by Daydreams
Looked like coconut.
“What do you want?” Donaher said. `-What’s up?”
A girl and a young man were sitting on a couch at the other end of the room, talking-and they looked up as Ellie, Donaher, and his wife came in.
“Margie … Richard . . .” Mrs. Donaher said, “-this is Detective Klein. Miss Klein, my daughter and her friend, Richard . . .” The girl and young man said, “Hi … 11 Margie was the girl in the graduation pictures. She had long light-brown hair, and was as beautiful now as her mother had probably been.
“What is it?” Donaher said. “-What can I do for you?”
“Wouldn’t you like some coffee … a piece of cake?”
Mrs. Donaher said. “You should sit down, dear, get off those feet.”
“No, thank you-I don’t have the time. They’re all right. -I just have some papers that Sergeant Donaher needs to sign, that’s all.”
“O.K.,” Donaher said. “Come on-we’ll go in the bedroom, get it done.”
“It was nice meeting you,” Ellie said to the Donaher girl and her boyfriend.
“Nice meeting you .
“Sure you don’t want some coffee?”
“Thanks, Mrs. Donaher-I really don’t have the time.”
Ellie followed Donaher back to the hall, and through a door on the right into a large bedroom. It was his and his wife’s room; they had a queen-size bed with a dark brown figured spread, and family pictures on the lowboy, under a wide mirror. Donaher closed the door.
“What in the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Keeping his voice low.
“-Tommy’s dead, and right away you’re over here looking for what, some shakedown money-right?”
Ellie turned and hit him in the face with the back of her hand. It made a louder smacking sound than she expected, and both of them were still for a few moments, thinking it might have been heard in the living room.
She’d hit him with her left hand, and her injured forearm started aching at once.
Donaher put his thumb and forefinger up to his nose, to pinch it, test for bleeding. He looked at his fingers to be sure.
“O.K.,” he said. “—So I was out of line. O.K. Just don’t try for seconds……
He hadn’t done it. He wasn’t frightened enough to have had any part in killing a cop. -Ellie tried, though, just to be sure.
“I came over to let you know Homicide’s got your name as a possible for killing Tommy.”
That scared him.
“Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?” He was forgetting to keep his voice down, and Ellie glanced at the door to remind him. “-Are you crazy?”
said much more softly.
“You couldn’t say anything’ like that! You’re fuckin’ crazy!”
“If you didn’t do it-maybe your friends did. Maybe your thief friends didn’t like Tommy giving them that trouble uptown.”
“Oh, wait a minute. Wait … a … minute! There’s nobody up there going’ to hurt Tommy. That’s no big deal, for Christ’s sake! They just move the pickup. What’s the big deal? -They’re not going’ to kill a cop ‘cause he won’t play. What do you think-there’s a bunch of maniacs up there? Tommy didn’t turn me-they know he’s not going’ to turn them.
Those guys aren’t going’ to hurt Tommy!”
“Somebody hurt him.”
“It wasn’t them. Probably some fuckin’ junkies .
Ellie stood looking at him. -He hadn’t done it, and his friends hadn’t done it. Her arm was hurting her worse.
Sergeant Donaher was sweating. He was handsome, with all that fine white hair. In the car, uptown that day, Ellie hadn’t seen how really good-looking he was. He looked like a senior detective in a movie. He cleared his throat. “-What in God’s name did you tell the Homicide guys?”
“Everything. -They’ll be coming around.”
“Oh, nooo … !” said Sergeant Donaher, his face reddening as it had in the car, uptown.
Ellie opened the door and walked out of the bedroom, pleased with imagining Donaher waiting through the next few days for that visit. At the living-room entrance, she waved to Gracie Donaher and the young couple on the couch. They were having coffee and cake.
“Bye-bye .
“Oh, wait,” said Mrs. Donaher, and she got up. “I’ll let you out….
Where’s Paul?”
“I think the sergeant’s in the bathroom,” Ellie said, and was ashamed, right after, of taking her pleasure at this decent woman’s expense.
