by Ann McMan
“It’s all the cheap crap from China. It’s everyplace now.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “It’s not like the old days, for sure.” He gestured toward the front of the house. “Driving over here, I remembered how a bunch of us used to shoot hoops out front.”
“Can’t do that now.” Joey took a big swig of his beer. “You’d get run over by somebody’s Mercedes.”
Tim nodded. “Everything’s changing.”
The telephone rang. Tim heard Marlene pick it up and begin speaking in animated tones to the caller.
Joey jerked his head toward the kitchen. “I keep telling Ma she needs to sell this place. Take the money and move out to Overbrook. But she won’t budge.”
“I guess I understand that,” Tim said. “It’d be hard for me to leave, too. I never strayed very far from the old neighborhood, either.”
Joey looked at him but didn’t say anything.
“I was going through some old photos recently,” Tim continued. “Ancient ones, taken way back when we both were on the basketball team. I think that’s what made me think about coming here tonight.” He noticed the subtle change in Joey’s expression. It was unmistakable—a tightening of the slack muscles in his face. That gave Tim a sick feeling. He knew asking about this was contemptible, but he was going to do it, anyway. “Do you ever think much about that time, Joey?”
Joey abruptly got to his feet. “I need another beer.” He turned toward the kitchen.
“Wait.” Tim didn’t mean for it to come out so forcefully. Joey stopped and looked down at him. “I want to . . . I need to ask you about something, Joey. Something I’ve never talked about with anyone.” He hesitated and dropped his gaze to the old carpet that was covered with faded cabbage roses. “It’s hard to talk about.”
“Father Szymanski?”
Tim was shocked. He didn’t expect Joey to come right out with it.
“Well . . . yeah. I mean . . .”
“Save your breath,” Joey hissed. “If you’re here to talk me out of turning his ass in, you’re too late.”
“No,” Tim said quickly. “That’s not what I . . .”
“I already tried—as soon as they announced that whole reparations thing. I went to the website and downloaded my stack of forms. The whole thing’s a fucking joke. They say they care and want to make things right. It’s nothing but a con. They don’t give two fucks about what happened to us. All they want to do is pay us off so we’ll shut up and go away,” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “And they even lied about that. The only way they’ll even talk to you is if you have witnesses who can back you up—or you can prove you told people about it while it was going on. Like that ever happens. What a bunch of bullshit. Right, Father?”
“Joey . . . believe me. I’m not here to protect the Church or to tell you to keep quiet. I want to help you.”
“Really? It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
“I hope not.”
“Fuck you, Tim—you and all the other sellouts. Fuck all of you who still want to look the other fucking way.” He hurled his empty beer can across the room. It clattered against the wall and rolled behind an old console TV. “You and that bitch that came by here. You can both go to hell.”
Bitch? Tim’s mind was racing. “Who else came by?”
“That slick bitch.” Joey clenched a hand in frustration. “Some foreign chick working for the diocese. She offered me twenty-five-hundred bucks to keep quiet. Twenty-five-hundred bucks. In cash. Are you kidding me? That’s all my fucking life is worth to the Church? Self-righteous cunt. I threw the money in her face and told her to go get her nails done. Szymanski can rot in hell. Fuck the Church. Fuck all of you.”
He stormed out of the room and up the stairs with so much force it caused pictures on the walls to rattle and tilt.
Tim got up belatedly and followed him into the hallway. “Joey?” He called up the stairs. “Joey, please. That’s not why I’m here.”
There was no response. The volume on the upstairs TV got louder. Amplified sounds of laughter and applause made a surreal soundtrack for the twisted drama that had just played out.
The peculiar irony of this was impossible to miss. Tim had spent his entire adult life learning exactly how to respond to any situation. The Church had sacraments for everything . . . birth, sickness, death—and everything in between. But there were no rituals for something like this. He stood immobilized in the dim hallway. Useless—like a hunk of castoff furniture.
It took him a few seconds to realize that Joey’s mom was in the doorway to the kitchen, holding the telephone handset against her ear. She remained rooted in place like a statue, staring back at Tim with a look of anguish on her face.
He had a feeling this wasn’t the first time a conversation with her son had ended this way.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed. “I’m so sorry.”
He backed toward the front door and let himself out.
Then he vomited in the street.
◊ ◊ ◊
Evan and Julia were sitting together on a large sofa in front of the fireplace, enjoying what remained of the second bottle of wine. The weather had been deteriorating all day and the sky was now spitting snow. The hot fire felt wonderful. The fireplace in this room had an immense Federal-style carved stone mantel and was outfitted with gas logs that clearly had been patterned after sequoia limbs. Relaxing like this was wonderful. Dinner had been a success—a testament to Evan’s ability to muddle through without the cast-iron skillet. She was doing her best to concentrate on how great it felt just to be here with Julia—and not to dwell on the disturbing revelations from earlier.
Julia had put some music on. Soft jazz. Probably Brubeck. It was nice—gentle and sweetly dissonant in just the right measure.
