Dead to Her

He’d changed too, in this hot alien place that was his comfort zone. He was shedding his lonely widower skin.

‘Don’t ever embarrass me like that again,’ he’d said on the way back from the boat this afternoon, his warm smile dissolving as soon as they’d got in the car, his whole demeanour suddenly colder than any chill the AC could put out. ‘This isn’t some trashy part of London, and my friends aren’t your revolting family. You can’t talk like that here.’ She was so stunned at the sudden shift in his mood – only seconds earlier he’d been holding her hand as they said their farewells – that it took her a moment to realise he’d meant her comment about the coconut water.

‘Everyone laughed,’ she’d answered softly. ‘It was a joke.’

‘You sounded like a whore.’ His words were bile, raw acid hitting her.

Only after she’d burst into startled tears, full of apologies, did he pat her on the knee, as if reassuring a scolded child, and tell her he loved her. It was a moment of revelation. Now she’d married him, all the things he’d said wouldn’t matter, actually did. He was well respected. He had power. He didn’t want to be embarrassed, not even by her. Maybe especially not by her. He wanted her to be perfect.

She took a deep breath. She could do this. He’ll be dead soon enough, Dolly had said when they’d hugged goodbye. With you riding him every night. They’d laughed at that too, but it turned out the sex was harder work than she’d expected.

It went one of two ways. If he was feeling sweet and sentimental and hadn’t taken a Viagra he simply laboured for hours with his head between her thighs, checking she was happy, while she fantasised until she finally came or faked it like a porn star, her sex chafed from his crude mouth. Either way she made sure she climaxed noisily. A man like William would never understand a true female orgasm. Quiet. Intense. Private. What validation would there be for him in that?

Then there was the other sex. The Viagra sex. Reclaiming his youth. All the things he’d never done with his saintly first wife he wanted to do now. With her. And she had to let him while finding the fine line between agreeing and not behaving like a whore. He wouldn’t like that.

Tonight had been that kind of sex and she felt bruised and hollow. She wished her friends from the club – Dolly, Ange, and Sabena – were here. They’d know how to play this better than her. It had all sounded much easier in London.

She pushed the sheets back and reached for her robe, pulling the thin silk around her strong body. She was too restless to go on lying there, corpse-like, as the hours ticked around until dawn. She needed to move, to remind herself of what she’d won, to shake off this feeling that she’d been duped into imprisonment so far from home and that it might break her.

Downstairs, she went to the kitchen first, draining milk straight from the container to settle the acid burning her chest from an afternoon’s drinking. She stared at all the stupid individual cartons of coconut water that Billy somehow thought would make him young again. It did taste like sperm, however much he may not have liked the comment. She wanted to twist one open and spit in it. She closed the fridge and padded out into the vast hallway.

Eleanor stared down at her in the gloom, her expression unreadable, and Keisha shivered. There was no space for the boy here. It was Eleanor’s ghost who stalked this house. The dead mother of the dead son. Keisha could feel her. She was on the walls and in the walls, her energy the blood that ran through the veins of this mansion. Her clothes were still in the closets of the master bedroom – Billy and Keisha used a different room for now – and the drawers were filled with her trinkets and memories.

Keisha had looked, of course she had. Her need to know about what came before had been overwhelming. Tucked away in a cabinet against one wall were so many framed photos of Lyle, the dead son and heir, that Keisha had been afraid they would tumble out and her nosing around would be discovered. Lyle had died before Eleanor and William had moved into this house – his death and Eleanor’s grief the cause of the move – but it was strange to Keisha that all his pictures were hidden away, from kindergarten and school friends to the proud young man in his military uniform, the uniform he’d die in, serving in Afghanistan, shortly after. Billy had said he’d been killed fifteen years before. If he’d lived, he’d be older than Keisha. Would she have liked him more than she liked his father? He had a sweet face, she thought. Shining eyes. No wonder Billy still couldn’t bear to talk about it. No wonder they’d hidden their grief away.

