Chapter Forty Four

She might have been lonely in the end.  Not that we’ll ever know.  She’s gone now, and all that we, the living, can do is guess.  We might create a likeness of her with all of our guesses, but we’ll never really know how close our likenesses come to the real thing.

I talked to her and the girls just before they left for Vashon, but we were all distracted by other worries.  Both she and I were overworked, and we weren’t saying much about ourselves.  We weren’t talking about the things that really mattered.  I wish I could say that I knew her state of mind at the time, but all I can recall are trivial things, like how she liked to cook spaghetti, or the new stores we had both been to, or how she’d seen a doctor about a pain in her stomach, which she later learned was an ulcer.

        So when I say she was lonely at the end, you’ll just have to take my word for it.  It wasn’t so much in what she said, as the way she said it.  It wasn’t that she was crying out for help.  It was an intuition on my part.  It was a feeling.

        But that’s most of what I retain from our conversations anyway – intuitions.  She never let me in.  We would talk about our husbands or our children or our jobs, but we never got below the surface.  She always tried to make everything about herself sound so pleasant.  She always tried to sound like she was in control.  But I always suspected that she had reasons for panic.  I always thought that there was something she wasn’t telling me.

She had her secrets, I know she did.  Now that she is gone, everyone knows.  And when I say that she might have been lonely, it is also what the facts of the case amount to.  It was a loneliness that passed over a phone line.  It was something that she did not need to explain.  Knowing her secrets now, it is easy to see how she might have been lonely.

        Not that it matters, now that she’s gone.  Now her decades-long affair is common knowledge, as is the paternity of her children.  Everyone hates her now. Not that that matters either.  She’s dead.  She’s beyond that kind of hurt.  Dead people don’t care about their reputations.  They are beyond defending themselves.  They are stories that we tell each other, nothing more.

Yet she was lonely, and if she found some secret kind of happiness she suffered for it.  She was the one who had to hide it.  She was the one who couldn’t be straight with other people.  She was the one who had to lie.  She was human, just like the rest of us, and she had parts of herself she couldn’t show to others.  She did wrong things, but so have we all.  She was not the villainess she is made out to be.

        I saw that man of hers once, outside their house.  Yes, he was very handsome, but not that George Clooney, jovial kind of handsome.  He was his own kind of handsome, with an ease about him and eyes that glittered from his face.  I know that given the right set of circumstances, that man could have had me as well.  If Lance had been further away from home, if I had been lonely enough, he might have talked to me awhile, and I wouldn’t have made an excuse to leave.  He might have asked me if anyone was at home, and I would have answered that no one was there.  He might have come over for a drink, and I would have invited him in.  With those glittering eyes he might have kissed me too, and I wouldn’t have tried to fight him.

He was in his car, parked across the street, probably waiting for her to come back from somewhere.  It was broad daylight and I was taking my dog for a walk.  I couldn’t help but notice the way he was staring at the house.  I thought at first he was some kind of burglar, but she pulled up in her own car as I was walking back to my house.  I turned my head, and they were smiling at each other.  That was when I knew.

        But I never said anything.  I never even mentioned it to her.  That was back when Lance and I were separated, and I figured that if she wants to have her fun, why not?  I knew her husband after all, and besides being brilliant I knew that he wasn’t exactly good company.  I knew that she had to be unsatisfied with a man like that.

        The day after I talked to her I heard about the accident.  Her oldest had a retreat or something on Vashon, something to do with that incident at school that she never told her husband about.  The other daughter came along for the ride, and they planned on driving down to the other ferry in West Seattle, the one that leaves from the dock near Lincoln Park.  I guess she just wanted to make a day of it or something.  Maybe explore the restaurants over there.  Maybe play at the beach or just talk.

        She loved her daughters.  Whatever else she did, she loved them more than anything.

        But they never made that ferry.  They took 99 South to the West Seattle Bridge, and halfway across the bridge something went wrong with the car.  They’re still not sure what it was.  But anyway the engine caught fire and they drove on a little ways, trying to pull over, but the car just came to a stop in the middle of the road.  One of those trucks that come in and out of the Port of Seattle was coming across the bridge from the other direction, and the driver must have been tired or on drugs or both because he plowed straight into them.  His truck rammed her car right into a Volvo that was passing by in the far right lane.  All three of them killed instantly.  I hope.

        And it’s horrible enough the way it is, but I think it wouldn’t have been quite as bad if the three of them had been sitting there in the car, happy about the trip they were taking.  I think it would be less horrible if they had been talking about something pleasant, or even arguing a little, but not sitting there like three strangers who happened to be related.  The three of them weren’t getting along so well at the end.  Even her daughters knew that she was keeping a secret.

        Like I say, I think she was a little lonely at the end, and I think it’s because she could never find a proper place to put her heart.  She wanted to love that man I saw in the car – and she did love him – but she knew that he was no good for her.  She knew that he was unreliable.  She kept waiting for him to change.  She kept waiting for him to get better, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen.  Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.

        And that other one, her husband.  How could she be satisfied with him?  Lance liked to call him “limp dick” when he wasn’t around, and I think Lance was right.  He wasn’t any kind of man.  He was just a grown-up boy, and she stayed with him because she felt sorry for him.  She stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go.  Yes, that makes her a liar, but so what?  She knew that she was everything for him, and it was easy to let him believe what he wanted to believe.  It was easy to play the dutiful wife.  I can’t blame her for that.  What else was she supposed to do?

        So yeah, the three of them dead, just like that.  I hope she was happy with her daughters, just before they went.  I hope they didn’t argue.  I hope I’m wrong and she wasn’t lonely.  I hope they didn’t suffer.  I hope she wasn’t thinking about whichever of those two men she’d be trying to please next.  Neither of them were really any good for her.  I think she knew that.

        When they told her husband at work he continued working for a while, and then quietly drove home later than night.  He found the place empty of course.  I saw all the lights go on in the house, and they stayed on until morning.  Then, the next evening, they were off.  And his car was gone from the driveway.  Haven’t seen the guy since, and the house has just been sitting there for the longest time.  The yard is all overgrown now, and the mailbox is full to bursting.  Where did he go, I wonder?

        And that other one, her lover.  The real father of her children?  I still see him sometimes in his car, parked across the street.  He never cries, that one, but he is always watching the house.  He is always waiting for something to happen.  I see him now and then when I walk my dog, and I want to tell him that I’m sad too.  I want to tell him that I miss her.  I want to tell him that she’s never coming back.

        I think she was a bit lonely in the end.  But maybe we all are, sometimes.  Lance is coming back soon, and he promised to take me out to dinner.  I should go change my clothes.  I probably shouldn’t have brought this up, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately.

        That poor man.  Those poor men.  I’m not sure which of them got it worse, the lover or the husband.  Would it be better to have a family beyond your reach, or to find out that your family was never yours from the beginning?