Say You're Sorry Page 14

Once inside her house, Diana fell on all fours to the faded red-and-blue Kirman in the foyer, one of the ever-so-tasteful treasures Richard had left behind. She writhed. She howled like a dog. She tore at her hair, her clothes. She cursed Rob’s name. She cursed Amber.

  And then Amber’s words cut through the din and the frenzy: pitiful, secret boyfriend, played into his plan, the job, dump her.

  Amber, the golden girl. Amber, one of her favorites. Amber, whom she’d taken to her heart. Amber, the fresh young bitch.

  Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful, the chorus resounded.

  They’d made a fool of her. A tidal wave of shame washed her from top to bottom.

  Eventually, after what seemed a year, a decade, an eternity of agony, Diana made it to the sideboard and sloshed three fingers of bourbon into a glass. As she tossed it back, her stomach lurched once, then settled, and the amber fire felt good.

  Excellent, in fact. The burn in her belly would help her focus.

  Not as if there were that much to decide, really. Not many options.

  First, of course, she’d “compromise.” She’d withdraw her support for Rob’s candidacy and cast her vote for the young blond feminist.

  That would be just desserts for Gloria and take care of the job question.

  Not that it would be even a step toward addressing the hatred that had begun to bubble in her belly for Rob. Oh, Rob. Rob, Rob, Rob. A bubble that would eventually fill her to bursting, she was certain of it. Just like the hatred she’d felt for Richard. The hatred that had had her dreaming of fire, rat poison, knives, guns. The hatred that still lingered even now, long after AIDS had devoured him. And the need to get even. There was no way such humiliation could go unpunished. Revenge would be hers.

  But first things first. No position for Rob. No reward for Gloria.

  Though, wait. Not too hasty. What might Gloria serve up in return? Thwarted Gloria, who no more wanted the blond hottie hired than she wanted a third arm, the young woman just a tool in her scheme? Diana had long been witness to Gloria’s wrath. Gloria would not take being crossed lightly.

  No. She couldn’t risk it. She needed to think.

  Just then Diana’s phone began to ring. Let it. She sloshed more bourbon into her glass. Let it ring, ring, ring off the hook. There was no one on God’s green earth she wanted to talk to. No one. She couldn’t even imagine forming words.

  Once again Diana doubled over with pain. Hot tears cascaded down her face like boiling rain. She felt as if someone had ripped her skin off in one piece, discarded everything inside but for her hatred, then left the husk. She was a semblance of a human being. But only a facsimile. She would never be whole again. Never.

  Then a deep voice boomed through her answering machine. “Hey, darling, it’s Fred.” Her neighbor, a lawyer, and the head of the block association.

  “Just wanted to remind you you need to be hypervigilant until the cops catch this burglarizing s.o.b. Not that there won’t be another one right behind him. Marcia Pennington said she thought she heard somebody snooping around her back porch this afternoon. Lock up and batten down, hon.”

  *

  Diana froze, staring in the direction of Fred’s voice, her glass halfway to her lips. Now she remembered what Rob had said earlier. Now she recalled the game he’d proposed.

  *

  Two hours later, a little after ten, Diana’s living room. Fred, in striped pajama bottoms and a faded Tulane T-shirt, stood with a strong arm around Diana. The red-and-blue flashers atop the small fleet of NOPD cruisers outside lit up the room, lending it an eerie carnival air.

  “Like I said, I called her and reminded her to be extra vigilant,” Fred rumbled to the officer in charge, Officer Jackson, a mountainous black man whose powder-blue uniform shirt was damp with the rain still pouring outside.

  “Absolutely.” Jackson nodded. “Way things been in this neighborhood recently, you can’t be too careful.”

  “But I wasn’t careful!” Diana cried, her face smudged with tears. “If only I’d checked the outside door to the sun porch, he’d never have gotten that far. It’s my fault. I’ll never forgive myself,” Diana wailed, shaking her head. “Never.”

  Behind them, back through the dining room, was the sun porch in question. Rob’s body lay half-in, half-out of the French doors between it and the dining room, his blood pooling on the hardwood in a dark red lake.

