CHAPTER ONE

Downstairs, the long-case clock in the hallway struck three. One, pause, two, pause, three, as if it were dolefully counting out how many lives would be lost before it struck again.

Jerry finished slapping paste onto the second-to-last roll of cornflower-patterned wallpaper and began to climb up the stepladder with it double folded over his arm. Three more lengths and the nursery would almost be ready for baby—just as soon as baby was ready for the nursery, anyhow.

He had been decorating the nursery for over a week and he had transformed it from the poky, neglected little box room it had been when they first moved in. Now the paintwork shone glossy and white, the pine door had been stripped and waxed and the doorknob polished. Once he had finished pasting up the wallpaper, there would be nothing more to do than hang the matching flowery drapes, lay the pale blue carpet, and move in the crib and the chest of drawers.

Jerry had never felt so buoyant in his life. Less than four months ago he had been promoted to full partner at Shockoe Realty, with a $17,500 hike in salary. At last he and Alison had been able to move out of their single-bedroom apartment on the second floor of Alison’s parents’ house south of the river and buy this tall, narrow Victorian house in the historic Church Hill district—a rare fixer-upper that hadn’t come on the market for over forty-five years. Admittedly, “fixer-upper” was an understatement, because the elderly couple who had lived here since 1959 had let the rain soak into the left-hand side of the eaves since the closing days of the Nixon administration, and they hadn’t changed the kitchen fittings since Buddy Holly died. But Jerry was a home-improvement buff who was in his element when he was sawing and painting and wiring and putting up shelves. Alison complained that he suffered from “fixamatosis.”

He was a well-built young man of thirty-one, with cropped blond hair, a snub nose, and a cheery, obliging face—almost a natural-born Realtor. Apart from decorating he enjoyed football and hockey and white-water rafting on the James River rapids, and barbecues. He had a taste for khaki Dockers and red-checkered seersucker shirts.

As he climbed the stepladder he was singing to himself “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?” It was Alison’s favorite song. He had fallen for her the moment he first saw her that summer lunchtime three and a half years ago sitting alone on a bench by the Kanawha Canal, eating a ciabatta salad sandwich and reading a book. He thought she looked so darn fresh. She had bouncy blond hair and wide blue Doris Day eyes and she wore sleeveless blouses with turned-up collars and tight blue jeans so that she looked like the next-door sweetheart from a 1960s sitcom.

She wasn’t dumb, though. The book she had been reading by the canal was Ulysses, by James Joyce. Jerry had sat down next to her and bent his head sideways so that he could read the spine. “Hey, Ulysses. I saw the movie of that, with Kirk Douglas.” She had laughed; and they had started talking; and she had never found out that he hadn’t been joking. He had found the book early last year and opened it, and read the words “History,” Stephen said, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” and shook his head in a silent admission of bewilderment.

Alison called up the stairs, “Jerry, sweetheart, your chicken sandwich is ready. Do you want a beer with it?”

“Sure. Give me a minute, could you? I’m just—”

Balancing on top of the stepladder, he positioned the paper against the wall and butted the edge to the previous piece. He creased the top against the ceiling with the handle of his craft knife and started to cut it.

As he did so, blood welled out from under his left hand and started to slide down the wall. “Shit,” he said. The cut didn’t hurt but he didn’t want to mess up the paper. He gripped the knife in his teeth and reached around for the damp cloth that was hanging from the back pocket of his jeans.

When he lifted his hand away from the wall to wipe it, he saw that he had somehow cut himself vertically all the way down from his wrist to his elbow—and cut himself deep. There was a bloody handprint on the paper, and now blood was starting to run down his arm and drip quickly from his elbow. Instead of trying to wipe the mess off the wall, he wound the cloth tightly around his arm and shouted out, “Alison! Alison!”

There was a pause, then: “What’s wrong? Do you need any help with the wallpaper?”

“I’ve cut myself, can you bring me up a towel or something?”

He eased himself down the stepladder, holding his arm upright to relieve the pumping of his circulation. All the same the cloth was already soaked a dark crimson and drops of blood were pattering across the bare-boarded floor. The piece of wallpaper slid drunkenly sideways and then dropped down by his feet.

“Alison!”

“I’m coming!” she puffed. She reached the top of the stairs and crossed the landing, holding a checkered tea towel and a packet of Band-Aids. “My God,” she said, when she saw the reddened cloth and the blood spattered all over the floor. “My God, Jerry, how did you do that?”

“I don’t know … I was just trimming the top edge. I didn’t even feel anything.”

“My God, let me look at it.”

She took hold of his hand and unwound the cloth. The cut in his arm was far more than an accidental nick—it was the kind of cut that a determined suicide would make, and blood was welling out of it relentlessly. Alison dabbed at it, but it was bleeding faster and faster, and in less than a minute her tea towel was drenched red, too. She took off her apron and bundled it into a pad.

“My belt,” Jerry said, unfastening his buckle. “Tie it tight around here.” He was already beginning to gulp with shock. “That’s it, really tight.”

Alison pulled out his brown leather belt and lashed it around his arm just below his bicep. She pulled it so tight that it squeaked. “Come downstairs, quick,” she said. “I’ll call 911.”

She helped him to the door and down the two flights of stairs. He leaned against the wall as he went, leaving a bloody smear on the primrose-colored paint. When he reached the last three stairs he stumbled and staggered forward, and Alison had to pull at his shirt to stop him from falling over.

“Here,” she said, as they went through to the kitchen. “Sit down. Keep your arm up high and I’ll call the paramedics.”

