Now, its title would be “‘Snake Eyes’: An American Romance.”
The airy exhilarating passage over the George Washington Bridge was the high point of Janet O’Meara’s drive: the remainder was simply driving, primarily on the Parkway, with a sensation of dread that mounted as she approached her destination.
“Poor Gina!—and poor Michael!”
What condition was Gina in, twenty-six days after the assault?—the last time Janet had seen her, in a manner of speaking, in the Mount Orion General Hospital, her head had been swathed in bandages; her mutilated face completely hidden. Even her eyes had been protected from the light by gray-tinted plastic lenses affixed to grotesque wire frames. She had endured a second operation to “repair” some of the damage. (The word restore, Janet noticed, seemed not to be used. In subsequent months, depending upon the condition of the scar tissue, and Gina’s mental state, there would be further cosmetic surgery—so Michael said.) Gina, sunk in upon herself, had replied in vague monosyllables to her sister-in-law’s resolutely upbeat conversation. Afterward Janet had wondered whether Gina had even known, or cared, that she’d come to visit, with a big pot of spring azaleas. She’d felt an intrusive fool.
Michael had been grateful to see her, as he was grateful for the many well-wishers who came to the hospital, to commiserate with him, and to indicate their support of him: for this was the strained interim when he had had to await a decision by the county prosecutor’s office whether, outrageously, charges (first- or second-degree manslaughter?) should be brought against him in Lee Roy Sears’s death.
Just a formality, such procedure. So Michael O’Meara was assured. But he was worried, and more than worried, telling Janet repeatedly, as she suspected he was telling others, in his calm, reasonable, yet wondering voice, “It was all I could do, defending myself against him. I had no choice. I had to protect my family. I had no choice.”
Tears in her eyes, Janet had hugged her brother, hard. “Oh, God, Michael, of course! Everybody knows. You did what you had to do.” She’d considered, and rejected, telling him of Snake Eyes.
The suspense had not been prolonged: no charges were brought against Michael O’Meara, on the grounds that he’d acted to save his life; and that Lee Roy Sears had died of “misadventure.”
Forensic evidence substantiated Michael’s description of what had occurred in Sears’s studio that night: there was the rusted ladder rung that had snapped under Sears’s weight, and Sears’s lacerated hands that indicated how he’d gripped the ladder as he started to fall. Of course, there were Michael O’Meara’s injuries: the deep razor slash on his forehead, a swollen eye, cracked ribs, a broken finger.
And the evil razor-instrument, stained with Michael’s blood, found on the floor of the studio.
In addition, a police search of the premises turned up, wrapped in a filthy rag and hidden in the toilet tank, Gina’s missing wristwatch, her engagement and wedding rings, and her numerous credit cards.
A number of persons acquainted with Lee Roy Sears were questioned by police, including H. Sigman (who spoke quite harshly of his parolee-client, as if the man had personally betrayed him) and Valeria Darrell (who seemed, according to Mount Orion gossip, both “devastated” and “relieved” by her lover’s sudden death), and, after brief deliberation, the county prosecutor, who was in fact a member of the Mount Orion Tennis Club and an admiring acquaintance of Gina O’Meara, declined to press charges against Michael.
The black man arrested in the Julia Sutter case had claimed from the start that he’d never so much as entered Julia’s house, but had found the stolen household items and credit cards in an alley a few miles away; apart from these items, there was nothing linking him to the murder, and public sentiment, in Mount Orion, was strongly inclined to see Lee Roy Sears as Julia’s murderer—for who, after all, had a motive?—a personal motive? As for the vicious assault upon Clyde Somerset, from which Clyde was only now recovering—Clyde had not seen his attacker, but insisted it was, it must have been, Lee Roy Sears, too.
In time, the police investigations into these mysteries would be abandoned. For very likely the authorities knew, as all of Mount Orion did: Lee Roy Sears was the man.
Now, as Janet O’Meara breathlessly climbed out of her car in the O’Mearas’ driveway, her brother, Michael, hurried to greet her and to hug her. How happy he was to see her!
How disappointed, to see she was alone.
