Gossip

  Suddenly Nicky pushed away from the table and took Lindy from her. “Mom, stop it. You’ve got her all hopped up.” Lindy started to cry and wriggle angrily, and held her arms out to Dinah. Nicky carried her out of the room and we could hear a battle begin as he wrestled her into her parka and shoes. We looked at each other, both a bit unnerved, I think, by the sudden end of our little party. Dinah got up and went to them out in the hall, and I followed her. Nick barely spoke to us as he planted the now-screaming child in her stroller, put one arm into a sleeve of his own jacket, and went out the door.

  Avis saw the items in the paper and on the Web; “friends” made sure of it. I believe she talked with Grace about them, because Peter Varnum developed a deal he had to attend to in London and left the country, but it didn’t help.

  Humiliation is a scalding emotion. Many of us learn to conceal that we feel it, as it is not a condition that inspires sympathy, but we all know the terrible heat of it, flooding the system like a vicious shade of red.

  Late one Tuesday afternoon in the dead gray weeks of midwinter, Nick brought Lindy to his mother’s apartment to spend the night. It was shortish notice, and Dinah had to cancel a theater date with me in consequence, but she sounded not displeased. “I have a date with my grandchild” trumps most things for women our age. Dinah kept a couple of plastic crates full of toys under the bed in Nicky’s old room, where Lindy stayed when she came to visit. Special rails were attached to the sides of the bed so she couldn’t roll out. It had been her first “big girl” bed. She was rumored to greatly prefer it to the hand-painted “youth bed” that Avis had provided at her apartment.

  Lindy arrived dressed entirely in pink, except for her shoes.

  “What can I tell you, we’re in a pink mood,” Nicky said. “I got her pink tights last week and it sort of grew.”

  “Come here, my pink girl,” said Dinah. Lindy ran to Dinah.

  “I’ll be back in the morning. What time do you need me?”

  “I have a class tomorrow night, so I have some prep work to do.”

  “I’ll be here by ten.”

  “Don’t rush. Lindy and I are working on our waffle recipe, aren’t we, pink girl?”

  “Waffles!” said Lindy, and wriggled out of Dinah’s arms so she could rush into the kitchen.

  “I’m off, Lindy-hop,” Nicky called after her. “Do I get a kiss?” But Lindy was busy in the cupboard Dinah had designated as hers, from which she was allowed to pull all the pots and arrange them upside down on the floor and beat them with spoons if she wanted, and she usually did want.

  Nicky followed her into the kitchen to give her a hug. He kissed his mother and thanked her. He wasn’t exactly ebullient, but he was calm. Well within normal range, in the opinion of the person who knew him best in the world, which as we all know now was not well enough.

  For some time, Grace had been unusually careful about keeping her laptop with her. She needed it to run presentations on the Smart Board in her classroom. She needed it at night, for entering grades and comments, and for keeping in touch with the parents of her students. But the last time her mother talked to her, which was right before lunch on that Tuesday, Grace had called to see if she had left her cell phone at Avis’s. She hadn’t.

  That evening when she walked through the door, at the time of day when the living room was usually flooded with western light and Lindy should have been having her supper, the apartment was quiet.

  “Hi, pup, I’m home,” she called to Nick. And then, “Lindy? I’m home, little widget . . .” Then she saw her cell phone lying in the middle of the otherwise empty dining table.

  Nick came out of their bedroom. “Hi, pup,” he said. They looked at each other for a long minute.

  “Where’s Lindy?”

  “At Mom’s.”

  “Ah.”

  So it had come. She probably didn’t know if she felt dread or relief. Probably both.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call as I was leaving. I left my phone,” said Grace, looking at it, pulsing on the table.

  “No, you didn’t. I took it out of your bag this morning.”

  So. There was no chance that it had been a simple mistake on her part, a helpful act of retrieval and return on his. We can only guess at the list it contained of numbers called. How many were to and from London? The text messages—hundreds? More? Even pictures?

