The Affliction Read online

  “If you feel you want to talk, about anything, my door is always open to you.”

  “I can go?”

  “If that’s what you want.” Pinky was on her feet, gathering up her backpack. She was out the door, eyes downcast, without another word. Christina went out to the waiting room, where the nurse was now reading the National Geographic.

  “Mrs. Bunting,” said Christina, “if Pinky didn’t want any help, why did she come to the infirmary?”

  “Señora sent her.” The Spanish teacher. “She was afraid the girl had the impetigo, or nits. Pinky was crying when she got here because she was missing test prep.”

  “I see,” said Christina.

  There was a nail salon in Rye-on-Hudson, but Hope hadn’t liked the look of it. She’d gotten a bee in her bonnet about salons that exploited new and illegal immigrants. When she had gone in to ask a few questions about the management’s employment practices, the owner had pretended not to speak English beyond waving her toward the nail varnishes and urging her to pick a color. Hope decided to drive to The Westchester mall in White Plains for a manicure and some retail therapy.

  The manicure had been satisfactory and she’d enjoyed window-shopping at the mall, wondering if her grandchildren would like little surfer outfits, or Elvis costumes, when she passed a brew pub on an upper level just in time to see a woman seated at a window table pick up her wineglass and hurl the contents into the face of the man she was lunching with.

  Too interesting. Hope, who had in truth been looking for a place to have a quick lunch herself, went into the restaurant and was shown to a seat with a fine view of the couple at the front table. The pair still sat facing each other, eyes locked, he dripping, she shaking with anger. Lucky for him she had been drinking white wine, Hope thought, and thought too that if she were the wet man, she’d move that glass of red he had ordered out of reach of his companion.

  Instead, the man wiped the wine out of his eyes with his napkin, reached for his wallet, dropped some bills onto the table, and got up to leave. Before he reached the door, the woman called after him, quite loudly, “You shit!” Then the man was gone, finally, and the woman, whom Hope had recognized, reached across the table and downed the glass of wine he had left behind.

  Hope tore a page out of the handsome green steno book she had always with her in her chicken bag these days, and wrote on it, “It’s Hope, from the elevator. Join me.” She got her waiter’s attention, which took some doing, since the whole waitstaff was breathlessly watching the drama in the front of the house, and had her note carried to Margot McCartney. Margot read it, turned and saw Hope, and came at once to sit across from her while the waiter followed with her plate. Margot said, “Well that was fucking embarrassing. I don’t usually make scenes.”

  “We probably should more often. I once cut off my husband’s necktie in the middle of La Grenouille,” said Hope.

  “Did you really?”

  “I did. We were entertaining clients of his and he was boasting about what a soccer star our son was, when he’d never bothered to go to one of his games, and I suddenly remembered I had a pair of scissors in my handbag.” Margot started to laugh, but it turned to tears. Hope signaled the waiter again.

  “I’ll have whatever that is,” she said, pointing to Margot’s plate, “and we’ll have two more glasses of the wine that was spilled.”

  “Crab Louis and two pinot gris,” he said, and whisked off with her menu.

  “Was that your husband?”

  “It was,” said Margot. “Is. Was? God—what am I going to do? I thought I knew how many ways he could fuck up our lives.”

  “I had a feeling that moving here had been harder on you than you let on,” said Hope.

  “How much did I tell you?”

  “Just that you were making friends slowly and the school was good.”

  “Jesus. I’ve lived in New York City since I finished college. Nineteen years. My friends are there—I left a job I loved—It’s only fifty minutes on the train, Lyndon says, and that’s right, it is, but it’s still a different planet. My New York friends never come up here. Why would they? I have to make dates to talk on the phone with them, they’re running here, they’re late for there, things I’d be doing with them if I still lived there, and my boys are bored at school and they fight with each other all the time, which they didn’t used to do. They had their own friends, they had playmates in the building, they were growing up with some street smarts . . .”

  Their wine arrived and they clinked glasses and drank.

  “. . . and I hate working for Lyndon. I hate it. I’m alone in his damn office all day, I never see anyone or meet anyone. He can’t afford to hire someone else, but we have to look prosperous, or he’ll never attract the rest of the money. Plus, there’s a holdout property he needs before the deal can go live. The whole thing depends on it, his options on other key parcels are running out. He was so sure he could finesse it, offer more money, make the owners a swap for something more valuable than what they’d give up, but they won’t budge. I don’t know what we’re going to . . .”

  She started to cry again.

  “So money is a problem.”

  “You have no idea. The boys need computers, they need sports gear, the cable just got canceled because we hadn’t paid the bill—I had no idea we were behind, Lyndon takes care of all that.”

  “Would it help if I lent you some money?”

  “Don’t be . . .”

  “Really. Simplest thing in the world, I’ll give you a couple of thousand, you keep it in cash, pay for everything you would have charged. Lyndon will never know, and you can take care of your boys.”

  “But why would you do that?”

  “Because you’re crying on your salad. It’s only money.”

  Margot smiled sadly. “You are amazing. But I can’t.”

  “At least tell me what just happened.” She tilted her head toward Margot’s previous table.

