Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence (12 page)

I then had to put up with Jake explaining that this was precisely what Sunny wanted to do. Because she was such a moral, compassionate person. Because she didn’t see herself as a home-wrecker. Because . . . Well, despite the becauses, Jake had persuaded Sunny that she couldn’t walk away until “we understood if what we had together was too big to walk away from.” He actually seemed rather proud of this pretentious turn of phrase. I wanted to punch him right in his big fat mouth.

•  •  •

I suppose I should be grateful to Sunny Voight. I mean, until Jake met Sunny, I was basically a house wife who did volunteer work and tried to write on the side, occasionally selling an article to the
Washingtonian or The Washington Post.
After Jake met Sunny, and after Jake fell in love with Sunny, and after I realized I really might wind up divorced, and after I finally decided (though it was touch and go for a while) that I wouldn’t make it easy for them by killing myself, and after three months of Jake and Sunny sorting everything out and deciding it wasn’t too big to walk
away from, and after my first full year of some heavy duty one-box-of-Kleenex-per-session therapy, I decided 1 didn’t want to be dependent, co-dependent, emotionally or financially dependent, or a woman who loved too much or herself too little or loved the wrong way, or . . . Anyway, what I mostly decided was that I was going to fix it so I’d never feel so frightened and helpless again.

By the time I had made this decision, Jake and Sunny were long done with their affair, and I was prepared to forgive—if not to forget. But I also was preparing—by writing several sample columns and getting them published in three small out-of-town papers, after which I wrote more sample columns and got them into seven larger papers, after which a syndicate started selling my columns to papers all over the country—I was preparing to be
IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE.

Aha, you are doubtless exclaiming. So that explains it! That explains why Brenda (née Branson) Kovner became the can-do woman she is today. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. At least, partly wrong. Because, as Freud has taught us (though I can’t, at the moment, put my hand on the reference) all of our acts are multiply determined.

Consider the fact, for instance, that my mother always possessed the—excuse me—iron balls of a Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, it was easy to picture, with just a few religious and geographical shifts, Maggie running Hadassah and Mom running England. I therefore submit that since I’d inherited my mother’s potent organizational skills, my decision to be in control of my life was, at least in part, genetically programmed.

In addition to Sunny Voight—call her (a)—add my
mother’s organizational genes—call them (b)—was the looming empty nest syndrome—call it (c): the fact that Wally and Jeff, then fifteen and seventeen years old, were growing up and soon to be leaving home. So I think it’s fair to point out that this decision of mine to be
IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE
also arose from developmental needs—the need to stop defining myself as a mother and a wife and to start to redefine myself as a person.

And then there’s—call him (d)—Dr. Milo Cunningham, my analyst, who helped me heal and redefine myself, who taught me that “admitting you’re scared is not the same as saying that you’re helpless,” and who (though he has suggested that I took him a little too literally) encouraged me to be
IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE
.

In conclusion I’d like to remind you (as I often remind my readers) that the answer to most complex questions isn’t (a), (b), (c), or (d), but “all of the, above.” On the other hand, when asked, as I am frequently asked these days, to whom I am indebted for inspiring me to
BE IN CONTROL OF MY LIFE
, I always mention my mother and my “ever-supportive family” and Dr. (Cunningham. But the first name I always think of is Sunny Voight.

•  •  •

Indeed, I was thinking of Sunny when I phoned Mr. Monti on August 28 and, making no reference to the unpleasantness of the twenty-fourth, asked if we could have a little talk. (I was thinking, I managed with
her
; I can manage with
him.)
Dressed in a pale-blue chemise with a saucy flounce, and sporting a beige straw cloche for the ladylike look, I arrived with a great big smile and a well-prepared script which began, “I know we
can work this out. 1 know in your heart you’re a caring and warm human being.”

But Mr. Monti was hanging up the phone as I was ushered into his office, and the face I confronted was neither caring nor warm.

“My wife has moved in with Gloria. My wife has left me,” he rasped. “And you know whose head this is on? It’s on
your
head.”

