—
He saw, as he was speaking to her across their kitchen table, that her eyes became small. No kindness appeared on her face. When he stopped speaking, she said, and her voice was very tight, “Bob Burgess, I am not your mother. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, I know full well about your childhood trauma and I live every damned day of my life trying to negotiate around that, I am always, always trying to make you feel safe, and when you say that an ordinary person would apologize, any ordinary person knows that sometimes people are late. It happens! It’s called life!”
He raised his arm; it was a gesture of futility, but she said, “Don’t you dare raise your arm at me!” And then he became livid. “Oh for Christ’s sake, Margaret, don’t be an idiot,” he said. Margaret rose and closed the curtains with a fury. He turned and said with anger, “Jesus, Margaret, you are just gaslighting me.”
—
In a daze he drove to the local 7-Eleven and bought two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of wine with a screw top. Then he drove to the river, and in the parking lot he took three large swallows from the wine bottle, and then he put it back in its paper bag and walked down to the river—it was dark now—stepping off the path to go down closer to the water, where he stood smoking a cigarette.
—
“They never change.” Lucy Barton had said this when she told him that her younger daughter was convinced that her ex-husband was a narcissist. “They never can change their behavior.”
And then Lucy had told him about gaslighting, that this was something narcissists do, and he had not exactly understood the concept. But he understood now, when Margaret had turned it on him, saying that she lived every day of her life aware of his childhood trauma.
They love being the center of attention.
They cannot take criticism.
They are controlling.
They talk about themselves all the time.
They are not empathic. Though this one gave Bob hope: Margaret was very compassionate about her congregants. In fact, about many people.
But then this: They like to think that they can save the world, there is often a grandiosity to them, and when they do good things for people they do so because it makes them feel bigger.
—
He drove home, not caring that he smelled like smoke, and when he walked in, Margaret said, “I was an idiot about you raising your arm.” But she did not say it nicely, he thought. He sat across from her at the dining table. Finally, he spoke. “You’re pretty self-absorbed at times, Margaret. You haven’t even really asked me much about this Matt Beach case, and you gaslighted me this evening when I told you why I was upset. I think that’s what gaslighting is—turning it around on the other person.” He stood up and walked upstairs to their bedroom and lay down on the bed, and still, he felt stunned.
—
Two hours later Margaret came up. She sat on the bed beside him, and she said, “I just googled gaslighting and you’re right. You’re right, Bob, God, I’m so sorry.” She took hold of his arm.
And in that way their altercation ended. But it had really shaken Bob.
—
In the morning Margaret asked him to fill her in on the Matt Beach case, and so he did. He told her that he was waiting to get Matt’s computer back, that Matt had no cellphone, and that Carol Hall was just crouched like a crazy person waiting for one more piece of evidence to tie him to the crime and then she was going to have him arrested on murder charges. He also told Margaret about the will. “We have three years to probate a will in Maine, and I’m not going to mention it to anyone until we see if they can find anything else to tie him to the crime.”
Margaret listened, asking him questions, and he answered them all, but he did not know how he felt. Margaret really did appear to be sorry about their fight the night before, and she really did appear to be interested in what he had to say this morning. It’s not that he didn’t trust her—they had been married for many years now. But he was aware of the age-old sadness inside him.
Margaret said, “Have you spoken to those two men who worked with him at the ironworks?”
And somehow Bob felt better by her asking that. “Got two appointments lined up this week with them,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
3
The next day, the state police called and said that Bob could pick up Matt’s computer. “You found out he doesn’t have a cellphone, right?” Bob asked, and the guy didn’t answer. So Bob went into Shirley Falls and picked up the computer, and then he drove to Matt’s house with it and said, “Now let’s see what’s on this.”
Matt looked worse than usual; Bob wondered fleetingly if his cancer had returned, but Matt just said what he always said, that he had not been sleeping. At the dining room table, Bob looked at Matt’s computer while Matt picked away at his red-tipped fingers, and Matt was right: there was almost nothing on it.
Except for this: I can’t stand her, she makes me so crazy, I can’t stand it stand it stand it. And a few more entries in which, over the course of the last three years, he repeated things like this. But there was also this: Oh Mommy I love you. And then this: I remember coming home from school one day I was maybe eight years old it was before I got sick and my mother was sitting on the couch and she was crying, and I said Mommy what’s wrong and she said that the kids at school called her beach ball because she was fat and then they called her bitch ball when they got older and she looked at me oh my God she was really crying and she said Matt honey I don’t know why I’m the way I am and I said Mommy you’re perfect and she said Oh honey come sit on my lap but I didn’t because I felt I was too old for that.
And more: She is making me crazy. I am losing my mind.
One more, which killed Bob: All I want to do is hold a woman I love, to really hold her.
Bob pushed back his chair and said, “None of this ties you to the crime, and I’m not going to let them use any of it if I can help it. There’s not enough probable cause to bring you in, Matt.”
And Matt sat with his shoulders slumped, staring at the table.
“Matt,” Bob said. “Do you ever have thoughts of hurting yourself?”
Matt looked up at him quickly. “What do you mean, like offing myself?”
“That is what I mean.”
Matt looked away again, and he said quietly: “No.” And Bob thought: He is lying.
—
“Okay,” Bob said. “Let’s get that rifle out of your house.” He started to move toward Matt’s bedroom, and Matt stood up and said, “Bob, if I really want to shoot myself I can just go to Walmart and buy another gun.”
Bob stopped walking and watched Matt. “You know I can,” Matt said, with a small shrug. “So leave the rifle where it is. Please.”
