American Appetites

Ottinger, seeing Ian’s face, said quickly that the witness would very likely not speak so emotionally in a court of law; and that in any case he would be rigorously cross-examined and broken down. “If he’s the lunatic you say he is, and he certainly sounds that way, he’ll expose himself,” Ottinger said. Recalling the single time he’d seen Sabri, in, so very ironically, his own house—why had Glynnis opened their door to such monsters?—he believed that the man would make a strong impression on the jurors. He was educated, attractive, had a high-paying job, dressed well, carried himself with a certain style. No doubt it would be revealed that his Egyptian background was upper-class, if not aristocratic. Ian could imagine it! He could imagine it! A sordid love triangle, two men and a woman, a “flame-haired dancer and model.” And poor Glynnis the casualty of their passion.

  “It’s a simple thing, the bastard wants my heart,” Ian told Ottinger.

  There were other rude surprises for Ian. The prosecution had subpoenaed his bank account, so the $1,000 check payable to Sigrid Hunt was a matter of public record; the prosecution had subpoenaed his account with New York Bell, as Ottinger had anticipated, so the numerous toll calls he’d made to Sigrid Hunt’s Poughkeepsie and Manhattan numbers were matters of public record; the results of the ignominious Breathalyser test—“a blood alcohol level of .14, when anything above a .10 reading is considered legally intoxicated”—were a matter of public record; as were medical reports from the Hazelton Clinic, Ian’s and Glynnis’s both. (Ian’s injuries were minor, mere lacerations to the face and hands, but there was a notation that the cuts on his right hand seemed to have been caused by a knife blade. Glynnis’s injuries were manifold, so bluntly stated, in clinical terminology, that Ian could barely force himself to read it. The crucial notation was that the skull fractures were on the back of the head, thus “the victim would appear to have been pushed forcibly backward.”)

  There were police witnesses: the patrolmen who had been called to 338 Pearce to investigate what neighbors called “the sound of a violent quarrel”; the detectives Wentz and Holleran, who had interviewed McCullough in his own home. There was the lengthy, repetitive transcript of Ian’s own testimony at police headquarters, on May 29. (How many times had Ian said, I don’t know, and I’m afraid I don’t remember.) There was a garbled account by a Mr. Horace K. Vick, identified as caretaker for the residence at 119 Tice Street, Poughkeepsie, where Sigrid Hunt rented an apartment, to the effect that Ian McCullough—or a man who strongly resembled him—had visited Miss Hunt there several times over the winter; might or might not have “stayed the night, sometime around Christmas”; and, when Miss Hunt was not home, sometime in the spring, insisted upon being let into the apartment to see if something might have happened to her. (Vick said, in what must have been a pious tone, “This McCullough party, he offered me money to unlock the girl’s door, but I said no thanks, mister. Told him it was a private residence and I didn’t want to get mixed up in no kind of murder case if that’s what it turned out to be.”) Ah, Ian could imagine it! He had entirely forgotten Vick until this moment.

  More upsetting, and far more shameful to read, were the testimonies of several friends. Ian had known they were being subpoenaed, or had half known, but had suppressed the knowledge; it would have pained him too deeply to imagine these people answering questions about him in so hostile an atmosphere. But now, in stark computer print, was the testimony of Roberta Grinnell, who had said that on the afternoon of April 23 she’d had a telephone conversation with Glynnis McCullough, during the course of which Mrs. McCullough had spoken to her of her husband’s “alleged love affair” with a young woman named Sigrid Hunt. Mrs. McCullough was “extremely upset, as upset as I’ve ever known her,” and “broke off our conversation rather suddenly.” So far as she knew, Roberta stated, there was no substance to the accusation that Ian McCullough was having a love affair or did not love Glynnis, et cetera. Next, to Ian’s considerable shock, was Elizabeth Kuhn, whom Glynnis had telephoned around noon of April 23, to ask for advice regarding her husband’s “alleged infidelity” and other marital problems. Elizabeth too reported Glynnis’s “distraught state of mind” and stated that, to her knowledge, Ian McCullough had never been unfaithful to his wife; indeed, the two had always been “an ideal, happy young couple, with a lovely daughter and a lovely house.” Denis Grinnell made a brief, laconic statement, to the effect that he was “morally certain” that Ian McCullough was not having an affair with any woman; that the McCulloughs were not going through any kind of marital crisis; that they were not in the habit of drinking heavily, or quarreling, still less given to physical violence. Amos Kuhn, Malcolm Oliver, June Oliver, Vaughn Cassity, Meika Cassity, Leonard Oppenheim, Paul Owen, Dr. Max, Dr. Max’s wife, Frieda, colleagues at the Institute, a dozen others gave statements, all of them brief, of the nature of Denis Grinnell’s. Ian read them with a growing sense of hope. So many witnesses on his side! So many voices in support of his innocence! He might almost believe, reading these pages of the transcript, that he was innocent.

