Young Wives Read online

  Jada smiled for the first time that morning. “Do you really think you can get me a different social worker?”

  “Look, if I can’t, I’ll certainly speak with Mrs. Monster and see exactly what she’s planning to say.”

  “It’s really good of you to do all this,” Jada said. “I mean, a younger woman like you shouldn’t have to be involved in all of this tragedy. You should be optimistic and enjoy your life.”

  Angie looked up at Jada and laughed. “Oh yeah,” she said, “let me tell you how optimistic and pleasurable my life is. Let me tell you about my romantic first anniversary.” She launched into the story and both women listened raptly as they walked along. She told them about the “older woman,” the Soprano, and then finding out her friend Lisa was the older woman. She told them about the trip to Marblehead—all of it. All except the big secret. She was tempted, but she couldn’t tell them.

  “I can’t believe it,” Michelle said when Angela was done.

  “I can.” Jada snorted. The two women went on to criticize Reid, ranting on about him, and then they had a few choice words for Lisa.

  Angela quickened her steps and marched along beside them. She realized she felt good. Well, if not good, then a little better. It wasn’t just the walk, it was the company. She really liked Jada. Michelle, on the other hand, seemed kind of wimpy and distracted, but she was clearly a good friend to Jada and vice versa. Angie was just grateful that she’d been invited.

  They came to the end of a cul-de-sac and began to turn around when Jada stopped. “Mich, aren’t you going to hit the post?” Angie didn’t know what Jada was talking about. She just looked at Michelle, whose head hung down limply until she shook it.

  “Michelle, what’s wrong with you?” Jada asked. “You always touch the post. Are you mad because of what went down at the bank?” Angie opened her eyes wider, but said nothing. “Or is it the reporters? Are they on you real bad?”

  Angie knew a lot was up but decided to just keep her mouth shut. The three women stood there in the cold. The sky had lightened to silver along the eastern horizon, but long shadows still darkened the road. Angie stood very quiet. She could see the moon, a white sliver about to set. She looked at Michelle.

  “Everyone in my family is dysfunctional now. Even my dog. He binges when we’re outside and vomits in the house. He eats the neighbors’ trash and ignores his biscuits. Everybody’s life is miserable,” Michelle said. “I didn’t think it was going to be this way. I honestly didn’t. I knew what Clinton did to you, but look at what happened to Angela,” she said.

  “And what happened to you,” Jada added gently, and put her gloved hand on Michelle’s thin shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

  Michelle shrugged away and started walking. Angela followed along with Jada.

  “Oh yes it is,” Michelle said. “I mean, what if I’ve been stupid? What if I’ve been wrong?” Angie could see tears in Michelle’s blue eyes as she turned to Jada. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What if Frank is guilty?” she whispered.

  Angie still didn’t say a word, but the penny had dropped and she put the pieces together. She’d read the paper and heard her father’s comments. This was the woman from the drug bust down the street, the one who had made headlines. She didn’t move, but for a moment she wondered whether her client was involved in a drug ring. Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted the urine test. Angie thought of what Michael had said, but looking at the two women Angie just knew that wasn’t part of the equation.

  Jada walked up to her friend and sort of bent her knees to put herself on eye level with Michelle. “Mich,” she said gently. “It was always a possibility. Do you have a reason to doubt him? I mean, evidence or something?”

  “No. Not really. I mean, I don’t know. But they want me to testify, and I don’t think I want to.” She hung her head and now tears did squeeze out of her eyes. “I just don’t think I want to. And I’m afraid to tell him and I’m afraid to tell Bruzeman,” Michelle said, weeping.

  Angie decided to take a chance and get herself involved. “Is it inappropriate of me to remind you that I’m an attorney and I might be useful?” Angie asked. Both women looked at her. “I know I’m not your lawyer, but do you know about your Fourth Amendment rights?” It was really cold, and Angie took a couple of steps forward. Michelle followed her as she shook her head. The three women continued walking and Angie pulled together her memory of constitutional law.

  “The police searched your house, right?”

  Michelle nodded again.

