Melancholy Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “I guess you couldn’t protect us from Mother sufficiently.”

  “Probably not,” my father said. “Probably wasn’t everything I should have been, either.”

  “You were a good father,” I said. “You never disapproved of me.”

  “Not much to disapprove of,” he said, and smiled slightly. “Except that all-night in high school.”

  I felt like crying. When I spoke, my voice was shaky.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  “You did what you could.”

  “So did your mother,” my father said.

  “It wasn’t quite enough,” I said.

  My father looked straight at me for a moment. I felt fourteen again.

  “I think, probably,” he said, “it never is.”

  49

  Brian Kelly stopped by for coffee. We had some with the oatmeal-maple scones that he brought, at the counter in my kitchen area. Sarah joined us. As did Rosie. Sarah sat on a stool. Rosie settled in on the floor under my feet and fixed us with her relentless stare.

  “Money is wired to Sarah’s account,” Brian said. “From the Wellington Bank in Gillette, Wyoming.”

  I said, “Wyoming?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where’s Gillette, Wyoming?” Sarah said.

  “West,” Brian said. “Money comes from an account belonging to Bright Flower Charitable Foundation.”

  “It’s from my grandfather,” Sarah said.

  Brian shrugged. “Bright Flower is a P.O. box in New York City,” he said. “Authorizing signature is ‘July Fishbein.’ ”

  “July?” I said. “Like the month?”

  “Yep, June, July,” Brian said.

  “The money comes from my grandfather,” Sarah said.

  Brian nodded. He looked down at Rosie.

  “This dog want something?” he said.

  “Everything,” I said.

  “You know anybody named July Fishbein?” he said to Sarah.

  “No.”

  He looked at me.

  “Name means nothing to me,” I said.

  “New York DOS says that Bright Flower is a legally incorporated not-for-profit.”

  “What’s DOS?” Sarah said.

  I wanted her to go out and play.

  “Department of State,” I said. “So they have a board.”

  “Yep. July Fishbein and four other women.”

  “And?”

  “New York cops are working on it, but so far we haven’t located any of them.”

  “Including July?”

  Sarah broke off a piece of her scone and gave it to Rosie. Rosie ate it carefully and resumed her stare.

  “Is there a phone number?” I said. “For July or Bright Flower.”

  “You bet.”

  “Is it real?”

  “Nope.”

  “What happens when you dial it?”

  “Operator interrupt: Number is not in service.”

  “What is all this stuff about?” Sarah said. “What’s it mean?”

  “Someone is going to considerable length to send you money without anyone knowing who they are,” I said.

  “You don’t think it’s my grandfather?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, who the hell?”

  “Maybe your biological father,” Brian said.

  “Or mother,” I said.

  “You don’t think she’s my mother, either?” Sarah said.

  “She wouldn’t do the DNA test,” I said.

  “She says she feels it’s an insulting intrusion,” Sarah said.

  She might not like Mrs. Markham, but she liked even less the thought that she was parentless. I didn’t blame her.

  “You got any other basis for doubting Mrs. Markham?” Brian said.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “But . . .”

  “But I sure as hell would like to know where Lolly Drake fits in.”

  “If she fits in,” Brain said.

  “She’s in here somewhere,” I said. “She keeps popping up.”

  “You think she might be my mother?” Sarah said.

  “She keeps popping up,” I said.

  We were quiet with our coffee. The scones were gone. Rosie refused to accept the fact, however, and kept up her beady vigil under our feet. Sarah’s eyes were teary. She wasn’t quite crying, but her voice shook a little.

  “Why did I do this,” she said.

  “You had a right to know,” I said.

  “Why didn’t I let it go, and just live as I had. Mother, father, go to college, get a boyfriend, get married. Why didn’t I do that. None of this would have happened.”

  “You don’t know what would have happened,” I said.

  She looked at me. Brian was quiet, drinking his coffee. One of his assets as a detective was how still he could be.

  “Why did I do this,” she said.

  I realized it was not a rhetorical question. She wanted me to tell her.

  “You seemed kind of mad at them,” I said.

  “You think I did this because I was mad at them?”

  “We do a lot of things,” I said, “for reasons we don’t understand. Maybe this was a way to get back at them for not being the parents you wanted.”

  A couple months of therapy, and I was Dr. Phil.

  “So now,” Sarah said, “if you’re right, I got none.”

  “Or others,” I said.

  “Yeah, right, others. What am I going to do, sleep on your couch the rest of my life?”

  “That’s an inductive leap,” I said, “that I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Fuck it,” Sarah said. “I don’t care if anybody understands.”