On the dresser were more photos, displayed this time, old pictures of Eleanor and her friends, or siblings, as children, and also of the happy couple – Billy barely recognisable as a young man and Eleanor aloofly elegant, and then in the drawers, hidden amidst various items of carefully folded clothes, she found some jewellery and a small box containing far more interesting treasure: a bag of grass and cigarette papers, and a sealed packet of syringes alongside a vial of morphine. That was a revelation. Perhaps Eleanor had kept a lot of her pain from Billy and her nurses or Iris and Elizabeth and whoever else looked after her. Maybe there had been more to the saintly Eleanor than met the eye. Everything about this world felt like an act.

Keisha wandered through the house, resisting the urge to go back upstairs and dip further into the dead wife’s possessions, instead taking comfort in the endless rooms and fine furniture. Her domain now. The demands of her family were an ocean away. Just the one man to take care of. Keep him happy, she thought. He’s nearly seventy. He’ll be dead soon. It was a harsh and horrible thought, but she couldn’t help it. There had been no pre-nup. It had all moved too quickly for that, her family pouncing while he’d been intoxicated by her, but he’d made her sign a post-nup as soon as they’d landed, the first clue that her knight in shining armour wasn’t so soft. She knew that, even when he died, she wouldn’t get everything, but she’d get enough. Plenty to get her family off her back and then flee somewhere wonderful where none of them could find her.

Her stomach fizzed as she passed a wall of photographs, black-tie events at the country club with various politicians or local celebrities. There were a few now familiar faces smiling out from some of the pictures, and as her eyes lingered on one, a hand subconsciously floated up to her neck, teasing the skin there, imagining a touch as her heart raced. This was the bright light in her new life. She thought back to the laughter on the boat. Their eyes meeting. The excitement of a flirtation. Never had Billy seemed so old and ridiculous beside her. She’d felt breathless. Girlish. Giddy. Alive. An overwhelming surge of lust.

She needed to be careful, she knew that. She couldn’t put all this at risk with one of her wild emotional obsessions. She had to keep her head straight. To concentrate on Billy. And that meant not getting distracted. She took a last glance at one of the photos before turning away. She had to keep those feelings boxed up for private moments. Something to fantasise about while Billy wheezed and slobbered all over her.

She turned the alarm off and went out onto the terrace, the night a wall of heat to penetrate, no hint of a breeze. It calmed her though. She had to think kinder thoughts about Billy. He had rescued her from a life she hated and a family who scared her. This was a beautiful place. She had to find a way to enjoy it until it was all hers.

Tiny yellow bulbs twinkled on strings in the trees, leftovers from the party. A light was on in the apartment above the garages where Zelda lived. She must be a night owl too. What time was it? One in the morning? Two? The light went out as she stared up at the window and she smiled. Maybe Zelda had the right idea. It was too late to be awake. She should have taken a pill or something to help her sleep. There was only so long Billy would put up with her sleeping half the morning and the less time she could spend in bed the less chance there was of him pawing at her more.

She took a last look at the glittering trees and then went back into the cool house. Her skin had goose-pimpled as she crept back under the sheets, and for a while she just lay in the dark, lost in her heated thoughts of eyes meeting, before finally, she fell into a fitful sleep of lustful dreams and family memories she’d rather forget.

7

It was ten when Keisha woke, the sheets tangled between her thighs like a drained lover, and she squinted against the light that streamed through the large windows. It made her feel good. A fresh start. Today, she would be a good wife. She stretched for a moment before grabbing her robe and heading downstairs. Coffee. She needed coffee. Strong, lovely American coffee.

She filled a mug from the machine in the kitchen and then followed the trail of noise to Billy’s office. Her nose crinkled as she passed several large vases full of pungent flowers, a cacophony of colour and scent saturating the hallway and hitting her with a wave of cloying nausea.

‘Jesus, Billy,’ she said, as she drifted into his office, and went to kiss him dutifully on the cheek. ‘Where did all those awful flowers come from?’

‘Morning, honey.’ He was leaning against his desk, face red from the treadmill, a carton of coconut water in hand. She should be glad he was making an effort, but the sight of him in his sportswear, so pleased with himself, only made her want to cringe. Youth was for the young. His was gone. No matter how often he got on the treadmill, he couldn’t run from old age and death. He’d be better off making his peace with it.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the voice came from behind her. Elizabeth, sitting demurely on the leather couch, notebook and diary open on the coffee table. ‘Old habit. I used to get them for Eleanor every few days. She loved all the perfumes. I did it without thinking.’

