops thinking for a while.

  When they’re done, she has a smoke. She doesn’t smoke much and her mouth doesn’t taste of it, not like Cath, who tried to mask her chronic tobacco breath with mouthwash. Polly smokes maybe once or twice a week, and only then because that’s their code.

  Unnatural.

  He tells his client to get out of his head. The husband, too. Didn’t he use those same words or something similar? Shut up, everybody. She’s the most natural woman he’s ever met. She’s all the elements. Fire, water, earth, air.

  “I feel safe with you,” she says. “With you, I wanted to feel the movement of the bridge. I know you won’t let me go over the edge.”

  And he feels awful because his job, in a sense, is to push her over the edge.

  14

  Irving curses silently when he sees the latest invoice from Adam. His curses are Yiddish—behema, putz, schmuck. No one who works for him—the plump, gap-toothed black woman who sits at the desk by the front door, Susie, or the young handyman, Johnny, who does a little of this, a little of that—would understand these words if he spoke them aloud, but he still will not speak them outside his head. He has never liked crude language and he has no respect for those who use it.

  But Adam Bosk! Adam Bosk, who came so highly recommended. Behema, putz, schmuck. Look at these bills. Mileage to and from Baltimore, yet also a $75 cab receipt for the same trip, plus parking. Irving isn’t blindsided by these charges. Adam, dutiful man that he is, explained what happened before he sent the monthly invoice on Friday. He played it well, Irving has to give him that. And thank God he didn’t follow her up Rogers Avenue, because Irving knows where she was headed even if Adam doesn’t. If Adam had seen her destination, he might have asked some questions, and while Irving is quick on his feet, he hasn’t figured out how to make a few pesky facts go away. It’s not as if Adam needs to know everything. The basic outline of what Irving has told him is correct. This nafkeh ripped him off. Now he has a chance to make her pay him back, but he needs leverage first. That’s Adam’s job, even if he doesn’t quite know it. Find what she fears losing.

  The trip to Baltimore, her little game with the cab, is also proof that she’s keeping Adam in the dark—and not just about her real name. That pleases Irving, because if she’s bothering to keep such little secrets, it means he must be right about the big secret. But how much more money can he expend when he’s not 100 percent sure of any return? Maybe he should cut his losses, admit that this whole quest is as much about pride as unfinished business.

  He doesn’t usually let emotion dictate his business moves. But it seemed so simple at first. Gather some intel on her current situation, then blackmail her. He wasn’t greedy, but a 10 percent finder’s fee seemed about right. Twenty, to make up for what she did ten years ago. Only who could anticipate that she would walk out on her family? That husband better watch his back, Irving thinks, and maybe the kid, too. Ditmars once suggested to him that the issues with the other kid, those were her fault.

  Eight weeks ago, the plan had seemed foolproof. Buddy up with the husband, then blackmail her with the threat of exposure. When the family took off for the beach all of a sudden, Irving had agreed with Adam that such a friendship would be easier to jump-start at the shore. Easier for strangers to come into your life on vacation. Then they would return to Baltimore and Adam would insinuate himself into the family’s routines, maybe start double-dating with them, whatever people do. The husband, even if he knew about her current scam, was the best way in. She was a sharp cookie and her life as a stay-at-home mom didn’t offer her much exposure to new friends, male or female. That’s another reason Irving thinks he’s right about her. The very lack of friends, the way she keeps to herself. She has secrets. And now that she’s left the new husband, she has to be on the verge of leading Irving—finally, finally—to an almost literal pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  So why hasn’t she? Is he throwing good money after bad? What does that phrase even mean? If you’ve spent bad money, you continue to spend bad money, right? The money doesn’t become good once you realize how foolish you’ve been.

  He walks to the front of his office, peers out the window at Route 40. This strip of commercial highway was never nice, but it had been respectable in his childhood. There had been a Korvette’s across the street—whatever happened to Korvette’s? Also a reliable place for steamed crabs, back in the day. Then that soft ice cream place closer to Ingleside. Gino’s, Hot Shoppes Jr. Now everything’s just a little sleazier, a little trashier. Through the 1970s, there was a girls’ school, looked like a castle to him, near the city-county line. But that closed long ago. Why do things have to change? And why is it always for the worse? Yes, he gets that the world has to keep moving, but movement is not necessarily progress. They put a man on the moon, so what? They still can’t cure cancer. If they could cure cancer, he wouldn’t be a widower at age sixty-three.

  He turns to Susie, typing away.

  “You know what never changes, Susie?”

  “What, Mr. L?” she asks, still typing. Such a good girl, industrious, capable, never idle. Is it okay to call her girl? You can’t call a black man boy, he knows that. This world makes his head hurt.

  “People. What they wear changes. How they talk, maybe. But people never change and that has made me a rich man by most people’s measure.”

