FEBRUARY 2003 #4
“Harper,” I growled. “If you’re going to tell me, tell me the truth. Otherwise keep your mouth shut.”
She said nothing. I thought she would continue saying nothing, but I noticed her foot was stepping down on the accelerator, the speedometer ticking well past the speed limit.
“Harper,” I said, as calmly as I could, like my heart wasn’t in my throat, like this wasn’t my worst fear magnified, not me behind the wheel but a reckless driver in crisis.
“He was going to leave me,” she said, releasing her hold on the pedal, and we slowed a touch. “He’s been cheating on me for years. And now one of the girls is pregnant, so …”
“Oh.”
Awful, horrendous, terrible. But not worthy of a body in the boot. (Not worthy of Harper doing this to herself. To me.)
Harper took a breath and steadied her voice again.
“Joel is everything. Fire and ice. Love and hate. I thought I could handle it—that he hated me as much as he loved me. That the love made it worth it somehow. But love fades and cruelty sharpens, and I thought maybe if I weathered all he was leveling at me the love might return just as forcefully. Instead he just … left. When he told me it was like the floor gave way. And then his hands were on me at the ceremony, and all I could think about was them on her.”
“Wait, you knew before tonight?”
“A few days,” she said. “So I thought I’d really lay into it, our performance of how perfect things are between us. I’d lean into how much I adore him so that when the news broke, sympathy would be with me and how thoroughly blindsided I must have been.”
“Of course.”
It is exactly what I would have expected of her in this situation—smiles and waves, not the blood still caught beneath my nails.
“She’s pregnant,” she said, simply. “And two years ago, so was I. I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t want kids, never have. But Joel did.
He wasn’t even happy, he was … possessive.
I already felt like my body wasn’t my own, like the thing growing inside me was taking over.
All those changes, all those risks. And him insisting I see it through?
I didn’t want to raise a child, didn’t want my body to break for it, didn’t want to give birth, screaming and in agony beside a husband who saw me only as an instrument of his legacy. ”
I thought of him accosting me in Cannes: “She has more important things to focus on than the petty schoolground bullshit going on between you both.”
Oh—that’s what he’d meant.
Like she was thinking of that too, she continued: “And then in Cannes, you smashed your own face into a basin just to score a point, and I realized that’s what I wanted. This. The life I was already living. So I …”
Joel at the Emmys, his snarled words: “Haven’t you done quite enough?”
“You had an abortion,” I finished, when it was clear she couldn’t.
“You know what it’s like, throw as many stories at the press as you can and hope it covers up the truth.”
I nodded. “The only time I ever gave them something real was when you pried it out of me.”
She smiled a little, but it didn’t erase how damn sad she felt.
“Your restraining order was an excellent cover. It couldn’t get out, there was no right answer there, just options that would have destroyed everything I’d worked so hard for.
Have the child and I’m a terrible mother who works too much.
Give it up for adoption and I’m heartless—and Joel never would have allowed that anyway.
Or have an abortion and deal with … everything that came with it. ”
Right. You could be forgiven almost anything in Hollywood. But not as a woman. Not when it came to the politics of our very bodies.
She remained silent, staring ahead, lost. Then, quietly: “For a few months before it all … my periods were irregular. My cramps were worse. My skin was breaking out. All these things I first went on the pill to stop …”
She let that hang in the air.
“Fuck,” I said, as understanding dawned.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “Maybe I’m reading into it.
Dramatizing it. But everything cleared up when I started keeping my birth control on set so …
anyway. It’s not like suspecting my husband of entrapment changed the fact the abortion was the most difficult decision of my life.
I didn’t want it getting out not because I was ashamed but because it was invasive and complicated and I knew I’d have to defend it again and again and again.
Joel knew that and he was going to leak it anyway, said that it was the reason he cheated, said I must have wanted this.
He was going to turn one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to me into his great excuse so that when he ran off with his pregnant mistress it would be his happily-ever-after in the eyes of the public, away from the vicious, selfish wife who took away his chance at fatherhood. ”
Oh. Oh, fuck him. I wanted to resuscitate him so I might stab him myself.
