Before She Knew Him(13)

After dinner, Matthew’s brother, Richard, came over. Matthew had told him that Mira was out of town, and Richard was taking advantage of her absence. There had been a time in the past when Richard and Mira could occasionally be in the same room together, but that time was long gone.

“Have a drink with me,” Richard said, as Matthew poured him a large Scotch and soda, the same drink their father used to love.

“No, thanks,” Matthew said.

They sat in Matthew’s study. He knew it didn’t make sense, but having Richard over to his study felt less like a breach of Mira’s trust than having Richard in one of the rooms that Mira had designed.

“I was thinking about you last week,” Richard said.

“Oh yeah?”

Richard leaned forward and pushed his hand through his hair. He had a widow’s peak, another similarity with Dad, although Richard’s hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days.

“I was, uh, driving down Merrimack Avenue, and I was at that four-way stop for about five minutes because a whole gaggle of your students were jogging by. Jesus Christ, Mattie. What was that, the girls’ cross-country team?”

“I don’t know. Were they in uniform?”

“Green, right? Half of them were in those tight little shorts. How do you stand it? Jesus, the flesh on them. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right then and there.”

“I don’t think of them that way. They’re my students, and they’re children.”

“Exactly. You ever notice how even the fat on young girls looks hot. I mean, how do they do it?”

Matthew was able to change the conversation for a little while, and they talked about their childhood, about Mom and Dad. It was the only reason Matthew even kept Richard in his life anymore, so that they could reminisce. They shared a history, a miserable history with miserable parents, and because of that they were bonded together. When Matthew had first started dating Mira, he had tried to explain the sophisticated cruelty with which his father had treated his mother, but could never explain it to her in a way in which she would get it. His father had very slowly shredded his mother’s self-worth and confidence, reducing her to something that was only vaguely human. Porter Dolamore had a gift; he was a master torturer, someone with so much patience that he could remove just a tiny strip of skin from his victim every day, keeping the victim alive and in pain. Natalia Dolamore did the only thing she could to survive. She became the woman that Porter always thought she was, bedding half the married men in town. It was how she got her revenge, but it took its toll as well. She was a different woman after Porter died at the age of fifty. Quiet and morose, hardly ever leaving the house. She died herself three years after her husband was gone.

Richard had three more drinks after his first one, but Matthew made sure to mix the last one with far more soda than Scotch. He wanted Richard to leave. There was no way he could bear his presence for the entire night.

Before Richard left, he surprised Matthew by saying, “I saw your new neighbor.”

“I have two new neighbors, Lloyd and Henrietta. They’re married.”

“I didn’t see Lloyd, but I did see Henrietta.”

“She goes by Hen.”

“She looks like she’d be up for it,” Richard said, his tongue actually darting out to touch his upper lip.

“Why do you say that?” Matthew asked. He was actually interested in Richard’s response because he wanted to understand where it was coming from. Like their father, Richard saw every woman who came within his range of vision as a sexual object, just a piece of meat. The difference between Richard and their father was that their father had actually occasionally caught his prey. With Richard, Matthew believed it was just talk. If he actually ever got his hands on a woman, Matthew didn’t think Richard would even know what to do.

“You can just tell,” Richard said. “Look at the clothes she wears.”

“When did you even see her?”

“When I came by a few weeks ago. She was out front, sitting on the porch with her legs up on the railing. I could see right up her skirt, saw the inside of her thigh. She saw me looking and didn’t even flinch. She’d give it up in a second, let me tell you.”

“I think you’re wrong about that,” Matthew said. “And I think you should probably leave. It’s my bedtime.”

“You offended?”

“No, not offended, Richard, but you sound just like Dad.”

“He understood women.”

“And you think you understand women? I’m the one who’s happily married. That’s more than you can say, and that’s more than Dad could ever say.”

“Calm down, Matthew. I’m just talking. Don’t take it so seriously. Except for your neighbor. Take her seriously. She is going to be trouble.” He raised his voice on the last word, spacing out the vowel sounds. Matthew, beginning to get an upset stomach, made Richard leave.



The next day, Matthew, still feeling a little queasy from time spent with his brother, had an unsettling moment with one of the students in his favorite class, the advanced senior seminar on the cold war. The class met after lunch. Matthew finished his turkey and cheese sandwich and moved the desks around so that they formed a circle. There were only eight students in his seminar, and not only had they picked the subject to study at the beginning of the course, but Matthew had them present many of the topics. Today they were talking about the Yalta Conference, and Hilary Margolis, probably the brightest girl in this year’s senior class, was leading the discussion. Matthew was sitting directly across from her, and as Hilary talked, she nervously uncrossed and recrossed her legs under her desk, and Matthew, unintentionally, saw up her dark green skirt, catching glimpses of her inner thigh and a flash of plain white underwear. It was the type of thing that Matthew saw on a daily basis—the girls at the school sometimes seemed oblivious of their young bodies, the flimsiness of their clothes—but, for some reason, seeing it right after a visit from Richard made Matthew think about it differently. He heard Richard’s voice in his head—she’s up for it—and even briefly imagined how soft the skin of Hilary’s thigh must be. He felt the blood rising up through his chest into his neck and caught Justin Knudsen eyeing him with just a little bit of concern.