•

I
suspect, it says something bad about me that—although I have dined at her home, entertained her at mine, and slept with her husband—I haven’t once mentioned Mrs. Monti’s first name. But in my defense, let me note that this is a woman who, whenever she introduces herself, will say, “Hello, I’m Mrs. Joseph Monti.” As I stood in her husband’s office, however, recoiling from his curses-upon-you glare, it flashed in giant letters on my brain: Renata, shortened to “Ren,” then homonymed into “Wren,” then omithologically generalized into “Birdie.”

Who, from what I’d just heard, had flown the coop.

Mr. Monti’s ashen face was precisely the shade of his gray Armani suit, and his suddenly deflated lips had turned the steely blue of his Hermès tie. Even in a state of shock, the man remained exquisitely color-coordinated. And unrelenting.

“Somehow—how, I don’t know yet—this whole thing is on your head,” he repeated menacingly. But
I had come to make peace and would not be provoked.

“Mr. Monti, Joseph,” I said, taking him by the arm and thinking fast, “this is no time for blaming and reproaching. Come sit with me on the couch and tell me about it.”

Sounding slightly dazed, Mr. Monti murmured, half to himself, “She calls me up and she says, ‘I’ve put up with plenty over the years, but this time, Joseph, you have gone too far.’ ” He settled, with a heavy sigh, into the brown leather couch. I was right there beside him.

“Did she say what you had gone too far about?” I asked solicitously, removing my fetching cloche and fluffing
my
hair.

“Something to do with Josephine. Something—it didn’t make sense to me—about Josephine. But then she started crying. And then she hung up.”

Though I not only think of myself as, but am, a deeply compassionate person, I confess to faking compassion for Mr. Monti. For the truth is that Mrs. Monti’s flight left me with only one (uncompassionate) question: Was this good news or was this bad news for the Kovners?

I was just about to explore this when there were cries of “Daddy! Daddy!” and Annette and Gloria burst into the office.

“I’ve never seen Mommy like this before,” said Annette.

“She’s up in my guest room,” said Gloria, “sobbing her heart out.”

“She says as of now,” said Annette, “she’s a single parent.”

The Monti daughters, though no longer pregnant, still
looked larger than life, their Dolly Parton breasts and their showers and towers of raven curls occupying far more space than your average breasts and hairstyles tend to do. Standing tall to their strappy shoes, and encased in designer duds, Annette and Gloria would surely have seemed, a dynamic duo anywhere but in the presence of their formidable father.

“Watch that tone of voice, missy,” Mr. Monti snapped at Annette, the color flooding back into his face. “And Gloria, if you’re walking around the city with skirts that short, I don’t want to hear you’ve been raped. It will not be rape.”

I silently waggled my fingers in a hello to Annette and Gloria, hoping I wouldn’t be asked to leave what promised to be an informative family powwow. Lucky for me, the three throbbing Montis were far too overwrought to contemplate the propriety of my presence.

“You’d be on the rapist’s side? Against your own daughter?” Gloria asked, uncharacteristically unsubdued. “Another good reason for Mommy to want an annulment.”

“Annulment? What annulment?” roared Mr. Monti.

“And she’s prepared to take it all the way to the Pope,” Annette chimed in. “She says you’ve gone too far.”

“I heard that already. And I say your mother’s gone crazy. It must be—what’s this new ailment all of the women are getting now?—that PMF.”

“It’s PMS, Daddy,” said Gloria, “and it stands for—”

“In mixed company I don’t want to hear what it stands for.” With one reprimanding finger, Mr. Monti silenced his daughters and let the silence gather in the room. “And now,” he said, “the two of you sit and tell
me why your mother has left our home and is suddenly talking annulment.”

Annette, alternating with Gloria, explained that their mother had packed a suitcase and left after Josephine telephoned her that morning.

“From where?” Mr. Monti interrupted.

“She isn’t saying,” Gloria said, trying to tug her skirt down over her kneecaps. “She told Mommy she’s hiding out from you because—” She stopped abruptly and sank her top teeth into her lower lip.

“Because
what?
Mr. Monti demanded.

“Annette will tell you.”

“I’m not telling him. He’ll kill me.”

“What’s this kill me? Have I ever even laid a hand on you?”

With that voice and that glare, I thought, who needs hands?

“I don’t know,” said Annette. “I mean, maybe I forgot.”

“Repressed,” corrected Gloria. “Josephine says that her doctor says that children tend to repress awful things like that.”

