Me for You Read online

  It was the quiet time at the gym, after the morning rush, and before the early afternoon ladies-who-lunch-then-StairMaster crowd. Sasha hugged the warm, sweet-smelling towels as she helped the laundress fold and shelve them.

  Sometimes Sasha used to rise in the night and shuffle to her daughter’s room to slide under the Aladdin quilt, spoon Stefi’s small, flannel-clad body, and sink into a few hours’ sleep that were clean and delicious. Sometimes during their mother/daughter morning ritual of dressing and breakfast before their walk to the bus, Gabor would bark from the bedroom, “What kind of woman doesn’t even sleep with her own husband?”

  It was so ridiculous—his complete lack of self-awareness, especially when marked by an octave-lower hangover gravel—that Sasha just laughed. That made him angrier, giving way to shouting, then coughing, like a huffing, puffing monster in one of Stefi’s stories.

  “Daddy! Don’t be mad!” Stefi would holler out from the breakfast bar. This would soften Gabor. His daughter always did. If he made it down to join them for breakfast, he’d cut Stefi’s toast into toast fingers and accent them with Cheerios eyes and mouths and raisin noses.

  The apnea, smoking, coughing, made him spit up things into paper napkins, which he threw at the trash, missing. One morning he coughed so suddenly toast crumbs shot out of his mouth and onto the table. Stefi stopped chewing.

  “Attractive,” Sasha commented, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She did everything she could to quell arguments in front of their daughter.

  That is when Gabor shoved her. It was not a hit. It was a shove. She was by the kitchen door, getting up to clear the dishes. He leapt up and elbowed her into the doorway while closing the door on her at the same time, muttering, “I don’t want to see your face.” Sasha’s hands weren’t free, so she couldn’t push back. Yet a free finger was extended from one of the mugs she carried and it caught in the doorjamb, making her yelp like an animal. Stefi had seen it all.

  On the way to the bus stop, Sasha explained to Stefi that Daddy didn’t want to hurt Mommy, he was just sad, and angry, because he couldn’t find a job in America right now. Sometimes men, and boys—like mean boys at school—are sad, but they don’t express sadness well, so they end up mad. Stefi nodded her blond head above her Pooh knapsack, taking this all in. In her head, Sasha heard I don’t want to see your face. Perhaps this was what had perfected her self-loathing during her marriage. Age crinkling her fair skin into patchy dry spots, circles under her eyes from the chronic interrupted sleep and long work hours—Gabor’s need to drink made Sasha believe there was something fundamental about her that wasn’t lovable.

  And then Stefi had drowned. That terrible afternoon—the screen door slapping behind Stefi as she ran outside, her little feet in red sneakers, a yellow seersucker sundress pulled over her bathing suit. So excited to go swimming with her American friend and her mum. The mother appearing to be perfectly competent. Sasha not even worrying. It wasn’t like her not to worry! But then Stefi was gone. Sasha’s whole life. Gone in an afternoon.

  4

  As Rudy played the Moonlight Sonata, he considered the prospect of getting another part-time job. Was this putting one foot in front of the other? He could work as a butcher at the upscale grocery by his house. During high school and college, he’d worked at his father’s butcher shop. He’d certainly feel more necessary at this second job. Chops, ribs, filets. People needed to eat! There were an array of vegetarian and vegan meat-substitute mixes these days, though the only vegetarian burgers Rudy had had were like cardboard coasters. He imagined laying out the loin chops pink and fresh, and preparing the meatloaf mix, veal, ground beef. He’d find a way to create a moist, flavorful veggie burger. Punching in during the afternoon rush, he’d work until the dinner hour came and went. Instead of cooking and eating dinner alone, he’d help others gather their dinners. Returning home with items from the deli to eat in front of the TV, Rudy would be too exhausted to be lonesome. Would exhaustion replace or exacerbate loneli— Suddenly someone sat down beside Rudy on his piano bench.