Janet kissed him, sensing both this disappointment and his resistance to showing it, and said, faltering, “Mother sends her sincere apologies, Michael. It’s such a shame! She wanted to come, she was all ready to come, but—she isn’t well. She—”
Michael said quickly, “I understand, Janet. It’s all right.”
Yet Janet persisted, as if a falsehood compounded were less unconscionably false, “She did want to come, and she asked me to ask you if you’ll telephone her, tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Michael said. He was smiling at Janet; and, except for the drawn look in his face, and the scar on his forehead, and his hair, which had turned a bristling metallic gray, he was his old affable self, or nearly. He even managed to laugh, a bit sadly. “I’ll be happy to call Mother, sure: but not until tomorrow!”
They entered the white colonial house by a door at the rear, talking, bemusedly, of their mother; as a way, perhaps, of not yet talking about Gina. In the kitchen, Janet gave a nervous start at the sight of a woman’s figure in the farther doorway: but the woman was the O’Mearas’ new au pair, Clara, who, short, plump, dark-haired, resembled Gina not at all.
They then sat together, sister and brother, in the family room (a beautifully decorated brick-and-teak-paneled room with a white metal fireplace and a view, through glass doors, of the woodland pond below the hill), and talked, earnestly, about many things: yet not, somehow, the most crucial things: for which, at least at the moment, Janet was grateful.
The O’Mearas’ house was unchanged, in its material surface. But its atmosphere, its intangible being, was wholly changed—somber, tense, undefined, disturbing.
Like a haunted house, Janet thought. If there could be such a thing really.
And it was discomforting, to anticipate Gina hurrying through a doorway to join them, with bright, insincere apologies for being late, while knowing that Gina was not going to do so.
After an hour had passed, and Michael and Janet had covered any number of relatively safe conversational topics, Janet asked, hesitantly, “And how is Gina?—does she want to see me?”
Michael said immediately, “She does. She certainly does. She’s been telling me, in fact, she misses you.” It was an unexpected thing to hear, for Janet and her sister-in-law had never been close; rarely had they confided in each other.
“Is Gina—well? I mean—generally?”
“Oh yes, yes she is. Her face is—mending. The vision in one of her eyes has been affected, and we’re doing all we can to save it. She was supposed to begin seeing a psychiatrist this week, but it’s hard for her to leave the house, right now. (I drive her, of course, to the doctors. She isn’t quite ready to drive a car yet.) We don’t want to push things—there’s plenty of time.” Michael spoke carefully, as if uttering a prepared statement. He tried to smile. “The important thing is, Janet, Gina is alive. For that, I’m infinitely grateful.”
Janet, who had been sipping a glass of club soda, pressed the cool glass against her forehead, in a gesture of resignation and horror. “Oh, God, Michael! I still can’t believe it! Him! Lee Roy! How could he! Such a terrible, terrible thing!”
Michael had a glass too in his hand: club soda as well: which he set down on a table, carefully. Janet saw that his hand was trembling; she regretted speaking out as she had, so impulsively.
“Yes. It was terrible. Is terrible. But he’s dead, and we’re alive, and we’re not defeated. Gina is scheduled for another skin-graft operation in six weeks, at the Kessler-Macon Clinic, in Chicago. Have you heard of it?”
“I??
?m not sure,” Janet said, seeing that Michael was eager to talk on the subject. “Tell me.”
So, speaking animatedly, almost aggressively, Michael told Janet of the extraordinary cosmetic surgery done at the Kessler-Macon Clinic; “miraculous” work done on patients who were hideously disfigured, in vehicular accidents, or fires—“Even more tragic cases than Gina’s.”
It was a matter of skin grafting, primarily. Removing “devitalized” tissue and replacing it with “living” tissue. There would always be some scarring, of course. That was inevitable, where the face had been so damaged. But, still, they did work wonders; and Gina’s psychological state would surely be improved if some of her old appearance could be restored.
Janet knew, without having to be told, still less without having to ask, that Gina O’Meara was suicidal. Sequestered at home, refusing to see most visitors, turned inward upon herself and on a regimen of numerous medications, how could she fail to be otherwise?
Beauty is only skin deep, the old cliché insists.
