Intrusion: A Novel Read online

  There was no way out. She knew it and listened to her sister’s chatter about body wraps and massages with a slowly mounting dread.

  THREE

  Martha Kim, a tiny, immaculate Korean woman with clear skin and narrow bright eyes, had been appointed as Kat’s grief therapist through Scott’s insurance policy. Kat had never visited a therapist before and Martha was not at all what she expected. During their first session, she had simply indicated the box of tissues and allowed Kat to cry for twenty minutes before beginning a gentle questioning. She showed no emotion at all, no sympathy, no empathy; she was a practical woman. Now, she said, “Your sabbatical must be up. They gave you three months?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you thought about returning to work?”

  “Thought about it, yes.”

  “They are still paying you?”

  Kat balled up the tissue in her hand and looked at Martha. Was this really any of her business?

  “No. That ran out.”

  Martha nodded.

  “So when do you plan to return?”

  “I’m giving notice today,” Kat said.

  As the words fell from her mouth, surprising them both, she realized that she was never going to return to Waters & Chappell. She did not want to continue with work that had been fulfilling once but seemed totally meaningless now.

  “And what will you do?” Martha asked.

  “I don’t know. I have to think about it.”

  “How does Scott feel about this?”

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Kat said.

  Martha’s expression did not change in the slightest, but Kat was certain she saw disapproval in the small brown eyes.

  “Are you getting out of the house at all?”

  “To the library. Once, to the grave.”

  “Oh? And how was that?”

  Martha settled back in her chair. Kat began to speak, felt her throat tighten. She reached for the box of tissues automatically. How was that? How could she describe what it was like to see her son’s name on a piece of hard granite? Christopher James Hamilton, Good Night, Sweet Prince. It was impossible. She did not believe the clichés about his soul being in a better place; she knew only that his body, his long, clumsy, beautiful seventeen-year-old body, was there in the ground. She imagined his hands, the long fingers that played the piano so beautifully, there in the ground. But he was not there.

  “I didn’t feel him there,” she said to Martha.

  “No?”

  “I suppose if I were religious. If I believed in a God, maybe.”

  “You have no spiritual beliefs at all?”

  “No. None.”

  “Did you ever?”

  “I was brought up Catholic. Attended a convent school. I grew out of it, I think.” She stopped. “Not entirely. I suppose you never really grow out of it.”

  For how could she explain to Martha her prayer each night, as she looked at the picture of her son: God, if there is a God, take care of my Chris. Please. An irrational prayer to a God she no longer believed in.

  “You don’t feel his presence at the grave. Where do you feel closest to Christopher?” Martha asked unexpectedly. It was odd to hear his name on her lips. Usually she said your son.

  “In his room. Or by his piano. Or when I play his music.”

  “Music he loved?”

  “Yes. Or music he composed himself.”

  Martha raised an eyebrow. She was impressed by this.

  “He composed music?”

  “Yes.”

  The tears streamed down Kat’s face, but she realized that she was learning to talk through them, to ignore them.

  “And your physical health. You are sleeping better? And eating?”

  “Sleeping a bit. Eating too much.”

  Martha did not show the disapproval Kat had expected. Instead she said, “You feel hollow inside? And you think it’s hunger?”

  “Yes. Exactly. That gnawing, empty feeling. But food, well, of course it doesn’t help. But still, I eat anyway.”

  “And thoughts of suicide?”

  Martha regarded Kat steadily. Kat had been waiting for this question, knew that a certain box must be ticked in the forms submitted to Scott’s insurance company.

  “Occasionally,” Kat said.

  She looked at the therapist, frowning. She was not going to share with Martha the fact that she had hidden, at the back of her underwear drawer, one unopened bottle of prescription sleeping pills. A full bottle. Just in case.

  “It’s not that I want to die, Martha. I just don’t know whether I want to live.” Kat paused, thought about it. “No. It’s that I don’t know how to live. I’ve forgotten how.”

  Martha tapped her file.