  Fred hugged her tighter. “Now, darlin’, you know it wasn’t your fault. How were you to know that boy would come round so late to talk? Stupid ass, like that was the way to get a job? Busting onto your sun porch ’cuz your front doorbell’s broke?”

  “But I should have recognized him,” Diana moaned, running a hand through her hair, clutching at her black silk dressing gown. “Like I said, he’d mentioned something at school today about dropping by, and I’d said, no, that wasn’t a good idea. It wasn’t appropriate.…”

  “Ma’am, it was dark. It was raining. Way he was dressed? Break-ins all over the neighborhood. It’s a shame, but what’re you gonna do?” Officer Jackson shook his massive head slowly, looking for all the world like a giant mournful Rottweiler. “I say, despite the mistaken ID, it’s a good thing you had that gun.”

  He cast an envious eye on Diana’s 12-gauge Italian-made Verona lying on the loveseat in the living room where she’d tossed it before calling 911. Over four thousand dollars’ worth of high-tensile steel and Turkish walnut, the shotgun had been a gift from her dad after she’d won a statewide women’s skeet competition.

  “And,” the officer went on, “what kind of fool goes around in the middle of the night tapping on folks’ doors, all in black, stocking cap pulled down so you can barely see his face? I’d a thought he was a burglar myself. Yep, burglar for sure.”

  *

  Rob had let himself in, as he did every time they’d played burglar. He’d come through the unlocked outside door of the sun porch, then stood jiggling the locked interior French doors.

  Diana had entered from the kitchen, the black silk dressing gown he loved half-open. She was naked underneath.

  The way the game went, he’d jiggle the door harder. She’d shrink, then shriek, “Oh no! Please go away!”

  Her gown would fall open. He’d bang the door, bang it again, and just before he looked to be about to dash a pane of glass, reach in, and unlock the deadbolt from inside, she’d open it. He’d race through and grab her up, her robe falling to the hardwood. Sometimes they’d make it up the stairs. Sometimes they wouldn’t. This time, he’d jiggled the door hard. And harder yet. But Diana didn’t open the door.

  “You bastard!” she screamed, reaching for the shotgun she’d propped against the china cabinet. She threw its beautiful steely length to her right shoulder. Such a sweet fit.

  Rob’s eyes grew wide. What? Then he’d laughed. A new wrinkle in their game. A twist.

  “Oh, baby,” he crooned. “You got a gun? I got a gun, too.” He winked. “Got a red-hot pistol for you, darling.” His face was pressed against the glass.

  *

  Louisiana is a right-to-bear-arms state, but there might be some gray area here, legally speaking, considering that Rob wasn’t actually all the way inside the house.

  Shoot ’em. Then drag ’em through the window. Every schoolchild knew that.

  She obviously couldn’t let him in from the sun porch, however. Why would she open her door to a burglar?

  Luckily, she’d had plenty of time to make a plan, weigh the options, after Fred’s call. Before Rob’s first footstep on the porch.

  A woman alone in a house. A college professor. Department chair. Sheriff’s daughter! Recent home invasions in the neighborhood. A rainy night. A man in black.

  This was, after all, Louisiana, where a jury had taken only three hours to acquit a Baton Rouge homeowner of shooting and killing a Japanese student whose crime had been ringing his bell. The kid had been dazzling in his all-white Saturday Night Fever suit before it blossomed blood-red, he and his friend mistaking
the house for one down the street where a Halloween party was being held.

  *

  Diana wanted Rob as close as possible.

  You didn’t have to be a crack shot; any fool could hit someone with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, and many heedless fools did. The pellets covered a fairly wide pattern from a distance.

  But if you wanted to kill someone, you stepped closer, closer, closer still. Then the pellets would rip a huge hole.

  That was what Diana wanted, tit for tat, to tear her lover to pieces.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” Rob had urged her closer with an upturned hand, fingers wiggling, a tough-guy gesture. In character. Playing a role.

  She’d racked the shotgun, loving that sound. Loving the well-oiled smell of it. Loving to shoot.

  She’d pulled the trigger, racked again, firing twice through the French doors. The first blast had ripped Rob’s heart loose and flung it against his chest wall. The second took out his guts.