  Startled, Rudy jumped and turned his head without removing his hands from the piano keys.

  “That’s okay, keep playing,” a man in a charcoal-gray suit and purple tie said softly but firmly. He had the same confidence and authority of the headless mannequin, and Rudy felt compelled to follow his directions. Worried he might have played the sonata at least twice, he transitioned into “Für Elise.”

  “I’m Detective Jensen,” the man declared.

  Rudy tried to think of all the bad things he’d done recently. He had put celery in the garbage disposal. The threads of the celery caught in a knot and clogged the thing up. Last weekend he had glided through a stop sign while listening to an aria that made the hairs on his arms tickle. An awful sick feeling struck him when he saw a child on a bike teeter out of a driveway just beyond the intersection. He had written off the rental of his cheap tuxedo on his taxes, unsure whether this was allowable.

  “I need to speak with you about your wife,” the detective said in a low voice.

  “She’s passed on.” Rudy hated these euphemisms, but they seemed polite. She died, god damn it, for no reason at all!

  “Yes, sir, I understand, and I would like to discuss with you the nature of her death.”

  That’s it. Rudy killed his wife. With his ineptitude. This man was the minister of feeble husbands.

  “We have reason to believe she was murdered.”

  “What?”

  Rudy lifted his hands from the piano, ditched Beethoven, and slammed the piano lid down over the keys. He turned to face the man, who had slick black hair, pointy features, and oily skin—like one of the bad guys out of the Nancy Drew stories he used to read CeCe before bed.

  Murdered? No. First of all, why would this man tell Rudy this at work of all places? Why not make an appointment? Rudy remembered uneasily that there were several messages on his answering machine at home. The light had been blinking for days, the number of messages stacking up to seven, eight, nine. Rudy hadn’t listened to them, because he’d assumed it was the Sandals resort returning the merlot-driven call he’d made one night to possibly book a vacation. That night, after finishing the merlot, he’d dipped into a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream—awful sticky, sweet stuff that coated his teeth with a moss he couldn’t get rid of the next day—he’d phoned the resort to cancel, but instead got a catalog selling lawn ornaments. Now he feared both were calling.

  “I need to see some kind of identification,” Rudy insisted. “A badge and a business card, if you please.”

  “Certainly.” The man rose, pulling a badge from inside his coat pocket and moving toward the armchairs by the piano. He flashed the badge at Rudy and dipped into his pants pocket for a business card from his wallet. He sunk into one of the leather armchairs and motioned to the other.

  “Please, have a seat.”

  Rudy complied.

  “A coworker of your wife’s at the hospital pharmacy has been charged with two murders, and he has also confessed to murdering your wife with a lethal dose of chloral hydrate.”

  “But. Why? No.” Rudy could only form one-word sentences. What motive could anyone possibly have for hurting Bethany?

  “Motive,” he said to the detective. A vexed murmur, rather than a question.

  “This is what we need to investigate,” the detective said. His eyes were so dark they didn’t seem to have pupils, yet Rudy thought he saw a glimmer of empathy there. “Sadly, there’s often no motive in these types of serial cases.”

  Rudy squeezed two of his fingers with the fist of his other hand, until his knuckles hurt. So he wouldn’t . . . He wasn’t sure what. Punch a mannequin. Whoever this confessor was, he would murder him right back, with his bare hands. Rudy had chopped heads off chickens and severed and quartered the entire side of a cow. He could probably wring a man’s neck, and he would.

  “I need to make an appointment with you to come down to the station,” the detective
added, laying a hand on the shiny sleeve of Rudy’s coat jacket. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture. “Please give me a call.” The detective nodded at his business card, which Rudy plucked from his lap and inserted into his wallet. Then the man stood and quickly vanished through the Men’s Department—his suit a gray, sartorial miasma.

  What on earth? Was this some sort of practical joke? Rudy did not return to the piano.