  And then what happened? I can imagine—so can you. She may have cried. She may have been cool. She may have told him she loved him, she may have told him she didn’t. She may have said she wanted to try again with him. She may have said his lawyer should talk to her lawyer. Whatever she said and did, it was clearly and absolutely the wrong response for that situation, with that man, because instead of accusing her or blaming her or threatening her, he killed her.

  She was in the bedroom when the police arrived. Nicky was in the living room, quietly waiting, comforting the dog. The cell phone was gone and has never been found.

  She fought hard. Nicky had rake marks down his cheeks where she had scratched him, but he was simply bigger, heavier, and much, much angrier. The matter under her fingernails was packed with his DNA, though why they bothered to test it I don’t know. He never denied he had done it. He strangled her until she was dead, then put a pillow over her face so he didn’t have to see the protruding tongue, the terrible eyes, and then put out the light, as if she were sleeping. He went out to the kitchen to telephone. Grace lay there on their king-size bed in her slim tweed skirt and lambswool cardigan, heart stopped, lungs collapsed, releasing the contents of her bladder onto the expensive linens.

  I’ve heard the tape of the 911 call on the news. You probably have too. He gives his name and address and calmly explains that he’s just killed his wife. That tape isn’t going to help him at all, if it comes to trial.

  The police called me first, because Nicky asked them to. He needed me to get the dog.

  The dog and I were with Dinah when Avis’s lawyer arrived at ten o’clock that night to take Lindy. Dinah didn’t fight it. How could she? I wanted to go to Avis as well, but I couldn’t leave Dinah. You wouldn’t have either. I was up most of the night with her. She kept waiting for Nicky to call her, but he didn’t. Her suffering was indescribable. So is Avis’s, but at least she has Lindy.

  The next afternoon Ursula was on Avis’s doorstep, having read the papers and rushed to help. She has been in charge of Lindy since then, except when Avis sent her downtown to collect Lindy’s things. I went with her. Avis couldn’t bear to go into the place herself.

  While I was there I packed up Grace’s jewelry to keep for Lindy. I could barely touch the clothes. They are too alive for me, too much a museum of moments with Grace laughing, talking, teasing her mother, gossiping with me as she stood before the mirror in my dressing room. I did have to bring back clothes for her to be buried in. I chose a green wool sheath that had brought out the beauty of her eyes. An Hermès scarf she had loved, to hide any bruises on her neck; very few would know it was a scarf Nicky had given her. Jimmy Choo shoes. Underwear. Fresh panty hose. I took them all to the funeral home and handed them over.

  I went through her desk to be sure there were no letters, no diary, no keepsakes that would hurt or embarrass Avis if the press got hold of them. I found only a few things and destroyed them. I’d have taken her computer if it had been there, but it wasn’t. The police must have it.

  The next day I had to go down again with Dinah. She wanted to pack up some of Nicky’s things to take to him at Riker’s. She wasn’t thinking very clearly; she’d been crying for several days. I can’t imagine they’ll let him have his own things at Riker’s. We had to get the super to let us in. Avis had a key to the apartment but Dinah didn’t. Interesting.

  The yellow crime scene tape was already down. I guess since Nicky has confessed, and his account matches the evidence, there wasn’t much point in treating it like a mystery. Dinah didn’t know I’d already been here since the murder. The apartment seemed as de
ad as Grace, the air stale, the blinds drawn. Reflexively Dinah opened the refrigerator. She looked at Lindy’s juice boxes and yogurts, at the open containers of milk in the shelf of the door, strawberries in a green plastic basket shriveling in the dehydrating air, and a package of chicken legs in the meat bin that smelled of rot. She closed the door again.

  I followed her as she went into the master bedroom. She spent a little time opening drawers in Grace’s desk while I watched and hoped she wouldn’t find anything I’d missed. She packed up Nicky’s wash kit and a small suitcase of socks and underwear, shirts and jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sneakers. Then Dinah went to the baby’s room. She saw at once that the toys and clothes were gone. There was a stuffed yellow chicken with a squeaker in it lying on the floor. We hadn’t done a very tidy job of closing drawers or the closet door after we’d cleaned them out; the place looked as if it had been ransacked.

