Текст книги "Night Night, Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Hallie Ephron

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter 8

The wind had died down and the house settled into an uneasy silence as Deirdre ferried beer bottles and leftovers to the kitchen. She carried her duffel bag into the room that was once her bedroom. The stuffy space had been taken over by Henry’s bench press, weights, and an exercise bicycle. Judging from the layer of dust on them, they didn’t see much use.

She opened the windows, but the air barely moved. On hot nights like this her father used to hose down the roof.

Her sliding closet door was sticky, but she managed to work it open. There, on the rack, hung some straight skirts and pleated skirts from high school, all of them much too long, with a few matching cardigan sweaters. A much shorter, swingy, navy blue tent dress that she’d worn in college hung there, too. She’d bought it because she thought it made her look like That Girl, Marlo Thomas. There was the cream-colored linen suit she’d worn to her college interviews, along with a brown trench coat that she used to wear with its broad collar turned up, its belt tied at the waist in the style of Catherine Deneuve.

Way on the end was the white two-piece dress she’d worn to her high school graduation and to the dance after. She fingered the silk brocade that had gone brittle with age. The shoes that were supposed to have been her first high heels were still in their box on the closet floor. When she’d bought them she’d been optimistic that she’d be able to take a few steps, maybe even dance. Just one more thing that was supposed to happen that never did.

Deirdre tossed her duffel bag on top of some cardboard boxes stacked in the closet. Her name was written in block letters on the sides—certainly her writing—though she had no memory of boxing anything up.

She turned. On the adjacent wall hung a large framed pencil sketch of a waif with enormous, honey-dripping eyes. The little girl held a gray kitten with its own wide teary eyes. Preadolescent Deirdre had selected this awesomely awful artist-signed (Keane) piece of ’60s kitsch herself. After the accident, she’d identified with that girl and begged her parents to get her a cat. She’d made up stories, none of them with happy endings, about how the pair came to find themselves in their pitiable state. Now she limped over, took the picture down from the wall, and stuck it in the closet facing the wall.

The mattress of her trundle bed was adrift in Henry’s magazines: Rolling Stone with U2 on the cover, something called Spin with a sultry Madonna, Cycle World. Deirdre pushed them aside, unearthing Ollie, her teddy bear. The felt that had covered his paws and nose had long ago been worn away. She pressed Ollie to her face and let his sweet, woolly smell take her back to a time well before this nightmare. Her mother would have been running her a hot bath and asking if she wanted hot cocoa to help her sleep. The bed would have been made up with freshly laundered sheets instead of two naked pillows and a stained mattress cover.

Well, there was certainly no hot cocoa now. Shrugging off her old memories, Deirdre tossed Ollie into the closet where he could have a pity party with the waif and her kitten. She took a quick shower, made the bed, and got into it. Exhausted but wired, she opened the drawer in her bedside table, pulled out Arthur’s manuscript, and started to read where she’d left off.

The second chapter, titled “The Bronx Is Up,” recounted his childhood. He’d grown up, the youngest son of Russian immigrants, with four brothers, none of whom Deirdre had met. She skimmed the pages, through a life story told in anecdotes, many of which she’d heard Arthur tell more than once. She paused at the sound of the front door opening and dog claws scrabbling on the floor. Henry was back.

In the next chapter, “Helluva Town,” Arthur flunked out of college and landed in Manhattan, found work as an assistant stage manager and a shabby room with a shared bath in Hell’s Kitchen. Late nights, he hung out in Greenwich Village. Mornings he’d get up early and write plays.

Deirdre heard the front door open and close again, then the rumble of Henry’s motorcycle catching, revving, and roaring off. She wondered when he was planning to take Sy’s advice and get rid of anything that they wouldn’t want the police to find.

Deirdre yawned. She tried to continue reading but the words swam on the page. She slid the manuscript back in the folder and tucked it into her bedside drawer. Then she plumped up the pillows and lay back. The house was silent with the occasional comforting sounds of dogs lumbering about. She stared up at the ceiling. There was a water stain in the corner. Would she and Henry have to fix the roof and get the rooms painted? Right now she was too tired to care.

The bedside clock said it was nearly one in the morning. Deirdre turned over, bunched the pillow under her head, and closed her eyes. Maybe it had been at about this time Arthur had gone for a swim. She could see him walking to the pool, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Diving in.

