Sunburn: A Novel(56)
What does he know about her? Not as much as he thinks he does. Suddenly, it is important to her to let him know that she had a nice childhood, too, warm and safe as his. Her parents were good people, much too nice to prepare their daughter for a world of people like Ditmars and Irving and that guy they worked with.
“On Sunday afternoons, my mom ironed in front of the television in her bedroom. It smelled so good. You know that smell—scorchy and warm. She had a bottle that she filled with water, for the things that needed to be ironed on the steam setting. She put some kind of scent in it. I don’t think it was made to be a sprinkle bottle for ironing—there was a tiny picture of a woman on it, but it was starting to flake off. If I could have one thing of my mom’s, it would be that bottle. I don’t know what happened to it when she moved to Florida.”
Better not to mention that Polly was in prison at the time, that her mother died in Florida of a broken heart.
All Adam says is, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you iron.”
“If I had her sprinkle bottle, I think I would. I wish I had her sprinkle bottle and this one bracelet she had, with these flat glass beads with pieces of peacock feathers set inside. My mother loved Halloween. She liked scary movies, too. She would let me watch anything. But then—it’s not like anything really scary came on TV back then. I remember House of Wax. And She—remember She?”
“Who?”
“The movie She. There’s a beautiful woman who’s hundreds of years old. She invites a man to bathe in this fire that makes you immortal. But it turns out that if you go into the fire twice, the spell reverses and you age to your real age. She turns into a skeleton, dies, reaching for him. So he’s immortal now, but he’s betrayed everyone and she’s gone. He’s going to live forever, but alone.”
Adam puts an arm around her, hugs her closer. “I think Halloween is making you morbid. Let’s go home.”
On Tuesday night, actual Halloween, Polly dresses all in black, in a 1950s cocktail dress unearthed at the church rummage sale a few weeks ago. She has bags and bags of candy—miniature Hershey bars, Reese’s cups, small boxes of Dots, because there’s always some weird kid who doesn’t like chocolate. But the trick-or-treaters don’t seem to realize that someone lives in the garage apartment, and they skip her door.
She hopes that’s the reason the kids skip her door.
“Adam,” she says, the wooden bowl of candy in her lap, “do you think people gossip about us? About me?”
“What do you mean?”
“About my life, what I did before I moved here.” A beat. “How Cath died.”
“If they do, there’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s best not to think about it.”
“Do you ever think about it?”
“What?”
In her black dress, black gloves, and retro heels, she looks like Joan Crawford or Bette Davis. She feels like them, too. Tough, yet brittle. That’s the thing about being really hard. When you do break, you shatter.
“Not even ten years ago, I fed my husband one of his favorite dinners. Turkey and scalloped potatoes, lots of beer. A pie. He didn’t like the pie because I didn’t have any ice cream, only whipped cream. Fresh whipped cream, whipped by hand. I knew the turkey would make him sleepy, but I couldn’t trust it to do the entire job. So I crushed up some sleeping pills, added them to the cheese sauce on the potatoes, to make sure he would be drowsy. Then, when he was asleep, lying on his back, I stood next to the bed—”
“I know all this,” Adam says. He’s not meeting her eyes. “You told me. Maybe not in such detail—”
“I stabbed him through his heart, Adam. Through his heart. I studied for weeks, making sure I knew where to aim. I had one chance. One chance to save myself and my kid. He was going to kill me. When he did, I knew there was no one who would care for Joy.”
“What’s got into you tonight?”
“I was looking forward to the kids coming to the door. We didn’t get many trick-or-treaters on Kentucky, back in the day.” She waits to see if he will ask her about this. He doesn’t. “Do you think people think I killed Cath?”
“It was ruled an accident.”
His eyes are fixed on the television. He bought it three weeks ago. She hates it. First she loses her beautiful apartment and now this thing has invaded. Adam and Eve didn’t need to be forced out of Eden, Polly thinks. All God had to do was send down a twenty-seven-inch color television and a cable box. Adam’s using the remote to toggle back and forth between a hockey game and a CNN report that a passerby has been subpoenaed to testify about finding Vincent Foster’s body.
She drops two words from her question. “Do you think I killed Cath?”
Someone shoots a goal and he gives a short guffaw of approval. Hockey. He watches hockey. She was never one of those people who have lists, questionnaires, to hand out at the beginning of a relationship. She never had the luxury of looking for a relationship, someone who would please her. If she had, she might have remembered to ask: How many hours a week do you watch sports? Do you care so much that you mope around when your favorite team loses? Ditmars did that, of course. Gregg didn’t really feel passionate about any team, which seemed not very masculine to Polly. Adam, at least, cares, but doesn’t take it personally when his team is defeated.