But, as Wilde has said: Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
As her brother spoke of a future, for Gina, of what could only be pain, pain, and yet more pain, Janet thought of the alarming rumors that had spread in Mount Orion and as far away as Manhattan after Gina’s near-death. The most obvious was that Gina and Lee Roy Sears had been lovers, and that Sears had calculatedly mutilated her, out of jealousy or spite; to punish her for her involvement with another man. In one version, the other man was Marvin Bruns, a Mount Orion businessman whom Janet recalled having met, in June, at the Dumont Center reception: a strong personality, with a sexually insinuating smile, but, yes, an attractive man. (It was said that Marvin Bruns had taken a room at the Marriott Inn that day, under another name.) In other versions, Gina’s lover was Clyde Somerset, or Stan Deardon, or Jack Trimmer; or an attorney named Dwight Schatten, a local resident unknown to Janet, reputed to be a “charismatic, sinister character.”
At first, Janet had been incensed that such ugly gossip was being circulated, in the very wake of Gina’s hospitalization: for surely it had no basis in reality?
Then, as the rumors were compounded, overlapping and bolstering one another, Janet had had to consider that perhaps there was some truth to some of them … but not, she hoped, to the rumor that Gina and Lee Roy Sears had been lovers.
Unthinkable! Lovely Gina O’Meara, Michael’s wife, and “Snake Eyes”—!
No, Janet did not want to think of that.
As Michael spoke of Gina’s prospective surgery, he unconsciously touched his own scar, which was about four inches long, a raw pink wavering horizontal crease just above his eyebrows. Another inch, and Lee Roy Sears would have sliced his eyes.
Janet wondered, but had not the heart to ask, if the scar would be permanent.
For how, eerily, like a snake it looked, in miniature. The realization made her shiver!
Michael excused himself to go see if Gina was prepared for a brief visit; went away upstairs, and came back fairly quickly, to say, apologetically, that she wasn’t, quite. “Maybe after lunch, Janet? You are going to stay for lunch?”
“I’d love to, yes,” Janet said. “Of course.”
Her brother had been looking at her anxiously, as if fearing she might want to slip away from this somber household.
Her heart went out to him, in that instant. Janet O’Meara’s so-successful older brother, needing, now, her.
“H’lo, Aunt Janet.”
“H’lo, Aunt Janet.”
Joel and Kenny spoke in small, subdued voices, encouraged to greet Janet, and even to submit (and how passively they did so!) to her energetic hugs and kisses.
“Aunt Janet has come to visit Mommy and us,” Michael said, “—isn’t that nice, fellas?”
Joel murmured a near-inaudible assent, and Kenny murmured a near-inaudible assent. Their eyes dropped shyly, or sullenly, away from their aunt’s smiling face.
Janet had brought the twins a newly released children’s video, which they accepted from her, with mumbled thanks. Their interest was so minimally tactful, so merely perfunctory, as to suggest that the video was too young for them, or already familiar.
The tragedy in their household seemed to have aged them, about the eyes.
Joel and Kenny had apparently been up in their room all morning and came down reluctantly for lunch when Clara called them. It was clear that Aunt Janet’s presence was a mixed occasion for them, at best; ordinarily, they would not have had to sit down to anything so formal as a midday meal in the dining room. If they were too well-behaved to show their resentment outwardly, their carefully neutral expressions and their failure to smile at Daddy’s and Aunt Janet’s remarks signaled their feeling.
Clara, the darkish-skinned dark-browed au pair, who might have been eighteen years old, or twenty-eight, very sweet, shy, abashed, was prevailed upon by Michael O’Meara to sit at the table with the family and was very ill-at-ease.
She jumped up from the table frequently, to bring in more food, or to take away used dishes. The luncheon was oppressively elaborate, rather more like a dinner. When Janet offered to help, Clara said, startled, “Oh, miss, no. You are the guest.”
Through this, Joel and Kenny sat docilely, neutrally. Had their eyes welled with tears Janet would not have been at all surprised.