  A new perfume was being sampled today, and it smelled—after so many sprays into the nearby aisle—sickeningly sweet, like a too-old Hawaiian lei and burned butter cookies. Rudy gagged a little, his throat dry. He wanted to escape the bright bustle of the store, get out of this damned tuxedo. Meet Sasha for an early-afternoon drink and tell her about this ridiculous nonsense. Oh, this topped a flying breast-feeding pad! He would not tell CeCe. He would not bother his daughter with such upsetting and potentially false (probably false!) news. For the love of God, would he have to go through the five stages of grief again? Denial, HYSTERIA, anger.

  The department store woman’s oblivious voice started to coo over the PA.

  “Rupert Simms, Rupert Simms.” Oh, for the love of God, Rupert Simms was probably at the Canadian border by now.

  “Rupert Si—”

  Rudy pounded his fists on the arms of the leather chair, stood, and bellowed at the ceiling: “SHUT. UP. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

  5

  Bethany would have told anyone that she wasn’t nearly as fault-free as her sweet husband imagined her to be. Case in point: Once upon a time—when CeCe was little—Bee stole a casserole from their neighbor’s stoop. At first she’d taken it, rescued it, and later she stole it. Scooped it up off the young couple’s porch next door when she’d dropped by with a get-well card for the husband, Gray, who’d been admitted to the hospital for an appendectomy, then gotten saddled with blood poisoning. Bethany also brought Violet and Gray an arrangement of roses and hydrangea from her garden. She knew how everything in life could change with just a doctor’s appointment or an emergency room visit.

  The couple was new to the neighborhood, and Bethany had only spoken to them in passing as they brought in their newspapers or garbage cans.

  “I think we need a new roof,” Gray worried after they’d moved in, shading his eyes to peer at the wooden shingles above.

  “Aw, as soon as you buy a house you go from elated to certain the whole place is going to cave in. Not time to worry yet,” she reassured him. When they shook hands, Gray’s was pleasantly warm and dry. He had the tousled brown hair of an overworked programmer, red-rimmed blue eyes. She wanted to dab away the little bit of shaving cream at the edge of his jaw with her thumb. Gray, Violet. Their names were colors.

  Hormones. Bethany blamed hormones for the swiped casserole. It was back when she was pregnant with a second baby and then had a sudden, second-trimester miscarriage. For the first time in her life she felt insane. The next thing she knew she was a turkey tetrazzini thief.

  She set the flowers on the porch in a corner of shade—pink roses for a girl, blue hydrangea for a boy—Bethany was to have had a boy They told her this after a pathology report. Boy boy boy wagon Lego boy. Stop! She chided herself. Obsessive thinking. This time off from work was allowing her too much rumination. Which was why she made the arrangement for the neighbors in the first place. Working at a hospital got you into the habit of at least trying to do things for others.

  She’d ferried the casserole back to their house for safekeeping and refrigeration. You could not leave perishables out in the California sun! The Pyrex dish was still warm, providing relief against Bethany’s tender, still-cramping abdomen. A get-well note from a woman named Cindy was tucked into the towel wrapped around the dish. Don’t leave food on a porch, Cindy. Even if the couple was home, and a dog didn’t ravish the food, it might cool to a ptomaine temperature by supper. Wouldn’t that be great? Lovely Violet sick with worry for her husband, doubled over with food poisoning. As Bee closed the door to her house, grateful to be inside—the miscarriage had made her not want to see anyone—she realized she’d never made or perhaps even eaten a casserole in her life. She must have tasted one. Didn’t they involve cream of mushroom soup? (Bent cans: botulism Violet, with her tiny hands and feet and spray of freckles across her nose, curled in a ball on the kitchen linoleum, unable to reach her phone.)

  Bethany removed the casserole from the basket and wrapped it in an extra layer of tin foil to keep it fresh, then stowed it in the refrigerator. As soon as she saw Violet’s car in the drive, she’d carry it back over.

