The neat, nearly identical houses on Keniston Avenue looked to her like toy houses or a movie set. She was very frightened when she rang Bradley’s doorbell, but she couldn’t think of any other way to show him he was wrong. Paradoxically, she needed to enlist his wife’s help. When Isabelle learned that Bradley was in love with someone else, namely Marion, whose face had been imprinted on his brain at birth, she’d understand the folly of her marriage. Imagining Bradley divorced was more pleasurable and less strenuous to Marion than wondering why she hadn’t had her monthly period. She hoped it was only because she was malnourished and emotionally stressed—she’d heard of such things—because her chances with Bradley depended on her being his liberation. A baby would make him feel trapped and disgusted, and she could never play the German ambassador’s daughter if she was fat with one.
To her great surprise, a blond boy of seven or eight opened the front door. In her thousand imaginings of the scene, no one but Isabelle had ever come to the door.
The boy stared at her. She stared at him. The moment seemed to last about an hour.
“Mom,” the boy shouted over his shoulder. “There’s a lady here.”
He went away, and Isabelle Grant appeared with a dish towel in her hands. She was thick in the middle, not as tall as Marion had pictured her. Like Isabelle Washburn, she seemed more pitiable than murderable. This, too, was unexpected. “Can I help you?” she said.
In Marion’s face the chameleoning reds, not the least bit funny to her now.
“Miss?” Isabelle said. “Are you all right?”
“Your, uh, your husband,” Marion said.
“Yes?”
“Your husband doesn’t love you anymore.”
Now alarm, suspicion, anger. “Who are you?”
“It’s very unfortunate. But you bore him.”
“Who are you?”
“I … well. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“No. You must have the wrong house.”
“You’re not Isabelle Grant?”
“Yes, but I don’t know you.”
“Bradley knows me. You can ask him. I’m the person he’s in love with.”
The door slammed shut. Feeling that she hadn’t made herself sufficiently clear, Marion rang the doorbell again. From inside she heard children’s pounding footsteps. The door sprang open. “Whoever you are,” Isabelle said, “please go away.”
“I’m sorry,” Marion said, with real remorse. “I shouldn’t have tried to hurt you. But what’s done is done. You just don’t satisfy him. Maybe, in the long run, it’ll be better for you, too.”
This time, the door didn’t slam, it just clicked shut. She heard the deadbolt turning. After some unaccounted-for minutes, she found herself still standing on the welcome mat. It was all so disappointing. For days, she’d imagined that speaking to Bradley’s wife would entirely remake the world; that her mental pain, which had been growing steadily since he sent his dreadful letter to her, would cease in an instant and she would be in a world where decisions were easy. But the pain was still there. It now took the form of not knowing what to do next. She would have liked to simply stay standing on the welcome mat, but she was sane enough to recognize the badness of going to Bradley’s house—all she’d accomplished was to cause Isabelle pain without relieving her own. She turned and walked back to the sidewalk. Coming to a small park, she saw a box hedge behind which she could discreetly lie down. She rested her cheek on a tussock of grass between bare clods of earth. Although there was dog poop close enough to be smelled, she lay there until darkness fell.
When she got back to her building, Bradley’s LaSalle was parked in front of it. He could have let himself into her apartment, but he was sitting at the wheel. He jerked his head to indicate that she should get in with him. She was frightened, but she did it. She cowered against the passenger door, trying to make herself smaller.
“What do you want?” he said angrily.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, seriously. What do you want? Tell me what the hell you think you want.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late for sorry. I’ve got an unholy mess on my hands now. I swear to God, Marion, if you go anywhere near my wife again, I’m calling the police.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The same goes for Lerner. We’ll call the police, and you know what they’ll do? They’ll put you in a hospital. You’re not right in the head. It kills me to say it, but you’re not.”