  A framed picture of Dinah with Lindy at the beach had been left on the painted dresser. Dinah took that.

  Avis’s apartment is full of flowers and visitors, as you would expect after the death of a young person. Avis wanted to bring Grace home to lie in the living room, but she was persuaded that it would be very much the wrong thing for Lindy. The corpse that had been Grace stayed at Frank Campbell’s. Her room there too was packed with flowers, and there was one long ghastly afternoon when Avis stood receiving Grace’s friends, saying the same things over and over. Yes. Thank you. She does, doesn’t she? Thank you for coming. You were one of her favorite people.

  I stood by the door and reminded people to sign the guest book. Avis had no idea whom she was talking to; her eyes were blank. Someday she’ll want to know who came. The funeral home did a remarkable job of restoring Grace’s face to a normal expression. I don’t know what violence they may have done to her down in their horrible workroom to achieve their effects. She was coated in makeup, which made her look like a familiar but slightly wrong representation of herself. Her face seemed too big, and her hair was weirdly wiglike. I was no longer sure that the scarf had been a good idea, but it was too late to fix it. As with so many things.

  On the sidewalk outside Campbell’s the press was thronged six deep. They snapped and shouted when they recognized people going in or out; I can only suppose they had studied the photo vaults in their morgues for hours so they would recognize the people in Grace’s life. They even called to me by name, trying to ask me questions, and outside a very small circle, I am nobody. You can imagine the hoopla when they caught sight of the famous actress from Grace’s class at Nightingale, or the boldfaced names among Avis’s social friends. Between that day and the funeral itself we went through two guest books and started on a third. You’d be amazed at the list.

  The press gauntlet was the same outside Dinah’s apartment. They harassed anyone coming out about Nicky and Dinah. At one point they caught the woman whose daughter Nicky had bitten when he was three. I saw this on the evening news; thank God all she said was that everyone in the building was terribly sorry for the family. A reporter then asked her if Alvin Grable was coming to the funeral.

  They liked asking everyone if they were surprised. What the hell did they expect people to say?

  Inside Dinah’s apartment, the atmosphere was far stranger than at Avis’s. A young life had ended there too, but neither Miss Manners nor Emily Post had covered the situation. Richard and Charlotte came in from Ardsley to sit with Dinah the first day. Richard is devastated. If he blames Dinah at all, he didn’t show it. People telephoned but didn’t know what to say. Charlotte and I took turns answering. Nicky’s friends arrived wanting to help, wanting to offer condolences, but then didn’t know how. Two of them fell to reminiscing about funny moments they had shared with Nick in happier times, but instead of eliciting smiles from the mourners, they found the family staring at them in confusion. Dinah moved through minutes that took forever to build into hours, as if she were underwater. More than anything, she seemed bewildered.

  Her sisters from Canaan Hamlet went to Avis’s first, to pay their respects, and then came to sit with Dinah. Treena seemed aphasic, she was so distraught. She said that Avis had been very gracious to them and seemed to be holding up. Dinah just stared at her. I could see her framing the question in her head: You went to Avis’s? You went to Avis’s first? But in the end she said nothing. They had loved Grace. Avis had been nothing but kind to them. What were they to do?

  In the evening, when most people had left, Dinah asked me if I thought she should go to see Avis. She was completely unmoored. I said no, the funeral would be circus enough for both of them to get through. I led her sideways into a talk about what she would wear.

  You’ve seen the tape of Nicky walking into the courthouse for his arraignment. The perp walk. Everyone’s seen it, the local news shows ran it over and over that day and evening while repeating what they considered his vital statistics. Out-of-work actor, former star of The Marriage Bureau, fired for punching Alvin Grable at a bar in a quarrel over a girl. Now being arraigned for the murder of his socialite wife, Grace Metcalf. On the screen you see Nicky walking quickly but with none of the ducking and squirming of the typical accused. He holds his handsome head up and looks calmly ahead of him into his ruined life as the cameras flash. His hands are cuffed behind him, and police hold both his elbows. On sound, you hear the 911 call. He says, “I need to report a murder.” The operator asks for his name and address. He gives them. The operator asks, “Do you need an ambulance?”

