77th Street Requiem

by Wendy Hornsby

  I saw threads of red in the drainage bag attached to the side of Emily’s bed, a sign of infection.

  “I’m very clear,” I said. “I know what Emily would say. But I want some assurance from you that, whatever happens, I have your support.”

  My mother smiled up at me and I was expecting some platitude about their faith in my judgment. What she said was, “Did Daddy tell you he’s considering a consulting job in France? Some god-awful industrial suburb south of Paris. I can take the rapide into the city, but, well, it isn’t nice there.”

  I grabbed the back of my father’s belt to make him stop pacing. “How long would you be out of the country?”

  “Two years. Maybe three. We’re going over next week to talk to the people.”

  “You’re abandoning me,” I said, breathless as from a blow to the solar plexus. “You don’t want to be here to argue me out of my decision, whatever it is.”

  Mother said, “It’s best this way.”

  “What about your house?”

  “Lyle will take care of it,” she said.

  “Damn.” They had their escape well planned. Lyle had been my solution when I took off for parts south.

  I stretched back across the bed and tried to count ceiling tiles, got to twenty and was no closer to anything that looked like an answer. Emily, seized by a spasm, shot out her foot and caught me sharply in the ribs. I grabbed her foot. “Thanks for the input, Emily.”

  Emily’s doctor came in to let us know that she was as clueless as we were about Emily’s prognosis. She was more confusing than helpful. Mother and Dad followed her out and left me alone with Emily. To talk things over with her, I suppose. Emily was not at all forthcoming and I needed help.

  I called Mike at the office.

  “Major Crimes, Flint here.” He sounded fierce, but that is his job.

  “MacGowen here,” I said, sounding to my own ear like a whipped puppy.

  “What’s up?”

  “How’s your hand?”

  “Throbs a little. Flight okay?”

  “No flames upon landing.” I told him about Mother’s counterdemonstration and he laughed.

  “How is Emily?”

  “She had another seizure. Doctor says she may have a brain lesion, but there isn’t much point in doing expensive diagnostics to pinpoint the problem. Em could have a cerebral rupture at any time.”

  “Any time today, or any time this year?”

  “Exactly. There’s more to it, too much to go into over the telephone. Mike, get someone to cover for you. Come up. I need you.”

  Big sigh. “I can’t, baby. I’ve got a line on my torture killer. And I’m waiting for the judge to hand down the warrant to search Anthony Louis’s hovel. I’m too close to too many things.”

  “You’re working all night?”

  “Probably. I found the dump where my torture murderer has been shackin’ and arrested his clothes and shit. Got everything he owns in the trunk of my car. He can’t go back home, and he’s got nowhere else to go, so it’s just a matter of waiting till he gets tired of being on the street, smelling funky and eating at the shelters. I got stakeouts everywhere I figure he might show up looking for a handout. He’ll hit one of them and I’ll bring him in. Could be tonight. Could be next week. But until I get him, I can’t leave Dodge.”

  There was a long pause, and then he said, “I ran the guns you took from Hector’s.”

  “And?”

  “One was his side arm. The other two were throwaways. I don’t know why Hector would keep throwaways at this stage in his career.”

  “Maybe he never got around to disposing of them. Maybe they were Gloria’s.”

  “Could be, but she says no.”

  “Did you talk to Gloria about the video cam?”

  “Yeah. But giving it back is an admission that she took it in the first place. She’s going slow.”

  “Guido can get you the serial number. Could we file a civil case?”

  “That may be our fallback position. The thing is, all we want is the tape inside the camera, if there is a tape. I don’t want to tip Gloria because she might do something to it. Maybe I’ll just go get it back the same way she took it to begin with.”

  “Don’t hurt her on your way in.”

  “I’ll try.” He chuckled. “What else do you know?”

  I told him what a bust the Las Vegas trip had been. Then I said, “I made an appointment with a realtor. I’m meeting him at my house tonight.”

  “Appointment with a realtor?”