‘Oh no, I’m sorry,’ Keisha said, feeling entirely not sorry. There was a brief glint in the secretary’s eye that made Keisha wonder if the flowers had been bought to remind her once again that she was simply a poor replacement. ‘Of course. Eleanor.’ She spoke the last word softly. The dead wife who wouldn’t be laid to rest.

‘I’ll get Zelda to throw them out.’ William squeezed her waist and she gave him her sweetest smile.

‘Only if that’s okay,’ she leaned in, pressing her body against his. Think of the money. The big prize. The inheritance. All those voices in her head, hers only one amongst those of others she knew, family, friends, lover. ‘I know it’s hard for you.’

William took another sip of his drink. ‘No more flowers unless you’ve chosen them.’ He paused. ‘And I’ll have that portrait taken down too. You shouldn’t have to look at that every day. This is your home now.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed him again, this time on the lips. Was he having the portrait taken down for her or for him? Did he feel guilty that he’d moved on so quickly? Either way, it didn’t matter. She knew men. She’d seen enough at the club. Out of sight was out of mind. Whatever lingering feelings he might have for his first wife, they’d vanish with the painting. Maybe that’s why all the photos of Lyle were hidden away too. Men weren’t very good at feeling was what she’d learned in life. It was too hard. Too real. She was the opposite. Sometimes she was sure she would be overwhelmed by reality.

‘I’ll get it put in storage.’ Elizabeth scribbled herself a note. ‘And I’ll speak to the kitchen designer about that faulty drawer you mentioned, William. I have no idea how things are falling down the back into the space there, but best that you don’t keep your glasses or passport in there any more.’

‘Thanks.’ William turned to Keisha. ‘Will you be okay if I go into the office for a couple of hours?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to start your green card paperwork and there’s no point paying another lawyer to do it when I have a firm of them.’

‘That’s okay, I’ll be fine. Take as long as you need.’

‘I also want to get a new life insurance policy. And finalise those changes to my will.’ His eyes shone. Today he was in a good mood, her adoring puppy, not an old dog baring its teeth. ‘Now, I’d better go shower and change.’ Elizabeth took that as her cue to disappear and leave them alone.

‘You sure you’ll be all right?’

Keisha smiled. ‘I’m a grown-up. I’ll be fine. Why don’t I meet you somewhere for lunch when you’re done?’

‘That’s a great idea.’

‘Hey, why don’t you ask Jason and Marcie to join us?’ The question was light, as if a momentary afterthought. ‘I should get to know them better.’

He held her tight and she didn’t flinch at the cooling sweat in the grey hairs of his barrel chest as they rubbed on her skin. Life insurance. Will. She luxuriated in those words instead, using them to build a hard shell around herself.

‘Good idea.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll speak to Jason and let you know where to meet us.’

‘It’s a plan. Now, shower. Go!’ She pushed him playfully away. It was a plan. Four months of Billy had left her aching for something else, something for her heart, and there was no crime in looking. She waited impatiently for William to dress and leave. A few hours to herself would be blissful. She’d take a Valium, keep the demons in her head quiet, play loud music, and have an hour-long bath to relax.

First though, once he was finally gone, she found herself back in Eleanor’s room, carefully picking through the dead woman’s jewellery boxes. She wasn’t going to take anything but she wanted to see if the pieces Billy had thus far given her – expensive as they were – were not just trinkets in comparison. How was her worth measuring up?

‘Are you looking for something, ma’am?’

Keisha nearly dropped the string of pearls she was examining. ‘Jesus shit, Zelda, you made me jump!’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know that Mr Radford was happy for people to come in here yet. I must have been wrong.’

Keisha looked at the diminutive black woman in the doorway. There had been definite disapproval in her tone. A slight distaste in her expression. Keisha’s hackles rose. There were too many people controlling her life. There always had been. She wouldn’t take it from a housekeeper. Who was she to judge?

