Sunburn: A Novel Read online

  Then: “I love you.” So it was okay.

  They went together for three years. She was too young to go on the Pill without her parents’ consent, but she was careful, truly careful. So they were both surprised when she turned up pregnant at age seventeen. He was twenty-two then, in his last year at UB. “There goes law school,” he said. He had never mentioned law school before. He joined the county police department, and they got married in her third month. In her sixth month, she lost the baby and he was enraged, accused her of faking the pregnancy. Then, he decided he wanted her to get pregnant right away. He didn’t want to admit he had made a mistake, that he could have gotten away without marrying her. He could never be wrong, about anything. In some ways, that was the most dangerous thing about him.

  By the time she got pregnant again and had the baby at age twenty-one, he had lost all interest in her, left her alone to care for their child, began running after women. And it wasn’t just the whores of Wise Avenue. He slept with neighbors, a coworker’s wife.

  He was an awful person. That was his true calling. Being awful. It was inevitable that he and Irving would form a partnership. The things they did—she tried to stay as ignorant as possible, but she knew they did terrible things. She tried to figure out how to make it right, how to tell someone, make it stop. But she knew he would kill her. He would smell the betrayal on her, kill her, and then what would happen to Joy?

  After that first punch, the one to the gut, he began giving her little slaps if she dared to say anything contradictory. Even something as mild as, No, honey, it’s the eighteenth, not the nineteenth, brought a reflexive backhand, sharp and stinging.

  On the rare times she dared to actually disagree, to stake out an opinion opposite his, he would throw her to the floor and lower himself on top of her, as he had done on that blanket in the cemetery the first time they had sex, only now pounding and kicking and choking her until she passed out, or he lost interest.

  She was stuck. Circumstances being what they were, she couldn’t leave him. Besides, he had these friends now, dangerous men. He boasted about what these men would do for him. She was so scared of him by then, she didn’t even allow herself to think mean thoughts against him when he was in the house. Her fantasies of escape were saved for those quiet moments, 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., when he was still out and she was too exhausted to sleep. Imagine if we could leave, she would think, then cry at the impossibility of it.

  Then came the night in 1983 that the Orioles lost what seemed a crucial game. They would go on to win the World Series that year, but that knowledge would arrive too late to comfort Burton. He picked up the kitchen radio and heaved it through the kitchen window, then told her to clean it up.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I’ll get it in the morning.” Not saying no because she never said no. Not pointing out that he was the one who had tossed the radio, only appealing to him to recognize what her days, her life, were like.

  For a moment, he seemed to soften. He went outside with the dustpan, came back with the fragments of the window. Smiling at her, shy as the boy who had first tried to get her attention at the pool, he emptied the dustpan into the kitchen trash.

  Then reached in, pulled out a shard, and held it to her throat.

  “I’ll kill you if you ever fail to do what I say,” he said. “I’ll kill you and burn this house down in such a way that they’ll never know what killed you.”

  She thought she was going to die that night. That freed her to say what she had never dared to say: “What about Joy? Without me, you’ll need someone to take care of her.”

  “I’ll kill her, too.”

  She considered spitting in his face. He would kill her, but maybe it would be better to be dead. She was tired. She was trapped. This was her life and it was never going to get any better.

  But—Joy. He said he would kill Joy, too. And she believed him.

  She begged, she babbled: “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’ll be good.”

  Impulsive acts are a luxury. She needed a plan. Days went by. Weeks. Months. She balanced the checkbook, cooked his favorite meals. Seasons went by, years.

  * * *

  Winter 1986 was mild, temperatures reaching the seventies a couple of days. She made him his favorite dinner and let him have his favorite sex, although it was never really a matter of letting. He fastened his hands around her throat, claiming all the while that it was for her pleasure. She turned her face to the wall—he preferred not to see her face during sex, the better to imagine others—and wondered at how her body still could respond to him at all. Muscle memory, she guessed.

  She waited for him to fall asleep, then got up, took a shower, knowing she would have to shower again. She stood there looking at him a long time—on his back, limbs splayed, snoring. His arms and legs were still the limbs of the boy she had once known, Burton, hard with muscle and tanned year-round. But Ditmars was soft around the middle. He blamed her cooking. He was thirty-one. She was twenty-five, almost twenty-six. They would celebrate their ninth anniversary later in the summer.

  Except they wouldn’t because she raised both her arms above her head and plunged a kitchen knife into his heart with all the force she could muster. His eyes flew open at the impact, but her aim was true. It had to be. There would be no second chances.

  At her trial, the medical examiner testified she almost cleaved his heart in two with one thrust. Her lawyer, court appointed, had tried to use this to prove that her initial story about an intruder must be true. He was a little bit in love with Polly by then. He asked a jury to contemplate if Polly could have mustered the force, even if she was lucky not to hit a bone on the way in. But he knew and she knew that she was more than capable. Just another of those superhuman feats of strength that a mother can summon, like lifting a car or leaping from a burning building. Polly was surprised the knife didn’t pierce his back, pinning him to the mattress as he had pinned her there time and again.

  She did not take the stand in her own defense.