  “I thought we should get an appraisal before we make any decisions.”

  “We?” he said. “Who is this we?”

  “You and me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m up to here with solo decisions, Mike. I miss you. I’ll deny this if you quote me, but I need you.”

  “Good to hear.” He laughed the way a man laughs when he hears his child has been especially clever. “Look, if there’s any way I can get away, I’ll do it. If I get enough accomplished tonight, maybe I can fly up in the morning, we can hang out a little, and fly home together tomorrow night. That’s the best offer I can make, and it’s soft.”

  “I’ll cling to the hope,” I said. “Good-bye.”

  Emily seemed to be asleep. Her breathing was very slow and regular. I shook her by the foot and nothing changed.

  It was late afternoon in Houston, a good time to catch my daughter in her dorm room. When I called, she bubbled over with exciting news.

  “I won’t be home for Christmas.”

  I managed to say, and maybe even to sound calm when I said, “Why not?”

  “I’m going to dance the part of the Snow Queen in the Houston Ballet Nutcracker.”

  “Congratulations. That does change things. I was just thinking we might have Christmas in Paris with Grandma and Grandpa.”

  “Why Paris?”

  “They’re talking about staying there for a while.”

  A long pause before she said, with pity, “Oh, Mom. You’ll be all alone at Christmas.”

  “I’ll be with Mike and Michael. And if you’re dancing in Houston, we’ll be there with you.” I looked over at Emily. No matter how the arrangements were sorted out, Emily was going to have her first Christmas all alone. Rather, we were going to have our first Christmas without Emily. I held on to Em’s clawlike hand.

  I said, “I’m proud of you, Casey.”

  Christmas I could handle, but three more months without my daughter’s leotards in my laundry? I said, “Tell me about the auditions.”

  She chattered on, apparently satisfied by my occasional “uh-huhs” and “reallys?” that I was following her dance jargon during the audition play-by-play. But I was completely lost. It was just nice to hear her happy energy.

  Em stirred me from my mental wanderings with another hard kick. When I pushed her leg aside, she pushed back. The kick was not a voluntary response; I saw her eyes roll back in their sockets, the skin of her face grow taut like shrink-wrap over her fine bones.

  To my daughter I said, “Emily’s having a seizure. Will you hold on just a second?”

  With one hand, I snapped up the bed’s side rails to keep Em from falling to the floor, then I grabbed the nurse’s call button and held it down until I heard running feet approach down the hall. Emily was in the throes of another grand mal.

  The nurses came, the doctor followed. Emily bucked and grimaced and frothed from the mouth. During it all, scared to the point of panic, I managed to lie the big mother lie, saying nothing to my daughter instead of sharing my horror. Despite my efforts, Casey was alarmed.

  “Talk to me, Mom.”

  “The doctor is giving Emily something.”

  “She okay?”

  Emily’s body still shook, but the muscles were not as rigid; the seizure was passing. And she still breathed, her heart still beat.

  “I think she’s okay, Casey.”

  “Grandma told me Aunt Em had been sick. An infection or
something?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Everybody always tells me how I’m just like Emily.”

  “In many ways you are,” I said. In more ways than being six feet tall like her aunt, and having my father’s hump on the bridge of her nose, and being smarter than everyone else.

  “I hope Grandma’s wrong,” she said.

  “What? You don’t want to be like Emily?”

  “Not that,” Casey said. “Grandma always says that we should be careful what we say around Aunt Emily, because no one can say for sure if Em can hear or feel, or think about things. I hope she can’t think at all. Because, if we’re so much alike, I know she’d be going insane if she couldn’t move or she couldn’t say what was on her mind. Excuse me for saying this, I know she’s your sister and you love her and all, but I’d rather be dead than frozen like her. Worse than being buried alive.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes,” I said.

  “Jeez, Mom, I’m not a baby.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “You are like Emily, Casey. Don’t ever stop saying exactly what’s on your mind.”

