The Map of True Places

by Brunonia Barry

  She thought of Mattei’s sense exercises. Close off two of your senses and switch them. Smell and what? Hearing? No, touch was better. Zee ran her fingers along the door handle and the fake leather seat. Shut off the offending senses, choose the ones you can manage.

  When they finally reached the house, Zee tipped the cabbie and walked around back, climbing the outside stairway to the deck, letting herself in through the kitchen door. The room was freezing, which fit well with her snow-day theme.

  She had been happy for the heat a few minutes ago, and now she was happy for the cold. Zee seemed to need these extremes more and more lately, something she didn’t want to think about because it reminded her too much of her mother. She removed her shoes but didn’t take a pair of slippers from the bin that Michael provided for guests. Her hot feet left moist footprints on the cool, dark wood floor. With each step forward, the footprints she left behind slowly disappeared.

  She was vaguely hungry. She opened the fridge. There were some leftovers from the party they’d had last weekend, some imported prosciutto and a ton of cheese. They’d invited several people over. Mostly people Michael worked with and some of Mattei’s friends, too, including Rhonda, whom Zee really liked. Mattei and Rhonda were planning a wedding, too, now that such things were legal in Massachusetts. Rhonda wanted to talk about all the details: her flowers (all peonies tied tightly in a nosegay, but with spiraling stems that remained visible), her music (jazz-pop fusion). Their wedding was to be in August, the day before Labor Day, which fell on September 1 this year. That Rhonda so clearly knew what she wanted didn’t bother Zee all that much. Rhonda had probably always known what she wanted, Zee thought, the way most girls know that kind of thing, straight or gay. Listening to Rhonda, Zee had wished for the first time that she were one of those girls who knew what she wanted. She’d been one of those girls once, but it seemed so long ago that she could barely remember how it felt.

  July was fast approaching and, with it, the official beginning of summer parties. She thought back to last year’s Fourth of July. While Michael and Mattei had made the rounds, passing hors d’oeuvres and making small talk, Zee and Rhonda sat on the deck and watched the fireworks. The condo Zee shared with Michael had one of the best views in Boston, the perfect place to see the light show, though you couldn’t hear the Pops from here—you’d have to be on the esplanade for that. So Michael had turned on the radio, creating a sound track that was a second off from the visual, each beat later than the flash.

  Michael had seemed so happy then, walking around refilling everyone’s glass with another good Barolo he’d found at auction. Last weekend he had served all French wines, some second-cru houses. Michael had a good collection, all reds.

  Zee reached into the vegetable bin and pulled out a half bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay that she’d hidden the night of the party, not in the wine fridge but in with the lettuces, which was somewhere Michael would never look. He hated salads, the only things she ever made as a main course. She created elaborate salads with homemade dressings, vinaigrettes, and infusions. She made oatmeal, too, for winter breakfasts, steel-cut stuff that took forty minutes to cook, and cowboy coffee with an egg, which was something Michael actually did like, though he didn’t much like her method of letting the pot boil over onto the stove before she dumped the cup of cold water in to clear it. Michael said he expected that the boiling-over bit worked better with a campfire, and couldn’t she just grab the pot before it bubbled up and went all over everything? The answer was no, she couldn’t seem to, though she always cleaned up her messes afterward.

  Zee filled a coffee mug with the K-J and started to recork the bottle. Then, seeing how little was left, she dumped the rest of the wine into the mug. She carefully placed the bottle into the trash compactor, then flipped the switch, waiting for the pop and the smash. The bag was almost full, so she removed it and took it out to the deck, walking all the way back down the stairs in her bare feet, placing the compacted bottle into the bottom of the garbage bin, not with the recyclables, as she would have preferred, but with the regular trash, so that there would be no evidence of the bottle. It wasn’t that Michael minded her drinking, but he definitely minded her drinking an oaky California chardonnay.

  She walked back up the stairs and ran a bath, letting the water get as hot as she could stand. She went to her closet and grabbed her winter bathrobe, a worn terry-cloth thing she’d stolen from some spa Michael had taken her to when they first met, which she’d later felt guilty about and sent a check to the hotel to cover its cost. If this was going to be a snow day, then let it be a snow day, she thought. It certainly was cold enough in this house to imagine snow on the roof.

  She filled the tub as high as she could and slid into the water. She took one gulp of the wine, then another, then finished the cup. When the falling feeling hit her, the slackening of muscles, a momentary release that came and went fast, she glided under the water, letting it into her ears, her mouth. She pushed her legs wide and let the heat fill her. As her head finally began to quiet, she forgot about Lilly, and the intimidating wedding planner, and Finch, and finally about Michael and the gnawing feeling of guilt she felt most of the time now when she thought about the wedding and everything she was supposed to be getting done.

  ZEE DIDN’T REALIZE THAT SHE had fallen asleep until she saw Michael standing above her in the bathroom. How long had it been? The water had gone cold, the sky outside was dark.

  She stood up and grabbed a towel.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, wrapping herself in the terry-cloth robe.

  He just stood there watching her, his expression difficult to read. She could tell he had something to say, something important from the look of things, but she wasn’t ready to talk.