  “Well, there is a particularity clause in the Fourth Amendment—it’s because of the British searching any house they wanted to during the Revolutionary War. Colonists were furious. So when they drafted the Constitution, they made sure that a search couldn’t be conducted unless there was a particular reason for looking—a strong indication that there was something or some reason to be searching for something particular.”

  “Oh, they were searching all right,” Michelle said.

  “They wrecked her house,” Jada added.

  “But the point is—” Angela almost shouted, stopping herself to think of her training in civil rights. “They couldn’t be looking for just anything. There has to be probable cause.”

  “You mean some kind of proof against Frank? He’s my husband.”

  Angela was careful not to say yes, though to get a search warrant the chances were pretty damn good. “Cops can be overzealous. District attorneys can be corrupt. But that Fourth Amendment law is pretty strong stuff. Samuel Adams said, ‘Then and there the child liberty was born.’”

  The three women walked on in silence for more than two blocks. Angie wondered if she had said too much. Finally Jada broke the silence. “Mich, I think you need a lawyer. I mean, a lawyer of your own,” she added gently.

  Michelle looked at her friend and Angie recognized the torture on the woman’s face. She’d been there for the last weeks over Reid.

  “Don’t you understand?” Michelle snapped at Jada. “If I don’t stick with Frank on this, our marriage is over.”

  “If he’s guilty, it might be over anyway,” Jada said.

  29

  Concerning buried treasure and other buried things

  Michelle was cleaning. Not just at that moment, but constantly. She knew her behavior wasn’t normal, but the situation wasn’t normal and she was coping the best she could. Cleaning was better than drinking, certainly.

  Aside from the daily bed-making, laundry, dishes, and dusting, she had already washed the walls of Frank’s shop, dusted and rearranged all his tools, and even scrubbed the cement floor. She’d found a special product at the hardware store to add to her arsenal—a grease-buster that had worked so well on the concrete in the shop that she’d gone out to the garage and used it on the oil-stained floor there.

  She’d then continued in the garage, stacking every old newspaper, rewinding the garden hoses more tightly than a surgeon’s catgut, and going through every bottle of DW–40, can of motor oil, and jar of nails, wiping and dusting all of them, arranging them by size, and throwing away the ones that had solidified or gone unused for years.

  She’d also sorted out the attic and had been through every single box of clothes and stored toys, and all of the old photographs. She’d washed and rewrapped the Christmas ornaments, laundered Jenna’s and Frankie’s old baby clothes, then ironed them and laid them all away again, this time packed in tissue paper. She’d made six boxes of items for Goodwill and taken them to the depository at the bank parking lot—but early in the morning, before there was any chance of seeing anyone she knew.

  Michelle certainly didn’t miss the bank. She didn’t even miss going out. She was too busy cleaning. In fact, she never went out—except into the backyard—unless she absolutely had to. Then she pulled a cap over her hair and wore Jackie O. sunglasses no matter how gray the day might be.

  Seeing people and being seen was not something she desired. She’d even stopped grocery shopping
at the Grand Union in town and had begun driving two towns away. She went to a disgusting Price Chopper where the produce was inferior and the aisles were dirty but where she was certain she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew; the checkout girls didn’t even look up from their scanners when she ran her groceries by them. It was a relief, but also lonely.

  She had no company during the day except the dog, and wanted none at night except her husband and her kids. Nobody called. Nobody visited. None of the women from the P.T.A., none of her so-called friends from work, no one at all. Except, of course, Jada. They still did their walking together every morning and Michelle thought she might go crazy if she didn’t have that normalcy each day. Thank God for Jada, who was going through a living hell of her own. Misery loves company, Michelle thought, and for a moment she shuddered at the idea that their friendship might be based on mutual unhappiness. Then she remembered, with relief and nostalgia, what walking had been like only months before, before their worlds had separately disintegrated.

  Michelle stood in her immaculate kitchen and looked around. Was there a smudge on the refrigerator handles? She took out the rubber bucket that she carried her key supplies in. Today she would clean out all the bedroom closets. Not merely reorganizing clothes and shoes, but the actual closets themselves, emptying everything out, vacuuming the carpet and the shelves, then washing down the walls, shampooing the carpet, and putting everything back.