  Hope’s salad arrived, and they both picked up their forks. Then Margot put hers down again.

  “You know Florence Meagher?”

  Hope said she did.

  “Everyone knows Ray was a beast to her. He’s got to be the prime suspect, and Lyndon is his alibi. Lyndon and Ray were off at some casino together in the Poconos when Florey’s body was being dumped in the swimming pool. They claimed they were together, but they weren’t. Lyndon can’t say where Ray was because he was up in his hotel room boffing some bimbo named Jerilyn . . . unprotected sex with a . . .” She began crying again, this time with rage. “Can you believe it? That he did that and came straight home to me and . . .”

  Hope stopped eating out of respect, although she realized she was really hungry. “I can believe it. Betraying someone and getting away with it is quite the aphrodisiac to some people. I have discovered.”

  When she had gotten a hold of herself again, Margot said, “The police came to talk to Lyndon. Twice. He thinks it doesn’t look good for Ray. And if they arrest him, then it will all come out, where Lyndon was that night, so he thought he better tell me first.” She picked up a forkful of food, then put it down on her plate again, and dropped her face into her hands.

  “He promised this had stopped. He promised me. What am I going to do?”

  * * *

  Maggie had spent Thursday morning on personal business. She was taking a course in Koine Greek at the New School and was behind in her translation from the Book of Matthew. Also, her beloved former assistant at Winthrop wanted a teaching job in Paris and needed letters of reference, and she had to find someone to use her tickets to the opera on Friday night. It was midafternoon by the time she and Christina Liggett were free to powwow on recent developments. Maggie found Christina studying a transcript.

  Having described the drama of the morning, Christina said, “Pinky’s test scores were terrific when we accepted her but she came from a terrible school. I expected her to be struggling, but look.” She handed Maggie the transcript. “She
’s killing it in everything except math. And a C+ is nothing to lose your hair over.”

  “She’d have to be unusually high-strung,” said Maggie drily.

  “Should I call her parents? She doesn’t want them to know.”

  “Is she on financial aid?”

  “Some. We don’t give full scholarships anymore. As you know. So they’re paying a sacrificial amount, for them.”

  “And she wants them to think it’s all beer and skittles.” Maggie was thoughtful. “It’s a risk, but I think I’d respect the student’s wishes. She’s got an opportunity here that could change her life if she makes the most of it. She’s trying hard to do that. If you tell her parents they’ll feel helpless, or try to fix it in some way that might well make it worse.”

  “But she’s suffering. I can’t just do nothing, can I?”

  “I have a theory. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and at the moment the nail I’m looking at is bullying. We found where the TickTalk postings about Lily Hollister came from.”

  “You did? How did you manage that?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay. But what’s the answer?”

  “Kate Curtin’s home computer.”

  Christina looked baffled. “Ellie Curtin’s mother? But she’s . . .”

  “No, of course she didn’t send them. At the times the posts were sent, Kate was at work and Ellie was at home, with a friend from school. Alison Casey.”

  Christina stared. After a long moment, she said, “Oh it would be. It just would be. Kill me now.”

  “Why?”

  “The Caseys are already suing us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we accused their daughter of cheating.”

  “Alison Casey is the student who stole the answer sheets?”

  “Whom we allege stole the answer sheets. We know she did it and her classmates know she did it, but on advice of counsel, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “So now she thinks she can get away with murder? So to speak?”

  “I’m sure she does. We didn’t know it when we took her, but she was accused of cheating at her last school as well, and the parents had sued them too. Which no one had the courtesy to mention in her letters of recommendation.”

  “Because the school wanted to get rid of her. Understood.”

  “So the parents will say we’re at it again, scapegoating because we have it in for her.”

  “But tell me this,” said Maggie. “Why was she posting from a computer instead of from her phone?”

  Christina paused. “Good point. Why?”

  “The dates of these posts are last Friday and Saturday afternoons. After Marcia Goldsmith took away Alison’s burner phone. Just a theory, but I’m guessing she kept her TickTalk business and anything else that could cause trouble on the second phone so she could throw it away if she needed to. Do you still have it?”

  Christina looked at her, as if trying to work out a very tricky piece of mental math. Finally she said, “I don’t know. I can’t remember what I did with it.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I don’t think this has ever happened to me before.”

  “Stress will do that. Don’t worry, by the time you’re my age it will be a daily occurrence. Let’s set the scene. It was the first day of the evaluation. And the day Florence Meagher disappeared.”

  “And Honey Marcus wanted to talk to me, Sharon said she was upset about something . . . I don’t think I ever did sit down with her. I better . . .”

  “That can wait,” said Maggie.

  “So . . . the phone is important,” said Christina.

  “Let’s just find it. Florence hadn’t shown up, my team was on campus, you had people waiting to talk to you . . .”

  “I was trying to find someone to cover Florence’s classes when Alison came in.”

  “Good. Then what?”

  “I said I would call her parents, and she got this little smirk, as if she looked forward to that. I put her on bounds until Friday and sent her back to class.”

  “Did you call the parents?”

  “No, I called our lawyer.”

  “And he said . . .”

  “He said I shouldn’t even turn it on. The phone.”