  She rearranged the two extra stems of hydrangea she’d put in a vase on the kitchen windowsill above the sink. Her favorite flower, this batch wasn’t as blue as she’d have liked. She hadn’t had time to add acid to the soil. The soil wasn’t acidic enough in Silicon Valley. Too many millionaires, not enough bitterness. These blooms were in between blue and pink—a flecked, light purple. Boy, girl, in between—she’d love a gay child! Bring him back. Stop. It. She washed her hands.

  After sorting the day’s mail, she returned to the refrigerator, wondering what to have for dinner. Rudy was away at a weekend off-site for his tech company. (“Flip charts, flip charts, flip charts,” Rudy had texted. “How much Kool-Aid can you fit into a flip chart?” “Good one,” Bethany had texted back. She could always rely on Rudy to make her giggle.) CeCe was away at a Girl Scout sleepaway; collecting the long list of “MUST HAVE!” items had delighted her. Sometimes Bethany thought her daughter might be more conscientious and diligent than the grade school teachers.

  “It’s super-simple and old-fashioned,” Cindy’s feminine script said on the little card tucked in a linen napkin inside the casserole basket. “A taste of the Midwest. Hope you don’t mind potato sticks!”

  Bethany did not mind potato sticks.

  When she opened the refrigerator door again and peered in, she knew she was going to eat the casserole, just the way you know you’re going to cheat on a diet or start smoking again. As she took down a plate from the cupboard, she wasn’t sure whether she would bake a replacement dish or bury the Pyrex and Red Riding Hood basket in the backyard, but she had her supper mapped out, and she was hungry.

  Thank you, Cindy; there also was a little slip of paper tucked into the Saran with instructions for heating: “15 minutes in the mic or 30 at 400 degrees in the oven.” Bethany didn’t even know this thoughtful friend of Violet’s. Why was she irritated by her little notes? She felt completely out of character. The way a photo is out of focus, or a radio only partially tuned in. Sad, crabby thoughts seeped into her brain like static from another station. Focus: “400 degrees” . . . she chose the oven.

  The oven door warmed her hips as she leaned against it. An intoxicating savory smell filled the house. The smell said dinner, home, family. It was a smell that called for a place mat, cloth napkin, fork, and knife. Salt and pepper, the newspaper dry and chalky from the driveway, unfurled across the table. As she laid out these items, she knew how lucky she was to have a husband who both cooked for her and with whom it was always nice to share meals. Friends of hers complained of husbands who leapt up from the table even if they were the only ones finished eating, or of meals spent looking at the back of cell phones or laptops. No such behavior from her Rudy. The crying again, dammit.

  Oh, the casserole was good. A glorious crunchy buttery crust of potato sticks and crushed cornflakes. Steam billowed out as Bethany dug into it with a serving spoon. (“Totally Midwestern!” Cindy’s cursive winked on the instruction card.) The grief said, go ahead, take another dollop. She poured herself a glass of wine (no longer pregnant, she could have coffee, wine, crack, sniff glue . . .) sat down, and tucked in. The turkey and noodles were just the right combination of bland and flavorful. There were peas, which somehow weren’t mushy. She detected thyme. Not dried, but fresh chopped. When she decided to heat up and eat her neighbors’ casserole, she did not know how much she was going to enjoy it.

  As she took a sip of wine, Betha
ny reengineered a replacement supper in her head, deciding that she could easily find a turkey tetrazzini recipe. She’d ask Rudy for advice. Wait, would she tell Rudy? She told her husband everything. But since the miscarriage, dark thoughts had moved in like foreboding storm fronts she didn’t want him to worry about. As she considered this, she heard the neighbor boys explode into the backyard. After supper was “no screen time,” their mother had explained. Twins, the boys wore sweet, lopsided, mischievous grins, and were always a bit dirty around the knees and elbows. Bethany loved their grubby imperfection. But they were polite! Little boys. She’d wanted one. That was a selfish, perilous wish—to hope for a certain sex of baby. Bad luck! Since when did she believe in luck?