Читать книгу The Woman in the Window - A. J. Finn - Страница 35

“YOU MUST BE BORED as hell,” she says when I open the hall door. Then she folds me into a hug. I laugh, nervously. “Sick of all those black-and-white movies, I bet.”

She surges past me. I still haven’t said a word.

“I brought something for you.” She smiles, dipping a hand into her bag. “It’s cold, too.” A sweaty bottle of Riesling. My mouth waters. It’s been ages since I drank white.

“Oh, you shouldn’t—”

But she’s already chugging toward the kitchen.

WITHIN TEN MINUTES we’re glugging the wine. Jane sparks a Virginia Slim, then another, and soon the air wobbles with smoke, rolling overhead, roiling beneath the ceiling lights. My Riesling tastes of it. I find I don’t mind; reminds me of grad school, starless nights outside the taverns of New Haven, men with mouths like ash.

“You’ve got a lot of merlot over there,” she says, eyeing the kitchen counter.

“I order it in bulk,” I explain. “I like it.”

“How often do you restock?”

“Just a few times a year.” At least once a month.

She nods. “You’ve been like this—how long did you say?” she asks. “Six months?”

“Almost eleven.”

“Eleven months.” Pressing her lips into a tiny o. “I can’t whistle. But pretend I just did.” She jams her cigarette into a cereal bowl, steeples her fingers, leans forward, as though in prayer. “So what do you do all day?”

“I counsel people,” I say, nobly.

“Who?”

“People online.”

“Ah.”

“And I take French lessons online. And I play chess,” I add.

“Online?”

“Online.”

She sweeps a finger along the tide line in her wineglass. “So the Internet,” she says, “is sort of your … window to the world.”

“Well, so is my actual window.” I gesture to the expanse of glass behind her.

“Your spyglass,” she says, and I blush. “I’m kidding.”

“I’m so sorry about—”

She waves a hand, lights a fresh cigarette. “Oh, hush.” Smoke leaks from her mouth. “Do you have a real chessboard?”

“Do you play?”

“I used to.” She slants the cigarette against the bowl. “Show me what you got.”

WE’RE WAIST-DEEP in our first game when the doorbell rings. Five sharp—the pharmacy delivery. Jane does the honors. “Door-to-door drugs!” she squawks, shuttling back from the hall. “These any good?”

“They’re uppers,” I say, uncorking a second bottle. Merlot this time.

“Now it’s a party.”

As we drink, as we play, we chat. We’re both mothers of only children, as I knew; we’re both sailors, as I hadn’t known. Jane prefers solo craft, I’m more into two-handers—or I was, anyway.

I tell her about my honeymoon with Ed: how we’d chartered an Alerion, a thirty-three-footer, and cruised the Greek Isles, pinballing between Santorini and Delos, Naxos and Mykonos. “Just the two of us,” I remember, “scudding around the Aegean.”

“That’s just like Dead Calm,” Jane says.

I swallow some wine. “I think in Dead Calm they were in the Pacific.”

“Well, except for that, it’s just like Dead Calm.”

“Also, they went sailing to recover from an accident.”

“Okay, right.”

“And then they rescued a psychopath who tried to kill them.”

“Are you going to let me make my point or not?”

While she frowns at the chessboard, I rummage through the fridge for a stick of Toblerone, chop it roughly with a kitchen knife. We sit at the table, chewing. Candy for dinner. Just like Olivia.

LATER:

“Do you get a lot of visitors?” She strokes her bishop, slides him across the board.

I shake my head, shake the wine down my throat. “None. You and your son.”

“Why? Or why not?”

“I don’t know. My parents are gone, and I worked too much to have many friends.”

“No one from work?”

I think of Wesley. “It was a two-person practice,” I say. “So now he has a double load to keep him busy.”

She looks at me. “That’s sad.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Do you even have a phone?”

I point to the landline, lurking in a corner on the kitchen counter, and pat my pocket. “Ancient, ancient iPhone, but it works. In case my psychiatrist calls. Or anyone else. My tenant.”

“Your handsome tenant.”

“My handsome tenant, yes.” I take a sip, take her queen.

“That was cold.” She flicks a speck of ash from the table and roars with laughter.