“Things like what?” Mr. Monti rose from the couch and hovered over a now cowering Gloria. “What doctor?”

“Her new shrink.” Gloria, feeling the heat, slipped out of her turquoise linen jacket and draped it over her rape-provoking knees. “Jo’s already had four sessions with her—the last one just this morning, before she called Mommy.”

Annette, the perspiration standing out on her creamy brow, decided to give her older sister some help. “Jo says Dr. X—she won’t tell her name because she’s
worried you’ll track her down—has already opened her eyes about her whole life.”

“And when she opened Josephine’s eyes,” Mr. Monti asked, “what, I would like to know, did Josephine see?”

“That you didn’t want her to go with Wally . . .” Gloria began.

“Or with any other man,” Annette continued, “because—I cannot say this.”

“Say it!” bellowed Mr. Monti.

“Because,” Annette whispered, “you want her for herself.”

“Sexually, that is,” said Gloria, looking ready to faint. “Josephine told Mommy that the reason you’re against Wally is because you secretly want to go to bed with her.”

I have to confess that I was totally loving this Freudian seminar. Mr. Monti totally was not. Back in his Raging Bull mode, he swung out wildly and smashed a green-glass-globed lamp to the floor, then swung again and shattered a crystal ashtray. “I will not—” he reached out to swing once more, thought better of it, and jammed his hands into his pockets “—I will not have such filth spoken in my presence. Take your lies and get out of here, and you can tell your mother—” he took a deep breath “—you can tell your mother that if she can persuade tie Pope to believe such filth, she can have her annulment.”

In an instant, Annette and Gloria had vanished from the room, and I was alone with Mr. Monti’s wrath. What, I asked myself, could I possibly say or possibly do to turn it away? It was clear to me that Dr. X had tried to help Josephine understand her father by pointing to the underlying unconscious (and, of course,
universal) incestuous yearnings that fueled his fierce refusal to let her go. (Give her a few more sessions and Dr. X, I was virtually positive, would see Mr. Monti’s motives as not merely Oedipal, would see that his narcissistic need for control and domination was just as profound an aspect of his pathology. Jake hates it when I talk like this, but too bad.)

In any case, poor Josephine—who possessed, I’d already observed, a quite literal mind—had failed to make the crucial distinction between unconscious wishes and concrete actions. Misinterpreting Freud, she had apparently decided that her dad was a clear and present sexual menace. Furthermore, having decided this, she was eager to share her new insights with her mother. Who, from what I was learning today, appeared to have an equally literal mind.

Let me say two things: I was more than willing to think the worst of Mr. Monti. But I also was ready to swear on my kids that, whatever else he might do, he didn’t do incest.

Perhaps I could earn his gratitude by essaying a constructive intervention.

“Listen to me, Mr. Monti,” I began, in my gentlest, most empathic voice, “your daughter Josephine is a bit confused. I’d like to help straighten this out, if you’ll only—”

“Listen to
me,
Mrs. Kovner,” said Mr. Monti in an extremely ungentle voice, “and listen carefully. You have torn my family apart. I promise you, I will do the same to yours.”

I had to admit to myself that Mr. Monti sounded chillingly sincere.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I soothingly said,
though I truly loathe that phrase. “I hear that you are really, really upset,”

“Upset?” said Mr. Monti, laughing unpleasantly. “You think I’m upset?’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling, but I presume his destination was higher up. “May I never see my wife or my children or grandchildren again, may I end my days in poverty, may my—” here he faltered a moment “—my thing drop off, if I fail to exact full vengeance on your husband and your sons for what you have done to me.”

He paused, turned his burning eyes on me, and intoned: “Vengeance on your husband, Jake. Vengeance on your son Jeff. And permanent—permanent—vengeance on your son Wally.”

The temperature in the office suddenly fell about fifty degrees. A lump the size of a softball lodged in my throat My body turned rigid. My stomach turned over. My thoughts turned to Victor Mature in
Kiss of Death.
This was the moment I recognized that Joseph Monti was basically unmanageable, that in spite of my profound grasp of the human condition I wouldn’t be able to turn this man around. He had taken his vow—this corny, ridiculous, melodramatic vow—and I totally believed that he would keep it.