  “I think we need a plan for you. Exercise certainly. Perhaps a better diet. Some physical changes might help you move forward.”

  Kat sensed impatience in the woman—enough of this, let’s have a plan—so she told the therapist of her sister’s idea for the Palm Springs visit. Martha was so approving of it that Kat, for one paranoiac moment, wondered if Maggie, Scott, and Martha had all actually conferred.

  As she left the parking lot outside Martha Kim’s office, Kat did not turn right, toward home in Porter Ranch at the northwestern tip of the San Fernando Valley, but instead began the drive to Forest Lawn without consciously deciding to do so. The conversation about the grave site had unsettled her. Surely, she should feel something? Kat wondered why she felt nothing but emptiness.

  The stone that marked Chris’s grave, still so shiny and new, gleamed in the sunlight. It was a shock to see his name written on it. It gave Kat a physical jolt. She wondered if years from now she would be used to it. A tall glass vase, containing purple and white tulips, had been placed at the edge of the grave. Kat stared at the flowers, seeing them precision-etched against the green of the grass: the dark ones, a rich ecclesiastical purple, a little decadent, a little corrupt. The white ones, more delicate, bowing their neat, supplicating heads. A shaft of sunlight cast their shadows on the stone. A card was attached to one of the stems.

  Kat hesitated a moment before, deeply curious, she crouched down to read the card. Shrugging away the feeling that it was wrong and intrusive—for surely a handwritten note, even in this public place, was a private communication meant only for her son?—Kat turned the card over.

  We miss you—Chloe, Vanessa, Ben, Matt, and Teddy

  Ben, Matt, and Teddy were Chris’s oldest friends; all three had been with him on the night of the accident, and Ben had sustained minor injuries. Vanessa was a good friend from high school. But Chloe? She couldn’t recall a Chloe. She thought back to the service, the girls in a huddle at the back. Was she one of those? Perhaps.

  “I miss you, too, Chris,” Kat murmured before she walked back to her car.

  At dinner that night, Kat confronted Scott.

  “You didn’t tell me you talked to Maggie about this Palm Springs spa thing,” she said.

  “Only once. For a minute. She’s worried about you.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to go before you agreed to it and made it seem like a great idea?”

  “Well, I thought it might be good because”—he paused, seemingly intent on slicing a cherry tomato into minute pieces—“there’s a Palm Springs client thing coming up. The opening of the new country club. So I thought it might work.”

  He looked over at her. Kat stared, horrified.

  “And we have to go?”

  “I do. The Rancho Mirage group—remember Ted Lafitte? He’s an old client.”

  “And you asked Maggie to arrange some spa thing?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “Of course not. Maggie asked if it would be a good idea to take you on a small vacation. And I remembered this Palm Springs opening. We’re not all in cahoots behind your back, you know, planning evil things to do to you. It’s not a stay in a salt mine. It’s a few days in a spa with your sister. And drinks at a country club with me. How bad can
that be?”

  He sipped his wine. His eyes, meeting hers, were worried. Kat smiled, finally.

  “Bad,” she said. “Very bad.”

  FOUR

  This is so nice, Kat. Well!”

  Maggie looked around with clear approval at the double room in the Palm Springs Desert Spa Hotel. Furnished in the inevitable creams, pinks, and soft greens of the desert style, it had two queen-size beds.

  “And look, a mountain view. How super! And a microwave, and a fridge. And golly, our own bar. What will you have, darling? How about a gin and tonic?”

  Kat rested the suitcase against the wall and sat on the bed. She felt out of breath.

  “Already? It’s only four in the afternoon.”

  “Not in England, it’s not. It’s midnight there. Come on.”

  Kat felt as if some dynamic force were dragging her in its wake. Maggie, two years younger, had once been her shy little sister—marrying young, giving birth to a son, Adam, when she was barely twenty. But as her husband’s company became successful and their social circle widened, Maggie became bolder. She wore her red hair long these days, and fashionable clothes with confidence.

