Compromising Positions Read Free Page B

Marilyn.
    “Marilyn? It’s me, Judith. Can I come over for a few minutes?”
    “Judith, I’m a little busy now...”
    “Look, the police were just here asking questions about you.”
    “Oh. What did they say?”
    “Marilyn, I’d rather not talk about it over the phone. Anyway, you sound as though you could use some company.” Actually, she sounded as though she were aching for solitude.
    “Well, sure. Come right over. Would you like coffee?”
    “Always. See you.”
    Marilyn O’Connor Tuccio is one of those wispy Irish redheads who look as though they were born to be taken advantage of: tiny, delicate, you could imagine her exhaustedly carrying an enormous pot of stew to the parish house “for Father Sweeny, Mrs. Mallory” or lugging home cases of beer for a beefy, veiny-nosed husband who made certain she was pregnant every year. Fragile and petite, with pale blue veins shimmering under the lightly freckled white skin of her hands, she should, according to stereotype, whisper hello to you and then lower those long, pale eyelashes, astonished at her own brazenness. Instead, she is unfailingly assertive, competent, and almost violently energetic, the only housewife I know who doesn’t, even secretly, feel she got shafted. Marilyn sews all the clothes for herself and her four children, cans all her fruits and vegetables, drives endless car pools and, in her spare time, is president of the junior high PTA and a Republican County Committeewoman.
    I trotted across the street and, when I got to the door, noticed that she had taken down her Valentine wreath and put up her Presidents decoration, a crewel-work double portrait of Lincoln and Washington, simply framed with flowers she had dried herself. Next month there would be an adorable stuffed lion and lamb hanging from the door, and for April, I recalled, a fluffy crocheted Easter bunny clutching a bouquet of crepe-paper daffodils.
    I rang the bell and Marilyn called out: “The door’s open.” I stepped into a massive room that took up the entire first floor of her house, a combination kitchen, dining room, living room, and playroom, paneled in a light wood and dominated by a large brick fireplace. A room for a family, she had called it two years before, when she ran across the street to show me her architect’s drawings.
    “Marilyn,” I said, seeing her sitting at the end of her long refectory table, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the police came over and started asking me questions, and I didn’t want you to think...”
    “Judith, this is unbelievable. A police detective was here last night asking me questions for over two hours.”
    “Unbelievable,” I concurred. Her small, pointed chin jutted out angrily. “Ridiculous.”
    “I told him I was busy going through my voter registration lists, but he just kept asking the same questions over and over.”
    I liked that. Marilyn was a politician after all, probably letting the detective know she was a committeewoman, well-connected in this congenitally Republican county.
    “What did he ask you?”
    “The usual,” she replied. Twenty years from Dragnet to Kojak and we’re all experts. “Whether Dr. Fleckstein seemed upset about anything. Did he get any phone calls. What time Lorna Lewis, you know, his nurse, left. Did he seem in a hurry to get me out of the office. Did I see anybody hanging around. Things like that.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “You take your coffee with a Sweet ’n Low and a little milk?”
    “Yes. Thanks. Were you able to tell the police anything?”
    “Well, you have to understand that I was absolutely numb from the Novocaine and that nearly the whole time I had that gas thing on and was floating over the clouds somewhere. I wonder if that’s what marijuana is like.”
    “Were there any phone calls or anything?” I sipped my coffee. Excellent. Marilyn had ground her own beans.
    “No, I don’t think so.”
    “And what about people? Any other patients