Before She Knew Him(64)
“I miss you,” Matthew said toward the end of the call.
“Everything okay on that end?” Mira asked. “Anything more from the police?”
“Everything’s fine. Is it okay if I just miss you?”
She laughed, and the sound of it made him feel even better. “I’ll be back tomorrow night. Did you get the flight details I sent?”
“I think so,” Matthew said.
“I’ll see you then. And, Matthew . . .”
“Yeah.”
“I love you so much. I want you to know that.”
“I know,” he said.
After the phone call Matthew went to the refrigerator. He wasn’t hungry, but he thought he should eat something. The day had been awful. When he’d arrived at the teachers’ lounge that morning all the talk had been about Michelle’s sudden departure. Matthew got himself a coffee he didn’t really need, while he listened to Sussex Hall’s oldest teacher, Betty, half whisper, “She could have at least met with the sub and gone over her syllabus with her. It would have taken her all of half a day, at most.”
“Her boyfriend was murdered and her father is dying,” Matthew said from across the lounge. Betty and the three teachers she’d been gossiping with all turned and looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” Matthew said. “I’m worried about her, is all.”
“We’re all worried about her,” Betty quickly said. “But I’m also worried about her students’ education.”
Matthew moved through the rest of the day in an agitated haze. He taught his classes, occasionally forgetting the visit from his brother, but then he’d remember, suddenly see that key ring again in his mind, and his stomach would turn. When the day was finally over, Matthew got back into his car, tried calling Michelle—straight to voice mail (“Michelle here. You know what to do.”)—then told himself that he should just drive directly over to her apartment complex, knock on her door. He could almost feel the relief that would come when she pulled the door open. He could hear her voice—“You came! I knew there was a reason I couldn’t get my act together and leave here this morning”—and then he could hear his brother laughing at him later. “You didn’t think I’d really do something like that, did you?” he’d say. “I bought that key ring at the drug store. Been waiting for months to use it on you.” He replayed the scenario twice in his mind, then noticed one of his students, Billy Portis, watching him from across the parking lot. Matthew ignited the engine of his Fiat, wondering if he’d been moving his lips, talking to himself.
Instead of driving to Country Squire, he drove straight home, the wind driving the rain sideways, the inside of his car steaming up. He cracked a window, rain coming in and hitting his face, but the windshield began to clear a little. He parked, instinctively looking toward his neighbors’ house as he got out of the car, and spotted Hen on her porch. She waved at him, and a feeling of relief spread through his body. He’d go talk with Hen, and he could make a decision about Michelle later.
Now, Matthew pulled a ginger ale from the refrigerator, plus two sticks of string cheese wrapped in plastic. He got some Triscuits from the cupboard and brought them with him to the living room couch, where he sat in the dark and ate his supper.
He couldn’t quite believe that he’d told Hen about Richard, but it had felt good to do it. And it wasn’t just that it was liberating for him. If Richard had actually done something to Michelle, then what else was he capable of? He’d mentioned Hen earlier, said how he’d seen her sitting on the porch one night, said he could see right up her skirt. What else had he said? Something about Hen being “up for it.” At the time Matthew had barely paid attention. It was his brother speaking, his loser brother who was all words and no action. But what if that had finally changed. The thought made Matthew’s stomach hurt worse than it had all day. He made the decision that he needed to go to Michelle’s apartment; he needed to find out one way or another the truth of what had happened.
He checked the time. It was too early to go over to the apartment complex now. Too many people coming and going. He decided to go over at eleven at night, hoping that it would be late enough that no one would see him, but not so late that it would look suspicious if someone did. He went into his office, turned on the small Tiffany lamp by the sofa, and looked at some of the titles on his bookshelf, hoping to find something he could read to kill the next few hours. He touched the spines of his collection of Salinger paperbacks. The Catcher in the Rye was the book that saved him as a thirteen-year-old, the book that finally made him feel okay about the rage he felt toward his parents and toward the world in general. But the book he pulled out now was Franny and Zooey, equally important to him, the book that first made him feel protective toward a girl. When he’d read it, also at the age of thirteen, he’d imagined that he’d fallen in love with the troubled Franny of the first part of the book. He had, in a way. She was his first love, a girl who understood that the world we live in is all bullshit. Opening the frail, musty paperback now and reading the first line—“Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather”—Matthew could feel the tension in his body begin to dissipate. He read the entire book, two long stories, really, then rose from the sofa, returned the book to its place on the shelf, and did some jumping jacks. Reading the book had worked, allowing him to enter a fictional realm for a time, something that had always been easy for him. It was what saved him, he sometimes thought; it was what got him through a childhood in which he’d been trapped in hell, and it was what his office represented now, with its books and talismans. It was a separate world.