  She checked her supply bucket—two clean sponges, one for washing and one for rinsing; the foam carpet cleaner; the spot rug cleaner; the Soft Scrub gel, which she liked to use for smudges on the walls; her rubber gloves; two brushes; Windex; Formula 409; and Pledge. She added the little tub of Brasso to polish the closet door pulls. She twisted her hair up into a knot, and then lifted the now-heavy bucket with one hand and the Dustbuster with the other. Her vacuum was upstairs, so she felt well armed.

  Pookie followed her up the stairs, but he already knew to leave her well enough alone when she was in a cleaning frenzy. She looked at Pookie’s wet brown eyes and they reminded her of Frank’s. Dogs and men were the same—they never spoke about what was bothering them. Usually he’d find an undisturbed spot in the same room, lie down, cross his front paws, and lay his head attentively on them, watching her.

  At the top of the stairs, they went into Frankie’s room first and Pookie immediately jumped onto the bed. Well, Michelle thought, she’d need most of it to put Frankie’s clothes and gear on, but Pookie would live with it or wind up under the bed if he had to. She liked having him there, cutting the silence with his breathing.

  Frankie’s closet took a little over an hour. It was an hour of, if not of peace exactly, then at least rescue from the crazy-making thoughts that wouldn’t stop circulating in Michelle’s head. While she scrubbed she didn’t once think about Bruzeman, Frank, Jenna and boarding school, finding Frankie a therapist, or anything else. She just scrubbed in the enclosed space of the closet until everything looked and smelled so clean that her eyes smarted from the comforting but harsh scents of ammonia and carpet cleaner. It was the only reprieve from her own mind, the only time she wasn’t terrified.

  Michelle stood up outside the closet and looked at the pristine emptiness with something as close to pleasure as she’d felt lately. She took a deep breath and then, noticing the slight tarnish on the closet door handles, she took out the Brasso and carefully lathered it on, being sure not to allow even a bit of it to touch the high-gloss paint of the door. Michelle wiped off some of the Brasso and wished she had Simichrome instead, the polish that really worked, but she’d run out of the stuff and had to go all the way to White Plains to get it. This would just have to do, she told herself; so what if it just took longer and might need a second coat? She had nothing else but other closets waiting. She took out her roll of paper towels, tore one off, and tentatively began to rub the tarnish off the knob in a circular motion.

  Somehow, it made her think of sex. She and Frank hadn’t made love for a couple of weeks now. She’d woken up last night to find him on one elbow above her, watching her face with those wet, soulful eyes. She’d rolled under him invitingly, but he’d turned away. Except for after Frankie Junior had been born—a difficult birth—she couldn’t think of when there had been such a long lapse between them. And it was funny—not in a funny way, of course—that she also couldn’t think out whether it was Frank or herself who was holding back, and whether the reluctance came from exhaustion, misery, or something else all together. Michelle finished rubbing the door handle and moved on to its mate. At least the pair of doors nestled together. She and Frank were even sleeping on opposite sides of bed.

  She sighed deeply, then coughed from the smell of the cleaning chemicals. Michelle moved both sliding doors apart so the closet was fully exposed to the air. To help circulation, she decided she’d better fetch the little fan that she kept in the upstairs linen closet, and set it up on the bedroom floor.

  As she started to leave the room, Pookie, almost buried on the bed by Frankie’s wardrobe, began to get up to follow her. “Stay,” she commanded him and quickly returned, plugged in the fan, and trained its breeze into the closet. She couldn’t hang up Frankie’s clothes yet or they’d reek. She’d wait until everything in there dried and then she would rearrange his things. Michelle put her blonde tendrils up in a quick twist, stuck a hairpin in, checked her watch—it was already almost eleven—and turned to the dog.

  “Okay, Pookie, we have another room to do.”

  Jenna’s closet was another story altogether. She had an endless amount of dresses, tops, jackets, skirts, shoes, bags, belts, and other nonsense absolutely stuffed into her closet. When Michelle began the transfer from the hangers to the bed, Pookie was off it and under it in no time. Michelle took advantage of the space to arrange Jenna’s clothes in categories on the spread.

