I’d started to intercede, to protect Sophie from this bullying, but to my astonishment, she’d risen obediently, as docile as a dairy cow, and—not changing out of the tatty sweats she’d slept in for weeks—headed out with Joan. Later she told me they’d gone to a gym where she had laced on gloves and punched a body bag until she was so exhausted her arms trembled and she could no longer lift them.
Now I shook off the memory and crossed to Sophie with the wine. “I assumed you’d want red.” She reached for it, gave me a tired smile. She had said it had been a bad day, and I saw the truth of that in her face. She still held the book and raised it toward me, a question in her eyes. I took a swallow of wine, made myself wait until she had a sip before taking a second, then asked, “Did you know he was coming?”
“Who?”
“Father Gervase?”
She placed her glass on the table. “He was here? He brought this?” Her surprise seemed genuine, but I didn’t totally trust it. I knew she continued to go to Mass each Sunday and talked with the priest.
“He left it.”
“Why?”
“The archbishop of Boston sent him. Apparently he wants to meet with me about painting portraits for the new cathedral in the city. A series of the saints.”
“Really?”
“So your priest tells me.”
“And the book is for research?” She couldn’t mask the hope in her eyes.
“No. I need to return it. In fact, if you want to drop it by the rectory, I’d appreciate it.”
Her chest rose, then fell in a silent sigh. “You’ve decided not to accept the offer? Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“It could be major,” she said. “For your career.”
I didn’t bother to respond. I’d had that kind of attention before. In the end, like so many things, it had proved empty.
“We could use the money.”
I couldn’t argue with her about that. In the past months, without her working, with me no longer arranging openings, pursuing commissions, funds had flowed steadily out. Savings that had once seemed more than comfortable had dwindled. Only the fund we had established for Lucy’s college tuition remained untouched, now designated as a reward fund for anyone with information leading to the arrest of her killer.
“If the church has money to throw around,” I said, “let them give it to the poor. Let them hand it over to the victims of pedophile priests.”
“Right,” she said. She leveled her gaze at me, and I could see that I had again disappointed and saddened her. I watched her place the book carefully on the end table next to her wine.
I sat in the other Morris chair, allowed myself another swallow. “Shall I build a fire?”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“It’s no bother.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Can’t? Or don’t want to?”
“Will,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “Please. Let’s don’t start.”
“Right,” I said. I looked at her and again thought that it was like gazing at a stranger. It wasn’t even the haircut or the self-control. Even the contours of her body had changed. Once she’d been soft, womanly. I remembered with a pang that was physical how I used to hold her, stroke her curves, her stomach, and once more felt the hot dart of desire that refused to be extinguished in spite of everything. Even now I remain amazed at how persistent our most primitive desires are. Sex. Survival. Revenge. “I’m getting a pot,” she would say when she caught herself in the mirror as she climbed out of the bath or as she undressed for bed. “You’re not,” I’d respond, not in any automatic, husbandly, reassuring way but because I truly loved her body, the slight rise, the mound of her belly. I couldn’t have imagined her with plank-flat abs, couldn’t understand the appeal of that. “You have a body born to make love to,” I’d tell her back in a time that was far distant. Now she was thinner, her chiseled arms evidence of the hours she spent in the gym. She had taken up kickboxing, she had told me, and could bench-press a hundred and ten pounds. She wanted me to be proud of this, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t even fake it. I resented the way her body had been transformed. This woman I did not know. I wanted my wife back. I felt the impossible longing to have my life back. My old safe, comfortable life.
Recently—the previous week? Over the weekend?—Sophie’s photo had been in one of the Boston papers. She was a font of information. Nearly eight hundred thousand children go missing every year. Two thousand a day. Twenty thousand children murdered in past years, she’d told the reporter. Twenty thousand. The figures had shocked me. Still, I deeply resented how this had transformed Lucy into a symbol, a statistic. A month before, Sophie had been interviewed on the noon news of the local NBC affiliate. She had become a media icon. Practically beatified. The Voice of Our Murdered Children, they called her. I had watched the show, amazed at how articulate she had become, how fierce, Sophie who used to have a glass of wine to fortify herself before attending school committee meetings. She had coined a term to describe the culture that allowed the abuse and killing of children, a culture that glorified death and violence in games and movies and television. Murdertainment. She’d told reporters that speaking about this was a way something positive could rise from the loss of our daughter. When she talked about what had happened to Lucy and other children, her anger was apparent, but it hadn’t consumed her. In some way, it had made her stronger. The balance between us had shifted precariously.
“Will?”
When I looked over, I saw her expression. Part irritation, part concern.
“What?”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
And I hadn’t. That was another of the things we’d argued about recently. “You don’t listen to me,” she complained. I would parrot back what she had said on an automatic pilot of recall, but of course now she was right. I hadn’t been listening. I had gone to the hollow place of non-sound. Perhaps I really was going deaf.
“I’ve been asked to go to Washington,” she said.
“Washington?”
She caught me up, explaining that she had been asked to testify at Congress before a subcommittee on violence in the media and its effect on society. I saw only the futility of this, the inevitable disappointment for her, as if anything she could possibly say would make even the smallest dent in the profits generated by violence. It was always about money.
“The committee hearing is on Tuesday. Do you want to come with me?”
That I wouldn’t do. In the days immediately following Lucy’s disappearance, I’d allowed myself to be convinced to appear on television with Sophie. We had watched the clip of the interview later that evening when it was re-aired on the eleven o’clock news, and when the cameras returned to the anchors at the end of the segment I had been shocked to hear one of them say to the other in an offhand way, The father struck me as very calm. As if they could possibly know what the fuck I was feeling. That was the last time I’d allowed myself to be put on the stage of public opinion.
Sophie waited for my answer. “Why don’t you ask Amy?” I said. “She’d be better company.”
“I knew that’s what you’d say.”
Then why ask?, I thought.