Jerry kept swallowing and swallowing as if he were thirsty. The bundled-up apron was already soaked, and blood poured onto the kitchen table, running along the grain of the freshly stripped pine.

Alison picked up the phone. “Yes, ambulance, please. It’s really urgent. My husband’s cut his arm and he’s bleeding so bad.”

There was a blurting noise on the phone, and then the operator said, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

“It’s my husband! There’s blood everywhere!”

“There seems to be a fault on the line, please say that again.”

“For God’s sake! My name is Alison Maitland, 4140 Davis Street, Church Hill! It’s my husband!”

Jerry was sitting with his arm still raised, but his eyes were closed. Alison said, “Jerry! Jerry! Are you okay?”

His eyes flickered open and he nodded. “Feeling woozy, that’s all.”

“Please tell them to get here quick,” Alison begged the operator. “I think he’s going to pass out.”

“Ma’am, can you repeat that address, please? I can hardly hear you.”

“Forty-one forty Davis Street! You have to help me! There’s so much blood! I’ve tied his belt around his arm, but he’s cut himself all the way down from his wrist to his elbow. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? There’s so much blood!”

Jerry suddenly slumped forward, so that his forehead was pressed against the bloody tabletop. Alison dropped the phone and went over to lift him up again. “Jerry, you have to stay awake! I’ve called for the paramedics, they won’t be long!”

Jerry stared at her with unfocused eyes. “I feel cold, Alison. Why am I feeling so goddamned cold?”

She bent over him and put her arms around him. “It’s the shock, sweetheart. You have to hold on.”

“What?”

“Think of our baby. Think of Jemima. Think of all the good times we’re going to have together.”

“Good times,” he repeated, numbly, as if he couldn’t understand what she meant.

She heard a tiny, diminished voice. It was coming from the phone that was dangling from the wall. “Hello? Hello? Are you still there, ma’am? Hello?”

She went over and scooped up the phone. “My husband looks just awful. He’s shivering and he’s very pale. How much longer is that ambulance going to take?”

“Hello? I’m sorry, you’ll have to repeat that.”

“My husband’s dying! How much longer are you going to be?”

“Do you have another phone there? Maybe a cell phone?”

“Listen!” Alison screamed. “I just need to know when the paramedics are going to get here!”

“Only about a minute now. Hold on.”

Alison turned back to Jerry. She was shaking so much that she could hardly speak. “They’re almost here now, sweetheart. Hang on in there.”

She opened the kitchen closet and pulled out five or six clean tea towels, dropping even more of them onto the floor. As she bent to pick them up, she heard Jerry say, “Ah!” as if something had surprised him. She turned around, and to her horror saw that he had a deep horizontal cut on his face, starting from a quarter of an inch beneath his left eye, across his cheek, and into his ear, so that his earlobe was dangling from a single shred of skin.

Blood was streaming down his chin and spattering his shirt-collar.

“Jerry! Oh my God, what’s happened?”

He was so stunned that all he could do was shake his head from side to side, so that droplets of blood flew across the tabletop.

Alison folded up one of the tea towels and held it to his face. “The knife, Jerry … where’s the knife? What have you done to yourself?”

She pried open his left hand, sticky with blood, but it was empty, and he wasn’t holding anything in his right hand, either. She looked on the floor, but there was no sign of his knife anywhere. How could he have cut himself, without a knife? She lifted the tea towel away from his face for a moment and she could see that the cut under his eye was so deep that it had exposed the yellow fat of his cheek and his cheekbone.

“Oh, sweetheart, what have you done?” she sobbed. There was so much blood in the kitchen that it looked as if they had been having a paint fight. But now she could hear the yip-yip-yipping of the ambulance siren, only two or three blocks away.

“Hear that, Jerry? It’s the paramedics. Hold on, sweetheart, please hold on.”

Jerry rolled his eyes up and stared at her. He was shivering, and he had the numb, desperate expression of somebody who knows that they are not very far from death.

“Jerry, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. The ambulance is right outside.”

Jerry had never felt so cold in his life—a dead, terrible, all-pervasive cold that was creeping into his mind and into his body and gradually freezing his soul. A few minutes ago the kitchen had been dazzling with afternoon sunlight, but now it seemed to be dimming, and all the colors were fading to gray.

“It’s getting so dark,” he said, and his voice was thick with shock.

The door chimes rang. Alison said, “Hold on, sweetheart. The paramedics are here.” She stood up and started to walk toward the hallway. Jerry thought, Please, God, let me survive. I have to survive, for Alison’s sake, for the baby’s sake. They already knew that she was going to be a girl, and they’d already chosen the name Jemima.

Alison reached the hallway, but as she did so she unexpectedly stopped. Jerry stared at her, willing her to move, willing her to answer the door, but she didn’t. She stayed where she was, in the colorless gloom; and she was swaying, like a woman who has suddenly remembered something dreadful.

“Alison?” he croaked. “Alison?”

She tilted—and then, in a succession of impossibly choreographed movements, like a mad ballet dancer, arms waving, knees collapsing, she began to fall to the floor. As she did so, she pirouetted on one heel, so that she turned back to face him. Her eyes were staring at him in amazement.

For a moment Jerry couldn’t understand what had happened to her. But then her head dropped back as if it were attached to her body on nothing but a hinge. Her throat had been cut so deeply that she had almost been beheaded, and blood suddenly jumped up from her carotid artery and sprayed against the ceiling.

A minute later, when the paramedics kicked the front door open, they found Alison lying on her back in a treacle-colored pool of blood, and Jerry crouched down next to her, whimpering and whispering and trying with sticky hands to fit her head back onto her neck.