The Wrong Man

Dess

The bathroom tile was cold, and it was the only honest thing in the apartment.

She had not meant to be there. She had meant to go to the kitchen and make tea. She had gotten as far as the hall, the wall at her back and the floor tilting under her, when the baby gave one long rolling heave and her stomach answered, and she had gone on hands and knees, like a dog, along the boards, and across the threshold, and pitched forward over the toilet. It was not much. She had eaten nothing since last night. She retched dry and shaking, with her forehead against the porcelain rim and her braid hanging in the bowl, until there was nothing left to give.

Then she lay down.

The floor was the old black-and-white hexagon, the kind they had put into every three-decker in Providence in 1920, chipped here and there and gray in the grout. It smelled of Pine-Sol and damp. She lay on her side with her cheek on the cool tile and her knees drawn up around the weight of her belly, and looked along the floor at the underside of the tub. It stood on its four iron claws. There was a pale gray drift of dust beneath it, and a dead moth, and a single lost bobby pin.

Warwick, she thought.

It was this color. The tile. Black and white.

I counted the squares. There were two hundred and eleven.

She began to count.

She counted the way she had counted at twenty-four, in a different bathroom, with a different lock, with her cheek pressed to a different floor. One. Two. Three. She counted along the row to the wall. She counted down the next. She told herself it was a thing to do with her mind, a way of holding it still. And she knew, even as she counted, that it was not Warwick. That nobody had locked this door. That the door stood open on a hall in which no one was waiting for her to ask permission.

I could get up.

I could get up any time I like.

That's what's different.

I'm just not doing it.

She lay there for a very long while.

…

The phone was in her robe pocket.

She felt it against her hip, a hard flat rectangle, and she drew it out with the slow care of a person defusing a bomb. The screen lit. 8:41. A text from Mrs. Ferreira, at 8:12: Cake? A missed call from her mother. A text from Peg, at 7:30, which said simply Monday. We talk. Eat something. There was nothing from the other person, and she was angry at herself for looking.

She opened a new message to Joelle.

She had started to type hey. She deleted it. She started to type can you come. She deleted that too. It looked, in the pale rectangle of the screen, like a thing a person would send who was in some sort of control of her life.

She typed one word, and sent it.

Dess: chicken

She put the phone on the floor beside her face.

It buzzed in nine seconds.

Joelle: OMW. 22 min. Don't move. Don't do ANYTHING stupid. Is it the baby? Is it HIM? Are you bleeding?

Joelle: Don't answer. Hold the phone. I'm calling.

It rang. She let it. It stopped. It rang again, and she picked it up and put it to her ear without lifting her head from the tile, and said nothing.

"Dess."

"Hi."

"Baby, are you hurt?"

"No."

"Is the baby okay?"

"He's kicking."

"Okay." A breath. In the background she heard the roar of an engine and the tick of a turn signal, and a car horn, and Joelle saying, in a voice that was not for her, Move, you absolute son of a — and then, gently: "Okay. That's good. That's the most important thing. Are you somewhere safe?"

"I'm on the bathroom floor."

A silence.

It was a very short one. It lasted a fraction of a second. But it was the kind of silence that has a whole history in it, and Dess heard it all: the black and white tile, the Warwick light, the cold night in which a young woman in a green dress had come running up a flight of stairs with a spare key and a crowbar.

"Stay there," said Joelle, in a voice that had gone quite quiet and perfectly flat. "Don't lock the door. Don't get up. Just lie there and breathe, in through the nose, like you're smelling a cake. I'm nineteen minutes away. I'm going to run every light in Rhode Island and I'm going to talk to you the whole time. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Tell me what's on the ceiling."

"What?"

"Just tell me. I want to hear your voice."

Dess turned her head.

She looked up past the tub. There was a water stain in the corner of the ceiling, a brown irregular blot the size of her palm, shaped like the state of Ohio. A thin crack ran from it to the light fixture. The paint was cream, and flaking.

"There's a stain," she said. "It looks like Ohio."

"Ohio's a good state."

"It's flat."

"It's got Cleveland."

"It's got Cleveland," said Dess. And she was crying again.

…

Joelle came through the door like the weather.