  She began to cry and got up and went down the length of my loft and stood with her face pressed against the window, looking out and crying. After one hopeful glance, Rosie paid no attention to her, and continued to stare at the empty plate where the sweet scones had rested.

  “I feel like a bad mother,” I said.

  “If you were,” Brian said, “you wouldn’t be alone.”

  50

  Mrs. Markham’s face began to get gray as I talked with her. “Of course, George was Sarah’s father,” she said. “No,” I said. “DNA says he wasn’t.”

  “They could be wrong.”

  “Not a good bet,” I said.

  Her face got grayer.

  “How do I know you’re not lying to me,” she said.

  “Why would I lie?”

  “You’ve been trying to destroy me since I met you.”

  I sighed and took a copy of the lab report from my purse and gave it to her.

  “I can’t read this,” she said.

  “Take it to your doctor or your local hospital or to another DNA lab. The Andover cops can refer you.” I said. “Or call the Boston cops. Brian Kelly is the investigating officer.”

  “I can’t do all of that,” she said.

  “Any of that would be enough,” I said.

  “I’m alone,” she said.

  “You could choose to trust me,” I said. “I’m not, in fact, trying to destroy you. I’m trying to help your daughter.”

  “He’s not her father,” Mrs. Markham said.

  She looked as if she was cold, or as if she was trying to be smaller.

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “He’s not.”

  “My God,” she said.

  “So, would you know who her father is?” I said.

  She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring past me, staring at nothing. She shook her head.

  “You don’t know her father?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I d
on’t mean to be indelicate, Mrs. Markham, but if the father is not your husband, shouldn’t you have some idea who else it might be?”

  “She wasn’t mine,” Mrs. Markham said. “She was George’s.”

  “Tell me about that,” I said.

  “She was George’s daughter from a previous marriage.”

  “You told me she was born in 1982.”

  Mrs. Markham nodded.

  “When were you and George married?” I said.

  She looked at me without any sign that she understood the question.

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked when you and George were married,” I said.

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “You were already married,” I said, “when George was working in Moline in 1979.”

  She did not speak.

  “Which means Sarah was conceived while you and George were married.”

  “She must have been born earlier,” Mrs. Markham said.

  “1978?”

  “Yes. That must have been when.”

  “Which would make her what? Twenty-six?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Mrs. Markham,” I said. “Sarah is not twenty-six.”

  “I don’t know what else to say. She is George’s daughter from a previous marriage.”

  “Except that she’s not George’s daughter.”

  Mrs. Markham put her gray face in her hands and began to cry.

  “Who’s the father, Mrs. Markham?”

  She shook her head.

  “Were you so promiscuous,” I said, “that you don’t even know?”

  “I was never promiscuous,” she said without taking her face from her hands.

  “Then who was the father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you’re not her mother?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Who is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Somebody is,” I said.

  Mrs. Markham shook her head again.

  “How did she end up with you and your husband.”

  Still bent forward, with her hands covering her face, she shook her head again. She began to rock.

  “Mrs. Markham,” I said. “She had a father and mother.”

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop it.”

  She raised her face, the pallor parchment now, with two feverish red spots high on her cheeks. She began to pound on her thighs with her fists.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “Mrs. Markham,” I said.

  She pitched forward out of the chair onto the floor and lay on her side with her knees drawn up and continued to pound her thighs. Her eyes were clenched shut.

  “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out get out get out get out.”

  I took the hint.

  51

  He knows,” I said.

  “Your father?” Dr. Silverman said.

  “Yes. He knows what my mother is, and he loves her anyway.”

  Dr. Silverman nodded.

  “I always thought he didn’t really love her,” I said. “That he stayed with her because of the children.”

  “He loved you more than he did your mother,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “Yes.”

  The office was quiet. Dr. Silverman was wearing a white cashmere sweater. Her hands were folded on the desk. Her nails were perfectly manicured. Her black hair was thick and shiny. Her makeup was amazing. Before I was through with therapy, I was going to have to ask her for suggestions. She seemed in no hurry. We could sit in silence for as long as we wanted to.

  “Since I was a kid,” I said, “I have had a recurrent fantasy. I am high in the mountains, in a pristine white wilderness, with a strong, quiet man. We are in a sort of shelter under an overhang. The snow is deep and new, with no tracks in it. It is perfectly still. Nothing moves. We are dressed in thick furs. The man has a Winchester rifle. A huge fire is blazing in front of the overhang. We are warm and very comfortable. There is somehow an infinite supply of food and firewood.”

  Dr. Silverman rocked slightly in her chair, nodding her head almost imperceptibly.

  “How does that feel?” she said.

  “In the fantasy, it seems perfect. Just me and the man together.”