  “Give me a minute, will you?” Zee said, and Michael turned and walked out of the bathroom.

  She went to the bedroom and grabbed a pair of socks, so her feet wouldn’t leave more prints on the wood floors. She put on a sweatshirt and jeans.

  She found him in the kitchen. He was eating a piece of salmon. She recognized the O Ya box.

  “What’s all this?” she asked him.

  “I’ve been calling you. You didn’t answer either phone.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry” seemed to be the word that started most of her sentences these days.

  “The wedding planner quit,” Michael said. “But she’s charging us six thousand dollars for her time.” He held out the tray to her. “I figure these are worth about half a grand apiece.”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t hungry. She felt a little sick.

  “For that price she should have sent the sake, too,” he said.

  She walked over and hugged him, holding on for longer than she wanted. He didn’t return the embrace. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll pick up the expense.”

  “It’s not about the expense,” he said. She could see him considering before he continued. “I have to ask you an important question,” he finally said.

  “What question?”

  “Do you not want to get married?”

  His question caught her off guard. “Why would you even ask me that?”

  “Come on, Zee.”

  A long silence followed. The truth was, she didn’t know. She didn’t know if she didn’t want to get married at all, or if she just hated the process. The big wedding was clearly something he wanted. She could count only about five people she would even invite.

  “Maybe I just don’t like the wedding planner.” She knew that much was true, though it was all she seemed to know. She felt suddenly foolish for the snow day and guilty that she’d made him feel bad.

  “Well, you’ve solved that problem, I’d say.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. She reached into the box they’d sent over and pulled out a piece of sushi. She would take a bite, and then she would tell Michael how much she liked it and that she thought they’d found the perfect food for the wedding. “It’s re
ally good,” she said. “Great, actually.” She didn’t have to lie.

  The phone rang. Zee didn’t move to answer it.

  She could follow his thought process. Michael was a game theorist and as famous as Mattei in his own right. He was paid to predict what groups of people would do. As a result, Michael always seemed to know what she would do before she did it, even when (as was so often the case these days) she had no idea herself.

  Don’t answer the phone, she thought.

  She didn’t say it. It would have been stupid. And it would have been futile. As she stood there with him, she felt as if she were the one who was the game theorist. She knew exactly what he would do.

  Michael picked up the phone on the fifth ring. “Yes?” he said into the receiver. Zee could tell that it was Mattei. Then, so she continued to feel his earlier reprimand, he went on, “No, evidently Zee does not answer her cell.” He listened to Mattei for a moment, and then, at her direction, he walked over to the TV and flipped it on. “What channel?” he asked. Then he handed the phone to Zee.

  Zee kept her eyes on the television as Michael changed the channels, settling on the local news, Channel Five.

  “What’s going on?” Zee said to Mattei.

  On the screen several cars were pulled over on the top level of the Tobin Bridge. An SUV with its driver’s door opened sat next to the leftmost guardrail. Police were trying to contain the crowds who were leaning over the side, pointing. The TV camera panned across the blackening water, but aside from a few pleasure boats nothing seemed unusual. The camera cut back to the newscaster, a blonde in a blue top. Pointing the microphone at the toll collector, she asked, “Did you know she was going to jump when she pulled over?”

  The toll taker shook her head. “I thought she was opening the door because she had dropped her money.”

  Another eyewitness leaned into the microphone, vying for camera time. “She didn’t jump, she dove.”

  The newscaster held the microphone out to a man who stood off to the side, staring over the railing. “I am told that you witnessed the whole thing,” she said to him.

  He didn’t say anything but just stared at the newscaster.

  Zee recognized shock when she saw it and hoped one of the medical personnel would treat him for it.

  The woman poked the microphone closer. “What did you see?”

  As if suddenly realizing where he was, the man pulled himself together. With a look of disgust and anger, he pushed the microphone away. “Stop,” he said.

  Zee felt dizzy. She held on to the couch arm to steady herself. A faint beeping sound was still audible from the SUV’s driver’s-side door, near where the key had been left in the ignition. It was weak and failing, but no one had thought to put a stop to it.

  Zee recognized the car.

  “Her husband left a message on the service,” Mattei said to Zee.

  Michael stared at Zee, still not understanding what was happening.

  “Who was it?” he finally asked.

  “My three-o’clock,” Zee said.

  3

  ZEE TOOK THE TUNNEL to the North Shore instead of the bridge. The old Volvo she’d gotten in grad school barely passed inspection every year, and though she seldom drove in town, she couldn’t seem to give it up. The alignment was so bad that she had to keep both hands firmly on the wheel to stay in her lane as she drove.

  Zee hated tunnels—the darkness, the damp, the dripping from overhead, where she imagined the weight of water already pushing through the cracks, finding any weak spot and working its way through. She wasn’t alone. Since the Big Dig tunnel ceiling collapse a couple of years back, most Bostonians were skittish about tunnels.

  “Water always seeks its own level,” Zee said aloud, though she was alone in the car and the sound of her own voice seemed wrong. The thought was wrong, too. It only made her more tense. Think of something else, she told herself. She wished she had taken the bridge. At the same time, she wondered if she would ever be able to take the bridge again.