  “Don’t you just love this?” she said to Kat. “A whole bucket of ice. They’re so civilized, these Americans.”

  Kat watched as Maggie poured two large drinks. She took one from her sister and sipped it. Then, Maggie flipped open her suitcase to pull out a silky black swimsuit.

  “We can go sit in the spa. The natural one. You did remember your suit?”

  Kat took another mouthful of her drink.

  “Yes,” she said.

  But when she tried on the swimsuit, it felt old and worn and tight. It pulled at the crotch, created deep ridges of flesh in her shoulders.

  “How long have you had that suit, Kat?” asked Maggie. “Since you were ten?”

  “Years and years. It does feel tight.”

  “Here. Try this one.”

  Maggie pulled another garment from her case and handed it to Kat. It was kingfisher-blue and made of a shimmering nylon, but it, too, was snug.

  “You’ve put on a little bit of weight, love,” Maggie said.

  Kat sat on the bed and found that the tears she had held back all morning were now sliding down her face.

  “So what?” she said. “So what if I have. What do you expect?”

  The words caught in her throat. Her sister was by her side at once, pulling her close with slim arms. Kat could smell her perfume, the shampoo in her hair.

  “Shush,” Maggie said. “Shush. It’s all right. It will be all right. Hang on, love.”

  “How’s it going to be all right?” Kat whispered. “How? Can you bring Chris back? Can you? Because that’s all I want. I just want him back.”

  Maggie rocked her gently. She wiped her own tears away with a trembling hand and waited out the crying bout, holding Kat until the shuddering ceased, then fumbling for a box of tissues. They took a bunch of tissues each, blowing noses, dabbing faces, taking long, deep breaths.

  “We’ll go to the spa later,” said Maggie. “Finish up your drink.”

  Kat was unable to reach Scott until late that night, and his voice on the phone, so tired and tentative, made her want to be home. Though the spa water was soothing after all—and the expensive dinner in a popular Palm Springs restaurant the first meal she had actually tasted in weeks—she wanted to be in her own house, in her own bed.

  “You sound tired,” she said to Scott. “Did you work late?”

  “Yep. Did some catching up. Couple of contracts had been hanging. They’re done now.”

  “You have dinner out?”

  “Got a meatball sub on the way home.”

  She smiled at this. “I miss you,” she said.

  “I miss you, too. The house is so quiet.”

  And, like a blast of cold air, came an understanding of how it must be there at home, with no son, no wife, no one.

  “Come sooner,” she said. “Come on Thursday. When is the opening?”

  “Friday night.”

  “Come on Thursday,” she said again. She sounded urgent.

  “I might. I might.”

  That night in bed, she missed him, the warm body next to hers, his awareness. The fact that she had only to move slightly, make a sound, and he would reach to take her hand. They would talk, on those long nights, in whispers.

  “You want to ask Why me? But really—why not me?” Scott said.

  “The real question is Why him? Because he was special in some way? Chosen?”

  “He was special all right,” Scott said. “Everyone thought so.”

  “Do you feel that, well, we could die now,” she had asked him on one of those nights. “That we’ve had our life?”

  “Yep. It’s odd how death isn’t such a big deal anymore.”

  “It’s still a big deal to me,” Kat said, thinking of the hidden pills, her own dark secret. She knew the strongest reason she hadn’t taken the pills yet was the further pain her suicide would cause Scott.

  “Of course it is,” Scott said quickly. “No. I mean my own death. Doesn’t scare me so much. If there’s anything to be learned from this, that’s the only thing. Chris led the way. If there are any mysteries out there, he knows them now.”

  Kat and Scott had not made love since the night before Chris’s accident. That night, after their son left to stay at the beach with friends, they had gone to bed early, relishing an empty house with no need to stifle their cries or be concerned about the vigorous creaking of their old bed. And they had made the kind of knowing love that long-married people make: lovemaking as warming as a summer sun, as nourishing and ordinary as rain. The last time. Kat couldn’t imagine it now. Could not imagine ever wanting again any kind of sexual joining. There would seem no point to it.