She was in her pink bonnet and a man's raincoat over a nightgown, with a pair of mismatched sneakers on her feet and her hair wrapped up in a satin scarf that was slowly unraveling over one eye. She had a diaper bag over one shoulder. She had in her arms a covered casserole dish, and a bottle of ginger ale, and a plastic grocery sack that clinked. She flung the dish on the hall table. She flung the ginger ale after it. She took the corner into the bathroom at a run, skidded on the tile, and came down on her knees beside Dess with a thump that jarred the room.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Hey, hey, hey, hey." She had her hands on Dess's face, on her shoulders, on her belly, patting, feeling, assessing, with the quick, practical, clinical tenderness of a woman who had given birth twice and diapered a hundred children. "Look at me. Look at me. Okay. You're cold. You're gray. Are you dizzy? Do you have a headache? Any spots in your eyes? Any, like, wavy lines?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm just tired."

"You are not just tired. You're lying on a floor. I know what you look like tired, I've seen you after four double shifts at the Foxwoods. This is not that." Joelle sat back on her heels. "Where's the cuff?"

"Kitchen."

"Don't move."

She was gone. She was back in under a minute with the blue-and-white monster in one hand and the blood-pressure log in the other. She sat on the edge of the tub and slid it up over Dess's arm, tugged, pressed the button. The machine wheezed. It clicked. It sighed.

148/94.

Joelle looked at it.

She said nothing. She took the cuff off, and rolled it up, and looked at it again. Then she took out her own phone and pressed it to her ear, and said, in a calm, level, extraordinarily polite voice: "Hi. Yes. I'm calling for the after-hours line at Dr. Pratt's office. My friend is twenty-six weeks pregnant. Her pressure was one twenty-eight over eighty-two yesterday and it's one forty-eight over ninety-four now, she's had an emotional shock, she vomited, she has no headache and no visual changes. Yes. I'll hold."

"Jo—"

"Shh."

"It's the stress."

"I know it's the stress. I'm still going to call." She put her hand over the receiver. "Dess. Baby. You're my person. I'm not going to argue about this. Hold still."

Dess held still.

The nurse came on, a tired, brisk, kind voice, and asked six questions in a row. Joelle answered them with the rapidity of a court stenographer. No headache. No pain. Movement good. No swelling in the face, a little in the ankles. Yes. Yes. I'm with her. There was a pause. A murmur. Joelle nodded.

"She says lie on your left side," she reported, "and drink a big glass of water and rest and recheck in an hour. If it's over one fifty, or if you get a headache or see spots or feel pain under your ribs, we go to Women & Infants. Otherwise it's a Monday call to Pratt." She lowered the phone. "That's it. That's the whole thing. You get to lie down and do absolutely nothing, which you hate, and I get to sit here and watch you do it."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare."

"I got you out of bed."

"I was already up. Terrence had the baby. Mei Ling was throwing up in the, in the bath. I had a bucket in each hand." Joelle slid off the tub and onto the tile beside her, on her back, with a loud thump. "God, this floor is awful. How do you live like this?"

"It's the tile. It's vintage."

"It's evil. It's colder than my mother-in-law." She stretched out, hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling. "Is that Ohio?"

"Yes."

"It's a good Ohio." She turned her head. Her face, in the flat white bathroom light, was creased and sleepless and very close. "Okay. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. There's a casserole, there's ginger ale, there's a sack of Reese's. I've got a bag with a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and Terrence knows I may not be back till tomorrow. And you don't have to tell me anything. You can lie here and not say a word for a week."

"I want to tell you."

"Okay."

"I want to tell you all of it."

"Okay, baby." Joelle reached over and took her hand. "I'm listening."

…

It took a long time.

She told it from the envelope. She told it flat on her back on the cold floor with her hand in Joelle's and her eyes on the stain, in a thin dry exhausted voice that seemed to belong to somebody reading a report. She told about the twenty-eight percent and the fifty-nine. She told about paragraph nineteen, and the exhibits, and the pension fund. She told about the hard chair. She told about the sentence on the sofa, and the way she had moved her lips in the dark.

She did not cry. She was out of crying. She talked, and Joelle listened, and the radiator knocked, and the afternoon light moved slowly across the black and white squares from the window to the tub.

When she had finished there was a very long silence.

"Okay," said Joelle.

"Okay what?"

"Okay. I need a minute. I'm going to say something and I want you to not be mad."

"I'm not mad at you."

"You will be."

"Jo."

"I knew," said Joelle.

Dess lay perfectly still.

"Not the building. Not any of that. I didn't know about the votes, or the, the gentleman in the yellow scarf. But I knew there was a thing. I asked him on the twenty-third. In your kitchen. I said, is there something you haven't told her. And he said yes. He said it was about the child's inheritance, and I said, when are you going to tell her, and he said the fourteenth. And I sat there, Dess. I ate a plate of chicken. I made an impression of Terrence arguing with a GPS. And I let you wait nineteen days."