During dinner, she’d filled Julia in on her progress with the Cawley project, stopping short of sharing too much detail about Tim and his tangential connection to a potentially dark offshoot of her research. Tim’s revelations about Joey Mazzetta and what he suspected had been happening at St. Rita’s all those years ago was stunning to Evan. But she couldn’t help him come to terms with it. He had to do that on his own. She would do what she could to pull any threads that might be connected to Judge Cawley—which probably would prove to be tenuous at best. But Tim needed to be the one to share information about his own past experiences. Evan supposed he would, in time. And even though he hadn’t asked her for secrecy, she felt honor-bound to observe it until he chose, if ever, to disclose his history more broadly. And that included sharing any details with Julia or Stevie.
“You seem pensive.” Julia’s voice was soft and low, like a suburb of the music.
“Do I?” Evan looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. What’s on your mind?”
Evan reflexively hitched her left shoulder and regretted the gesture immediately. The odds Julia would overlook it were about as great as discovering that the frayed Powerball ticket in her back pocket contained the winning set of numbers.
Julia sat up and turned to face her. “Do you need some ice for that?”
And we have a winner . . .
“No. It’s okay. Really.” Evan tugged her back against the sofa cushion. “It’s just a reflex. I promise.”
“Evan . . .”
“I promise.”
Julia looked dubious, but she resumed her former posture, leaning back against Evan.
“Okay,” Julia continued. “So, you were saying?”
“I don’t recall saying anything. You, on the other hand, hinted earlier that you were going to tell me something you were persuaded I wouldn’t like.”
“I don’t think I said that, did I?”
“Well,” Evan demurred. “Words to that effect.”
Julia shifted her posture slightly so she could face Evan. “I called my mother while I was in Albuquerque, and we had a conversation about . . . things.”
“Things?”
“Y
es.”
“Such as?”
“For starters,” Julia indicated their surroundings, “I told her we needed to have a conversation about business matters. I chose not to elaborate, but those matters will include selling this place—and the New York apartment.”
Evan was surprised. “Really? You don’t like living here?”
“Well, once I’ve bleached all the cookware, there’ll be no more worlds to conquer.”
Evan nudged her. “Be serious?”
“All right. To answer your oddly curious question, no. I don’t like living here. It’s . . . absurd and needlessly extravagant. And it’s not responsible to continue to carry these properties on the company books. That goes for the London flat, too, although I can’t see my mother ever agreeing to part with it.”
“Why now?”
Julia shrugged. “Why not now? I have no intention ever to live in Manhattan again, and I certainly no longer require lodging in Philadelphia on this ridiculous scale.”
Evan felt a tiny surge of panic, which she tried valiantly to suppress. She prayed this wasn’t a prelude to Julia telling her she was moving the company headquarters to Boston. After Andy’s death, that had been a real possibility. She only opted to come to Philadelphia because . . . well . . . because of them. And, to be fair, her father had spent a fair amount of time during his tenure at the helm of Donne & Hale, running operations from the smaller Philadelphia office. So, there was some kind of precedent for the move.
Something in her expression must’ve tipped Julia off.
“I’m not leaving,” she insisted with determination. “I’m just selling this townhouse.”
Evan gave her a guilty look. “I guess I’m pretty transparent, aren’t I?”
Julia sat forward again. “If you didn’t already have a bad shoulder, I’d slug you.”
That response surprised Evan. “Why?”
“Why? Tell me this: what in my demeanor or behavior toward you has ever suggested that I’d think about leaving here?”
Evan couldn’t come up with anything but a jumble of confused feelings.
“I’m waiting.”
“Nothing,” Evan finally said. “There’s nothing that would suggest you’d want to leave.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
Evan nodded. She did believe it, too. She just couldn’t always stifle the knee-jerk responses of her inner Eeyore. “But where will you live?”
Julia raised an eyebrow.
For once, Evan was pretty quick on the uptake. “Oh. Um . . .”
“I see this possibility hasn’t occurred to you?”
“No,” Evan said hurriedly. “That’s not it. Of course, it has. I’m just . . .”
“Surprised?” Julia suggested.
Evan nodded. “Yeah. But in a good way.”
“What if I promised to stay fifty feet away from your disgusting cookware?”
“We might consider that a condition.”
“Do I get to have conditions, as well?”
“Of course.” Evan narrowed her eyes. “Why do I get the sense you’ve had time to make a list?”
“I don’t recall suggesting I had a list.”
“No. But you’ve got that ‘I’ve got a list’ gleam in your eyes. I recognize it.”
“Oh, please . . .”
“Ha! See? There it is again. You have a list.”
“Evan.”
“Julia.”
“Okay,” Julia conceded. “Maybe I do have a list . . . a short one.”
Evan made no effort to conceal her smug reaction to this admission. “Let’s hear it.”
“For starters, we need to ask Stevie what she thinks. That’s the most important consideration.”
Evan was moved that this was important to Julia. During the times she’d allowed herself to consider the possibility of Julia moving in with them—which had been increasing lately—this was the one consideration that always stopped her cold. Stevie.
