Sudden Mischief

"Police have any leads on Brad," Susan said.

"Not that they are sharing with me."

"Were we going to share those onion rings?" Susan said.

"Of course," I said. "I was only picking out the fattening ones to save you."

"And so fast," Susan said.

"Just doing my job, little lady."

I got the right amount of tartar sauce on a clam and put it in my mouth.

"Brad always had to be a success," Susan said.

I chewed my clam.

"No, it's not quite that," Susan said.

She was staring out at the barely discernible tidal marshes, her profile lit by the lights from the clam shack.

"He always had to be perceived as a success," she said.

"You would have helped," I said.

"Or he thought I would," she said.

I ate another clam.

"Could he really have shot someone?" she said.

It seemed a rhetorical question to me. Even if it wasn't, I decided to treat it like one. I examined my clams and my tartar sauce to make sure I wasn't getting disproportionately ahead in one area or the other.

"You think?" she said.

"I don't know, Suze. I barely know him."

"Hell, I probably don't know him any better," Susan said.

She ate half a clam, no tartar sauce. She said she hated tartar sauce. She had always hated tartar sauce, and no amount of psychotherapy had ever succeeded in changing her.

"I was married to him a lifetime ago," Susan said. "One of the common problems I run into in the shrink business is the assumption that people are always what they were. That time and experience haven't changed them."

"It's the basis of reunions," I said.

"Reunions are normally a fund-raising device," Susan said, "contrived by the sponsoring institution to exploit that delusion."

"And it makes you mad as hell," I said.

"I suppose so," Susan said. "It stunts people's growth."

"Mind if I have another ring?" I said.

"Speaking of growth… No, go ahead. I won't be able to eat my share anyway."

"Could the Brad you were married to have shot somebody?"

"I always thought he was weak," Susan said. "He covered it. He was big, he played football. He became more Harvard than the Hasty Pudding Club-of which he was a member, by the way."

"Lucky duck," I said.

"But he didn't seem to have any real i

"Doesn't necessarily take courage," I said. "Weakness would do. Fear. Desperation."

"Yes," Susan said, "of course."

She smiled. I could tell she was smiling as much from the sound of her voice as I could from the look of her face in the rain-dimmed car. It didn't sound like a happy smile.

"Did he have a gun when you knew him?" I said.

"I don't think so, but it would have been a nice accessory for his self-esteem."

"Which was a little shaky," I said.

"Yes."

"Was he in the army?"

"No."

"Does the name Buffy mean anything to you?"

"I think she was my successor," Susan said.

"Carla Quagliozzi?"

"No. Brad's been married several times; I only knew the next woman. But you must understand that the Brad I knew needed to be with a woman. Since many women would find him initially attractive, but finally insufficient, I imagine there have been quite a few."

"His parents alive?"

"No."

"You mentioned a sister, went to Bryn Mawr."

"Yes, Nancy."

"Know where she is?"

"Bedford. She's married to a dentist."

"Know her married name."

"Ginsberg."

"I guess she's not trying to pass," I said.

Susan didn't comment. She ate a clam instead.

"Any other family," I said.

"He has children," Susan said, "from other marriages. I don't know anything about them."

We finished our supper. I got out and emptied the clam cartons and other debris into the trash barrel. The rain seemed a little harder now, and the wet smell of it mingled with the strong smell of the salt marsh. I stood for a minute and smelled it, and felt the rain, and looked at the swamp water, its obsidian surface dappled by the rain. Then I took a deep breath and got back in the car.

"Obviously none of my business," I said. "And obviously a sore spot, but if you knew what he was, why did you marry him?"

Susan didn't reply for a while. I could see her imposing control on herself. I knew her so well I could think along with her. Hard questions were part of what she did every day. If she could regularly ask them, she ought to be able to answer one or two. And even though the question was out of line, she had opened the door to all of this by inviting me in that evening when we sat in the Bristol Lounge listening to music and liking each other. She imposed patience upon herself and it showed in the tone of her answer.

"Of course I didn't know his failures when I married him," she said. "He seemed a great catch. Football player. Big man on campus. Money in the family. I learned of his shortcomings during our marriage and finally they were enough to cause our divorce."

"How about me?" I said.

"Excuse me?"

"What was there about me that made you love me, besides my reputation as a world-class lover?"

"I didn't know that about you," she said.

"But you soon learned, didn't you, my proud beauty."

"Oh my," she said.

"But besides that?"

"I've never thought about it," she said.

"Aren't you in the think-about-it business?" I said.

"About other people," she said softly.

I waited. This was risky. But the whole thing was risky. If I was going to help her get through this, I needed her to think about herself. She was smart as hell, and she was tough as hell, and if she thought about herself in this context for a while good things would emerge… Maybe. The rain came down hard on the roof of the car. A station wagon with fake wood sides pulled in beside us and a man and woman and three children piled out and scooted through the rain for Farnham's. Far out at the edge of the salt marsh I could see the ru

"You were, are, the most dangerous person I've ever known," she said.

"'That was it?"

"I don't know. That's what seems to bubble up when I think about you. I'd never met anyone like you. You were obviously a good man, and you were nice, and I found you attractive, but you were so dangerous," she said.

"So it wasn't just my open Irish punim."

"No."

"Did you know that when you, ah, consummated our relationship?"

"I knew it the second time around."

"After Russell," I said.

"No, after Dr. Hilliard."

"The San Francisco shrink."

"Yes. It was Russell's attraction too."