  There was more, but this was enough. Ian handed the document back to Ottinger. He lit a cigarette—he’d recently begun smoking again, having quit fifteen years before—and said, “I understand now why the indictment was handed down. It is an ingenious story the prosecution has invented, sheerly fiction, but plausible. And then, you know, people want to believe. They have a sort of savage instinct for believing in romance.”

  Ottinger said carefully, “It is fiction?”

  “Most of it.”

  “‘Most’—?”

  “Most.”

  “But not all?”

  Ian shrugged. “I’ve told you I don’t care to talk about my private life,” he said. He added, ironically, “My private sexual life.”

  “Your sexual life, it seems, has become public.”

  “It has not become public.”

  “The prosecution argues that you killed your wife, and did so intentionally, because you were in love with another woman and wanted your wife out of the way. And, on the face of it, the canceled check, the telephone calls, this Fermi Sabri’s testimony, and the caretaker’s—”

  “A fabrication. A sequence of small truths that add up to an enormous lie.”

  “Obviously, you were involved with Sigrid Hunt. Otherwise you would not have given her money or telephoned her. Or visited her in Poughkeepsie. Did you visit her?”

  “Once, because she called me. It was”—Ian hesitated, filled with rage at Ottinger for asking these questions—“it was a friendly visit, and nothing more. Not even ‘friendly’ as such because we weren’t, the two of us, really friends. We were hardly acquaintances. She had met me, I don’t remember where, it might have been at our house, a party of Glynnis’s, a large cocktail party of Glynnis’s, sixty or seventy people perhaps, and Sigrid Hunt and her fiancé were there, I really don’t know why,” Ian said, his voice quickening, and his face hot, “and there, suddenly, I turned around, and—they were there. And some weeks afterward she telephoned me, to ask help of me, as it turned out to borrow money of me, and I drove to her apartment in Poughkeepsie not knowing why she had called me or why on earth I was going there, like a man who has suspended all volition, simply coasting along as in a dream. And I did not know why, nor do I know why, even today. I only know that I deeply regret having done all that I did, and would give my very life if I could undo it. But the hourglass runs in one direction only. Its sands run in one direction only.”

  Ottinger regarded him closely. “You visited Hunt only once?”

  Ian looked away. “I visited her only once but, yes, there was another time, the time the caretaker spoke of, when I’d been worried about her, not having been able to contact her, and I—yes, I did drive down, simply to see if . . . she was all right. I mean, if she might have been in trouble.”

  “And you asked the caretaker to let you in her apartment, and he refused?”

  “He did not refuse. He let me in. He accepted twenty-five dollars from me
. She was not there, of course.” Ian picked a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. He wanted very badly to strike Ottinger in the face and wondered if the man sensed it, if that was why Ottinger was staring at him so keenly. “I had worried that she might be dead. That her fiancé might have killed her. She told me he treated her brutally, at times; she told me she was frightened of him. And somehow I was caught up in it. As I said, I don’t know why. It must have been because I’d wanted to be.”

  “So she asked you for money?”

  “I don’t think she did, I think I offered it to her.”

  “And she accepted?”

  “She accepted.”

  “And your wife found the canceled check?”

  “Yes. Famously. As is known through North America.”

  “Do you know what the money was for?”

  “An abortion.”

  “And was the father this Fermi Sabri?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “And not you.”