“It’s not like I decided he should die for it,” she said, flicking the indicator like she might have a body in the boot but would never be as irresponsible as to turn without proper notice.
“But I realized what he was planning and I was, well, not shouting—I knew we were still in a hotel and the last thing I wanted was for it to become public—but hissing, I suppose. And he kept trying to touch me, to hold me still—hold me down—and I was shoving him off me and that made him angry. I grabbed the knife, ready to dramatically wave it and make clear that he was not to lay a hand on me again and then he charged forward and I … It was instinctive.”
Her voice broke. A quiet whisper, like the words haunted her as much as the memory.
“I just thrust it out and in it went. And then he pulled it out and suddenly he was the one holding the knife and I’d never seen him look so angry, and I just ran.
I ran so goddamn hard. Right to you. He must have collapsed the moment I left but …
I think if I stayed he would have killed me, even if just out of spite. ”
Harper was still staring ahead, her expression bleak.
But the pain underscored every word she spoke—her voice strained, her warbling tone, so that all I could think was that her body was petrifying itself, hardening a protective shell, would shed no further tears because they’d never fixed a damn thing.
“It wasn’t mutual,” she said, knuckles paling on the steering wheel. “The hatred. The spite. I loved him so fucking much, but I just wanted him to stop hurting me. And now he …”
She pressed her lips together firmly, but it wasn’t enough to halt the choking noise in the back of her throat. Something about it caught at mine too, and I felt tears burn.
“I’m glad you ran,” I said, turning to look out at the fleeing scenery. It felt like sincerity was only safe like this, tossed behind my shoulder, like to look at her would force something else in its place. “I’m glad it was him that died.”
I felt her turn to me, but still I did not face her.
“I’m glad we’re about to bury him.”
———
Barlam Thicket was a dense, sprawling forest and an offshoot of far nicer, more touristy ones nearby. It was the overgrown cousin, the uglier sibling. Darker and less frequented, like it awaited something like this.
When we finally located the road that had led to the lodge, it appeared half-abandoned.
Not fully, of course, we would not be lucky enough for that. But the path was cracked, the growth creeping in, the trees that lined it last trimmed a long time ago.
We pulled off the road a quarter of a mile down and did our best to hide the car. I even scooped up a handful of mud and smeared it across the number plates, just in case.
“That’s disgusting,” Harper said, wrinkling her nose.
I had gloves on but I quite agreed, the wet mulch and the cold water within.
I wanted Jo Malone infusions (nutmeg and ginger only) in a bath lined with Loewe candles (I didn’t care which, so long as there was a dangerous number of them.) But no, right now I had Hampshire mud and a body turning stiff with rigor mortis.
So instead I countered: “And stabbing through sinew isn’t?”
Harper blanched and I worried I’d gone too far but then she burst out laughing. “True.”
We could not drag the suitcase through this—we had even slipped pairs of Joel’s trainers on to disguise our shoe size if tracks were located.
It had rained only yesterday—and god, was it really only yesterday that I’d run from the station to the hotel?
Collided with Harper? That she’d followed me back to ensure I made it to my room?
The air was still damp and earthy, the ground still soft enough to suck our footprints right up. But it was forecast to rain more for the rest of the week. If we could keep them from looking here until then, they might wash away.
We carried the body between the two of us, still wrapped in the garment bag. If we were discovered now, it would all be over.
There’s not much to say about it other than I was exhausted: the scrubbing, the hauling and soon, the digging, the shovel strapped to my back slapping my knees with every fatigued step.
Harper had a torch tucked under her arm, but it didn’t stop us from tripping, from stumbling, from dropping the corpse strung between us.
And of course, the sheer weight of all of this, especially the feelings I had struck far from view.
By the time my shovel broke the ground beneath, I had to choke my tears back—did they carry DNA? If one landed on him, would they know? But then I’d wrestled him into that bag with Harper. I was all over him and clearly complicit.
Worst case I’d say the threesome was with them. That ought to keep the gossip mags churning.