"I asked you to ask."

"I know you did. But I should've said, baby, that's not enough. I should've said, you don't get to give a person nineteen days to find out something that's already true. I should've dragged him out into the hall by his tie." Joelle's voice shook. "I was so charmed. He was so sorry. He kept being sorry. And I thought, well, he's sorry, he'll do it right. And I let him. And now you're on the floor."

"Jo. Stop."

"I'm not stopping. I'm confessing. It's the day for it."

"You told him you'd put him in the ground with a shovel."

"That was a bluff."

"It was a good bluff."

"It was terrible." Joelle was laughing, and crying, both at once, with her arm flung over her eyes. "It was the worst threat I ever made. I said I'd plant a hydrangea. Who threatens a man with a hydrangea?"

"You do."

"I do. God help me." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Okay. Okay. I'm fine. I'm just— I love you so much, and I screwed up, and I can't bear it."

"You didn't screw up."

"I kind of did."

"You asked the question. He answered. That's all anyone could've done." Dess squeezed her hand. "He's a, a, careful liar, Jo. He's the best I've ever seen. He doesn't say anything false. He just— arranges the furniture."

"That's worse."

"That's what I said."

"That's so much worse. Marcus said stuff that was false, you could catch him. Theron just— builds a room, and puts you in it, and you think it's the world."

"Yeah."

They lay side by side on the tile.

The light had turned gold. A pigeon landed on the sill outside the little frosted window and walked up and down, croaking. From across the yard, faintly, came the sound of a polka, and then of a woman's voice singing along, flat, with great joy.

"Can I ask you something?" said Dess.

"Always."

"Is it the same?"

"What?"

"Marcus. And him." She turned her head. "I keep thinking it. I keep trying to stop. I think: he's nothing like Marcus. Marcus locked me in a bathroom. Theron held my hand under a table. Marcus took my paycheck and my car. Theron fixed my brakes and then asked if he could split the bill." She swallowed. "He's nothing like him. I know he's nothing like him. And I have this feeling in my body, right here, under my ribs, that's exactly the same. And I hate it. Because it makes Marcus less bad."

Joelle was silent for a time.

"I don't think it's the same man," she said at last.

"No?"

"I think it's the same trick."

"What trick?"

"Deciding for you." Joelle rolled onto her side, propped on one elbow. "That's all it ever is. Marcus decided you shouldn't see me. He decided you shouldn't have your own money. He decided you were better off in a room. And he did it because he wanted you to stay. And Theron decided you shouldn't know about the votes, he decided you'd be safer if he owned your building, he decided you'd be happier with a cradle. And he did it because he wanted you to stay." She shook her head. "Different men. One was a bastard and the other's a sweetheart. But the thing they did, the actual thing, it's the same. They looked at you and thought: she can't handle this. I'll handle it."

"Marcus never thought that. Marcus thought I was stupid."

"Yeah. And Theron thinks you're fragile. Which is a lot nicer. But it's the same hole." Joelle smoothed Dess's hair back from her face. "I'm not saying he's a monster. I'm saying he did the thing that makes you feel the way you felt on that floor in Warwick. And I'm saying you have every right to feel it. And that feeling it doesn't make you wrong about the rest."

"The rest."

"That he's good. That he loves you. That he'd die for the kid." Joelle's mouth twisted. "All of it. Every word. It's all true at the same time. That's what's so hard."

"I said that to him."

"What did he say?"

"He said he loved me. Out loud. For the record." Dess's voice cracked. "He said it was true. He said he wouldn't say it again till I told him he could."

"Oh, honey."

"I know."

"That's—" Joelle put her hand over her heart. "That's the most annoying thing I've ever heard. That's a movie. That's a whole Hallmark movie, with the, the music. How am I supposed to hate him when he says things like that?"

"You're not."

"I'm going to try."

"You can try."

"I'm going to try so hard." She flopped onto her back again. "I'm going to hate him till Tuesday. Then I'm going to forget and make him a casserole."

Dess laughed.

It was a thin hurt cracked laugh, but it was a real one, and she felt it go through her chest, and the baby, as if offended, gave a heel to the ribs. She groaned and pressed her palm to it. Joelle's hand came over hers.

"Hi, Calder," said Joelle. "It's Auntie. Listen, buddy. Your mom's okay. Your dad's an idiot, but he's your idiot. And we're all going to figure it out."