  He says, “No, she’s dead.”

  “Who is dead, sir?”

  “My wife. I killed her.”

  You can hear the operator talking excitedly to a dispatcher; then: “Can you stay on the line, sir? Can you tell me what happened?”

  He says, “I killed my wife.”

  “Yes, sir. Can you stay right there, sir? Help is on the way.”

  “Yes, I’ll stay with her.”

  Help wasn’t what was on the way. But whatever he had called for, he sat quietly until it came for him.

  Insomnia. Do you have that? It’s like a nasty light you can’t put out no matter what you pour on it.

  Is this a very American story? Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy kills girl? If yes, I don’t see why. People who go unhinged belong to some separate country with no history or culture. Though your country and mine is already getting its hands all over it. Indictments will be brought. For manslaughter or first degree? Does taking the child to his mother’s house prove Nick had decided in advance to kill? Does keeping the dog at home prove he had not?

  Will they understand it any better when it’s over? I doubt it. Murder is always bound to be more than the sum of its parts.

  The funeral. It was at St. Thomas, where they had been married. Officially married. Two hundred or so of us had cards of invitation, which in theory entitled us to seating in the reserved pews in front, but the place was packed to the rafters, and even with cards you were out of luck if you hadn’t arrived at least three-quarters of an hour before time. The church staff as well as some private security—I assume that’s who those men in black suits with the earpieces were—did their best to keep out the press, but plenty of them found their way in, and with little digital cameras they got enough pictures to feed the gossip sites and tabloid columns for days. Avis had hired an event planner to handle the details; she was in no shape to do it herself. But it was still she who had to decide about sending reserved seating cards to Dinah and the rest of Nick’s family.

  Of course she sent them.

  At Dinah’s house, once the first gruesome shock had been survived, the axis began to move off center, first a degree or two, then more and more until Dinah’s universe was at right angles to Avis’s. Grief for Grace faded back a little as feelings, complex though they were, for Nicky, who was still alive, moved to the fore. He had snapped; he had fallen very far and hard. But did he jump or was he pushed?

  There is even a soundtrack for this question. There was a long conve
rsation in the family about choosing a defense lawyer and how to pay him. About an insanity defense. The case for manslaughter. The fact that Nicky has so far showed no wish to do anything except plead guilty. Which is not exactly the same thing as showing remorse. He seems to think it’s as if he’d fought a duel, done something illegal but quixotically manly.

  Dinah assumed I would sit with her at the funeral. Nicky’s godmother, after all. Dinah, who had positioned herself as an outsider all her life, now found herself with the Establishment ranks arrayed against her, with their silken tents and banners flying, armor in place and parade weapons at the ready. She sees, at last, what a formidable force it is.

  Avis invited me to join her in the rector’s study and walk into the sanctuary with them after the mourners and others were seated. Dinah and her family would have to fight their way down the aisles, clutching their tickets like everyone else. Instead I managed to arrive late and alone and slip up a side aisle. Casey Leisure saw me and signaled to me; she made room for me in her pew by squeezing her daughters aside and putting all their coats on the floor, which was kind of her.

  Avis walked down the center aisle, supported by her stepdaughters and their families. Her head was high, and she looked like a carved ivory icon, dignified and drained of blood. She must have taken something. In the center of the aisle she bowed to the cross, then turned directly to enter her pew, completely avoiding looking to the right, where Dinah and her family were sitting. Then the casket was carried down the aisle on the shoulders of eight pallbearers, four weeping friends of Grace’s and four stout men from the funeral home. We all stood as it passed, and I caught sight of Mike Allison and his new wife on the other side of the aisle. She was not the one from the doctor’s office, not a trophy wife at all, but a friendly-looking Town Club dowager with gray hair and a pleasant face.