AFTER THE second game, she requests a tour of the house. I hesitate, just for a moment; the last person to examine the place top to bottom was David, and before that … I truly can’t recall. Bina’s never been beyond the first storey; Dr. Fielding is confined to the library. The very idea feels intimate, as though I’m about to lead a new lover by the hand.

But I agree, and escort her room by room, floor by floor. The red room: “I feel like I’m trapped in an artery.” The library: “So many books! Have you read all of them?” I shake my head. “Have you read any of them?” I giggle.

Olivia’s bedroom: “Maybe a little small? Too small. She needs a room she can grow into, like Ethan’s.” My study, on the other hand: “Ooh and aah,” says Jane. “A girl could get stuff done in a place like this.”

“Well, I mostly play chess and talk to shut-ins. If you call that getting stuff done.”

“Look.” She sets her glass on the windowsill, slides her hands into her back pockets. Leans into the window. “There’s the house,” she says, gazing at her home, her voice slung low, almost husky.

She’s been so playful, so jolly, that to see her looking serious produces a kind of jolt, a needle skidding off the vinyl. “There’s the house,” I agree.

“Nice, isn’t it? Quite a place.”

“It is.”

She peers outside a minute longer. Then we return to the kitchen.

LATER STILL:

“Get much use out of that?” Jane asks, roaming the living room as I debate my next move. The sun is sinking fast; in her yellow sweater, in the frail light, she looks like a wraith, floating through my house.

She’s pointing to the umbrella, leaning like a drunkard against a far wall.

“More than you’d think,” I reply. I rock back in my chair and describe Dr. Fielding’s backyard therapy, the unsteady march through the door and down the steps, the bubble of nylon shielding me from oblivion; the clarity of outside air, the drift of wind.

“Interesting,” says Jane.

“I believe it’s pronounced ‘ridiculous.’”

“But does it work?” she asks.

I shrug. “Sort of.”

“Well,” she says, patting the umbrella handle as you would a dog’s head, “there you go.”

“HEY, WHEN’S your birthday?”

“You going to buy me something?”

“Easy there.”

“Coming up, actually,” I say.

“So’s mine.”

“November eleventh.”

She gawks. “That’s my birthday, too.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not. Eleven eleven.”

I lift my glass. “To eleven eleven.”

We toast.

“GOT A pen and paper?”

I fetch both from a drawer, lay them before her. “Just sit there,” Jane tells me. “Look pretty.” I bat my lashes.

She whips the pen across the sheet, short, sharp strokes. I watch my face take form: the deep eyes, the soft cheekbones, the long jaw. “Make sure you get my underbite,” I urge her, but she shushes me.

For three minutes she sketches, twice lifting her glass to her lips. “Voilà,” she says, presenting the paper to me.

I study it. The likeness is astonishing. “Now that is a nifty trick.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Can you do others?”

“You mean, portraits besides yours? Believe it or not, I can.”

“No, I mean—animals, you know, or still lifes. Lives.”

“I don’t know. I’m mostly interested in people. Same as you.” With a flourish, she scribbles her signature in one corner. “Ta-da. A Jane Russell original.”

I slip the sketch into a kitchen drawer, the one where I keep the good table linens. Otherwise it’d probably get stained.

“LOOK AT all those.” They’re scattered like gems across the table. “What’s that one do?”

“Which one?”

“The pink one. Octagon. No, six-agon.”

“Hexagon.”

“Fine.”

“That’s Inderal. Beta-blocker.”

She squints at it. “That’s for heart attacks.”

“Also for panic attacks. It slows your heart rate.”

“And what’s that one? The little white oval?”

“Aripiprazole. Atypical antipsychotic.”

“That sounds serious.”

“Sounds and is, in some cases. For me it’s just an add-on. Keeps me sane. Makes me fat.”

She nods. “And what’s that one?”

“Imipramine. Tofranil. For depression. Also bed-wetting.”

“You’re a bed wetter?”

“Tonight I might be.” I sip my wine.

“And that one?”

“Temazepam. Sleeping pill. That’s for later.”

She nods. “Are you supposed to be taking any of these with alcohol?”

I swallow. “Nope.”

It’s only as the pills squeeze down my throat that I remember I already took them this morning.

JANE CASTS her head back, her mouth a fountain of smoke. “Please don’t say checkmate.” She giggles. “My ego can’t take three in a row. Remember that I haven’t played in years.”