  *

  Fred stayed until everyone was gone. “Just a formality,” Officer Jackson had assured them of the crime-scene crew. “Want to follow procedure here. Dot all our i’s and cross all our t’s. I’m sure you appreciate that, being a lawman’s daughter. No question but this has every appearance of a home invasion.”

  After the EMS vehicle carried Rob’s body away and the last cruiser departed, Fred urged Diana to come home with him, to spend the night with his family.

  “No. No, thanks, Fred,” she assured him. “You’ve been a brick. I couldn’t ask for a better friend. But really, I’ll be okay.”

  And she would be, Diana thought later, lying in the stillness of her bedroom, the lilac-papered boudoir where she and Rob had shared so many delicious romps.

  She had her prestigious job. Her ever-so-terrific house. A raft of good friends. And she lived in the Big Easy.

  Then, over the rain on the rooftop, she could hear Rob crooning Brother Ray’s words just as surely as if his head were on the pillow next to hers.

  Well it don’t make no difference if you’re young or old…

  no matter whether, rainy weather…

  you got to get yourself together…

  and let the good times roll….

  With that, Diana’s heart convulsed once more with loss. Dear God, she’d miss him so. Rob, the last of her lovers, she was sure of it. She could never, ever again expose herself to such grief.

  Her final scream of anguish ripped through the sweet-scented room, and then quiet blanketed it once more. After that, there was nothing, nothing but her own breathing and the falling rain.

  Just before tipping over into darkness, Diana thought, First thing. First thing, bright and early, she’d call Gloria and tell her about the awful accident.

  Gloria would understand. Gloria would get it. And Gloria would keep her mouth shut, or…

  And Amber?

  Well, she was young, with the recklessness of a true beauty. What was one boyfriend, more or less, to such a girl? Besides, Amber was smart and clever enough to protect herself.

  And Chloe? Chloe had already tasted the fruit of revenge and found it sweet.

  With that, Diana turned over and dove headlong into the blissful sleep of the avenged.

  She dreamed it rained so hard and rained so long that the pumping stations failed. The water rose and rose until all the streets flooded. She saw herself floating in her darling little Mercedes roadster, its top down, past Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, then hanging a right into the middle of St. Charles. She was waving like a homecoming queen, smiling and waving and flirting to beat the band, floating, floating, floating down the neutral ground.

  You Run

  San Clemente, California, June 1976

  Thirty years since Richard Milhous Nixon’s first campaign for Congress, bankrolled by Pat Nixon’s selling her interest in her family farm.

  Twenty-four years since the 1952 presidential election when Richard Nixon’s campaign funding was called into question and Pat sat by her husband’s side as he made his “Checkers” speech, telling the nation about their dog, Pat’s “Republican” cloth coat, and laying out the details of every cent they owned and owed.

  Sixteen years since Nixon lost his presidential bid to John F. Kennedy by two-tenths of one percent of the popular vote and promised Pat that he would never again run for public office.

  Fourteen years since Nixon’s defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election.

  Eight years since Nixon’s decision, made without consulting his wife, to run for president once again.

  Four years since the break-ins at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.

  Almost two years since Richard Milhous Nixon, the only president ever drummed out of office, retreated with Thelma Catherine “Pat” Ryan Nixon to San Clemente and their vacation house, La Casa Pacifica.

  Two months since the publication of Bernstein and Woodward’s The Final Days, a minute-by-minute account of the death throes of the Nixon presidency.

  One month before Pat Nixon would suffer her first debilitating stroke.

  Perched above the sea, the long white-stuccoed house with the red tile roof was within earshot of Camp Pendleton, and sometimes, at night, if you listened hard, even over the waves, you could hear shelling and rifle fire from the ghosts of young Marines, killed in Vietnam, who’d trained there.

  The house was light and bright inside, but eerily still. As the visitor entered, it struck him that La Casa Pacifica felt as if no one had ever laughed within its walls.

