Cul-de-sac Page 3

  All kinds of things bother him now, things that never used to annoy him, too many things to dwell on, not if he wants to start the day off on the right foot. One of those things is standing right in front of him, he realizes, trying to mask his irritation at his wife with a smile. She’s dressed in a perfectly tailored suit that shows off her equally perfect figure, and grinning her big Cheshire-cat-that-swallowed-the-canary grin, her full lips emphasized by the bright coral lipstick she’s taken to wearing since she returned to work. Her long dark hair is pulled into a neat bun—she refers to it as a chignon—at the nape of her neck. At thirty-nine, Olivia Grant looks even better than the twenty-three-year-old he married, back in the days when he was a successful marketing executive and she was a lowly account manager with a neighboring advertising firm he sometimes did business with. She considered it a job back then, not the career she calls it now, and she’d been only too happy to give it up after the birth of their twins, Zane and Quentin, now twelve, and then Katie, two years after that.

  Sean didn’t object to his wife choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. His career was thriving, and it was a source of great pride that he could support his growing family on his income alone. Over the years, he continued his steady climb up the corporate ladder, becoming one of five vice presidents of the mid-level firm that employed him and was confidently on track to becoming a full partner.

  And then two years ago—ironically, just as they were considering a move to a larger house—he was handed his walking papers. Business was down, way down. The company could no longer afford the luxury of five vice presidents, something he’d suspected for months, but never thought would apply to him.

  Once he got over the shock of losing his job—the idea that he was dispensable hurting even more than his abrupt dismissal—he relished the time off to relax and reassess what he wanted out of life. And what he wanted, he decided during those first few weeks, was more. More money, more power, more respect. He was certain that a man with his experience and credentials would have no trouble securing another job. Plus, he could afford to wait. His severance package was excellent and, combined with a small inheritance from his father, ensured that he wouldn’t have to settle. He could hold out for the perfect position.

  “We’ll be fine,” he assured Olivia.

  “I’m not worried in the slightest,” she said.

  It took several months for his optimism to fade, a year for it to disappear altogether. It seemed that, even with an upturn in the economy, no business wanted to hire a man on the cusp of fifty, regardless of his experience or credentials. Not when they could employ someone half his age at half his salary. Sean reluctantly lowered his sights, tried for positions he’d initially refused to consider.

  And was turned down for all of them.

  “Too qualified,” they said. Too old, they meant.

  He grew increasingly depressed. He stopped wearing the neatly pressed shirts and silk ties he’d been known to wear even on weekends. He went days without shaving. He stopped exercising. He put on weight. What was the point in maintaining appearances when nobody gave a damn whether he appeared or not?

  His wife—ever-supportive, relentlessly optimistic Olivia—urged him to see a therapist. When he argued that therapists were expensive, she offered to pay for his visits with the money she’d been saving to buy a new car, which, of course, only made him more depressed. He didn’t want his wife sacrificing for him. It was a man’s duty to support his family, to be the breadwinner, to “bring home the bacon,” as his father used to say.

  His father had been full of such sayings. “Bringing home the bacon” was one. “Never send a boy to do a man’s job” was another.

  Now it seemed that all employers wanted were boys.

  Or women.

  How else to explain the ease with which Olivia found a job? Eight months ago, his wife, who hadn’t worked in over ten years, walked through their front door and proudly announced that, on a lark, she’d driven up to Jupiter to see her old boss, and he’d hired her on the spot. Why shouldn’t she go back to work? she’d asked when he objected. Now that all three kids were in school, she was getting bored sitting at home, doing nothing but laundry and preparing meals. Besides, they’d almost eaten through both his inheritance and his severance, and his unemployment benefits would soon be discontinued. Simply put, they needed the money.

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  But now he’s the one sitting home all day, doing nothing but laundry and preparing meals, while she’s out there, making money and having a grand old time. Dressing up. Wearing four-inch heels. Looking better than she has in years. Taking meetings. Batting those long eyelashes at her superiors. Hell, she was promoted to account supervisor after barely six months on the job. How does that happen without some serious flirting?

  Not that Sean doesn’t trust his wife. He does. Olivia has never been anything but loving, loyal, and supportive. “You’ll find something else,” she’d said when he told her he’d been let go. “You’ve got this one,” she said whenever he went for an interview. “Remember what your father used to say—‘When one door closes, another one opens.’ ”

  Except that when another door opened, she was the one who’d walked through.

  She tries to hide it, but he knows he’s become a thorn in her side. He can see the disappointment in her eyes. It makes it difficult to look at her.

  “You smell so pretty,” he tells her now, forcing himself to do just that. “Is that a new perfume?”

  “Yes, and it’s called So Pretty.” She laughs. “Great nose,” she says, kissing the tip of his. The high heels that have become part of her daily uniform add inches to her height, making her taller than he is. A daily reminder of how their situations have reversed. Why can’t she wear flats like she used to?

  Why can’t anything be like it used to be?

  “So, what’s on tap for this morning?” She’s stopped asking him if he has any interviews.