  16

  Adam can’t stop singing.

  He sings in the shower, hums while shaving. Little tunes bubble out of his mouth at work, snatches of songs he doesn’t remember ever learning, show tunes and pop tunes, all with one word in common: Love. Love, Love, Love. As in: You’re not sick, you’re just in love. As in: I can love you like that. And once, before he stopped himself: I’m in love with a wonderful—

  His food sings, too. People begin talking about it. How good the grilled cheese is, the burgers, the fish. He convinces the boss to take advantage of the summer bounty—the good tomatoes, the beautiful varieties of silver corn. People who think silver corn begins and ends with Silver Queen have no idea what they’re missing. He makes towering BLTs with his own cured bacon and aioli. Mr. C is skeptical: “Why bother making mayo from scratch?”

  A couple stops by one day, deciding they’d rather have a long lunch than fight the beach traffic. Turns out they write a column for the Baltimore Beacon called the Dive Club that reviews bars and restaurants off the beaten path. The High-Ho gets a rave. Adam can barely believe it’s his food they’re describing, even though he knows how good he is. Belleville was always the place no one wanted to stop. But this August it becomes commonplace to see out-of-state tags in the parking lot on weekends, and not just Maryland. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, D.C. Now Mr. C is the one who wants to sing all the time. “I can’t lose you, Adam,” he says.

  You won’t, he thinks, stealing a look at Polly. Not yet.

  “You have to hide it better,” she says to him that night in bed. “We’re a secret.”

  “Why?” he says. “It’s been almost a month. Cath can’t expect me to not date at all.”

  “It’s not just Cath. It’s better if it’s a secret. Besides, people don’t like it when people at a job date each other. Especially when there aren’t a lot of people working there. Max and Ernest are grumpy enough that the bar is so busy now. Come Labor Day, it’ll be a smal
l-town bar again. Remember that.”

  Come Labor Day. He’s paid up through then. How long can he stay on this job? When will Irving pull the plug? Should he quit, tell Irving that he has determined she has no funds and he’s sorry it took so long to establish this? Maybe she had money once, but it’s clearly gone. Why would she stay here otherwise?

  “I don’t think anyone would mind. I think you just like secrets.” Once he ends the job with Irving, he thinks, he’ll want to go public with her. He’s trying to do the right thing, but things happen. Love happens.

  “That’s true,” she says agreeably. “I do like secrets. A little mystery is good for a woman.”

  “So, what, you got a husband and kid or something I don’t know about?”

  He’s more startled by his words than she is. Did she tell him that Gregg was her husband? He’s pretty sure Gregg mentioned a kid at least. She sure never mentioned a kid to him. They don’t talk about their pasts. Easier that way.

  She says, coy as a kitten: “What if I do?” He’s spooning her so he can’t see her face, but her body is relaxed and loose in his arms, no tension at all except in her neck. There’s always tension in that one spot. She will let her entire body melt into his, but extends her neck so far forward he can’t bury his face in her nape, as he would like to do. She smells wonderful there.

  “Were you married?” he asks. “You and that guy? Are you going to divorce him?” She doesn’t encourage questions, but it occurs to him that normal lovers ask such questions. He probably should ask more questions, even if he knows the answers. Heck, maybe he’ll even ask questions to which he’s supposed to be finding the answers. Where’s the money, Polly?

  “What do you think?” she asks back.

  “I don’t think a woman like you has been roaming free all this time. Someone tried to slip a harness on you a time or two.”

  She yawns. “Amazing women often remain single into their thirties. Men—men are the ones who are suspect if they haven’t married by forty. So what about you?”

  “I’ve got a couple of years until I hit your deadline.”

  “But have you ever been married?”

  “Once. Really young. The kind of marriage that doesn’t count. When we broke up, we didn’t even argue over stuff because it was so clear what belonged to whom.”

  “Whom. Listen to you, Mr. Fancy Pants. Mr. College.”

  “Nothing wrong with proper grammar.”

  “Yes, that’s why you come over here every night. To teach me grammar.” She arches her back, that’s all, arches her back and twitches her hips, and he’s gone. Then, suddenly, it’s 5 a.m., and there’s a glimmer of light and she’s saying “Go, go, go” as if this is a fairy tale where something dire happens at sunrise.

  He meant to ask her about the kid, but she distracted him.

  Because she has no AC, the outdoor air feels refreshing as he walks home. Not driving to her place is another one of her rules. People go for walks in the middle of the night, she says, but no one drives anywhere after 2 a.m. unless they’re up to something. So he walks. There’s one stretch where he has to cross a vacant lot, and the dew is heavy enough to drench his shoes through and through. He’s in love. He has a job. Is there any way he can do the job and not risk her? He has to quit. That’s it, plain and simple. He has to call Irving and tell him she has no money and it’s time to wrap this up.

  * * *

  “So nice of you to worry about me wasting my money,” Irving says on the phone, in a tone that suggests he doesn’t find Adam nice at all. “How can you be so sure I’m wrong about her?”

  “Because she clearly has no money.”