  She said, “Yeah?”

  “Call Mike and Michael and tell them you got the part you wanted. They’ll be as proud of you as I am. I’m sure we’ll all be in Houston for Christmas.”

  When Emily’s storm passed there were bruises on her alabaster white flesh where she had knocked against the side rails. On her forehead, where the entering bullet had left a daisy-shaped scar, she gave herself a real shiner, as if she had attacked that gruesome spot with concentrated violence. But she still breathed in and out. Her heart rate was normal, even if mine was not.

  I spent most of the rest of Friday afternoon in my uncle Max’s Oakland law offices, discussing Emily’s legal situation with Max’s partner, Jackson Allgood.

  “We’ll have papers ready for signature before we go home tonight,” Jackson said. “Tell me where you’ll be and I’ll deliver them myself.”

  “At my house,” I said. The hug he gave me was full of emotion; Jackson had had a massive crush on my sister once. In a way, I suspect he still did.

  He walked me back to the BART station, holding on to my arm. “Damned hard deciding not to intervene. I admire your decision, but do you think your parents will stick with it?”

  “They have a right to back down,” I said. “It would be a tremendous relief for me if either of them would express some strong opinion one way or the other. Right now I’m flying on instruments. I know Emily would prefer death to being hooked up. But my parents? Who knows?”

  “I don’t envy your situation,” Jackson said, squeezing my arm.

  I leaned against him for a moment. “All my life, I have known that my parents would leap through fire to save their children. My dilemma now is defining what it means to them to be saved. To live, in legal terms? To be saved from further indignities?”

  “Shall I draw up a second set of instructions?”

  I shook my head. “We have it right.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  I drove my father’s car across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco at around six that Friday evening.

  Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. The entire Bay Area was under a summerlike siege. Heat in the East Bay and inland valleys drew a dense layer of cold, heavy fog off the sea, leaving the city under a shroud.

  I like fog; it softens the edges, lays a blanket of quiet over the land. After the heat of Oakland, the soft, damp coolness of the West Bay was a blessed change. I took the Embarcadero home, during rush hour, in peak tourist season, just so that I could drive along the bay front and hear the foghorns out at sea. It’s a beautiful sound, more mournful than trains in the night, as melodic in its way, and as natural to the area as hooting owls are in the woods.

  When I parked in front of my restored house in the Marina district, Lyle, my housemate, was sitting on the front stoop watching the gray shadows of commuter ferries fan out from the city, heading toward Sausalito, Tiburon, Vallejo, and points north. The boats are a pretty sight in any weather.

  Lyle got up and strolled over to meet me as I walked up the steep hill.

  “Benedict Arnold,” I said, kissing his cheek, anyway.

  “Me? Who’s selling my home out from under me? Your mom and dad offer me a new gig, am I going to say no?”

  “Who says I’m selling my house?”

  “The real estate agent you called is inside with his little forms, going through all the closets, looking for cracks and leaks. I should have tripped him on his way in.”

  I looked up at the front of the house, saw the marina, the water, the Marin side of the bay reflected back in the tall windows. I would have bought the house for the view alone. Anyone would. Then I saw the agent standing inside on the landing between the second and third floors, looking out at the same scene, maybe figuring a price tag to put on it. I felt sick.

  “Lyle, Lyle, crocodile.” I grabbed his arm. “What am I going to do?”

  “Hell if I know. Except, you’re taking me to Masa’s for dinner tonight. You owe me that at least.”

  The agent, a neighbor I’d had a nodding acquaintance with for years, made his way down through the house and out the front door. In common with every second real estate agent, his name was Jerry.

  “I haven’t seen inside here since the earthquake,” Jerry said, holding his folder of forms close to his chest. “You’ve done a great job with the restoration, Maggie. Absolutely top drawer.”

  Lyle looked a little green. He had supervised most of the rebuilding and redecorating. If the house was ready to be placed on the market, it was largely his fault. I put my arm through Lyle’s and leaned against the shoulder of his bomber jacket.