  Although not, he thinks, as rich as he should be and that’s on her. She stole his money, he can’t help seeing it that way, even if no cop would agree. Would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that chance encounter last fall. Then she surfaced, hiding inside a suburban mom, and he saw that she was playing a very long game. Maybe waiting for him to die? She was going to be disappointed then. He’s only sixty-thr
ee, which might seem old to her, but his people are long-lived, their memories sharp to the end. Now and then, especially when he’s paying Adam Bosk’s invoices, he starts to forget why he wants to get her back, why it matters so much, then he reminds himself: It’s the principle. Even if no one else knows or remembers what she did to him, he does—and he’s going to get what was his. That’s the thing about being rich. You can afford a few principles.

  He just hopes that wherever she parked the money, she’s getting a good interest rate.

  Interest. Yeah, she always got a lot of interest. Is Adam sleeping with her? Probably. Unprofessional, but that one does things to men. She’s a witch. He tries to tell himself he doesn’t get the appeal, but he can’t lie. Back in the day, even when she was heavier, she had a glow about her. He would try to prolong his visits to the house, arriving when he knew Ditmars wasn’t there yet, asking for a glass of water, acting kindly toward that scary, sad kid. He was never sure how much she knew. At the time, she seemed kind of dumb to him. Incurious, to be more accurate. Her entire life was that house and that kid. It was grim, and being married to Ditmars didn’t make it any better, although Irving doesn’t believe all those things they said about Ditmars, after. Guy didn’t have it in him. Sure, he was probably a putz in a lot of ways, and a bully, too, but he wouldn’t have hit a woman. Besides, she could have left, anytime. It’s not like he had her chained to the radiator.

  When Adam sent him the photos from the beach, he was stunned by how much better-looking she was now. At first, he wondered if that meant she had started tapping into the money. Transformations like that, when a woman’s in her thirties—they don’t just happen. But, yeah, she probably did drop weight, given her circumstances. In her case, that was enough. Lost the weight, grew her hair out, let it go back to its natural color. Ditmars had made her dye her hair blond, the stupid oaf. The way she looks now, she could have done better than the second guy she married. Apparently she got knocked up. Again. He wondered why she just didn’t decommission the equipment once and for all. But some women worry that they’ll stop being women if they do that.

  He goes back to his desk, pulls out those photos again, a treat he tries to indulge no more than weekly. Okay, daily, as of late. She’s wearing a one-piece, cut very low in the back. She’s helping her new kid build a sand castle. The way she’s posed—her rear end tilted up in the air—it’s like she knows someone’s watching her. Not necessarily Adam, who took these photos. Boy, if she had any inkling who Adam is, who he’s working for, she’d pull up stakes and leave that sleepy little Delaware town. He’s starting to think that may be the point for her, seeing how long she can go without leading Irving to the pot of gold at the end of this endless rainbow.

  Then he wonders if she thinks of him, ever.

  He remembers their one time. It was her idea, but it wasn’t really that great and he realized—later—that it was a part of setting him up. “Could you help me get a policy on Ditmars?” Sure, of course, but doesn’t the FOP—“It won’t be enough. Because of Joy. The thing is, Ditmars doesn’t want it, says it’s a waste of money, but I’m smart with the household budget, I can carve out the payments monthly and he’ll never know. I just need someone, you know, friendly. Who won’t sweat the signature. Who will let me slide on whatever medical tests are required. You must know someone like that. It’s mainly for my peace of mind. You know how, if you take an umbrella, it never rains, but when you risk it, you get soaking wet? Besides, Ditmars is healthy as an ox.”

  Of course, even an ox can’t survive a knife through his heart. But Irving wasn’t deconstructing her words just then. Irving was on top of her, showing her how friendly he could be. Sure, I’ll find someone to write you a policy. A million dollars for some dumb cop’s life. Why not? It wasn’t like an arson investigator put himself at that much risk, not one like Ditmars. The only way Ditmars put himself in danger was by sleeping with other cops’ wives, hanging out with drug dealers and murderers. Irving doubted she’d be able to make the monthly payments anyway. Then, when Ditmars did die, he assumed she wouldn’t be able to collect, given the circumstances.

  But she had outsmarted him by making the daughter the beneficiary of that policy. And now she has outrun him, or tried to. She seemed so weak, so vulnerable. She had needed him. Briefly, just for one afternoon, he let himself think that she wanted him. He knows better now.

  He sighs, writes a check to Adam Bosk for his July expenses, then pays the August retainer. He’ll give him until Labor Day, then pull the plug.

  Maybe in the end, all money is bad money.

  15

  The trip to Baltimore wasn’t a good idea. It was never a good idea. It felt terrible to go. It felt terrible not to go. When she goes, she feels defensive, forced to see herself as others see her. But not going makes her that person, too. She can’t win. And now she’s doubly awful, with two trips to make, two burdens to carry in her heart.