Michael was a loving, attentive father; too loving, and too attentive, perhaps, at close range. He seemed unaware that he was making his sons uncomfortable, by continually asking them questions, trying to draw them into the adults’ conversation. How was school?—how was their space-science project progressing?—could they tell Aunt Janet about their new friend, Tikki? The boys replied in monosyllables, ducking their heads toward their plates and eating quickly, eager to escape. Janet was struck by how identical they were in both appearance and affect: sitting side by side, never so much as glancing at each other, they nonetheless mimicked each other, in their facial mannerisms, the very slant of their eyes, the way they chewed their food.
They were growing, physically. Their once-delicate faces had filled out. Their eyes looked sunken in their sockets, with a premature befuddlement and sorrow.
For Gina, convalescing in the bedroom upstairs, rarely saw her children, Janet gathered. And never saw any of her Mount Orion friends.
What terms the elder O’Mearas were on, precisely, Janet of course did not know. On the telephone, Michael was always optimistic, upbeat. Gina was “progressing.” Gina was “doing just fine.”
Of course, it was very early, still. The maniac had assaulted her less than a month ago.
And now the maniac was dead, removed utterly from the world—that might be some solace.
“Daddy, c’n I be excused?” and, “Daddy, c’n I be excused?”
It was a palpable relief when the twins left the table, with scarcely more than a mumbled “G’bye!” for Aunt Janet. They ran away to another part of the house with the happy abandon of young animals released from captivity; Janet saw one nudge the other gleefully in the ribs as they rounded a corner. Their footsteps were percussive on the stairs.
They’d left Aunt Janet’s video gift on a table in the hall, forgotten.
Michael, drawing his fingertips unconsciously across the scar on his forehead, said, “It’s been very hard on them, of course. Gina was always such a devoted mother, so much a part of their lives, and now it’s as if she were”—he paused, sobered by his own words—“gone. But only temporarily gone, as I’ve tried to make them see.”
Janet said, bravely, “Michael, I think they’re bearing up very well. And so are you.”
“Honey?—Janet is going to have to leave soon. She’d just like to say hello.”
Silence.
“Gina? Are you awake?”
Silence.
Upstairs, at the door of Gina’s bedroom, Michael stood leaning in the doorway, speaking softly. Behind him, Janet did not try to peer in; but could see shadowy contours, indistinct shapes, the
filmy outline of curtains over a window with its Venetian blind drawn tight. Apparently Gina was in bed, or propped up in bed, unmoving. There came to Janet’s nostrils a sad stale scent of something medicinal overlaid by a resolutely cheerful lavender air freshener.
How sad, Gina O’Meara, so lately beautiful, vivacious, social, hidden away in this darkened room!
If Janet had even felt a womanly prick of jealousy, or dislike, for her brother’s wife, she regretted it now. And did she really want to see Gina’s scarred face?
She whispered, embarrassed, “I’ll come another time, Michael. Let’s not disturb her.”
“But Gina does want to see you, I know.”
“Oh, but—”
There was a stirring in the darkened room, a low, throaty voice murmuring something inaudible. Michael said, eagerly, “Yes?” and hurried inside, to Gina in her bed; the two spoke together, in an undertone, and Michael came away again and shut the door. Michael seemed very moved. He said, “Gina says she just isn’t up to talking with anyone, today. She had a bad night last night. And the main thing, Janet”—Michael was now steering her back to the stairs, his hand on her elbow, warm, solicitous, emphatic—“Gina says not to pity her. ‘Tell Janet not to pity me,’ she said. ‘That’s the one thing I can’t bear.’”
Janet said, faltering, “Oh—of course. I know. I mean I don’t—pity her. I—simply feel very sorry for her.” Janet surprised herself by starting to cry. Michael quickly slid an arm around her shoulders. “I feel so sorry for you all.”
Michael said, “But, really, why, Janet?—when you think of it, every one of us—Gina, Joel, Kenny, yes even you—and me—we’re damned lucky to be alive.”
Janet shuddered. She had not quite been thinking of it that way.
It was time for Janet to leave, and Michael walked her to her car. Now the difficult visit was over, Janet felt both relief and regret. In full daylight, Michael did look older; his genial, earnest face was thinner than Janet had seen it, since boyhood. And how quickly his red-brown hair had faded, to that harsh metallic gray.