  The agent seemed to be measuring the house with his eyes. “Why do you want to sell, Maggie?”

  “I’m living in L.A.,” I said. “Keeping up two houses is too expensive. When this house is vacant, it’s a killer. But even when Lyle has renters in here, there’s a negative cash flow. I can’t cover the hemorrhage much longer.”

  “What a shame.” Jerry struck a mournful posture. “This is a bad time to be selling a house; the worst I’ve known in twenty-five years selling houses in the city. I hear what they’re saying about statewide recovery, but the local housing market is still in the toilet, and looks to stay there for another couple of years. You’re not going to get anywhere near what this house is worth if you sell now. You’ll be lucky if you recoup the mortgage debt. But it’s your decision. If you want to list your home, you know I’ll bust my butt to sell it. Think over your options, though. If there’s any way you can ride out the slump, I advise you to do it.”

  Lyle, who is my height, beamed into my face. “Listen to the man.”

  What I heard when I listened to the man was the sound of my evaporating bank account. So I offered Jerry my hand to let him know he should go away. I said, “Thanks for your time. I’ll let you know what we decide.”

  I went straight inside, called Mike, and told him what Jerry had to say about selling. Mike said at least we had more information. Then he said, “You’re all over the news tonight, sweetheart. According to what’s his name with the comb-over on channel two, the reason you weren’t available to comment on the Documentary Deaths is because you were unplugging Emily.”

  “Life is rich in its variety,” I said.

  Mike said he was sure he wouldn’t be able to fly up. Not Friday night, and not Saturday morning. I said good-bye.

  Lyle showed me the water damage to the ceiling. He said, “It isn’t as bad as I thought it was. A little cosmetic plaster and paint, you won’t notice it.”

  I was looking at the beige stain when I asked, “How much did those tenants cost us?”

  “They skipped on last month’s rent. We won’t get anything this month while we get the place back in shape. And every month until we find a new tenant, nada. Add some paint, some cleaning
, replace broken fixtures.”

  “Thousands,” I said.

  “Thousands,” he agreed.

  Jackson came by at seven with papers and a bouquet of white mums. He was very solemn as I signed the instructions to the hospital staff that they were to continue Emily on intravenous nutrition but were not to intervene mechanically in any way to resuscitate or sustain her. The deed was easier to accomplish than I had anticipated. In fact, I felt a sense of relief.

  Jackson left to deliver a set of papers to my parents, and another to the hospital administrator.

  When he was gone, Lyle said, “Dinner. Now.”

  The restaurant Lyle chose had a dress code that my jeans wouldn’t pass. I went up to the attic storage room, found a red silk sheath and a string of phony pearls in one of my trunks, and put them on. We took a taxi to Masa’s near Union Square for the best Japanese dinner in the city. And for drinks.

  We had a lot to talk about. We went from Masa’s to Kim-ball’s for some jazz, then on to an after-hours club south of Market Street to hear honest-to-god rock and roll. It was so nice being with Lyle, so comfortable all around, so far away from the telephone, that I didn’t want to let go of the evening. We stayed out too long. I drank too much.

  I must have broken the string of pearls trying to get out of my dress. When I woke up on the living room couch Saturday morning, the dress looked like a red puddle on the rug, and there were fake pearls everywhere. I wrapped myself in the quilt Lyle had thrown over me at some point, and followed the smell of coffee into the kitchen.

  “You obviously didn’t have enough to drink,” I said, dismayed by Lyle’s crisp oxford cloth shirt, the khakis with a crease, the smooth glow on his cheeks. I closed the shutters against the morning sun before I sat at the table. With my head propped on my hands and hair falling over my face to keep the remaining light out of my eyes, I asked, “Were we in a train wreck?”

  “You were.” Lyle scooped steamed milk onto a big mug of coffee and put it in front of me. “Your whole life flashed in front of you. I take that back. Your whole life droned into my ears.”