‘Billy won’t mind,’ Keisha said, breezing out of the room. ‘He’s – we’re – only waiting for Iris to get back from vacation, then this will all be sorted and cleared out.’ She paused and looked down at the housekeeper. Why was she explaining herself? ‘And anyway, it’s my house now, I can go where I want.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Zelda said.

‘I’d like some tea – English style – and bring it to my bathroom.’

She didn’t want any tea. But she did want to be respected. No one had respected her at home. That wasn’t going to happen here. Zelda was going to have to change her tune, or Billy would be looking for new staff.

She ran the hot water, swallowed a Valium, and tried to shake off her irritation, even managing a thank you when the drink arrived. Lunch, she thought, as she slid naked into the vast bath, submerging herself into the bubbles. Relax and think about lunch.

8

In Southside, it always felt ten degrees hotter to Marcie and her hands were slick with sweat under her plastic gloves, but she had no intention of taking them off. The community centre that served as the Mission’s soup kitchen stank of stale summer sweat and the thick meaty stench of the paper mills, as if any breeze that passed over the city dragged it here to settle away from the polite squares and strollers through Forsyth Park … There were worse smells too, ones that emanated from the warm bodies, and there was no way she was going to touch any of the shuffling line of homeless degenerates queuing up for stew and dumplings and a beaker of cherry Kool-Aid.

Unlike the other volunteers, who chatted together, Marcie kept herself to herself. They were all fully paid-up Baptists and she didn’t want to get absorbed into the inner congregation by accident. Another set. Savannah was full of sets.

Out amongst the tables Virginia was in her element, touching shoulders, relishing the gratitude. It was different for Virginia. She’d never been poor. For all the time she spent here, these people weren’t real. She didn’t see them as whole, good, bad, ugly or somewhere in between. They were simply unfortunate, as if none had ever been part of his or her own downfall. Marcie didn’t like being around the homeless, but at least she didn’t diminish them.

She glanced down the line to where an old man, Harold, was slowly moving forward. His face was a portrait of etched unpleasantness and although she never acknowledged it, she was aware that his free hand went down to the crotch of his pants whenever he looked at her, a move designed to make her feel uncomfortable, a way to take a little power back.

She slopped the stew over the side of the bowl, spilling some on him.

‘Oops, silly me.’

‘Dumb bitch,’ he muttered.

It’s not me who’s going to die on a street corner one day, stinking of my own piss, though, is it? She wanted to hiss back. Instead, she handed him a biscuit, as they glared at each other.

‘Over here, Harold,’ Virginia called. ‘Lawrence saved a seat for you.’

Lawrence and Harold. The most ridiculous names for two old drunks, if those were their names at all. It’s not like anyone here checked IDs. Crude and foul though, both of them. The worst of the clients, as Virginia insisted the tramps were called.

Jason couldn’t understand why she always went back. Whenever she’d gone home from helping she was bitching about Harold this or Lawrence that. How could she explain it to him? She wasn’t here to cosy up to Virginia or fill a few hours with something after the embarrassing failure of her boutique, it ran deeper than that. She liked to remind herself of how life could change on the turn of a dime. One bad deal at work, one divorce, a couple too many drinks and then you’re sleeping in a square all day with everything you love in a brown paper bag. Life changed. And it could change fast. It never hurt to remember that.

These raggedy shells of humanity disgusted her on a visceral level but she needed her disgust. Jason would never grasp that. Sure, he’d had problems with his father, but he’d never been poor in his bones. He’d come from the right blood and the right blood rallied around and helped pick him back up when Maddox Senior had done the honourable thing in his disgrace and killed himself.

She caught herself. That was blunt, even for her. Everything was setting her on edge. She felt claustrophobic. The plastic gloves on her hands felt too tight, suffocating her skin. The weight of this life, one she’d done so much to secure for herself, had at some point settled around her neck like a noose.

Jason. She was embarrassed by her behaviour of the day before. It wasn’t like her to either feel so weak or to show weakness like that. To allow the jealous paranoias of a younger woman. She cringed when she thought about it. Maybe she’d go and surprise him. Yes, that’s what she’d do. Take him somewhere lovely for lunch, somewhere decadent and not like this. Try and get some of the good of their relationship back.