Ellie got off the island bus near the travel agency, and limped down the sidewalk to her building. The night was becoming colder than cool. A black sedan, a Chevy, was parked in front of the building entrance. -Its engine started as she came up, and a tall man in a tan raincoat got out of the back and stood in streetfight.
“Busy day . . .” said Phil Shea.
His face looked plainer every time she saw it-a long, raw, Irish face.
“Yes . Ellie said. Shea seemed very relaxed, standing on the sidewalk talking to her-as if they had the Whole night.
“You O.K.? “I’m fine … thanks.”
“Your partner’d be proud of you,” Shea said, bent and kissed her on the cheek, then kissed her mouth, turned and climbed into the car. There were three other men in the Chevy … stony, watchful faces. The car pulled away, and Ellie watched for Shea to look back, but he didn’t.
Mayo greeted her at the apartment door with a long complaint, then marched before her down the hall. Ellie set her purse on the telephone table, and had intended to listen to her messages, but felt suddenly sick. She walked down the hall to the bedroom, called, “Will you shut up - - .” to Mayo-moaning in the kitchen, waiting for food-then limped to her bed and fell across it.
She lay there for several minutes, and slowly began to feel better. She had felt she was going to faint, or vomit again. She turned over, reached up and got a pillow under her head, and lay still a little longer, “I shouldn’t have gone downtown,” she said, out loud. —I should have stayed here when Max brought me.
… 11 She turned her face to the pillow and began to cry, but didn’t cry long. When she finished, she propped herself on her elbow, got a tissue from the bedside table, and blew her nose. Then she got up, and felt all right, but very tired. Her feet were hurting her, and her arm was hurting her more. -She should have hit Donaher with her right hand.
She walked out to the kitchen, took a can of Puss’n Boots Chicken n’
Gravy down from the cabinet, opened it, emptied it into a saucer, and stooped to slide that under the kitchen table. Then she went out to the ball to listen to her messages.
There was a short one from Clara: “-Hello, sweetheart. I’m fine and getting ready to get out of here. I miss the hell out of you, and will be sorry to leave none of the windy city except for some of its architecture-pure Howard Roark. See you soonest, your new friend, old lover Clara.”
Ellie didn’t know who Howard Roark was—assumed he was modern. Clara hadn’t heard about Tommy.
There was a longer message from Mary Gands. The engagement was definitely on, Joseph wasn’t drinking at all–only a glass of wine at dinner-and why hadn’t Ellie called her?
Charlie Corsaro had called, and had had to call back a second time for space on the tape to complete his message. “Hi, El-I know this thing has hit you real hard, too. You an’ Tommy were close. . . . I’m sorry for the pain you must be sufferin’. Doctor’s put Connie to bed for a day or two. She’s OX but she just stopped talkin’ much. Truth is, I think it took a while to really hit her.
Mrs. Donatto and Mrs. Evans are comin’ in, takin’ care Of Marie. I don’t think Marie realizes exactly what hapened, and that’s a blessing.
Requiem Mass is set for day after tomorrow, Sunday, at St. Gregory’s, two o’clock.
You come a little early-0. K. ? You’re sittin’ with the family.
Love, Charlie.”
Ellie turned off the machine, listened to it rewind, then walked out to the livi
ng room. It was stuffy, smelled faintly of paint and thinner.
She turned on the floor lamp, then went to open the windows wider, welcome in some of the cold night air. From the second window, near the far corner of the room, she could see the lights of the cars on the FDR
Drive across the river-running along like bright beads of mercury. At this distance, whispering.
She tilted the shade of the floor lamp so its light fell directly on the painting-and stood for a few moments, trying to look at it like a stranger. 1W
Ellie was relieved to see it wasn’t too bad-especially for wet in wet.
It was a good painting … not as pretty, maybe, as it should have been. The blossoms-bright yellow, dull orange, traces of brown-looked like blossoms … and seemed to burn like small fires in their clump of greenery. But it wasn’t very pretty. Everything was off to the right a little-the leaves, the stems and blossoms leaning that way. If there’d been more of a wind blowing, it would be perfect.