  In the Palm Springs hotel room, her sister snored softly. Kat stared at the window, watching the lights flicker on the shades from the traffic passing by. She was thirsty. She edged carefully out of bed and moved toward the bathroom, then Ouch—a hard stub; her toe had caught the suitcase or a chair.

  “Kat? Are you all right, love?” Maggie sat up in bed. “What’s the matter? You can’t sleep?”

  “I’m just thirsty. And I haven’t been sleeping much.”

  “Shall I make a cup of tea?”

  “Go back to sleep, Mags. I’ll get some water.”

  Kat poured a large glass of water, gulped it thirstily, and then returned to bed. Soon, Maggie’s soft snoring began again. Kat closed her eyes, imagined her son, tried to visualize him. His face would not come into focus. She remembered a line from a book Martha had given her: Think of him doing something, think of him active in some way, then you will see him. There! There he was at the piano. He turned to look over his shoulder at her. And he smiled.

  “Mom, listen! Listen to this.”

  She let the tears dry on her face. She did not want to move and wake her sister.

  Scott arrived early on Friday morning, hugging Kat hard as she stood, still wearing her dressing gown, in the doorway of the hotel room.

  “You look better,” he said. “Rested.”

  “She looks great,” said Maggie. “And look, she’s even got a little bit of a tan.”

  Kat smiled at her sister.

  “A little bit is right,” she said.

  But she did feel better, right up until the early evening when she pulled on the black dress for the country club cocktails. Scott was already dressed, sitting on the balcony sipping a scotch. Maggie, in the bathroom, added finishing touches to her makeup. Kat stared at herself in the full-length mirror. The dress felt uncomfortable. Her hair was dry and out of condition, and she had shadows under her eyes. She looked tired and she looked old. She was reminded of a quote from Paula, Isabel Allende’s memoir about the death of her daughter. Isabel wrote that she had studied a photograph of herself taken just a month earlier: A month ago, at this very hour, I was a different woman . . . a century younger than I am t
oday. I don’t know that woman; in four weeks, sorrow has transformed me.

  “I can’t go,” Kat said.

  Scott turned his chair around from the view of the mountains.

  “What?”

  “I can’t go. I just can’t. This dress looks awful. I look awful.”

  Maggie emerged from the bathroom immediately.

  “You look lovely, Kat,” Maggie said. “Let me play with your hair a little bit. Your dress is classic. It’s perfect. And here—” She tugged at the sapphire-and-diamond earrings in her own ears. “Wear these. Just what you need.”

  Kat bit at her lip. Maggie had stayed an extra day to accompany them to this function, and her sister was now dressed in midnight-blue silk and looked stunning. Maggie’s face, as she regarded her sister, showed clear concern.

  “Oh, damn,” said Kat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  She held the earrings in her palm.

  “I can’t wear these, Maggie. You should wear them.”

  “Of course you can, Kat. Please.”

  Kat thought that she should never have agreed to any of this; not to the spa, not to Palm Springs, not to the country club. She should never have asked Maggie to come with them to this opening. Scott and Maggie watched her warily, waiting.

  “How long do we have to stay?” she asked, aware that she was acting like a sullen and difficult child.

  Scott considered this.

  “Just long enough to say hello to Miyamoto and his wife and a couple of the partners. And to say hello to Ted Lafitte. He wants to introduce us to the head of a European consortium. Could be a big client. Miyamoto’s really excited about it. So maybe you could stay for that? Then, you and Maggie can come on back. Say an hour and a half?”

  “Okay. But that’s all.”

  “Let’s just put our best foot forward and see how it goes,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, Mags. Please,” Kat said.

  FIVE

  The private ballroom of the spa hotel, designed with Italian marble and crystal lights, had French doors running along one side that were open to a pool, softly lit and surrounded by rocks, palms, and cacti. Kat, nervous, paused at the entrance.