  Pat Nixon, wearing a white blouse, a lightweight navy cardigan, navy trousers, and a smile, received her guest in a sitting room on the north side of the house. From there they could see her gardens: eucalyptus and beach palms, gardenias, purple gazanias, and pink and white geraniums. A man in grubby workclothes bent over an azalea border.

  Mrs. Nixon and her visitor settled in chairs cater-cornered from one another. It was the cocktail hour, five p.m. Manolo Sanchez, who’d been with the Nixons for years, brought in a silver tray holding decanters of bourbon and scotch, glasses, and ice. “I work with the gardeners,” Pat Nixon said, sipping her drink. “Sometimes I’m out there six, seven hours a day. Gardening has almost kept me sane.” She laughed a small laugh. “The first year I went through four pairs of canvas gloves. All that ground cover there,” she gestured, “that’s where the rose garden used to be.”

  The visitor blinked, remembering that Pat Nixon, for all her love of gardening, hadn’t spent much time in the Rose Garden at the White House. Those grounds had not been a pleasant place what with the war protesters raging just outside the fence, surveillance helicopters whirring above their heads. He could still hear the chanting: One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fuckin’ war.

  “How’s the president?” he asked.

  “He’s…” Pat Nixon paused, then began again. “He’s fine. He’s working on his memoirs, you know. Trying to sort it all out.” She stopped once more and stared out the window for a bit. Then she brightened. “His health’s much better. It was good to hear from you during the phlebitis, the surgery—”

  “Yes, well,” the visitor murmured.

  “We heard from thousands of people, you know. Ordinary people.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad. People cared, you know.”

  Pat Nixon shook her head as if she hadn’t heard him. “Dick’s illness came so quickly on the heels of our leaving Washington, that the jackals jumped on that too. They said he wasn’t really ill, that he was faking so he wouldn’t have to appear at the trial. Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell. He almost died, you know. A year and a half ago, and he’s only now really recuperated.”

  “Difficult times,” the visitor said. “But I’m glad to hear he’s well.”

  Pat smoothed the fabric of her trousers. “He is not well. He will never be well. They will never let him be well. They will never let him be.”

  The visitor nodded. What Pat Nixon said was true. R
ichard Nixon had always been a lightning rod for hatred. (Or was it his self-hatred that attracted even more ill will?) A wag he had once read said that while JFK represented America’s dreams, its aspirations, who Everyman wanted to be, Nixon represented what the average American was: sweaty, ill-at-ease, plagued by paranoia and self-doubt.

  Pat Nixon said, “Judge Sirica sent a team of three doctors from Washington to examine him, to make sure he was too ill to testify.”

  “I remember. That was inexcusable.”

  From somewhere down a far hall, a dock sounded the quarter hour. When its tolling was done, silence crept through the house once more like a cold fog.

  Silence was the thing that had struck him most about the Nixons over the years. He’d flown with them several times in the helicopter up to Camp David and watched them sit side-by-side the entire trip without saying a single word. No one else had dared to speak: the doctor, the Secret Service guys, the military aide. They’d been very awkward journeys.

  It had been like that in the White House too. The Nixons had led almost completely separate lives. The president rarely ate dinner with his wife. He didn’t consult her about matters that should have fallen into her purview—menus, entertainment for state affairs—and certainly not policy matters.

  The visitor had asked her once, “Does the president try out speeches on you?” Pat Nixon had answered, “He never tries anything out on me.”

  It was ironic, he thought. For while Nixon was a whiz at speaking extemporaneously, he looked so miserable and so phony, that no matter how well informed he was, his public appearances were always a disaster. Whereas Pat, who detested public speaking, was fabulous at it. She conveyed warmth and sincerity, the generosity of spirit that was truly hers, without turning a hair. When she went to South America on her own, after the Lima quake, they’d loved her. Just as they’d applauded her in Africa, as a person, as an ambassador of her country’s and her own goodwill.

  Perhaps, he thought, there was the crux of it. Pat Nixon loved people, loved helping people, but she hated politics, politicians, and the whole political process. Whereas, while Nixon was interested in people, fascinated by them, in fact, his interest was cool and detached, as if he were a Martian, studying humans. Socially inept and horrible at small talk, he adored the political arena.