Before she thought about it anymore, and got worried, Ellie picked up her tube of viridian from the newspaper on the coffee table, squeezed some onto her palette, a smaller blob of black beside that, took a clean brush, shook two drops of copal medium onto the paints, mixed them-then leaned over the picture and painted four curled leaves against the white canvas to the right of her bending flowers. -Three of the leaves flying, scattering away in the wind one fluttering, its painted edges smeared, about to go….
It worked pretty well.
Ellie walked around the couch to look at the picture from farther away.
It looked good.
She walked back, and touched the picture lightly, just with one finger on the edge of the biggest blossom. -Almost dry. Dry enough to carry, tomorrow, if she was careful…. She’d be able to put a coat of retouch over it, take it over in the morning. Ellie squeezed another very small dab of black onto the palette, dipped the brush, and signed the picture in the lower right corner.
Klein.
She cleaned the brush in the kitchen, then went to the hall phone, looked up St. Christopher’s number in her address book, and called.
After several rings, a woman answered (elderly, perhaps Edna) and Ellie identified herself, and asked to speak with Sonia Gaither. There was a thoughtful pause at the other end of the line, then considerable clicking as the call was transferred to the dorm, and several more rings before a young girl answered the phone, then shouted for Sonia.
“Hello … ?”
“It’s Ellie, Sonia. Officer Klein. Sorry to call so late.”
“Oh … hello.”
“I’m just calling to let you know we have the people who … did that to your mom, your mother. There were two of them.”
“Two of them? -You got them .
“Yes. They were arrested today. -Two women …
Rebecca Platt and Susan Margolies. They robbed her. -They did it for money……
“But I met Mrs. Margolies. Sonia’s voice had begun to wobble like a child’s.
“I know … I know. Sweetheart, sometimes decent people do indecent things. I think Dr. Margolies is sick. The other lady, too, I think, in a different kind of way.”
“That’s why they hurt her … so much?”
“Yes. Probably the other lady did that. -But they won’t hurt anybody else. They’re in jail.”
“Are they going to put them in the electric chair?”
“No. They’ll lock them up until they’re very old. -Don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them, Son ‘ ia. They’re not worth your spending a lot of time on them. I’m sure your mother would say you have better things to think about than that.”
“I guess so………
“I’ll come up in a day or two, if you want me to. I’ll come see you, and tell you anything you want to know. -And I’ll bring the letters, too.”
“Nobody else read them?”
“Nobody else read them.”
“I guess you think she was really weird . . . all that stuff she wrote about.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Can you come up Sunday . . . ?”
“No, not Sunday. I have to go to a funeral. -What about Wednesday? You have classes all afternoon?”
“No. Wednesday’d be O.K. -Two o’clock is my last class. Latin.”
“O. K. -Main building at three? We can go for a drive and have dinner, if it’s all right with the people up there.”
“Oh, it’ll be O.K.”
“All right. Three o’clock, Wednesday. -You take care, sweetheart
“His. Klein-“
“Ellie.”
“Ellie. -Did you catch them?”
“My partner and I caught them.”
“Well . . . see you on Wednesday.”
“Bye-bye .
“Bye-bye.”
Ellie put the receiver down, went into the bedroom, took off the sheepskin slippers and white socks, undressed, and walked into the bathroom, touching her tender breasts, gently stroking them. The doctor had said no showers, no baths for a day or two so as not to wet the butterfly bandages.
SOL
She went to the sink, took a towel from the rack and spread it on the carpeting; then-standing on that-turned the water on, soaped her washcloth, wrung it out a little, and began to wash-soaping her face, tlien rinsing the cloth in hot water and wiping the soap away, She rinsed her face a second time, then soaped and rinsed her throat and neck, her shoulders, armpits, and breasts. She was careful not to wet the bandage on her left arm. She washed her stomach, her groin-reached around to do her back and down between her buttocks-then put her right foot up on the side of the tub, washed her leg and foot, then did the same with her left, not wetting the bottoms of her feet. -When she finished, she took a towel from the rack, dried herself, then picked the other towel up off the floor and draped them both over the shower-curtain rod.