Was that when it had gone wrong? He’d taken a running leap from the board, hit the water, and gotten the air knocked out of him. Struggled to reach the surface, flailing in darkness, propelling himself toward what he thought was sky and smashing headlong into the cement at the bottom of the pool.

Sweat broke out across Deirdre’s neck and back and she sat up, gasping for breath. She imagined Arthur hanging there, a dark shadow under the water, life seeping out of him. Her fingertips tingled and her heart beat a tattoo in her chest. She smelled chlorine and death and gagged.

Breathe, she told herself as she tried to relax, counting a slow in and out, until finally the tension eased and her lungs filled completely. Shivering, she sat there for a few moments longer before sinking back into the pillow and pulling the blanket around her. The handlebars of the exercise bike looked like shadows outlined against the window. The open closet was a dark rectangle. She started to close her eyes but that feeling, like someone was chasing her and she couldn’t get away, started to take hold.

Deirdre had long known that the truly scary stuff was in her own head. Doped up on Demerol after her car accident, she’d dreamed that her limbs were scattered down a hillside and she had to convince the EMTs to collect them for her. Or that she was on the table in an operating theater, a light beating down on her from above as doctors sawed off her leg, the surrounding stadium seats filled with onlookers. Or that her father was driving her home but she had to get back to the hospital because she’d left behind her hands. Even when she knew she was dreaming, she couldn’t wake herself from those dreams. The memory of that paralyzing panic was far more vivid than any memory of the accident or of anything the doctors had done to her after.

She’d learned, over time, to avoid Demerol and redirect her mind. Anchor her attention on a sensation. Like the heavy sweet smell that was in the air, maybe a gardenia or night-blooming jasmine in the yard? The scent reminded her of hairspray. Aqua Net. Connect the dots and up popped Joelen Nichol, standing in front of her bathroom mirror years ago, spraying Deirdre’s hair. Deirdre remembered the feel of that cool mist drying to a tight coating like a skim of egg white on every skin surface it touched.

Joelen. Who had stood at the front door hours ago and offered Deirdre a business card before bolting out to her car. Then called to offer any help she could. So she was a Realtor, not the movie star she’d dreamed of becoming.

There was a flash. A roll of distant thunder. Then the hiss of a light rain. The rain grew steadier, and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Deirdre pulled the blanket more tightly around her and let her mind drift back to a safer place, to the morning before school in sixth grade when Joelen Nichol had walked into her life.

Chapter 9

The sixth-grade girls at El Rodeo set their hair in pin curls and wore blouses with Peter Pan collars and circle pins. When Joelen Nichol appeared in their midst with her reddish-brown hair poufed out around her head like spun sugar, her eyes outlined in black, and mascara clumped on her stubby eyelashes, she seemed like a seismic anomaly. Her lipstick wasn’t Cherries in the Snow or Coral Bells, but instead the color of a politically incorrect “flesh tone” crayon. In a world filled with Carols and Barbaras, Pattys and Nancys, even Joelen’s name was exotic.

The first day Joelen came to school, Deirdre had been waiting outside for the bell to ring, her books pressed to her chest, feeling like a tree stump growing out of the concrete. As usual, the popular girls camped out at the picnic tables, their backs to outsiders, their books on the spaces between them, sending the clear message that there was no room for anyone else to squeeze in.

Deirdre didn’t see Joelen walk in from the street. What she noticed was how, one by one, like a herd of prairie dogs picking up a scent, the boys shooting hoops on the other side of the fence had paused. She noticed how oblivious Joelen seemed to the stir she was creating, leaning nonchalantly against the chain-link fence that separated the picnic tables from the playground, adjusting her cinch belt, smoothing her blouse.

Maybe because they were both outsiders, doomed to perpetual orbit around Marianne Wasserman and her circle (or coven, as Joelen liked to call them), Deirdre and Joelen became fast friends. When the bell rang and the other girls gathered up their books, Deirdre fell in beside Joelen. They walked home from school together that afternoon. From that day on, they shared their lunches and talked on the phone before bed. On weekends they had sleepovers—until the Saturday night when both their lives flew off the rails.

Deirdre turned over. It had taken her two years after the car accident before she could do that simple thing: turn over onto her injured side without aching. She’d always be uncertain on her feet without her crutch.

She closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye she could walk unaided. She saw herself moving up the stairs and into the school where her friendship with Joelen had begun. She drifted through her memory of the building, down hallways and up staircases, remembering the smell of the cafeteria on fried fish day and the art room’s peppermint smell of paste.

