Read Online As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs - Free Book Online Page B

the notes he’d typed up, but he wasn’t near a computer.” My in-laws kept their gaze on me, though I sensed they were controlling themselves, aching to exchange a glance, maybe hoping I’d look away. Was I reading something into the situation? I didn’t know. Yet their silence also told me they’d vowed to each other to be gentle: Families could split apart under this kind of pressure, and the Gerstens weren’t that sort. I could hear Babs telling Clive on their drive out from the city, “I want this to be civilized. No recriminations. Even if we have to bite our tongues.” And Clive, hands gripping and pushing against the wheel as if to fuse it to the steering column, murmuring in a choked monotone, “Unless she’s making a complete hash of it and putting Jonah in peril. Then we cannot remain silent. Am I correct?” Clive came from a middle-class New York background, but when he did speak, his vocabulary was kind of grand, as if he had a screenwriter specializing in biblical epics writing his dialogue. He was so worshipful about his wife’s privileged background, I guess he kept wanting to sound like the man he thought she deserved. Now, though, he had nothing to say.
    Possibly what I was reading from their silence was my own tale, composed totally in my head, and they were simply waiting for me to talk again. “I got the feeling Coleman’s ‘not near a computer’ might be some kind of delaying tactic. So I asked him, ‘Could you do me a favor and just check that notepad you carry? Maybe you jotted it down.’ And he waited, like, a few seconds too long. It could have been that he was hoping I’d tell him not to bother if it was an inconvenience. But I kept quiet. So he gave me the name.”
    “Which was?” Clive asked. He loosened the knot on his tie, an orange Hermès with teeny giraffes all over. Its cheeriness was making me uncomfortable, and I wished he’d worn something in a gray basket weave.
    “Lieutenant Paston,” I told him. “Gary McCorkle Paston. From the Nineteenth Precinct detective squad.”
    Babs leaned forward. “Did you get a chance to call Lieutenant Paston?” she asked with the sweet neutrality of a social worker, which made it sound like she’d sprouted a second personality.
    “Yes, I did call him. He’d already gotten some details and the picture of Jonah I’d given to Detective Sergeant Coleman—I’m not sure whether he’s called Detective or Sergeant or both because he only gave me his card. I don’t think he said, ‘I’m so-and-so.’ Maybe he did. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.” I was starting to sound ditsy, and probably not only to myself. I inhaled one of those conscious diaphragmatic breaths they teach you in yoga to relax. I could have used a few more, but then my in-laws might think I was acting weird or even on drugs. “Anyway, Lieutenant Paston asked if I had any more pictures, so I scanned a couple and e-mailed them to him. He said he’d call Gilbert John and Layne, and whoever else police call. A few of Jonah’s other contacts. But he said the good news was that he’d checked: There weren’t any reports of people resembling Jonah who were, you know. Unidentified.”
    Even though the den was the warmest room in the house, all three of us seemed to feel the ice of my unsaid words: “morgue,” “dead body.” In the same instant, we each tried to get warm. Babs pulled the shawl collar of her taupe sweater tighter against her neck. Clive clenched his hands, brought them to his mouth, and breathed hot air on them. I lifted up my cup of tea, but its warmth was gone, and the aroma of the cold, smoky Earl Grey made me shudder.
    We were quiet too long. Maybe because they were in my house, I felt obliged to say something, but I’d already gone the “coffee? tea?” route twice since they’d arrived. So I picked up the pad and paper I had ready to make a note or take down an address if I got a call . I wrote down Detective Sergeant