  He shrugs, looks toward the back of the house, where his three children are getting their things ready for the day. In a few minutes, Olivia will drive them to school on her way to work. It will be his job to pick them up when school ends at two-thirty. How is he supposed to make plans when he has to be back by the middle of the afternoon?

  Of course, old Mrs. Fisher, who lives catty-corner across the street, has offered to babysit, even to pick the kids up from school, should that be necessary, but the woman’s eighty-four years old, for God’s sake. He’s not about to entrust the lives of his children to someone whose license probably should have been taken away years ago.

  “I noticed we’re running low on coffee and Cheerios,” Olivia says.

  Sean tenses. His wife never makes a direct request for him to go grocery shopping. She just “notices” they’re running low on various items. Can she not just come out and say what she really means? “I’ll pick some up this morning,” he says.

  “Oh, and Zane was requesting macaroni and cheese for supper. How does that strike you?”

  Right between the eyes, Sean thinks, but doesn’t say. “Sounds good.”

  “Great. I might be a little late getting home,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. “We have this presentation in Fort Lauderdale this afternoon, and with the traffic…well, you know. So if I’m not home by six, just go ahead and start dinner without me.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over, so if you haven’t heard from me by five-thirty…”

  “I’ll know to start without you.”

  “Okay. Thank you. Kids,” she calls, “let’s go!”

  Immediately, their children are at the front door, laughing and wrestling with their backpacks. Sean struggles to find a trace of him in any of their faces, but finds only their mother. Dark-haired and hazel-eyed, all of them, while his eyes are the same sandy brown as
his still-thick head of hair. At least I have that going for me, he thinks.

  “Bye, sweetie,” Olivia says now, kissing his cheek. “Wish me luck this afternoon.”

  “Good luck this afternoon,” he replies dutifully.

  “Love you,” she says.

  “Love you, too.” He watches his family from his usual spot at the living room window as Olivia backs her Honda Accord out of the driveway and disappears down the main street.

  In his mind’s eye, he pictures a truck come flying out of nowhere to crash head on into the car, the old Honda collapsing like an accordion as his wife’s head snaps back, then forward, and the steering wheel disappears deep into her chest. He sees two uniformed police officers walking solemnly up the concrete path to his front door, mouths downturned, eyes downcast. “We’re so sorry to inform you…”

  God, what’s the matter with me? he wonders, banishing the horrifying images. I love my wife. Where are these thoughts coming from?

  Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? his father whispers in his ear, another of the sayings he was so fond of.

  Sean glances at his watch and is only vaguely alarmed to realize that almost an hour has passed. “Guess time really does fly when you’re having fun,” he says with a laugh, watching a silver Tesla turn onto the cul-de-sac and pull into old Mrs. Fisher’s driveway. “Uh-oh,” he says as both front doors lift into the air and a man and woman emerge simultaneously. The woman pulls at her short, tight skirt as the two march purposefully toward the front door. “Looks like trouble.”

  Chapter Four

  Julia Fisher is finishing her second cup of coffee and trying to figure out an eight-letter word for “spend wastefully.” It’s the only word in today’s so-called quick crossword puzzle that she hasn’t been able to get, despite knowing the first letter is an S and the seventh letter an E. She’s concentrating so hard that, at first, she doesn’t realize that the knocking floating around the periphery of her conscious mind is intended for her. It is only when the knocking is joined by the persistent ringing of a bell that she understands someone is at her front door.

  And who that someone is.

  “Shit,” she says, although she’s been half expecting them. She takes a deep breath and slowly pushes herself out of her chair, taking a cursory glance up the stairs as she enters the tiny front hall. Arthritis-riddled fingers pat at the short, frosted blond curls she’s been sporting since college, then stretch reluctantly toward the doorknob before falling back to her side. Maybe if she doesn’t answer it, they’ll go away.

  No such luck.

  “Mom!” a man’s voice calls, accompanied by more knocking, more ringing.

  Julia takes another deep breath and opens the door to Norman and his wife, Poppy. Who names a child Poppy? she thinks, staring into their anxious faces. “My goodness. What’s all the fuss?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s all the fuss’?” her son repeats. “Do you have any idea how long we’ve been standing out here?”

  “It can’t have been that long….”

  “Long enough. We thought you might have fallen and couldn’t get up. Or something.”

  Julia recognizes the “or something” for the euphemism it is. What Norman means is We thought you might be dead. She stands back to let her son and his wife—his fourth wife, if anyone’s keeping track anymore—enter. “I’m perfectly fine,” she tells them. “And you don’t have to worry about me falling. You bought me one of those necklace-alarm thingies I can push—”

  “You have to wear it for it to actually work,” Norman interrupts, glancing at her bare neck.

  “Picky, picky,” Julia says, hoping for a smile she doesn’t get. Has her son always been so humorless?

  “It’s not funny,” he says, as if to confirm her suspicion. His eyes follow his wife’s high, round backside as she wiggles past Julia into the living room and plops down on the chintz sofa, a frown on her already turned-down mouth.