  Once again, as she’d done in Frankie’s room, Michelle went into the closet and began on the walls. How did so many smudges get all over them? Michelle wouldn’t allow herself to miss a single one. She thought of her mother and the house she grew up in, how her mother had let everything go, fixing things—whatever was wrong or dirty or broken—with a drink. Michelle would never, not ever let that happen. She wouldn’t let anything go. She attacked a black heel smudge at the bottom of the closet wall with renewed vigor.

  Jenna’s closet was much bigger and dirtier than Frankie’s. There was also an extra corner, a slight indentation where the closet went back another six inches because of a structural beam. She remembered Frank yelling at the wall boarder for starting to board over it and waste the niche. He was a stickler for quality. Well, she was, too. Michelle moved into the narrow space so she would wash the walls in the indentation and then get to the carpet. But as she worked her way down the wall to the bottom, she noticed for the first time how the tweed carpet there was frayed.

  Well, she could get up and get her little scissors to cut it even, she thought, but first she pulled at it for a moment to see if the frizz was simply loose from wear or catching on the heels and buckles of Jenna’s shoes.

  Michelle tugged, and the carpet moved a little bit under her hand. Surprised, she pulled harder. She saw then that the fraying was a seam, not just a few loose loops of pile. She supposed the seam was because of the indentation in the back. She hated that, and so would Frank, though she supposed in a closet it wasn’t worth the money to cut another huge swath if it was going to cause lots of waste. Still annoyed, she pulled at the seam harder than she meant to and this time the whole piece lifted up and away from the floor in her hand.

  Great! Now there’d be sawdust, staples, dirt, and all the rest of it that might have been buried by the carpet layers when they’d stretched and nailed the rug. But when Michelle stared down at the floor beneath the carpet, it wasn’t dusty. That wasn’t normal. The floorboards weren’t laid abutting one another in a running bond, as they were with the maple planking in the rest of the house. Instead, right before her, Michelle could see a
perfect alignment, a carefully crafted crack that went up one, two … six boards. Michelle reached down with her rubber gloves still on and began to pull at the exposed edge. Was there all kinds of grime in there?

  She felt a wiggle, but couldn’t get her fingers in, so she used the handle of her scrub brush. It worked as a lever, and as a single piece, the wood lifted up.

  Michelle suddenly felt dizzy. She dropped the piece of carpet and the wooden cover to the open space exposed beneath the floor. Her skin turned hot then cold with foreboding. There, very neatly wrapped in newspaper, were four rectangular packages inserted between the joists. Michelle picked one up.

  Pookie, as if he could sense her changed mood, came into the closet beside her and began sniffing—not just the carpet, but also the package in her hand. Was it a book? Michelle carefully unwrapped the folded paper in one corner where it wasn’t held by the bakery string that tied it up. As she bent the newspaper away, hundred-dollar-bills—still in their wrapper—were exposed.

  Pookie put out his head and began to snuffle at them. Without thinking, she pushed him roughly away. “No!” she said, and he slunk somewhere out of the closet, but Michelle could hardly think of the dog’s feelings now. Her own were too frozen. She stared at the heavy package of money in her hand. Pulling off her gloves, she ran the tip of her fingernail down past the money. They were hundreds, all of them hundreds. And they were the old hundred-dollar-bills, not the new ugly ones.

  Thinking of her first job in the teller’s cage, Michelle tried to estimate what she was holding in her hands, but then the dizziness came back and she had to put the money down, get up, and almost stagger to her daughter’s bed. She pushed Jenna’s clothes to the floor in piles and laid down, drawing her knees up close to her chest. Slowly the dizziness passed, but the fear took its place. Not fear—terror. She’d seen four packages in the floor, and she estimated there were at least five or six hundred bills in the first one. Over half a million dollars wrapped in newspaper under floorboards and carpet, hidden in her eleven-year-old daughter’s closet beneath pairs of old Doc Martens and new platform shoes?