  “No, she’s not spending any money. That’s different. You watch me for—how long has it been since she hit Belleville? Nine weeks? You watch me nine weeks and you’ll think I have no money, either. I dress like crap, I drive a ten-year-old Cadillac, I eat ready-made egg salad sandwiches from the deli, with a cream soda. But I’m rich, Adam. Rich enough to pay you for weeks on a job that shouldn’t take anywhere near this long.”

  “We’ve been over this. No one could have foreseen her picking up stakes and starting a new life somewhere other than Baltimore.”

  “Fair enough. I didn’t hire you for your psychic abilities. Although maybe I should have gone to that fortune-teller, the one at the corner of Northern Parkway and Park Heights. Everything in that neighborhood changes, but she’s been there forever, so she must know something. A scam artist, but I bet her customers don’t know it. They’re happy. Me, I am not a happy customer. But then, I don’t enjoy being scammed.”

  Adam takes offense, despite the fact that Irving is right to doubt him. But how could he help falling in love with her? It’s not his fault that he thought he could enjoy the sex for what it was, get the info he had been hired to find, and then move on. It wasn’t the sex that made him fall for her. It was something in her eyes, when they went for lunch in Baltimore that day. She needed him. Needed someone, and why not him? He could take care of her—if she would only let him. He is taking care of her, even if she doesn’t realize it. Irving promised to keep things clean, no violence. Adam never would have taken this job if he thought someone could be hurt. What if Irving hires someone who’s willing to be a little rougher? Adam will be here to protect her.

  “You can’t prove a negative. It’s impossible to prove someone doesn’t have money stashed away. But I’ve gotten close enough to her to feel confident on this score.”

  “How close, sonny boy?”

  Irving speaks in the rhythms of a grandfather, which he is. But Irving never sounds more dangerous than when he’s trying to sound affectionate, paternal.

  “We work together. At the bar. I told you that.”

  “What else you do together? Am I going to have to hire a PI to follow the PI?”

  “Look, I’m trying to be responsible about your money. It may be time for you to terminate this job.”

  “And if I do, I guess you’ll come back to Baltimore?”

  What does Irving know? Nothing. Yet Adam is getting nervous. “I usually take a big trip after a long job. New Zealand, maybe. Or I’ll join the peepers in New England, come fall. I want to go to Egypt.”

  “I hear Belleville is beautiful in autumn.”

  “Irving, you got something to say to me?”

  “No, but I got some info for you. Maybe I should have shared it from the start. But in my own way, I thought I was being fair to her, that it would color your interactions if you knew too much. You like movies? I’ll send you a movie.”

  “I don’t have a VHS—”

  “I’ll send one of those, too. You really need to see this movie.”

  “Irving—”

  “Watch,” he says. “Listen. Then we’ll talk. Fast-forward to the thirty-seven-minute mark or you’ll cry from boredom.”

  * * *

  A package arrives at the motel the next day, Adam’s day off. “Heavy,” says the guy at the front desk, who’s always into everyone’s business. It’s a bitch, figuring out how to connect it to the old-fashioned television and Adam has to drive to the Radio Shack in Salisbury twice to get the right cords. It’s almost nine o’clock when he pops the unmarked black cassette into the slot and sees a not-very-professional title card. “In the Name of Love.”

  “What the—?” He remembers Irving’s advice, fast-forwards. Goes too far, but he recognizes her, jumbled as she is, her brilliant red hair covered with a scarf. The name on the screen, though, isn’t one he remembers. Pauline Ditmars. Who’s Ditmars? He realizes then that Irving never told him the name of her first husband. He said it wasn’t important.

  Irving also said he had run a LexisNexis on Pauline Hansen and given Adam the full results. Adam believed him. Why wouldn’t you believe a client who ran an insurance brokerage, had access to all kinds of info, especially a tightfisted one like Irving, who wouldn’t want to waste money paying Adam to do things he could do for himself? He said she had cheated the stepdaught
er from her first marriage out of a life insurance settlement and that she was probably working another scam now. Irving had it on good authority that she had swindled someone out of millions. Irving said.

  Polly’s voice in the movie is toneless, almost robotic. He can barely believe it’s the same woman. She’s beaten down, joyless.

  “By the end, he was hitting me almost every day. No, I didn’t tell the truth to the cops. He was a cop, no one was going to believe me. So I said there was an intruder. Well, they saw through that right away. Then when I tried to tell the truth, I had no credibility. They thought if I would lie about one thing, I’d lie about the other. He was a cop. I guess no one gets to kill a cop, not even his own wife.”

  A narrator’s voice takes over: “Pauline now freely admits that she stabbed her husband while he slept. But she is a classic case of ‘battered women’s syndrome,’ driven to kill Burton Ditmars because she could not imagine any way to end the cycle of abuse, especially after he threatened to kill their disabled daughter.”

  Disabled daughter? Irving had said stepdaughter, Adam is sure of that. But then, Irving also said the father had died of “heart trouble” and that Pauline had rigged the medical exam so it didn’t show he had a preexisting condition when she forged the life insurance papers.

  Well, being an abusive husband is a preexisting condition of sorts, although it’s rare for men to die of it. And a knife through the heart is definitely a kind of heart trouble.