  “Because?”

  “Because if she’d been sexting on it, and nothing would be more likely, there could be dirty pictures on it. I’d be in possession of child pornography. He told me either to destroy it, or to send it to him and he’d put it in the safe.”

  “What a world,” said Maggie.

  “Yes.”

  “Which did you do?”

  “Then Ray Meagher came in to say he didn’t know where Florence was, then I went out to see if Honey was still waiting . . .”

  “And she wasn’t, but I was.”

  “And then it . . . got away from me. I don’t know what I did with it.”

  She was rooting through her desk drawers. By the time she had finished with the bottom ones, with no luck, she was visibly upset. “This is important, isn’t it?” she asked again.

  “I think of it this way,” said Maggie. “Your memory is like a Ferris wheel. Sometimes the thing you’re looking for isn’t in the bucket at the top; the wheel has turned, and it’s down there somewhere. But if you don’t worry about it, it gets back up to the top again.”

  Christina buzzed the front office. “Sharon—did I give you a cell phone last week to send to our lawyer? Ancient smart phone, black?”

  Sharon said that she had not, but that Christina’s mother was on line two and was determined to wait.

  Christina, looking ragged, said, “I have to take this,” and pushed the button that connected her to Planet Martha.

  Chapter 11

  Friday, May 1

  Friday had been a long day for Honey Marcus. The same argument every day for a week.

  “It was a threat. To us.”

  “It wasn’t. It’s my property and I have nothing to do with Florence Meagher; I barely ever met the woman.”

  “But why the pool? Why not dump her in the river, or leave her in the woods? That’s a direct message to me, it has to be.”

  “Greta, stop.”

  “To embarrass the school and frighten us into selling. No school, no jobs for us. He’s not going to stop. It’s never going to stop.”

  “I don’t believe it. Ray Meagher is a meathead. He’s mean, but I just don’t see him being that subtle.”

  “You don’t think he killed her?”

  “I don’t know who killed her, I told you, I barely knew the woman! But you can’t give in to this, you’re making things up!”

  “You didn’t see her.”

  “I know. And you can’t stop seeing her, I get that . . .”

  “I’ve got to go,” Greta had said, which was what she always said when she was afraid she was about to be really angry. She had gone out without saying good-bye, leaving the breakfast smoothie that Honey had made her standing on the counter. Goddamn it. Goddamn it—they had been through so much, maybe too much, but they had both believed they had found a sanctuary. They had been talking about starting a family. This was all about Greta’s goddamn father somehow. Not for the first time Honey wished she could drive straight through to Minnesota, yank him out of his wheelchair, and make him listen to chapter and verse of the damage he’d done to his beautiful, talented gift of a daughter. And then drive a golf club through his heart. Then since she’d gone all that way, she would strangle Greta’s mother for protecting her marriage instead of Greta.

  She’d had a long day of teaching, interrupted in the middle by a drive with one of her clients to evaluate a horse he might want to buy. (She’d had to recommend against. The mare was still green, and the owner wanted too much money. Too bad though, she was a stylish little thing.)

  When Honey climbed the stairs to the apartment that evening, she didn’t know whether to hope that Greta was home, or that she wasn’t. She wanted a hot shower and a cold beer, and an evening of binge-watch
ing The Americans wouldn’t be bad. She liked her shows to have really high body counts.

  Greta’s car was downstairs, but that didn’t mean anything; she often walked back and forth to campus. She might have come home at lunch while Honey was off with her client, and gone back to school on foot.

  The door was unlocked. So Greta was home. If she’d come wanting to make peace, she sometimes signaled this with flowers on the kitchen table, or a steak in the reefer. But the kitchen was exactly as Honey had left it this morning.

  She hadn’t left the door unlocked. Had she?

  She never did that. But she’d been upset, so it was possible. Something felt off to her in the quality of the silence.

  “Greta?”

  Nothing.

  “Lovey, are you here?”

  Honey went to the living room, which looked to her unchanged from this morning. The book she had been reading last night was still open on the arm of her chair. Greta’s tea mug was still on the table where she’d been sitting on the couch.

  A floorboard creaked. She whirled around.

  Standing in the hallway leading to the bedrooms was Lyndon McCartney. He had a braided leather riding crop in his hand. Hers.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

  “The hell you didn’t! What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I called to say I was coming. Door was unlocked.”

  “It was not!”

  “It was, actually, but let’s not fight about it.”

  “What were you doing in our bedroom?”

  “I wasn’t in your bedroom. I went looking for a place to wash my hands.”

  “How about the kitchen sink?”

  “Honey. I was using a figure of speech.”

  “I didn’t hear a flush.”

  “I flushed, washed my hands, and left the seat down. I was just looking at the pictures in the hallway.”

  “Thanks for letting me know you were here.”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t hiding.”

  Honey, her eyes fixed on him, went to the answering machine and pushed the button for replaying messages. Out of the tinny speaker came Lyndon’s voice: “Honey and Greta, it’s Lyndon McCartney. I’d like to speak with you this afternoon, if that’s all right with you. Something’s come up. Okay, you’re not picking up. I’ll take my chances and drop by.” She turned the machine off.