  Ian cast Ottinger a look of pure hatred. “And not me.”

  “So you were not having an affair, in the usual sense of the word, with Hunt.”

  Ian shook his head and did not reply.

  “You were not in love with her, and you did not want to get rid of your wife in order to marry her. And Glynnis was mistaken in thinking . . . what it seems to have been she thought.”

  Again, Ian shook his head.

  “But she became very upset, and very angry, and she accused you, and—”

  “No. I don’t remember.”

  “Is it possible that Glynnis attacked you, and you fended her off in self-defense, and—”

  Ian got to his feet. “I’ve told you I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I will not talk about it. I will not violate Glynnis’s privacy; I will not desecrate her, goddamn you, do you understand?”

  He left Ottinger’s office, plunged blindly down a flight of stairs, hurried out into the street. He’d wanted so desperately to strike Ottinger with his fists, he had to get away. But I am not the sort of person who behaves like this, he thought, in amazement. Am I?

  OTTINGER CALLED HIM that evening, at home. “I’ve hired a private investigator to look for Hunt,” he said. “We can’t sit back and wait for Lederer to find her. He’s a fellow I’ve worked with in the past, with some success.” When Ian did not reply he added, “Of course, he doesn’t come cheaply.”

  “Do any of us?” Ian said, and hung up the phone.

  2.

  At Glynnis’s grave. In the early evening: a damp greeny quiet, swarms of gnats in the shadows. And mosquitoes: Ian slapped repeatedly at his bare arms, and at the back of his neck. Goddamn.

  Bianca, squatting in her white shorts, white cotton pullover top, was picking away dead blooms and leaves from a geranium plant in a pink foil-wrapped pot. In the warm airless humidity of the August evening her skin glowed whitely, as if damply; her hair had been braided, not very expertly, and fell in a heavy rope between her shoulder blades. It was a habit father and daughter had fallen into, of visiting the cemetery twice a week, often, for expediency’s sake, as they were tonight, on their way to somewhere else. (Ian, at least, was going to the Cassitys’, to an outdoor barbecue. Bianca had been invited but would probably not come along.) She said, casually, “I was thinking, Daddy, it wouldn’t be any trouble for me to take the fall semester off. And stay home—if you wanted me to.”

  Distracted as he was, invariably, at Glynnis’s gravesite, for what after all does one do, what does one say, in such a place, where even grief seems crude and self-assuaging, Ian nonetheless heard his daughter’s voice waver: for she’d meant to say, in a voice of heart-rending kindness, stay home with you.

  He said quickly, “Of course not, honey, don’t even think of such a thing. The trial has been postponed until after Thanksgiving now, and Nick is trying to get it pushed back again.” Ian smiled at his daughter, who was looking so earnestly at him. What, he wondered, did she see? Was the man in her vision, as in her imagination, anyone with whom he might reasonably identify? He said, “He is busily filing motions, or writing briefs, whatever it is lawyers do with their days, ostensibly in the service of humanity. He is certain that things will turn out well, and I am certain they will, too. There’s no need for you to interrupt your studies; I wish, really, you could put the matter out of your mind. And if . . .”

  His words faded. He could not think what he meant to say.

  Bianca said, as if enthusiastically, “I could stay home and work here. Reading, I mean. At school, that’s mostly what I do, read; it seems so easy to stay away from classes.”

  Ian said, “I thought you were involved with other things too. Theatrical productions, dance. . . .”

  Bianca looked at him oddly. “Dance? I was never involved with dance. And you wind up spending so much time, you need to have so much energy, for performance things. Things that people do together, in a group. So much effort goes into making one another believe, you know, that it’s worthwhile; that it’s real enough.”

  “But isn’t it fun, too, working with other people? You seem to have enjoyed it, in the past.”

  Bianca crinkled her nose, as if she were trying to remember. The past? Which past? She said, stubbornly, “It requires a lot of faith to make some things real, that’s all.”

  Ian had developed a fatherly distaste, a nervous tic of a reaction, when Bianca drifted onto her subject—it had become so specifically hers—of what is “real” and what is “not real.” He said, “I suspect that all things are equally real, and that’s the problem—how to choose.”

