If? Is Leenie beginning to believe her own lies?
“Now can we get back to workshopping?”
April 15
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE, Gerry files for an extension on his taxes, which depresses him. But at least he knows the date for once because his accountant has emailed him the forms he needs to fill out and file electronically.
Although Gerry has an accountant, he refuses to have a business manager, preferring to keep his own books and do as much tax prep as possible. Thiru has always twitted him about this, but long before the world at large knew about predators such as Madoff, Gerry had not wanted anyone to touch his money. After his first marriage, he never mingled money again. The marriage counselor that Sarah insisted on seeing when he asked for a divorce had proclaimed this “interesting” in a tone that suggested she disapproved. Gerry didn’t care.
But his finances are unusually complicated this year, with the sale of the New York apartment and the purchase of another one, and his mother’s estate still pending, although that shouldn’t affect his taxes.
His father’s estate still pending. His mother’s executor has said to look for official paperwork on that soon, but it hasn’t arrived.
He glances at his almost empty datebook. It has long been Gerry’s practice to jot down a few details about the day’s work—words written, ideas he should pursue in revision—but there has been nothing to jot down for weeks, months. Only Leenie’s work is moving forward. Maybe he could keep a record of her progress, note what he has accomplished as her teacher and editor.
April 30 has been circled in bright red, but there is no text to indicate why. A day so momentous that it required no entry, yet he has zero memory of what was supposed to happen then. It’s not a birthday or anniversary of note. And then he remembers—it’s the day he’s supposed to start preparing to walk again, transitioning first to a wheelchair and then to a walker. Within weeks, the walker next to his bed will finally be used as it was meant to be used, not as a combination of lance and shield. Did he really push Margot? Did he really kill her? He is in his seventh decade and he has never put his hands on a woman in anything but love and passion. Well, what happened with Margot was a kind of a passion, he supposes.
Leenie comes in with his lunch, a tuna salad sandwich on toast and some carrots. The food she prepares has improved and he now realizes that those terrible dinners she forced on him were part of his punishment, his gaslighting.
“It’s going to be strange,” he says, feeling that he’s being expansive, “when you’re not here any longer.”
“Where am I going?” she asks.
Not my concern, he thinks. “I just glanced at my calendar—I’m going to be learning how to use a wheelchair in a week. That’s why I do the exercises with the pulleys, so I’ll have the upper-body strength to get myself in and out of the chair.”
“There’s still a lot you won’t be able to do.”
“Of course, but eventually—I will be ready to be on my own. I think I’m going to sell this place and move back to New York.”
Leenie sits in the dining room chair that now is always at his bedside, ready for their “classes” together. “No,” she says.
“No?”
“I don’t have anywhere to go. Even with continuing payments from you—”
Wait, there are going to be continuing payments? He misses a few words in his panic over the idea of what he now realizes is this inevitable and infinite blackmail.
“—and I don’t want to live in New York anyway. We’ll never have this much space.”
We? WE?
“Leenie, how do you envision this ending?”
“Happily ever after.” She laughs at the expression on his face. “Just kidding. But, we are in this together. Remember how you had us read The Getaway at Goucher, then screened the film for us? We’re Doc and Carol, in a sense. But we can choose whether we’re the ones in the book, who are miserable together, or the ones in the film, who are sincerely on each other’s sides.”
There is too much to absorb in what Leenie has just said. All Gerry can do is focus on the least important aspect, that this thickbodied, plain woman has just cast herself as early 1970s Ali MacGraw. True, that makes him Steve McQueen, but—no, he is not Doc. He does not rob banks. He has killed no one.
Finally, in that moment, he realizes this to be true. He did not kill Margot. This woman did and left the body for him to discover, hoping he would blame himself.