"He's not his dad."

"No?"

"He's his uncle," said Dess. "On paper. He's just a neighbor, a guy with an umbrella." She stopped. She heard it. She heard the way it sounded, in a voice that had said it so many times that it had gone smooth as a river stone. "Oh, God."

"What?"

"I said it to him. I said it on the cot. I said, the father of my son. And he said, I'm not. And I said, I know what you're not." She pressed her free hand against her mouth. "I was so busy deciding what he was, I never let him tell me what he wanted."

"What does he want?"

"I don't know."

"Did you ask?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I was afraid he'd say you." Dess stared at the ceiling. "And I wouldn't have known if it was true. Or if it was just the thing he'd learned to say."

Joelle was silent.

For a long moment there was no sound in the bathroom but the knock of the radiator and the far-off polka. And then, very low, Joelle said:

"You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think you picked the wrong man."

Dess turned.

"Not that one," said Joelle. "I mean— Okay. I mean it like this. When you were a kid, you learned there were two kinds of men. The kind who leave and the kind who lock you in. And you've spent your whole life watching for them. You've got the eyes. You can see a, a leaving man or a locking man from three blocks. It's a gift. It's kept you alive."

"Yeah."

"And then along comes a guy who's neither. Who doesn't leave. Who doesn't lock. Who gets up at five fifty-four and stands at a window and waits. And you've got no category. You've got no file. And your brain says, he must be a locking man. He must be hiding it. So you look. And you find it. A drawer. A deed. A date." Joelle's eyes were bright. "And you say: there. I was right."

"I was right."

"You were right that he hid things. You were right that he bought a building. But you weren't right about the, the kind. He isn't a locking man, Dess. He's a man who's so afraid you'll leave that he builds a house around you. That's a different thing. It's still wrong. It's still a thing you can't accept. But it's different."

"How is it different?"

"Because a locking man doesn't stand there and say I'm sorry. A locking man says you're overreacting. A locking man says after everything I've done for you. And Theron—" Joelle shook her head. "Theron sat on a hard chair, and said I am the third kind, and let you walk him out the door."

"He didn't fight."

"No."

"I wanted him to fight."

"I know."

"Isn't that horrible? I told him to go. And I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to say, no, I won't, I'll stay, I'll break the door. And I stood there, and he went down the stairs, and I thought: why isn't he fighting me?" She laughed, brokenly. "Because I'd have hated it. I'd have called the police. And I wanted it anyway."

"That's called being human."

"It's called being stupid."

"Same thing." Joelle propped her head on her fist. "Dess. Listen. I'm going to say one more thing and then I'm going to make you eat. I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know if you should forgive him or leave him or marry him. That's yours. That's a you thing. But I know this. Whatever you decide, you decide it with your eyes open and your cuff on and a lawyer in the room. And you decide it because you want to, not because you're scared, and not because you're tired, and not because some man in a cream-colored car sent a man to your door at ten to six in the morning to frighten you."

"That's what he wanted."

"Of course it is."

"He wanted me to be alone. When I read it."

"Of course he did."

"He wanted it to blow up," said Dess slowly. "Not just between me and Theron. Between all of us. He wanted me on this floor." She stopped. A cold bright thing went through her chest. "He wanted me to call him."

"Who? Hale?"

"Kessler's letter says, 'The most generous notice.' It's a, a, a courtesy copy. It's an invitation. He didn't send me a petition. He sent me an offer." She sat up. She did it too fast; the room swam; Joelle's hand caught her elbow. "Jo. Hand me the packet."

"The what?"

"On the table. The kitchen. The big envelope."

"Dess—"

"Please."

Joelle went. She came back with it in both hands. She sat on the edge of the tub, and Dess took it, and drew out the cream letter, and held it up to the light. She read it again, slowly, the way she had read it at dawn.

In the interest of affording you the most generous notice.

It was thought best that you should not be caught unawares.

You are entitled, but not required, to be represented by counsel.

Her eyes went to the foot of the page.

Very truly yours, Albert L. Kessler.

And under it, in smaller type, as in every letter that firm had ever sent:

cc: H.A.W.

She stared at the three letters.

"He copied him," she said.

"So?"

"So Kessler works for Hale. It's his client. It's right there. They're not even hiding it." She looked up. "This isn't a legal notice. It's a, a message. It's saying: we know you're alone. Here's the door. Come in whenever you're ready."