  “No,” Bianca said, with her maddening serenity, “it isn’t a problem for all of us.”

  Ian smiled and fumbled for his cigarettes, which, it seemed, he had left back in the car, or had not brought along at all, and said, more energetically, “Of course I don’t want you to sacrifice another semester for me, Bianca. You’ve done so wonderfully; in fact I am filled with awe at you, not only your academic performance last spring but—how can I say it—you. You have held us both together, somehow. Everyone says—”

  He paused, and added, “Not that I think it has been easy for you. My God, no.”

  Bianca frowned, picking now at another plant, one of those voluptuous flowering plants with the enormous blooms that looked, and perhaps were, dyed: this one was deep blue. Hydrangea? There were a half-dozen potted plants at the head of Glynnis’s grave, each quite large and surely expensive; all were overblown, now, and required trimming. You could see, quickly scanning this section of the cemetery, that Glynnis McCullough’s was a popular grave.

  And would that please her? Ian wondered. As, in life, it had meant so strangely much?

  Bianca was saying, in her low, murmurous, rather too restrained voice, “. . . as things work themselves through, in another year or so; I’m not impatient and I can wait, but—well, when they do . . . maybe my junior year . . . there’s this program in Thailand, for teaching English and just sort of helping out, in, I guess you could call them, rural villages. . . . It’s no big deal: nothing like the Peace Corps. What I’d hope for is that I’d learn, you know, from the Thais. Their way of life, you know, and their tradition. I’d learn, I’m sure, a lot more than I’d be teaching them. Then I could come back and get my BA, East Asian Studies probably, and I’d have an advantage; I will have learned the language, and learned about the religion, the specific kind or kinds of Buddhism they practice . . . it’s all very complex, you know, like a language with any number of dialects. The only way to learn anything genuine is from the inside, Daddy, don’t you think?”

  “A program in Thailand? Teaching English?”

  “Actually it’s in Burma, Ceylon, Laos, and Nepal, too. But from what I’ve read, and people have told me, Thailand seems just right.”

  “You’d spend a year of your life in Thailand, teaching English in a village?”

  “Did I say a year? It might be less than that, or more. The program sets you up, you kn
ow, it’s all very structured; my adviser at school was saying . . .”

  Ian listened to Bianca and did not interrupt. He saw, in her hopeful face, in the glisten of her wide intelligent evasive eyes, that if he loved her he must not interrupt. His daughter was plotting the desperate way she might escape from him, while, beneath her, so very literally and precisely beneath her, the dead woman who had been her mother lay in her ebony coffin, sheerly matter now. Matter disintegrating into its elements. How Bianca might escape him, and how she might escape that.

  Bianca said, “Mainly I just want to learn, I want to be filled with something—well, I don’t know how to put it, something that isn’t, you know, just me.” She paused and wiped at her damp upper lip. “Just—us.”

  “Of course, honey. I see.”

  Still, on the way home, Ian, always the professional, the professional father it might be said, thoughtfully named the friends, acquaintances, colleagues, professional contacts of his who were involved in one way or another with East Asia and who might be of help to her: economists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians; an ex-student of his in population research and demography, at the Center for East Asian Studies in Washington; an old classmate from Harvard who was deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Rangoon. Bianca listened politely and did not interrupt.

  3.

  It was a season of stasis: each day interminable, unimaginable. Had it not been for his work, the consolation of hours—for there is no end to statistics, nor to the ever more refined programming of variable futures—he doubted he could endure. For one must live after all in the present tense: the next five minutes is the great challenge. Except for accepting an invitation to Cape Cod, to spend a few days with Denis and Roberta, at the cottage they usually rented for the month of August, Ian had made no plans for the summer except to get through it.

  Yet he was cheerful enough, with an air of energy, resigned goodwill. Smiling when necessary, proffering his hand to be shaken. Hello, how are you! Hello, how are you! These many months, he could not once recall being rebuffed. For those colleagues, acquaintances, former friends who wished to shun him were discreet enough to do it without calling attention to themselves. Hazelton-on-Hudson was one of the civilized places of the world.