Deirdre didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until a thump yanked her awake. What time was it? Her wristwatch glowed: ten past two. She heard a shuffling sound, then a grunt. That was a person. The dogs would be growling and snarling if it were an intruder. It had to be Henry.

She tried to go back to sleep but was jarred awake by a louder thump and the sound of something being dragged. Annoyed, she grabbed her crutch and got out of bed. Paused for a moment behind the closed door and listened. She turned the knob and opened it a crack.

Henry, looking like a ninja in a black T-shirt and black pants tucked into motorcycle boots, was carrying the plastic garbage bag, which now looked to be full, from the bedroom hallway into the living room.

He disappeared into the front hall. Deirdre waited to hear the front door open and close but it didn’t. Baby padded over and sniffed at Deirdre. She gave the dog a peremptory pat.

Henry reappeared. He yawned. Stretched. Turned around and scratched his head. Then he sank down on the couch and leaned back. Moments later she heard what sounded like a cow’s rhythmic lowing. He was snoring.

She crept over to him. “Henry?” she said, and touched his shoulder. He collapsed a little farther onto his side, out cold.

Deirdre pulled off his boots, tilted him over onto his back, and put his feet up. Then she covered him with a plaid flannel stadium blanket that Arthur kept over the back of the couch. Warren Beatty—that was who Joelen used to say Henry resembled, and Deirdre had always been sure that Henry knew it. She’d once caught him practicing in the bathroom mirror, a Beatty-esque puckish grin morphing into a sleepy-eyed, seductive gaze. Back then he was forever pulling at his hair to get that forelock to come down over his eyes. It seemed utterly goofy and contrived to her, but girls ate it up.

These days, with his hollow cheeks and hooded eyes, his looks had sloped off into cool, sardonic Robert Mitchum territory. She pushed his dark hair off his face and brushed his forehead with a kiss.

She’d started back to bed when she noticed that Henry had left the garbage bag sitting on the floor by the front door. She went over and poked at it with her crutch. It was folded over, not tied shut. She steadied herself against the wall and leaned over to open it. Out wafted a rich, earthy smell like patchouli. Weed, packed up but not disposed of. If the police arrived early in the morning to search the house, it would be the first thing they’d trip over.

Deirdre opened the front door. The rain had stopped and the air was much cooler. Up and down the street, outside lights were on but the windows in most of the houses were dark. In the distance a siren wailed.

Get rid of it. That was easier said than done. Where? The police would easily find it if she put it out in the alley with the trash. The trunk of her car seemed the safest bet, for the moment at least.

Deirdre took her time feeling her way over the uneven paving stones, pulling the bag across the dark courtyard and out to the street. She opened her car trunk and heaved the bag inside. Then she pressed the trunk lid down until the latch clicked. At least it was out of the house. Later she’d figure out how to dispose of its contents.

She returned to the house and crawled back into bed. This time she fell asleep almost instantly.

SUNDAY,

May 25, 1985

Chapter 10

The phone started ringing the next morning at eight thirty. Deirdre missed the first call and the second. The third got her out of bed. She caught the tail end of her mother leaving a message as she stumbled into the living room. “. . . I’ll be there as soon as I can. By late tonight, I hope. Henry, Deirdre? I love you both.”

Before Deirdre could pick up the phone, her mother hung up. Seconds later, the phone rang again. Deirdre grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Hello, Gloria?” Not her mother. A man’s voice.

Deirdre took a breath. “No. This is her daughter, Deirdre.”

“Ah, Deirdre. This is Lee Golden, a friend of your dad’s.” Deirdre knew the name. A set designer? “I just heard what happened and I wanted to reach out to you and Henry . . .” Deirdre sank into Arthur’s lounge chair and held the phone away from her ear. When the phone went quiet, she thanked Lee Golden for calling and promised to let him know about funeral plans.

That was the first of a deluge of calls she took that morning. There’d been an article about Arthur’s death in the paper. Callers danced around what they really wanted to know: How on earth could Arthur have drowned during a daily regimen that he claimed kept him as fit as any thirty-year-old? Deirdre thanked each caller, took names and phone numbers, and tried to get off the phone as fast as possible. Finally she surrendered and let the answering machine pick up, half listening as message after message was recorded.

None of it woke Henry, who lay on the couch in exactly the same position Deirdre had left him the night before. Deirdre let the dogs out and filled their food and water bowls. There wasn’t much in the way of people food in the house other than leftover Chinese. Desperate for coffee, Deirdre found a dust-covered percolator in one of the kitchen cabinets, along with an unopened can of Maxwell House, its sell-by date long past. Soon the pot started to rumble and pop, sending out wafts of reassuring coffee aroma.