  “And the landscape?” Dr. Silverman said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Talk about the landscape a little more,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “Very still,” I said. “Deep snow, nothing moves.”

  “And the rifle?”

  “I don’t know. When you’re far out in the wilderness, a rifle is good, isn’t it?”

  “Does he use it to hunt?” Dr. Silverman asked. “Provide food?”

  “I suppose, I don’t know. It’s not part of the fantasy.”

  “What do you do, sitting there?” she said.

  “Nothing. That’s all the fantasy is, that image of us.”

  “Do you know who the man is?”

  “In the fantasy, I do,” I said. “But you mean, really? Who he is in my real life. No, I don’t know. Richie, I suppose.”

  “Does Richie carry a gun?”

  “Not usually. I’ve told you about his family.”

  She nodded.

  “You know many people who carry guns.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was the first?”

  “The first person I knew who carried a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father, I . . . oh, Jesus Christ.”

  Dr. Silverman’s eyes moved in the way she had that somehow prompted me.

  “The gun,” I said.

  Go ahead, the eyes said.

  “The big gun.”

  Dr. Silverman nodded.

  “Sometimes a gun is only a gun?” I said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “And sometimes it’s phallic?”

  She nodded.

  “Sometimes it’s both,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “So I’m in a cave in a mountain with a man with a big gun,” I said. “All around is empty, frozen landscape with no life in it. And there’s a big fire.”

  Dr. Silverman didn’t say anything.

  I smiled.

  “Keep those home fires burning,” I said.

  She kept looking at me without comment. Her eyes did their little move.

  “What?” I said.

  Go on, the eyes said.

  “Home fires,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman’s head nodded maybe a quarter of an inch.

  “I’m keeping the home fires burning with my father and his big gun,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman nodded minutely.

  “So why the dead-of-winter landscape?”

  She moved her eyes. It was as if she had shrugged. How did she do that? I was quiet. She was quiet.

  After a time she said, “Dead of winter.”

  “Dead of winter?”

  “Your phrase,” Dr. Silverman said.

  “And in here there are no offhand comments,” I said.

  She smiled and shifted in her chair in the way she did to indicate that time was up.

  “Next time,” she said.

  I stood and walked to the door. She walked with me, as she always did.

  “Dead of winter,” I said.

  She smiled and held the door open. I went out.

  52

  You spend your life never going to Moline, and all of a sudden you are there for the second time. I was at the bar in the cocktail lounge at the airport Holiday Inn and Convention Center, with Millie McNeeley. I was having my first glass of white wine. Millie was drinking her third Manhattan, and chain-smoking Chesterfield Kings.

  “I need you
to remember,” I said to Millie. “Two men are dead, two women are facing emotional destitution. It’s not about discretion anymore.”

  Millie listened to me. She nodded as I spoke. When I stopped, she sipped a bit more of her Manhattan, took another long pull on her cigarette, and watched the smoke drift up in front of her face as she exhaled with her lower lip pushed out. She didn’t say anything. I waited. It was one of the things I had learned from my father about detective work. Silence pressures most people. Wait. Listen. Be quiet.

  “That’s too bad about George,” Millie said finally.

  I nodded. Millie drank some more and smoked some more.

  “He was a lot of fun,” she said.

  I nodded. A small nod, just enough to cue her that I was listening. I knew where I had learned that.

  “We had a little thing for a while,” Millie said.

  Nod.

  “He was married at the time.”

  Millie finished her Manhattan and gestured to the bartender for another one and grinned at me.

  “But I wasn’t,” she said.

  “When was this?” I said.

  “Oh, lemme see.” The bartender brought her Manhattan. She drank some. I suppressed a shudder.

  “It would have been right around 1979, 1980—not too long after he got here. George was a ladies’ man.”

  “Though married,” I said.

  “His wife was a poop,” Millie said.

  “Were you his only, ah, conquest?”

  “I wasn’t conquested,” Millie said. “I liked sex as much as he did. Still do, just harder to come by.”

  “Were you the only woman in his life,” I said, “other than his wife.”

  Millie sipped her drink.

  “Hell, no,” she said. “George was hot. And the options in Moline aren’t that great.”

  “Who else was he with.”

  “Every female at the station, I think.”

  “Including Lolly Drake?”

  “Absolutely,” Millie said.

  For a moment, I felt like jumping off the bar stool and doing a little River Dance thing right there in the cocktail lounge. Instead, I remained calm.

  “Were they a big item?” I said.

  “No bigger than George and I,” Millie said. “Remember, she wasn’t Big-Deal Lolly then, just a kid with a call-in show in a small market.”

  “Was George careful?” I said.