“He’s a rare-books librarian, not Hercule Poirot,” she said. “What do you care if he suspects you?”
“I do if it’s changed the way you think of me.” Francis reached up for her.
“I’m thinking of my marriage,” Liesl said, pulling her hand away from him.
“Darling,” he said, looking at the space where her hand should have been. “I don’t believe you.”
“All right. It’s not my concern if you do.”
“Hannah is out of the house. You’re about to retire. People around you are dying, for Christ’s sake.”
“Stop it, Francis.” She pulled her arms around herself by reflex, a flash of anger that he had invoked Hannah in the heat of the argument. Hannah was out of bounds.
“You’re not thinking of life changes, of opportunities? Darling, I don’t believe you.”
“Francis,” she said, thawed now that he had moved away from talk of her daughter. “We’ve had so very much to drink.”
“Don’t I know it. But not enough to make you shake off your suspicions of me.”
Francis was miserable, and Liesl was cold. She looked at the door, at her shoe propping open the door, and wanted terribly to go home.
“We should go home, Francis.”
“No, darling. We should keep drinking.”
He took another gulp from the chardonnay and held it out to her. She didn’t take it.
“People our age shouldn’t drink like this,” Liesl said. “Bad for the heart.”
He was still holding the bottle, and finally she took it from him and placed it on the stair.
“Come on,” said Liesl, and she finally extended the hand that he’d been looking to grasp earlier and helped to pull him to his feet.
They went inside through the fire exit. At the end of the corridor, Max was leaving the restroom, straightening his tie.
“I should kill him,” Francis said.
“He’s as protective of the library as you are.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Enough of this now. Enough of the name-calling and accusations.”
“I only called him a liar,” Francis said with a slur. “But that liar called me a thief.”
***
Liesl walked home through the rain, her umbrella forgotten on the coatrack in her office. The rain was a mist now, and though it clung to her hair and to the threads of her coat, she let it cover her since it was doing the work of turning the cells in her neck from rubber back to flesh and bone. She took her shoes off on the doormat outside the front door so she wouldn’t wake anyone with her footsteps.
“It ran quite late,” John said. Didn’t ask, but said it as a fact.
“You’re awake?”
John stood in the cluttered hallway. There were canvases resting against the baseboards on either side of him, and he couldn’t lean against the wall without disturbing them. So he just stood in the center of the hall. Fully dressed in the middle of the night. Watching his rain-soaked, barefoot wife.
“I thought you’d want a chat,” he said.
“It’s been a day,” Liesl said. “Chat tomorrow?”
He didn’t move from the center of the hallway. Nor did he turn on any lights. The canvases guarded the hallway like little soldiers. John approached her, and she tensed. He pulled the wet coat off her shoulders, kissed the top of her head, and hung the damp garment off the closet door to dry. He turned and walked toward the kitchen. She followed him.
“I’ll make you some tea.”
“There’s really no need.”
“You’re soaked through, darling.”
He had called her darling through all their years of marriage, but on that night the word only conjured Francis. Francis who had used it last. Francis who had begged her to return the sentiment.
“A tea would be lovely, John.”
“Good,” he said.
“Did Hannah stay?” Liesl asked.
“No.”
“What a pity. I would have liked to have breakfast with her in the morning.”
Liesl made her way to the kitchen table and sat herself down, the night’s chardonnay sloshing around in her belly.
“She had schoolwork to attend to.”
“Of course. Did the two of you have a nice dinner?” She fought off a vibratory yawn.
“It was nice. You had quite a bit to drink?”
“Not so very much.”
“Didn’t you? You’re speaking in that strange way you do.”
The kettle began to whistle.
“I’m mostly just tired.”
“Would you like a glass of wine then?”
“No, John. Just the tea is fine. The tea is perfect.”
Her foot was hot where Francis’s had touched it. Her head was swimming where the chardonnay was slipping between her neurons. John studied her and could see every bit of it. She was sure of it.
“Good,” he said.
“I’ll have to go in for a bit tomorrow, but the library will be closed, so I’ll be around during the day.”
“Your decision? To close it?”
“President Garber’s. I don’t mind. There will be work to catch up on, but it seems the respectful thing to do.”
“Right.”
“Gives us all a chance to sleep it off, anyway.”
“Right.”
“Did you and Hannah have a nice dinner together? Pity I couldn’t come.”
“Yes.”
“I asked that already. It’s been such a long day, and there really was quite a bit of wine.”
“Milk in your tea?”
“Please,” she said. “And just a touch of sugar.”
He brought the two cups of tea over to the kitchen table and sat down next to her. He drank from a large orange mug, she from a cream-colored teacup. She hated the types of homes that had dozens of mismatched mugs, but she let him keep the one because Hannah had bought it for him with money from her first paper route.
Each took a first sip of the hot tea. She was still wearing her damp clothing, but he hadn’t suggested that she go change, so she didn’t. She crossed her legs, and her knee began to bounce with anxiety. He looked down at her bouncing foot.
John looked at his wine-weary wife, down at the bouncing foot. Signaled to her that whatever was happening, he wasn’t blind to it.
“Your stockings are shredded.”
“I saw,” she nodded and nodded, too long. Looked at her foot instead of at him. “I’ll have to throw them out.”
He kept watching her face, taking a long sip of tea as he watched, waiting for the eye contact that wouldn’t come.
“Did something happen, darling?”
“Two deaths. A funeral,” she said. A subdued shrug, but still she didn’t look at him.
“Something tonight, I meant.”
“What could have happened?”
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
He refused to look away from her. He knew there was something there, and finally when she believed she had composed herself, she lifted her head and met his gaze.
“John,” she said.
“Liesl,” he said. “It’s the middle of the night. You’re drunk. You’re upset. Talk to me.”
“I have to go to bed.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. She smiled at him, or she tried to. His eyes were big and watery and a little bit bloodshot because he was tired too. In the kitchen, over tea, she almost told him all of her secrets. All of the secrets of a forty-year marriage.
“Stay a little longer,” he said.
“I promise everything is fine,” she said. She got up from the table, took her mostly full cup of tea to the sink, and poured it down the drain. John stayed drinking his. He had let go of her hand; he didn’t get up to try and follow her.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Well, I can’t help that.”
Liesl and her secrets went to bed.
***