Dream Girl(77)

“Tell me about your mother, my sister,” he says. “I know nothing about my father’s other family.”

Not surprisingly, she looks confused. Her confusion is only heightened when she reads Gerry’s scribbled note to her. Leenie is dangerous. She will try to harm you. Pay attention to what I write, not what I say.

“I hope it’s okay if I take notes,” he says, wanting to set up a reason for having the notebook in hand when Leenie returns to observe them.

“Um, sure. My mom—she’s like her mom. She’s really fun, outgoing. Bubbly. My sister, too. I always wished I had that personality. I was the family bookworm. I wanted to write, so I got an MFA. But all I ended up with was fifty thousand dollars in debt.”

“I have an MFA myself, but I’ve begun to think it’s a bit of a racket.” He writes: Unlock the casters on the wheels, quickly and without drawing attention to what you’re doing. “Oh, I’ve dropped my pen. It’s rolled under the bed. Can you get it for me?”

She’s catching on. She’s quick, now that she’s gotten her bearings. Leenie has climbed the stairs and is in the kitchen, grumbling to herself. The “snack ” that she puts together for them is two cans of LaCroix and a plate of crackers. No spread, no cheese, not even peanut butter, only crackers. She places the plate on the wheeled tray that Gerry uses for his meals. He positions it carefully so it sits between him and his guest, not across the bed as it normally would be.

“You know, Leenie, you’re right, Kim shouldn’t stay here. After all, you’re using the master bedroom and the study has only that sleeper sofa, which is bound to be uncomfortable. Besides, Kim probably doesn’t want to stay under my roof, and who could blame her? I’m going to get her a room at the Four Seasons.”

“The Four Seasons,” the women say in unison. Kim’s tone is awed, while Leenie is clearly disgruntled. She really does hate it when he spends his money on anyone but her.

“Yes. Would you go back downstairs and get her suitcase?”

“Now?”

“If you could.”

As soon as her back is turned, he writes: Position the bed so it’s facing the stairs and when Leenie is almost to the top, push it as hard as you can toward the stairs, then get the hell out of here.

She looks skeptical, scared, and who can blame her? Gerry scrawls: She has killed two women. She will kill you. GET OUT OF HERE.

He adds: Hand me the walker.

Bump, bump, bump. Leenie is dragging Kim’s suitcase up the stairs as if she wants to punish it. Perhaps she is disappointed because her orchestrated surprise did not deliver the big scene she was hoping for. Well, Gerry tried to warn her about her instincts.

“Now.”

She’s strong, his niece, he’ll give her that, but it’s on him to get the job done. He uses his aspirational walker like an oar, pressing hard on the floor, awkward and unwieldy as it is. He may never use his upper-body strength to transfer himself to a wheelchair, but he’s making good use of it now. He needs only two, three hard pushes to take advantage of the trajectory that Kim has started. The bed sails forward, catching Leenie at her midsection as she crests the stairs. She tries to throw the suitcase at him, but her reflexes are slow, her aim off, and it caroms to the side. The bed knocks her backward down the floating staircase exactly as Gerry planned.

What Gerry has failed to anticipate is that the bed keeps going, accelerating, a runaway chariot straight out of Ben-Hur, rolling over Leenie’s body—oh, the terrible cracks and squishes, he has never heard noises such as these, his intention was only to knock her out, not flatten her—then hitting the wall opposite the staircase with enough force to catapult him out of the bed and—





1999




GERRY WALKED. He had been walking every night for hours, ever since Gretchen left. He didn’t miss her, but he was angry, offended. How dare she leave him?

He did not have much affinity for nature, preferred New York City above all cities, but late April was the one brief season when he liked the outdoors and Baltimore. The weather still had a cool sharpness, while the air, at least here in North Baltimore, smelled of blossoms and soil. He walked through the Wyman Park dell. He walked to the sculpture garden at the BMA.

Mostly, he walked along the path through Stony Run that led, eventually, to Cold Spring Lane and Alonso’s.

He did not miss Gretchen. He had not loved her. She was right, he didn’t even like her. Gretchen had been a rebound. Not from Lucy, but from New York City in general, his anxiety over Luke’s diagnosis, Tara’s decampment for the suburbs. Gretchen had been a safe haven. Marriage had been designed as an institution of safety, an economic proposition. In his second marriage, Gerry had been a Jane Austen female, mating for security. He had felt he could not risk another Lucy, who had seemed so sensible and right but had always had that wildness, and it was, he realized, the wildness that drove him away. You couldn’t write the kind of poems that Lucy wrote if you weren’t a little kinky, he had decided, but it was not a lifestyle that worked for Gerry.

And then Luke died and Tara stopped speaking to him and he was left with Gretchen. No, he didn’t miss her. But he resented the fact that she had lured him back to Baltimore, then abandoned him. That wasn’t fair play. Neither was the prenup, in which Gerry had agreed to waive any claim on the Gramercy Park apartment. Gretchen was selling it now, planning to move downtown.