The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 15

Chapter 151969Josephine had studied the fashion magazines carefully and put in plenty of time practicing at her vanity table. She had it now, lining her eyelids with the perfect cat’s-eye technique, the black line thickening and swooping up as it went past the outer end of her eyelid—a confident, unwavering line, the epitome of modern. She was wearing a pair of silk bikini underwear Albert had sent her when he was off on a business trip, with a silk bra to match, all in the most flattering rosy peach color. She stood and walked to her bedroom door, then whirled around to catch herself in the vanity mirror—yes, she was practically Jean Shrimpton. How could he resist?

Josephine slipped a clingy Pucci dress on. Her feet were bare, and her chestnut hair was tied in a cascading topknot just like the model’s on the cover of that month’s Vogue. She went barefoot because she had gotten the idea that Albert liked her feet. Padding downstairs to his office, she paused for a moment on the stairs, watching herself as though she were in a movie: seeing herself glide down the wide stairs, her legs shapely, her makeup perfect. Seeing herself go to her husband’s door, and slowly open it.

Transfixed by her vision, she imagined Albert leaping up from his desk, his face turning red from desire just at the sight of her, screws and wires and bolts dropping to the floor in his haste to come to her.

Josephine approached his office, her steps quiet. Still, it was as though a camera were going, as though she were not one person but rather several, one of whom was always observing. She was always her own audience and never fully whole.

“Albert,” she said, as sweetly as she could.

Albert did not look up.

“Give me a moment, if you would,” he said. On his desk was a magnifying apparatus and he was looking through it at something vanishingly tiny on his deck. Keeping the rest of his body as still as possible, he reached in with a minuscule pair of tweezers and then pulled them back, resting his hand on the edge of his desk, staring intently into the apparatus.

“Albert!” said Josephine, her fantasy breaking up, feeling as though the jagged bits and pieces of it swirled around her head and into her mouth, threatening to choke her. “You won’t so much as look up when I come in? You won’t stop your work for just one single solitary instant?” For a moment she stood trembling, jaw clenched. And then in her rage she reached over to his desk and picked up a musty-smelling book. “This is what I think of you and your stupid work!” She threw the book directly at the magnifying apparatus, knocking it to the floor, although Albert had moved quickly and put his hands over the circuitry he was working on, and it remained safe.

After that, Josephine was unable to make any more unannounced appearances in Albert’s office, because he locked the door. A different sort of man might have divorced his violent wife, even though of course divorce was far less common then than it is now, and on top of that it would have killed his deeply Catholic mother. But Albert Desrosiers was a man who carried through with his commitments, even if those commitments turned out to be horrible mistakes, and so Josephine and Albert lived all the years of their marriage in separate forms of abject misery.

Though they were rich, which for Josephine at least, provided nearly enough compensation for the rest of it.