  Both Mattei and Michael had told Zee not to go to Lilly’s funeral.

  “Why would you do that?” Mattei asked.

  “Because she was my patient,” Zee said. “Because I’m a human being.”

  “I hope you don’t have any delusions that the family will welcome you,” Mattei said.

  “I’m going,” Zee said.

  ZEE HAD PLANNED TO STOP to see her father before the funeral, but she was running late. These days she didn’t drive enough to know how bad the traffic would be this time of day. The Big Dig might officially be over, but traffic was still a mess. She had planned to go directly to Salem and surprise Finch with a visit. She was worried about him. Lately she had only seen him in Boston when he came in for his doctor’s appointments. He seemed frail and weak. And she couldn’t help but feel that he was hiding something from her. So today she planned to drop in unannounced to see for herself. But it was too late to go to Salem now. She’d have to see Finch after Lilly’s funeral.

  She altered her route, electing to take the coast road directly to Marblehead, winding along the golden crescent of beach that stretches from Lynn through Swampscott to the town line. At the last minute, she decided to take a shorter route through downtown Lynn, not counting on road construction. It was summer. Road crews were everywhere, the required extra-shift cops sleepily directing traffic.

  Zee hadn’t been on this road for a long time. Mostly the streets were as she remembered them. Roast-beef and pizza places lined every block. Popping up next to them were bodegas, nail salons, and the occasional package store. The businesses were essentially the same. But the ethnicity had changed. Small groceries sat next to each other, their signs in Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian. Lynn had always had a diverse population. These days there were more than forty languages spoken in the Lynn schools. Zee forgot who had told her that. Probably it had been her Uncle Mickey.

  Her mother’s people, including Uncle Mickey, were from Lynn, though they were originally Derry Irish. They had come over from Ireland to become factory workers at a company on Eastern Avenue that made shoe boxes.

  They were all IRA, or at least the two brothers had been, Uncle Mickey and his brother Liam, who died in an explosion in Ireland. Zee remembered her mother telling her that their emigration had been sudden. Maureen’s reluctance to say more about it left Zee wondering about the details. It was out of character for Maureen to hold back any details when she was telling a story. Whatever it was that had happened, the family had no longer been safe in Ireland. They’d had to leave the country overnight, taking only what they could carry.

  Maureen had told her all this in such a matter-of-fact tone that Zee had never quite believed the story.

  “Make no mistake,” her mother had said many times. “We are, every one of us, capable of murder. Given the right circumstances, it is within each of us to take a life.”

  Zee never knew whether by “every one of us” her mother had meant all of humanity or simply all of the Doherty clan. She had often thought about asking that question, but she never did. In the end she decided she really didn’t want to know.

  Their house had been on Eastern Avenue, near the factory but farther down the street, closer to the beach. Zee doubted if she could find the place now. It was so long ago that her grandmother had died. Her mother died only a few years later, just after Zee turned thirteen. Besides Zee, Mickey was the only Doherty left.

  The factory where they’d once worked had long since closed. A sign on the front of the building read KING’S BEACH APARTMENTS. It was directly across from Monte’s Restaurant, where she used to go for pizza with her father and Uncle Mickey in their pirate days.

  When her grandmother died, Uncle Mickey had moved to Salem. He wanted to be closer to his sister, he said. Mickey could pilot a boat with the best of skippers, but he had never learned to drive a car. Though it was only a town away, Lynn was too far from what was left of his family, he said. And he didn’t like riding the bus
. Though Maureen had killed herself just a few years after he made the move to Salem, Mickey stayed on. He had grown to love the Witch City. He was both a born entrepreneur and a natural salesman. He had a bit of the old clichéd blarney in him as well. When Salem reinvented itself, Mickey was right there to take advantage of the opportunity. He now ran a witch shop on Pickering Wharf, several haunted houses, and a pirate museum. He had done well. People in Salem fondly referred to Mickey Doherty as “The Pirate King.”

  Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin. Zee recited the old poem in her head. A sign on a Salvation Army building read CITY OF HIM. People were always trying to find a new image for Lynn. Zee liked it the way it was. It seemed to her a real place where real people led real lives.

  She could smell Lynn Beach from here, fetid and heavy. At the Swampscott town line, she noticed a little shop with a woman in the window seated at a sewing machine. Outside the store hung a sign, hand-lettered, with penmanship that slanted downward as it progressed: MALE/FEMALE ALTERATIONS.

  City of Sin. There was a reason she felt so right here, Zee thought. As sins go, Zee had committed her share. She felt guilty about a lot of things, not the least of which was the question that Lilly had asked shortly before her death. Lilly’s question reminded Zee so much of Maureen that she hadn’t shared it with Mattei. It was the thing that in retrospect should have tipped her off about Lilly, but instead it hit her in a much more personal way, as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

  The last time she’d seen Lilly Braedon, Zee had been trying so hard to rationalize the risky behavior Lilly had been engaging in that she found herself unprepared for the question. Just as the session was ending and Lilly was walking out the door, she turned back to Zee and asked, “Don’t you believe at all in true love?”