The doorbell startled her. Her first thought: the police were back. She wasn’t dressed. Hadn’t even combed her hair. At least the bag with her brother’s pot was no longer in the house. She waited for the doorbell to chime again but it didn’t. By the time she opened the door and looked out, no one was there, but four cellophane-wrapped food baskets were lined up just outside.

One by one, Deirdre carried them into the kitchen. One was from Linney’s Delicatessen. Bagels, cream cheese, lox, babka, some rugelach. The card read Condolences from Billy and Audrey Wilder. Arthur would have been over the moon.

She poked open the cellophane wrapping and sniffed. The smell took her back to Sunday mornings when she’d stood, holding her father’s hand in front of the sloping glass deli counter at Nate’n Al’s on Beverly Drive, watching the clerk hand-slice belly lox from a long filet and dollop cream cheese into a container. He’d wrap up four whole smoked, bronze-skinned butterfish, which Arthur would fry the minute he got home. She remembered the feel of warm bagels through the paper bag she carried to the car.

She hooked a bagel and took a bite. Closed her eyes. It had the perfect chewy crust, soft inside, and yeasty taste. In San Diego there was no such thing as a decent bagel, and you were lucky if you could find packaged, precut smoked salmon.

When Deirdre returned to the living room, Henry gave a phlegmy cough and turned over, his arm dropping like deadweight off the edge of the couch. He mumbled something, pushed himself up, and looked around. His expression said Huh?

“Morning, sunshine,” Deirdre said. “Mom called.”

Henry scowled. Then registered that she was eating. “What’ve you got there?”

“Billy Wilder’s bagel.” Deirdre took a bite. “Mmmmm. Delicious. Hungry?”

Henry uttered a profanity that Deirdre chose not to hear, then he rolled off the couch and stumbled toward the bathroom.

Coffee aroma reached Deirdre. She went into the kitchen for a cup and was on her way back when the phone rang again. She paused to listen to her father’s greeting. Beep.

Another well-meaning friend of Arthur’s, this time a woman, Just calling to say how sorry I am to hear . . .

Henry was back, standing in the doorway and scratching his crotch. “So what did Mom say?”

“She said she’ll try to get here by tonight. Take a shower, then get yourself a bagel and coffee.”

“Coffee? You made coffee?”

Twenty minutes later, Henry was in the kitchen pouring himself coffee and eating a bagel. The dogs started barking and swarming the front door, and seconds later the doorbell rang.

Deirdre went to answer it. Standing on the doorstep was Sy Sterling, still trim but with a toupee where for years he’d worn an elaborate comb-over. Sy dropped his briefcase and held open his arms. Deirdre choked up and let herself be folded into a soft hug, enveloped in the scents of aftershave and cigar.

When she pulled away, Sy drew a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, blew his nose, and wiped away his own tears. “Such a pair we are.”

She nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Everyone keeps saying it, but it really doesn’t seem real.”

“It should not happen,” Sy said, squinting at her, his eyebrows sprouting white hairs like sparklers. “Arthur swam every damned day.” He shook his head and his gaze shifted over Deirdre’s shoulder.

Henry had come up behind Deirdre. He held two cups of coffee. “We’re still in shock,” he said. He gave Sy one of the cups and took his briefcase. Deirdre closed the door behind them as Sy followed Henry inside.

“You?” Sy said, giving Deirdre a sympathetic look. “You found him.”

Deirdre’s throat tightened and she swallowed a hiccup.

“You should have called me right away. I could have been here for you. They took him—where?”

“To the city morgue,” Henry said.

Sy shuddered. “Of course. Unattended death. There will be an autopsy. And then?”

“Westwood Memorial Park,” Deirdre said.

“Good. Your father? He would want his urn next to Marilyn’s. You called Gloria?”

“She’s on her way,” Deirdre said.

“Good, good.” Sy harrumphed. “Well, of course none of this is good. But it is what it is. Come, children.” He headed for the dining table. “We need to talk.” He settled into the chair at the head of the table, pulled a cigar from his pocket, and chewed on it. Then he sat back, shifted the cigar to the other corner of his mouth, and chewed on it some more. In all the years Deirdre had known Sy, she’d never seen him actually light a cigar.

