Disabled daughter? Irving had said stepdaughter, Adam is sure of that. But then, Irving also said the father had died of “heart trouble” and that Pauline had rigged the medical exam so it didn’t show he had a preexisting condition when she forged the life insurance papers.
Well, being an abusive husband is a preexisting condition of sorts, although it’s rare for men to die of it. And a knife through the heart is definitely a kind of heart trouble.
Adam starts the video from the beginning. Woman after woman, telling the same sad story. Boring in the way that only such mundane viciousness can be. He hit me here, he hit me there. At the end, there is an epilogue, noting that the governor’s decision to commute these sentences resulted in a Beacon-Light investigation that determined some of the women had not been properly vetted and probably should not have been released.
Pauline Ditmars, whereabouts unknown, is named as one of the three women that the governor regrets releasing, in part because the large insurance policy she took out on her husband, three months before his death, did not come to light during the vetting process.
17
He’s changed.
Polly can’t put her finger on it, but something is different about Adam. She had him. He was hooked, addicted. He was almost too far gone on her, gazing at her when he thought no one was looking, humming all the time.
Now he steals glances when he thinks she isn’t looking.
They still follow their same routine—friendly colleagues at work, secret lovers at night. Adam and Eve, whiskey down. If anything, he seems more passionate during sex. But out of bed, it’s as if a transparent screen has fallen between them. She catches him with his arms folded, considering her. He studies her face when she speaks. His food is getting crazier, as if he’s trying to impress her.
He is trying to figure out if he can tell when she is lying.
The next day at work, she oozes charm for the customers, turns it off when she’s talking to him. She doesn’t do the cold burn, shooting daggers at him with tight-lipped denials. I’m fine, I’m fine. That’s for amateurs.
She smiles. She is polite and kind. Sweet, even. But there’s no fillip of teasing in her eyes or her smile. She’s his oh-so-professional colleague. When he says, “You okay?” she replies with buttery sincerity, “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” She pays special attention to Max and Ernest, who love it, not that they’ll ever tip well. She giggles with Cath when she comes in to pick up her paycheck.
“Summer’s almost over,” Cath says. It is mid-August, blisteringly hot. Hard to believe it will ever be cool again, yet somehow things always cool down.
“It’s gone by fast.”
“Always does.” Cath fans herself with her check. “So what are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“There won’t be enough work for both of us, come Labor Day. I told you that. It’s a seasonal gig.”
“Even with Adam’s cooking getting all this new business?”
“That’s temporary. Watch. Maybe they’ll let him stay if he wants because the boss doesn’t like to cook and he usually takes over in the kitchen come Labor Day. But they won’t need you. I guess you’ll be moving on.”
Cath says the last part a little hopefully. Maybe she’s begun to suspect that Adam moved on before he broke up with her. Maybe she knows something else. How? It’s been years since anyone cared who Polly was and that Polly had a different name, Pauline Ditmars. A different body and different hair, too.
It’s funny, all her life, she wanted to lose ten pounds. She wasn’t fat, but she wanted to be a size or two smaller. Nothing worked. She tried every diet, every form of exercise. Turns out all she needed was living on pins and needles while waiting to see if she was going to get a pardon. She’s glad now, in hindsight, that Ditmars made her dye her hair that awful blond color while they were married, that she wore a scarf during the interviews for the movie. Sometimes, she was so smart she was ahead of herself. She came out of prison ten pounds lighter, lost another ten pounds, let her hair grow. She was unrecognizable. Even if you remembered who Pauline Ditmars was, you couldn’t recognize her in Pauline Smith.
She had never worried about Gregg putting two and two together. Gregg could barely put two and two together on his best days. One time, they had been out drinking with friends, and they had talked about her case right in front of her. She had made all the right noises. Oh. Ah. What an awful person. Killed him in cold blood, then made up a story when she caught wind that they were looking for battered women to pardon? And then they couldn’t take the pardon back, so all she did was jeopardize the women still in, the ones who really were battered women?
She had yearned to tell them the truth. Yes, she had lied, at first. In part because she was scared of Irving. She had killed Irving’s cash cow, tricking Irving into paying for it in a sense, not that a dollar came out of his pocket. But he knew the signature was forged, yet couldn’t rat her out without implicating himself. It was a double betrayal and he took it personally. He was probably still out to get her, but there was no way that Irving knew where she was. The day the Baltimore paper sent a photographer for that article on the restaurant, she had kept in the background, made sure that Cath got all the glory.
No, it must be Cath who has come between Adam and Polly. Has to be. She might not know anything, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make trouble. She probably told the boss to cut Polly loose at summer’s end.
“Labor Day is two weeks away” is all Polly says to Cath. “Maybe I’ll find something else in town.”
“Don’t count on it.” She seems to realize that she’s been a little too quick, too vicious in her triumph. “I mean—it’s a small town, quiet in the winters. Maybe you can find some work up at the chicken plants, but that’s a nasty business. Or the prison might be hiring. Good jobs, union jobs, but not my thing.”
Not mine either, Polly thinks.
At closing time, Polly tells Adam not to come by, that she’s got plans with Cath. He looks hurt, so she says: “I had to say yes or she’d get suspicious, ask me too many questions about why I never do anything with her. I can’t put her off forever.”
Cath lives in the trailer park. It’s a nice one, better than some of the houses around here, with flower beds and sweet little “patios” created by pull-out canopies. People are sitting out, enjoying the relatively cool night, having one last beer. She knocks on Cath’s door.
She doesn’t look happy to see her.
“Kinda late to be dropping by.”
“Well, I just got off.”
“There’s this thing called a phone?”
“I don’t have one.” Brandishing her paper bag. “I do have vodka.”
“There’s a pay phone at work.”
“I don’t know your number. Are you mad at me? You seemed a little mad at me today, when we talked.”
It’s hard, sounding sincere about her concern. She’s not used to this kind of girlish chitchat. The reason she doesn’t like women is because they’re exhausting. If this is how they treat men, no wonder they all have relationship problems. Do you like me? Are you mad at me? So much emotional folderol. Maybe she was like other women, once, but Ditmars changed her. He made her weak, he broke her down until she had no choice but to become strong. It was get strong or die. Because not dying, not giving up, required the greatest strength of all.
“No, I’m not mad,” Cath says.
Because women aren’t allowed to be mad, right?
“You seem awfully anxious for me to be out of town.”
“Not exactly. But we’re not really friends, are we? I thought we were going to be. You were so nice when Adam—well, you know.”
Polly walks past her and enters the little trailer without being asked, takes a seat on the plaid sofa. Cath’s not very neat. That’s kind, actually. Cath’s a slob. She follows Polly in, lights a cigarette from her stovetop burner. The woman cannot go much more than fifteen minutes without a cigarette. Her trailer reeks of tobacco, and there’s a film on everything. Even Cath.
“What do we really know about Adam?” Polly asks her.