Ellie stood looking at herself in the sink mirror, took a razor from the soap dish, and lifted her right arm so she could shave that armpit. Then she lifted her left, and did that one, -Her left arm ached, from holding it up.
Still watching herself, thinking about nothing, she let her hair down, and brushed it out, moving her lips, counting the strokes. When she’d done enough of that, Ellie opened the cabinet, took out her Ponds, and stroked the cream lightly into her face, taking care to trace the faint lines around her mouth.
She turned off the bathroom light, walked naked out to the living room to turn that light off. -The picture looked very good. It wasn’t wonderful-but it was a good painting. Ellie stood looking at it for a few moments, then went back down the hall for her purse, took out one of the small pink pills the Chinese doctor had given her, went to the kitchen and took it with two glasses of water.
Coming back, she picked up Mayo at the kitchen door, and carried him with her into the bedroom.
She dreamed of something green, then didn’t dream at all for a while.
Almost awake then, Ellie felt Mayo slide from underneath her hand, her sore arm outstretched as she lay on her stomach. She supposed he was going hunting. There was a cricket in the kitchen; she heard it after Mayo left her, and its dry music sent her deeper into sleep.
Rebecca and she were walking along the boardwalk at Coney Island.
Rebecca was old, but still nice-looking.
Ellie supposed she must be old, too, though she didn’t feel it. They’d been talking about Rebecca being in prison.
`-It could have been worse,” Rebecca said. “I got my marketing B.A….
correspondence.
Later, Ellie was alone, and looking for saltwater tafty.
She asked somebody, a man with a small white dog, and he pointed to Tommy, who was sitting on a bench out on the boardwalk in the sun, looking at the ocean. Tommy was wearing his summer suit, the light blue seersucker.
When Ellie walked over, he turned and looked up at her, then nodded to the sea. “-Take a look at that,” he said.
In the morning, after nine, Ellie wo
ke to the thrum of traffic across the river. She lay in bed for a few minutes, remembering that Tommy was dead . . . deciding what she’d have for breakfast. Then she got up, went to the bathroom-her feet hardly sore at all-and, while she was sitting on the toilet, tested her injured arm, waving it as if she were conducting an orchestra, then making a muscle. The bandaged place was still sore, but the arm didn’t ache. It didn’t hurt when she clenched her fist.
She went out to the living room in her bathrobe, and found Mayo lying along a windowsill, his soft brown fur ruffled up against the screen. He was gazing down the right angle of mowed grass that opened onto the spaces of the river. The morning sun was bathing the lawn bright green-the hurricane fence below, silver whitethe width of the river beyond, oiled chain mail.
Ellie made herself scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast, and had a cup of Russian Caravan tea to go with them.
Then she sat at the kitchen table with her makeup kit, applied a light foundation, very light blue mascara and darker blue eyeliner, and tea-rose lipstick.
She went back to the bedroom, put on her bra and panties, dressed in dark brown wool slacks, a coffee blouse, her white running shoes and white socks. She went out to the hall, took the Smith & Wesson from her purse, brought it back to the bedroom and put it on the bed while she got into the shoulder-holster harness. The harness had two wide fitted loops for her shoulders-the left one supporting, fairly low, the small holster the Smith required-a narrow elastic strap running across her back to hold both loops firmly on, and another strap descending from the holster on the left to her belt, to hold that gun-weighted loop in place.
Ellie put her left arm carefully through its loop, wrestled her right arm through the other more casually, shrugged to settle the elastic comfortably across her back, then reached down to her left side to snap the retaining strap to her belt. She bent over the bed, picked up the pretty little pistol, and tucked it away well under the curve of her left breast.
The holster rig-with her bra-made for considerable harness, and Ellie had never liked it.