“I promised your father, if anything happened to him, I would be here for you. A promise I hoped I would never have to keep.” He reached across the table to clasp Henry’s and Deirdre’s hands. The diamond in his chunky pinkie ring caught the light. “I am here for you now. You know that? Right?” He gave Deirdre’s hand a squeeze and held her gaze for a few moments, then shifted his attention to Henry. For a moment his expression seemed more questioning than reassuring. Then he sat back. “So.” He undid the two straps and unlatched his battered briefcase.

Sy set his cigar on the table and took out a sheaf of papers. He handed Deirdre and Henry each a packet like he was dealing cards. Deirdre looked down at hers. On the first page, it said LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

“Your father? He was a dreamer, but I am afraid reality had him by the short hairs,” Sy said.

“Not sure I like the sound of that,” Henry said. “How bad is it?”

“There is still the house. You two will own it once the will is through probate. There is a mortgage, of course, but you will be able to get quite a bit more for the house, even”—he gestured to the water-stained ceiling—“the way it is. Your father may have already lined up a broker.”

“I think he did,” Deirdre said.

“Did he?” Henry said, and shot Deirdre a look. She hoped he’d let Joelen sell the house for them.

“So that is good news,” Sy said. “Bad news is that between Arthur’s debts and his assets, there is”—he paused, searching for the word—“overlap. When the estate pays what is owed you will be left with maybe twenty-five thousand. Of course I do not charge you for my legal services, but other expenses will have to come out of that. Burial and the funeral, of course.”

“But they made a fortune—” Henry said.

“Made and spent it. And I should not have to remind you that until quite recently your father had certain obligations. Financial obligations. So some of his savings?” Sy said, looking steadily at Henry, “Pffft.”

Henry stared back at Sy. For a moment it was a standoff.

“So,” Deirdre said, “is anyone going to tell me what you’re talking about?”

The dogs, who’d been lying on the rug in the living room, picked up their massive heads and started to bark, then scrambled over to the door before the bell chimed.

“Probably another fruit basket,” Henry said.

The doorbell rang again, followed by a rap and a sharp voice. “Police. Please open the door. We have a warrant to search the premises.”

Henry blinked. “Oh shit.” He jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair, then lunged for the front hall. The dogs were in a frenzy, barking and leaping.

“Just a minute,” Sy called out. “Henry, dammit, control your dogs.”

Henry turned in circles, probably realizing belatedly that the garbage bag was no longer by the door where he’d left it. He shoved Baby out of the way and pulled open the door to the front closet, looking for what Deirdre knew wasn’t there.

“Henry,” Deirdre said sharply, gesturing her brother over. Under her breath, she said, “I got rid of it.”

“Henry!” Sy said. He had one hand anchored on Bear’s collar while the dog jumped up and down, oblivious. Baby was barking, standing with her paws up on the door where the finish had long ago been scratched away.

“Bear, down. Baby, down,” Henry shouted. Both dogs went still. “Sit.” The dogs scooted back on their haunches. Baby put her head between her paws and whined. Sy relinquished his hold on Bear and Henry grabbed the dogs’ collars, one in each hand.

Multiple raps sounded on the door. Sy put a finger to his lips. He mouthed the words, Let me do the talking, then pulled open the door.

Four officers were on the other side. Deirdre recognized the one in the lead: Detective Sergeant Martinez.

“Officers. Can I help you?” Sy said, all traces of an accent gone.

Martinez looked past Sy to Deirdre and Henry. He glanced uneasily at the dogs. “We have a warrant to search the premises.” He held up a piece of paper. “We’ll need access to the garage and the cars. And, please, we’d appreciate it if you stay out of the way until we’re done.”

“May I see that warrant, please?” Sy asked.

“And you are?”

“Seymour Sterling.” Sy took a breath and puffed out his chest, a banty prizefighter still. “I’m the family’s attorney.”

Henry and Deirdre nodded like a pair of bobbleheads.

Martinez handed over the paper. Sy took his time, sliding a pair of reading glasses from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Search residence,” he said under his breath. “Property. Vehicles. . . .”

Deirdre’s heart lurched. Would they search her car?

Sy ran his finger from line to line. “Ah, probable cause. . . .” He cleared his throat and read. “ ‘The Beverly Hills Police Department has been conducting an investigation into the death of Arthur Unger—’ ” His voice dropped again and turned to a mumble. As his eyes scanned the page, the scowl on his face intensified. He stepped aside and the officers swept into the house, Martinez taking up the rear.