"You don't leave much to chance, do you?" she said.
"Proper provisioning is the mark of a good eater," I said.
I had a large order of clams. Susan had chosen the small. We shared an order of rings. Sharing with Susan was always good because she consumed slowly and not too much. We ate for a time in silence. The evening had darkened and the windshield wipers were off so that we couldn't see much of the scenery and what we could see was blurred. But the lights from the clam shack made dark crystal patterns out of the rain that sluiced on the windshield, and the steady sound of the rain made the dark interior of the car seem like the perfect refuge.
"Police have any leads on Brad," Susan said.
"Not that they are sharing with me."
"Were we going to share those onion rings?" Susan said.
"Of course," I said. "I was only picking out the fattening ones to save you."
"And so fast," Susan said.
"Just doing my job, little lady."
I got the right amount of tartar sauce on a clam and put it in my mouth.
"Brad always had to be a success," Susan said.
I chewed my clam.
"No, it's not quite that," Susan said.
She was staring out at the barely discernible tidal marshes, her profile lit by the lights from the clam shack.
"He always
had to be perceived as a success," she said.
"You would have helped," I said.
"Or he thought I would," she said.
I ate another clam.
"Could he really have shot someone?" she said.
It seemed a rhetorical question to me. Even if it wasn't, I decided to treat it like one. I examined my clams and my tartar sauce to make sure I wasn't getting disproportionately ahead in one area or the other.
"You think?" she said.
"I don't know, Suze. I barely know him."
"Hell, I probably don't know him any better," Susan said.
She ate half a clam, no tartar sauce. She said she hated tartar sauce. She had always hated tartar sauce, and no amount of psychotherapy had ever succeeded in changing her.
"I was married to him a lifetime ago," Susan said. "One of the common problems I run into in the shrink business is the assumption that people are always what they were. That time and experience haven't changed them."
"It's the basis of reunions," I said.
"Reunions are normally a fund-raising device," Susan said, "contrived by the sponsoring institution to exploit that delusion."
"And it makes you mad as hell," I said.
"I suppose so," Susan said. "It stunts people's growth."
"Mind if I have another ring?" I said.
"Speaking of growth No, go ahead. I won't be able to eat my share anyway."
"Could the Brad you were married to have shot somebody?"
"I always thought he was weak," Susan said. "He covered it. He was big, he played football. He became more Harvard than the Hasty Pudding Club-of which he was a member, by the way."
"Lucky duck," I said.
"But he didn't seem to have any real inner resources. You couldn't trust his word. You couldn't count on him. One reason I didn't want children is that I couldn't imagine him being a good father. I couldn't imagine him working at whatever job he had to because his kids needed to be fed. I couldn't imagine him actually being a man. I would have said he didn't have the courage to shoot someone."
"Doesn't necessarily take courage," I said. "Weakness would do. Fear. Desperation."
"Yes," Susan said, "of course."
She smiled. I could tell she was smiling as much from the sound of her voice as I could from the look of her face in the rain-dimmed car. It didn't sound like a happy smile.
"Did he have a gun when you knew him?" I said.
"I don't think so, but it would have been a nice accessory for his self-esteem."
"Which was a little shaky," I said.
"Yes."
"Was he in the army?"
"No."
"Does the name Buffy mean anything to you?"
"I think she was my successor," Susan said.
"Carla Quagliozzi?"
"No. Brad's been married several times; I only knew the next woman. But you must understand that the Brad I knew needed to be with a woman. Since many women would find him initially attractive, but finally insufficient, I imagine there have been quite a few."
"His parents alive?"
"No."
"You mentioned a sister, went to Bryn Mawr."
"Yes, Nancy."
"Know where she is?"
"Bedford. She's married to a dentist."
"Know her married name."
"Ginsberg."
"I guess she's not trying to pass," I said.
Susan didn't comment. She ate a clam instead.
"Any other family," I said.
"He has children," Susan said, "from other marriages. I don't know anything about them."
We finished our supper. I got out and emptied the clam cartons and other debris into the trash barrel. The rain seemed a little harder now, and the wet smell of it mingled with the strong smell of the salt marsh. I stood for a minute and smelled it, and felt the rain, and looked at the swamp water, its obsidian surface dappled by the rain. Then I took a deep breath and got back in the car.
"Obviously none of my business," I said. "And obviously a sore spot, but if you knew what he was, why did you marry him?"
Susan didn't reply for a while. I could see her imposing control on herself. I knew her so well I could think along with her. Hard questions were part of what she did every day. If she could regularly ask them, she ought to be able to answer one or two. And even though the question was out of line, she had opened the door to all of this by inviting me in that evening when we sat in the Bristol Lounge listening to music and liking each other. She imposed patience upon herself and it showed in the tone of her answer.