What Stevie wanted mattered more to Evan than what she wanted for herself. She never wanted to do anything that would make Stevie feel like an afterthought or some kind of bystander. That was even more true now that her daughter was starting to think about college. Evan had observed firsthand how many parents couldn’t wait for their kids to move out so they could coopt their spaces and redesign them as “offices” or workout rooms.
To be sure, their house in Chadds Ford was small, but Evan resolved that if she ever felt the need for more space, she’d add on rather than erase Stevie’s footprint from the only home she’d ever known. Inviting a third person to share the already close quarters with them—even though it was less likely that Stevie would ever live there full time again—made this decision a big one. For all of them. Julia’s sensitivity to that spoke volumes about how well she understood and respected this relationship dynamic.
“Thank you for thinking about Stevie,” Evan said.
“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t heard the rest of my list.”
“True. What else you got?”
“Just two other things. First, we’re getting a new coffeemaker. That item is nonnegotiable.”
Evan rolled her eyes.
“And, I’m going to need office space of my own. I do have some thoughts about how best to accomplish that. It will entail adding on to the house. But if you’re amenable, I think we can accomplish that with minimal disruption and in an unobtrusive manner consistent with the existing architecture—and I will pay for it. Entirely. No arguments.”
“Okaaayyy.” Evan considered Julia’s suggestion. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any sketches worked up?”
“Are you asking hypothetically?”
“Of course.”
“Then hypothetically speaking, and you may not hold me to this—I might have considered committing a few ideas to paper . . . possibly.”
Evan considered Julia’s response. “Do you want to show me these sketches that may or may not exist now, or after we’ve talked with Stevie?”
“After we’ve talked with Stevie? Don’t you want to have that conversation with her by yourself?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“Um. Maybe because it would be easier for Stevie to speak freely if I weren’t present?”
Evan laughed. “You have met this kid, right?”
“Obviously . . .”
“Then I shouldn’t have to tell you that Stevie has no problem speaking freely, even in circumstances when she should keep her mouth shut.” Evan smiled. “Especially when she should keep her mouth shut. I credit the Cohen end of the gene pool for this charming characteristic.” She took hold of Julia’s hand. “All this is to say that you never need to worry about knowing what my daughter thinks.”
“That is among her more enviable traits.”
“You think? It’s always bugged the piss outta me.”
“Trust me.” Julia squeezed her hand. “The alternative is much worse. I should know. I was never able to be truthful—or be myself—with either of my parents.”
“But you’ve committed to change that,” Evan reminded her. “And you have been changing it. That takes real strength of character.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Julia continued, “because selling this place wasn’t the only topic I discussed with my mother.”
“Why do I think my name came up?”
“Probably, because in addition to being a persistent naysayer, you’re also an uncommonly accomplished prognosticator.”
“Those are among my more endearing qualities.”
“I won’t disagree with you.”
Evan tugged on her hand. “So. Are you gonna tell me about your conversation?”
“In typical fashion, my mother lost no time trying to entangle me romantically with one of the hapless offspring of her blue-blooded expatriates in Paris.”
“She did?”
“She always does,” Julia re
plied. “It’s what she has in lieu of a hobby. I think her exact words were, ‘It’s been two years since the incident with Andy.’”
“Incident?”
“Yes. And, apparently, that means it’s time for me to emerge from my cocoon of self-imposed, virginal solitude.”
Evan was more than a little curious. “Did she have someone in mind?”
“Of course, she did. I have to travel to Paris, anyway, to get her to co-sign some estate documents. Mother thought I should time my visit to coincide with the annual New Year’s Eve celebration. Apparently, the Lippincotts are planning to be there, too—along with their hapless son, Gerald, a former classmate of mine at Exeter.”
“Lippincott? As in the publishing Lippincotts?”
“Oh, yes.” Julia nodded. “Albert and my father were always fast friends. At one time, they even talked about merging the two companies, but since Albert was only a distant cousin, no agreement ever developed. J.B. Lippincott eventually merged with Harper & Row in the late ’70s, but Albert’s branch of the family always remained close. Gerald’s parents more or less adopted my mother after Dad died . . . thank god.”
“Know if they’re art lovers?” Evan asked.
“The Lippincotts?” Julia looked perplexed. “I have no idea. Probably. I think Binkie used to be on the board at the Barnes Foundation. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. It was just a whim . . . something random in this case.” Evan squinted at Julia. “Binkie?”
Julia laughed. “Welcome to my world.”
“So.” Evan stretched her legs out and rested her feet on the edge of the coffee table. “Wanna tell me more about this Gerald guy? Does he work out? Am I gonna have to arm wrestle him for you?”
“I don’t think so. And I told my mother much the same thing.”
“Excuse me?” Evan wasn’t sure she’d heard Julia correctly.
“You didn’t misunderstand. I told her about you. About us.”
“Holy shit.” It was Evan’s turn to sit up straighter. “What’d she say?”
“She asked if you were related to the Radnor Reeds.” Julia batted her eyes. “Are you?”
Evan laughed. “I once did some second-story work there. Does that count?”
“Probably not. The upshot of our discussion was her complete refusal to entertain the prospect of me being in a relationship with another woman. So, she did what she always does, and resolved to pretend the conversation never happened.”