"Dess."

"And I am." She folded the letter along its crease. "I'm ready."

"No."

"Yes."

"No way. Absolutely not. You are not going to Newport to see that man."

"I didn't say Newport."

"You were about to."

"I was." Dess put both feet flat on the cold tile. "Jo. Here's the thing. For four months, I've heard everything from one side. I've heard it from Theron, who doesn't lie but arranges the furniture. I've heard it from Ansel, who doesn't lie but won't speak. I've heard it from Constance, who's lost her son. And I've heard it, in a, in a handkerchief, from a coward on the phone. And not once, not once, have I heard from the man who's accusing him."

"Because he's a snake!"

"Maybe he is." She breathed. "But I'm an adjuster. I don't believe a claim until I've seen the claimant. I don't believe a denial until I've seen the file. I read the petition; I read the exhibits; I've got Theron's answer. And you're telling me I'm supposed to stop there? That I'm going to make the biggest decision of my life with only half the evidence?"

"You're twenty-six weeks pregnant and your blood pressure's high!"

"I'm twenty-six weeks pregnant and I'm right." Dess stood. She held onto the sink with one hand. She was shaking, but she was upright. "I'm not going to sign anything. I'm not going to make a deal. I'm going to go sit in a room, with a cup of tea, and look at his face. That's all. That's what I do. I look at a face and I find the line that's wrong."

Joelle stared at her.

"That's insane," she said.

"Yeah."

"It's absolutely out of its mind."

"Yeah."

"You're going to need a wire."

"I'm not wearing a wire."

"You're going to need me."

Dess looked at her.

"I'll drive," said Joelle, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She pulled the satin scarf off her head and wrung it in both hands. "I'll sit in the car. I'll have the engine running. I'll have Terrence's baseball bat. I'll have my cell phone open to nine-one-one with my thumb on the button, and if you're not out in an hour, I'm going to drive through the gates of that mansion and run over a yew hedge."

"You're not coming in?"

"I'll come as far as the hedge."

Dess began, helplessly, to laugh.

"Don't laugh. I mean it." Joelle's chin was up. "This is the worst idea you've ever had. It's worse than the napkin. It's worse than the car. But you're going to do it anyway. Because you're the most stubborn woman in the state of Rhode Island. And I'd rather be there. Than not."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"But not today."

"God, no. Today you're going to eat a casserole and lie on your left side and take your pressure every hour." Joelle pointed. "And you're going to call Dr. Pratt on Monday. And a lawyer. A real one. Someone with a briefcase."

"I know a woman. She did Marvin's divorce."

"Is she good?"

"She got him the dog."

"Hire her." Joelle took Dess's arm. "Now come on. Lie down. I made a casserole. It's a, it's got three cheeses. It's from my mother-in-law. It's a hostage situation."

"It's a courtesy casserole."

"It's a crisis casserole," said Joelle. "There's a difference."

They went into the kitchen.

…

It was past three in the morning when Dess woke.

She lay on the sofa under the patchwork quilt, with the lamp off and the street lights glowing orange through the blinds. Joelle slept in the armchair, the corduroy one, with her feet on the coffee table and her mouth open and the satin scarf across her chest like a sash. The apartment was very still. On the table, beside the pressure cuff, lay the log, in Joelle's big loopy hand: 9 p.m. 138/88. 11 p.m. 134/86. 1 a.m. 130/84. A pencil lay across the page.

She turned her head.

Through the blinds, across the yard, a single light was on. It was in a third-floor window of number 14. A tall figure stood behind it, quite still, in the pale rectangle. He had not drawn the curtain. He had not moved. He stood with one hand against the glass, as a man stands who has been standing for a very long time, looking at a dark kitchen window across a yard of snow.

She didn't lift her hand.

She lay and watched him, with the quilt to her chin, until the lamp in his window went dark. Then she lay a long time more, staring at the ceiling, with the baby turning slowly under her heart.

The wrong man, she thought.

Joelle's wrong. I didn't pick the wrong man.

I picked a man I couldn't predict.

That's all.

And I'm so tired of being the woman who predicts.

She closed her eyes.

And somewhere between sleep and waking, in the thin gray hour before dawn, in the voice of a boy at a dock holding a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST UNCLE, she heard a line from a book she had read once, long ago, in a library with a cracked green spine. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. And then: Something up above was calling him imperiously.

She slept.

Beside her, in the dark, the blood-pressure cuff sat silent on the table, a gray coil, waiting for the morning.