“It shows,” I tell her. She snorts, laughs, exposing a trove of silver fillings.

I inspect my prisoners: both rooks, both bishops, a chain gang of pawns. Jane has captured a single pawn and a lonely knight. She sees me looking, swats the knight onto its side. “Horse down,” she says. “Summon the vet.”

“I love horses,” I tell her.

“Look at that. Miracle recovery.” She rights the knight, strokes its marble mane.

I smile, drain the last of my red. She eases more into my glass. I watch her. “I love your earrings, too.”

She fingers one of them, then the other—a little choir of pearls in each ear. “Gift from an old boyfriend,” she says.

“Does Alistair mind you wearing them?”

She thinks about it, then laughs. “I doubt Alistair knows.” She spurs the wheel of her lighter with her thumb, kisses it to a cigarette.

“Knows you’re wearing them or knows who they’re from?”

Jane inhales, arrows smoke to one side. “Either. Both. He can be difficult.” She taps her cigarette against the bowl. “Don’t get me wrong—he’s a good man, and a good father. But he’s controlling.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dr. Fox, are you analyzing me?” she asks. Her voice is light, but her eyes are cool.

“If anything, I’m analyzing your husband.”

She inhales again, frowns. “He’s always been like that. Not very trusting. At least not with me.”

“And why’s that?”

“Oh, I was a wild child,” she says. “Dis-so-lute. That’s the word. That’s his—that’s Alistair’s word, anyway. Bad crowds, bad choices.”

“Until you met Alistair?”

“Even then. It took me a little while to clean myself up.” It couldn’t have taken that long, I think—by the looks of her, she would’ve been early twenties when she became a mother.

Now she shakes her head. “I was with someone else for a time.”

“Who was that?”

A grimace. “Was is right. Not worth mentioning. We’ve all made mistakes.”

I say nothing.

“That ended, anyhow. But my family life is still”—her fingers strum the air—“challenging. That’s the word.”

“Le mot juste.”

“Those French lessons are totally paying off.” She grits her teeth in a grin, cocking the cigarette upward.

I press her. “What makes your family life challenging?”

She exhales. A perfect wreath of smoke wobbles through the air.

“Do it again,” I say, in spite of myself. She does. I’m drunk, I realize.

“You know”—clearing her throat—“it isn’t just one thing. It’s complicated. Alistair is challenging. Families are challenging.”

“But Ethan is a good kid. And I say this as someone who knows a good kid when she sees one,” I add.

She looks me in the eye. “I’m glad you think so. I do, too.” She bats her cigarette on the lip of the bowl again. “You must miss your family.”

“Yes. Terribly. But I talk to them every day.”

She nods. Her eyes are swimming a bit; she must be drunk, too. “It’s not the same as them being here, though, is it?”

“No. Of course not.”

She nods a second time. “So. Anna. You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way.”

“Overweight?” I say. “Prematurely gray?” I really am soused.

She sips her wine. “Agoraphobic.”

“Well …” If we’re trading confidences, then I suppose: “Trauma. Same as anyone.” I fidget. “It got me depressed. Severely depressed. It isn’t something I like to remember.”

But she’s shaking her head. “No, no, I understand—it’s not my business. And I’m guessing you can’t invite people over for a party. I just think we need to find you some more hobbies. Besides chess and your black-and-white movies.”

“And espionage.”

“And espionage.”

I think about it. “I used to take photographs.”

“Looks as though you still do.”

That deserves a smirk. “Fair enough. But I mean outdoor photography. I enjoyed it.”

“Sort of Humans of New York stuff?”

“More like nature photography.”

“In New York City?”

“In New England. We used to go there sometimes.”

Jane turns to the window. “Look at that,” she says, pointing west, and I do: a pulpy sunset, the dregs of dusk, buildings paper-cut against the glow. A bird circles nearby. “That’s nature, isn’t it?”

“Technically. Some of it. But I mean—”

“The world is a beautiful place,” she insists, and she’s serious; her gaze is even, her voice level. Her eyes catch mine, hold them. “Don’t forget that.” She reclines, mashing her cigarette into the hollow of the bowl. “And don’t miss it.”

I fish my phone from my pocket, aim it at the glass, snap a shot. I look at Jane.

“Attagirl,” she growls.