As soon as her shift was done, she freshened up in the staff-only restrooms and then rushed out to her car, eager for this run-down part of town to evaporate behind her – out of sight, out of mind.

Jason was her husband. Hers. Thoughts of that little bitch weren’t going to sour that. She’d make it right. Keisha was no one. Jason might want her physically, but no matter who she was married to, Keisha didn’t fit in and she never would. As Marcie put the car in drive, she tried to ignore the quiet voice at the back of her mind that whispered, But why would she ever want to?

‘He never goes for lunch before two.’ Marcie frowned, quietly fuming. It was only one thirty and there was no sign of Jason in his office. She’d tried his mobile, but it was going straight to answerphone. So much for her big romantic gesture. Where the hell was he?

‘He’s with Mr Radford,’ Sandy, the partners’ assistant, told her. ‘They left about thirty or forty minutes ago I guess.’

‘Did he say where they were going?’

‘No, just lunch. Did you try his cell?’

‘It’s been a bit glitchy. I can’t get through.’ How stupid did Sandy think she was? Or was she enjoying seeing Marcie on the back foot? Damn you, Jason, for embarrassing me.

‘Oh, Elizabeth was here earlier!’ Sandy exclaimed. ‘She probably made the reservation since I didn’t. You could try her?’

Back out in the heat, annoyed and sweating, Marcie wondered if she should leave them to their boys’ day, but after the morning with Virginia, immersed in the grime of the city, she had wanted to see Jason. To settle any choppy water beneath them. To feel like she belonged again, not a cuckoo in the nest like Keisha. And what else was she supposed to do? Go home and drink wine alone? She dialled.

‘Hey, Marcie!’ Elizabeth’s voice crackled, distant, as she answered. Still chirpy though. Ever chirpy, that was Elizabeth. ‘What can I do you for? You’ll have to talk loud, I’m in the car and this hands-free thing doesn’t work so good.’

Typical Elizabeth. Surely, she could afford something better, or get William to pay for it? She probably didn’t want to be a bother. Elizabeth survived in this luxury jungle of theirs by not being a bother. ‘I’m looking for Jason. Wanted to surprise him. But Sandy said he’d already gone for lunch.’ Why did she feel so ridiculous asking? It’s not like she normally knew where Jason went at every minute of every day. It hardly screamed problem in marriage. In fact, if she did know where he was all the time, that would be more of an issue.

‘You’re not with him?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ The irritation in Marcie’s voice must have been clear even if the line wasn’t. ‘It’s just that I thought you would be. I booked the table for all four of you. The Terrace at Carmello’s. For one o’clock? They’ll be there now, I imagine, if you want to go find them. The food is great but the service is slow, but William said to book somewhere nice to sit out.’

Marcie was barely listening and muttered a thank you before hanging up. She was supposed to be with them? So why hadn’t Jason called?

All her unease. Her gut feeling that Jason was pulling away, wanted someone who wasn’t her. She was right. There was something to it. Heat rose through her. She looked at her watch. It was nearly two. All four of you. Jason and Marcie and William and Keisha. Keisha, Keisha, Keisha. Sandy hadn’t mentioned her though, so maybe the men had decided to go on their own? She dithered by her car until the heat got too much.

Perhaps she was overreacting. There was a reasonable excuse. It’s only lunch, she told herself. Stop making a deal out of it. Just go. If the men were on their own she’d be charming for one drink and then leave them to it.

9

The men weren’t on their own.

‘Ah, there she is. The wife!’ That blunt, strange accent.

Marcie’s blood chilled, turning her stomach to ice water. Keisha was sitting between William on one side and Jason on the other – a very startled Jason, Marcie noticed as her face flushed pink in a surge of something she couldn’t blame on the weather. He quickly leaned back in his chair but a moment too late to hide that he’d been leaning in, hanging on every one of Keisha’s words, so much so that he hadn’t noticed his own wife standing by the table. Splinters of her heart broke off and she wanted to stab him with them. Stab both of them.