ERICA ARRIVES BACK AT LAGUARDIA on Sunday evening, and she and Gloria get into a waiting car. She’s still feeling shaky, she can’t get the image of Joan Marcus on the ladies’ room floor out of her mind—the tongue hanging out, the rolled-up eyes, the livid throat wound, the smeared blood on the wall, the blood, the blood.
After dropping Gloria at her rental on Eighth Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street, the driver takes Erica up to Central Park West. As they approach her graceful prewar building, lights glowing in the windows, she allows herself a moment of sentiment: There’s no place like home.
And then she hears Susan’s bitter mocking laugh: Home? Ha! Home is where the crap is. Will it haunt her forever? Shouldn’t it stop, finally? After all, she bought her mother a townhouse outside Bangor in a spiffy new development, she pays the monthly fees, and her accountant sends Susan $2,500 a month. Yes, it’s all done out of guilt and shame and, yes, Erica resents the money. Why should she take care of a woman who never took care of her? Who left her to fend for herself all during her childhood, to scrounge meals, often subsisting on blocks of government cheese and food pantry peanut butter and Hamburger Helper without the hamburger? Who took her clothes shopping—to the Goodwill—once every two or three years? Who thought slapping your kid across the face—sometimes, most times, not for misbehavior, but because Susan was in a hungover raw-nerve state—was acceptable parenting?
Still, Erica (through her lawyer) dutifully sends the checks—her only stipulation being that Susan go to NA meetings. On some level she enjoys the monthly reminder to Susan that her daughter got out, she made something of her life, she’s not a pathetic loser. But still the sad, sick bond remains, like invisible shackles around her heart and soul, the bond forged in a thousand nights in that cramped, filthy, moldy, drafty double-wide. And with it comes the tiny, faint flickering hope that somehow things could get better, that the sliver of affection—love even, maybe—that Erica felt from and toward her mother a couple of times during her childhood could be rekindled, that redemption is possible. Because when you’re a mother and daughter, there is no escape.
Home, bitter home.
Erica walks into the apartment. The front hall is dark and the place is eerily silent. “Greg?”
There’s no answer. Erica tenses. She switches on the hall light and walks down into the living room, which is also dark. “Greg?”
Still things are silent—and then, “I’m in here, honey.”
Why didn’t he answer her first call? And take so long on her second? Erica walks down to the guest room, one corner of which Greg has turned into his home office. He’s sitting at his computer in the dark, his face looks ghostly bathed in the gray light from the screen. He makes no move to stand up and greet her.
Erica stands behind him, rubs his shoulders, leans down, and kisses him.
“I’m just finishing up this proposal,” he says, not turning to her kiss.
Erica takes a step back. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“I just want to get this nailed. We’re having horseradish-encrusted salmon for dinner.”
He cooked! “Yummy.”
“With asparagus and baby potatoes.”
“I’m starving.” They’ll sit down to a nice dinner and catch up, she wants to hear all about last night’s party and to fill him in on the Bellamys and on the murder. She wants to feel supported and engaged and . . . loved. She needs it right now.
He finally turns to her and takes her hand. “Are you okay? You had a pretty eventful little trip.” Before waiting for an answer, he turns back to his computer, saying, “Just give me ten minutes.”
“I’ll go unpack. Meet you in the kitchen.”
“If I’m not there, just take the containers out of the fridge and nuke ’em for a minute. Everything is from Whole Foods.”
Down in their bedroom, Erica fights to control her disappointment and hurt. She gathers her dirty clothes and then heads down to the washer/dryer closet. As she’s about to put her stuff in the washer, she notices a shirt in there. One of Greg’s. A cool black-and-white striped one, Marc Jacobs. He must have worn it to the party last night. Maybe it got a little stain on it and he zapped it with Shout and then stuck it in the machine. Erica lifts it out and holds it to her nose. The smell of bergamot is unmistakable.