The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [55]
Robert, Kathryn noticed, was studying her intently.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m worried, Robert. Really worried. Mattie’s brittle. She’s fragile. She doesn’t eat. Sometimes she breaks into hysterical laughter. She doesn’t seem to have the appropriate reaction to anything anymore. Although I’d like to know what is appropriate. I told Mattie that life doesn’t just dis-integrate, that we can’t break all the rules, and Mattie said, quite rightly, that all the rules had already been broken.”
He crossed his legs the way men do, an ankle resting on a knee.
“How was Christmas?” he asked.
“Sad,” she said. “Pathetic. Every minute was pathetic. The worst was how hard Mattie was trying. As if she owed it to Julia and me. As if she owed it somehow to her father. I wish now we had canceled the whole thing. How was yours?”
“Sad,” he said. “Pathetic.”
Kathryn smiled.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked, looking around the room as though something in it might provide a clue.
“I’m trying to avoid having to clean the house. I’ve always used this room as a kind of retreat. I hide in here. What are you doing here? is a better question.”
“I have a few days off,” he said.
“And?”
He uncrossed his legs and put his hands in the pockets of his trousers.
“Jack didn’t spend his last night in the crew apartment,” he said.
In the room, the air went thick and heavy.
“Where was he?” Kathryn asked quietly.
How quickly a person could ask a question she didn’t want the answer to, Kathryn thought, and not for the first time. As though one part of the psyche dared the other to survive.
“We don’t know,” Robert said. “As you know, he was the only American on the crew. When the plane landed, Martin and Sullivan got in their cars and drove home. We do know that Jack went to the apartment, however briefly, because he made two phone calls, one to you and one to a restaurant for a reservation for that night. But according to the maid, no one slept there Monday night. Apparently, the Safety Board has known for some time. It will be on the news today. At noon.”
Kathryn lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t been home when Jack had called, and he’d left a message on the machine. Hi, hon, he’d said. I’m here. I’m going downstairs to get something to eat. Did you call Alfred? Talk to you soon.
“I didn’t want you to be taken by surprise,” he said. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Mattie . . . ,” she said.
“I’ve told Julia,” he said. He got up, crossed the room, and sat at the bottom of the daybed, at its edge, barely sitting at all. His shirt was a darkish cotton, possibly gray, although Kathryn wondered if it, too, could be called taupe.
Her mind felt pushed, compressed. If Jack hadn’t slept in the crew apartment, where had he been? She shut her eyes, not wanting to think about it. If anyone had asked her, she would have said that she was certain her husband had never been unfaithful. It wasn’t like Jack, she wanted to tell Robert. That wasn’t him at all.
“This will end,” Robert said.
“It wasn’t suicide.” She felt compelled to say this at least. She felt it absolutely.
He reached over and put his hand on hers. Instinctively, she started to pull her hand away, but he held on to it.
She didn’t want to ask, she didn’t, but she had to, and she could see that he was waiting for the question. She sat up slowly, withdrawing her hand, and this time Robert let it go.
“The reservation was for how many?” she asked as casually as she could.
“For two.”
She pressed her lips together. It didn’t mean anything necessarily, she thought. It could easily have been for Jack and a member of his crew, couldn’t it? She saw Robert’s gaze flicker to the window and back. Which member of the crew? she wondered.
“How did you keep in touch with Jack when he was away?” Robert asked.
“He called me,