  Julia lowers herself into one of two mismatched chairs opposite the sofa, waiting for her son to occupy the other. Instead he remains standing. How had she and Walter, her husband of more than half a century, managed to produce a son whose four marriages combined don’t add up to half that? Not that she doesn’t love her only child. She does. She just doesn’t like him very much. “You’re looking well,” she tells him, as if to counteract such thoughts.

  Besides, it’s true. Norman and his young wife are indeed handsome specimens, both standing over six feet tall, and in wonderful shape, thanks to daily workouts and regular weekend golf games. She studies Norman’s deeply tanned face, finding it hard to believe her son is fifty-one years old. It’s even harder to believe she could have a son that age since, aside from the standard assortment of aches and pains, she doesn’t feel much older than that herself.

  Her glance shifts to Poppy—slim, blond, voluptuous, porcelain-skinned, undeniably beautiful Poppy, Norman’s wife of almost three years, whom he met at the gym in the building that is home to the hedge fund company he helped found, and for whom he promptly discarded wife number three.

  Julia sighs. Not that she was particularly saddened by the loss of wife number three, whose lovely face she can barely recall. The fact is that Norman has always liked his women as stupid as they are beautiful. Unlined, uninformed, and unthreatening, she thinks, and sighs again.

  “What’s the matter?” her son says now.

  “Nothing’s the matter.”

  “You sighed.”

  “I did?”

  “Twice.”

  “Is your arthritis giving you problems?” Poppy asks, leaning forward on the sofa, her surgically enhanced breasts straining against the seams of her tight pink jersey.

  “No more than usual.” Julia holds up her two misshapen index fingers, the tips of which curve almost comically toward each other. “They look like parentheses,” she says with a laugh. “Brackets,” she explains before Poppy can ask. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “A couple of things,” Norman says. He walks toward the window, stares out at the street. “Have you seen Mark?”

  “Mark? No. Not since last week.” Mark is Norman’s twenty-year-old son, her only grandchild, courtesy of wife number two. She’d lasted almost a decade, the longest of any of Norman’s wives, probably because she turned a blind eye to his constant philandering. But two years ago, she’d remarried and relocated to New York, and Mark had opted to stay in Florida and move in with his father, an unexpected development that hasn’t exactly gone over big with the fourth Mrs. Fisher.

  To be fair, Mark is quite the handful.

  To hell with fairness, Julia decides. “Is something wrong?”

  “We caught him smoking weed…marijuana,” Norman explains.

  “I know what weed is. I may be eighty-four, but I’m not senile.” Not to mention, I might have indulged a few times in my youth, she thinks, but considers it wise not to say.

  “And I’m pretty sure he’s been taking money out of my purse,” Poppy volunteers.

  “You’re pretty sure?” Julia repeats. “You’re not positive?”

  “I’m pretty positive,” Poppy says, as if this settles the matter. “I mean, there was about forty dollars missing from my wallet the other day, and he’s the only one who could have taken it.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “I did. He denied it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t take it.”

  “Anyway, we got into a whole big fight about it,” Poppy says, brushing aside the question of Mark’s possible innocence with a wave of her long, manicured fingernails, “and he called me the C-word….”

  “A cunt?” Julia asks with more relish than she’d intended.

  “Mother, really…”

  “How can you even say that word?” Poppy asks, squirming.

 
Julia shrugs. She’s always rather liked the sound of it.

  “Anyway, he stormed out of the house,” Norman says. “We haven’t seen him in two days.”

  “I mean, we’re sure he’s okay,” Poppy says. “It’s not like this is the first time he’s pulled something like this.”

  “But it will be the last,” Norman insists. “There are limits to what we’ll tolerate. He dropped out of college; he can’t keep a job for more than a couple of weeks. If he doesn’t straighten up and fly right, we’ll be forced to kick him out for good.”

  Julia is about to say something, but the fact that she has produced a son who says things like “straighten up and fly right” renders her temporarily speechless.

  “Anyway, I know you two have a special relationship,” Norman says, managing to make the word “special” sound vaguely distasteful. “So if he should happen to come by, I’d appreciate it if you’d call us immediately. And whatever you do, don’t give him any money.”

  “Let him see what it’s like out there without Norman paying all the bills,” Poppy adds.

  I’m sure you’ll be able to tell him yourself in a few years, Julia thinks, and has to bite down on her tongue to keep from voicing it out loud. She looks toward her son. “What else? You said there were a couple of things….”

  “We’ve been through this before,” Norman says. “It’s this house.”

  “Oh, dear. Not again.”

  “Look,” Norman says, speaking over her. “I understood your desire to hang on to the place after Dad died. I mean, all the experts agree that you shouldn’t make any major changes for the first year after someone dies, but it’s been almost two years now, and you’re not getting any younger. You shouldn’t be going up and down all these stairs, you could fall and break a hip—”

  “Actually,” Julia interrupts, “they say your hip breaks first….”

  “What?”

  “The hip breaks first,” Julia repeats. “And that’s why you fall. Not the other way around.”

  “Okay, fine. Whatever,” Norman says dismissively. “The fact is that this house is getting harder and harder for you to look after. There are too many stairs, too many rooms to clean. Besides, it’s dangerous, a woman your age, living alone. Someone could break in…”