  Her low mood continues for days. She can hide it at work. She has to. There’s no percentage in being a sulky waitress. But she finds she’s snappish with Adam. She wishes he would disappear for a few days. She revealed too much of herself on that trip. Not her actual secrets, but the fact that she has secrets, which is bad enough. She should have concocted a cover story, been nonchalant, let him drive her right up to the front door. My niece. My cousin. My half sister. There were a dozen lies she could have told, convincingly, any one of which would have been better than taking that taxi, all but announcing: I AM HIDING SOMETHING FROM YOU.

  Which wouldn’t matter if she didn’t care about him. She can’t afford to love any man. But she does, or is beginning to. It’s a dangerous game, trying to convince someone you love him. Sometimes, the person you end up convincing is yourself. She’s supposed to be leaving by Labor Day.

  And so is he.

  She finds herself looking for him, at work. Happy for a flash of his forearm as he hands plates through the pass-through. Wanting to make eye contact as she rattles off special orders, as if “Whole wheat, no mayo, no lettuce, extra pickles” is a love song. She tells herself sternly that she is not in love with him. How could she be in love? She doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know her. He will never know her. To be known—there’s nothing riskier. She stands behind the bar, listens to Max and Ernest say the same things they say every day, about the Orioles and the Phillies and how late the tomatoes are this summer and do you think OJ did it.

  Burton—always Burton, never Burt, he got angry if you called him Burt—had known her since childhood. They had come up together in the same neighborhood, the good part of Dundalk, although some ignorant people laugh at the idea that Dundalk has a good part. But there are beautiful old houses in Dundalk and they were both the children of steel workers at a time when steel workers did quite well. Their families had nice two-story brick homes, memberships at the swimming club.

  Five years apart in age, Polly Costello and Burton Ditmars hadn’t traveled in the same circles growing up. Five years is huge when you are a kid; it might as well be fifty. Then the summer she was fourteen going on fifteen, she bought a two-piece bathing suit. Yellow, no straps, scandalous by the standards of the day. And a bad choice for a girl who was a little overweight and always burned before she tanned. But she wasn’t fat, just not model thin, and Burton cared only about the top half of the bikini. He liked a little heft on the bottom, too. Later, when he began to cheat on her, it was always with bottom-heavy women. Prostitutes, usually. When he was caught, he insisted his choice was chivalrous, made in consideration of her feelings. Because no wife could be jealous of a Wise Avenue whore, right? That was sheer release, that was natural, and she was so exhausted all the time. It was the most considerate thing he could do, if you thought about it. Or so he argued. No, not even argued, said blandly as if it were a fact she had to accept. I don’t like onions. We’ll go to my mom’s for Sunday dinner. I’m going to cheat on you.

  “You know why I’m exhausted, Ditmars,” she would say
, sitting at their kitchen table, weeping. Early in their marriage, she had started using his surname, the way all his buddies did. Not that they were buddies. Anything but.

  The house alone was enough to make her cry. It was okay, but small and cramped, with only one bathroom. She had thought they would enjoy a better standard of living, him being a cop. Crime, unlike the demand for U.S. steel, didn’t have huge fluctuations.

  And crime didn’t crawl into the lungs and skin of men, destroying them. Her father had died before the young couple’s first wedding anniversary. Her mother had opted out of the class-action suit, accepted a settlement, moved to a small town on the Gulf Coast in Florida. When she died less than a decade later, people said politely that some marriages were like that, the partner can’t go on, but Polly knew she had killed her mother.

  “It was your choice,” Ditmars said when she dared to feel sorry for herself.

  “No, not this. You can’t say this is my fault.” She was scared to tell the truth, that she thought he was the one who was accountable, for his indifference and his slowness to respond that horrible day. If they had gotten there sooner, if he had been more forceful. But one night, she did, she said the things that were never supposed to be said and, sure enough, he hit her. Only once, but with a closed fist straight to her stomach, hard enough to double her over.

  “I hope nothing ever grows in there again,” he said. “If it does, I’ll make sure it’s not in there for long.”

  She would lie in bed at night alone, trying to remember Burton, the shy young nineteen-year-old who had dared to flirt with the fourteen-year-old in the yellow bathing suit. He hadn’t known she was fourteen, not at first. He assumed sixteen, would have been fine with fifteen, and, when he learned fourteen, he said, “Wow, there are laws.” Then he set out trying to persuade her to break those laws. All summer long, in the backs of cars, on blankets spread in spots he said no one could see. I’m dying. I’ll die if I can’t. No, really, I’ll truly die. I’d die for you. Always some variation of death. Until, finally, he decided he could not, would not wait. He raped her. Not that anyone would call it that. Not even her father would call it that. She had brought this on herself. Burton said as much, when he was finished: “I didn’t want to do that.” Weeping, as if she had forced him to be a lesser version of himself.