Life Sentences

by Laura Lippman

  But he had become clingy of late, demanding. He wasn’t in love with Cassandra, but he couldn’t bear the fact that she wasn’t in love with him. They were on their last legs. She hoped the end wouldn’t be ugly. In fact, she had calculated that he would fall out of the habit of her while she was in Baltimore, smoothing the way for a painless breakup.

  “Maybe I could come down there,” he said. “On a weekend, it’s an easy drive.”

  “I’m working,” she lied reflexively.

  “On a Saturday?”

  “I’ve scheduled some interviews.”

  “How are things going?”

  “Okay,” she said, hoping that was the truth. She really couldn’t tell. But Bernard, whom she had met at a lecture a year ago, needed to believe she was never in doubt when it came to her work. He had read the novel, while it was still in manuscript, and pronounced it brilliant. Bernard worked on Wall Street, and his prognostications on money were much more sound than his opinions on literature. If only he had brought the same conservative, the-bubble-must-burst mentality to her last book. All commodities crash, Bernard had told her recently, speaking of oil, but Cassandra couldn’t help wondering if it applied to her, too.

  “I miss you,” he said in a tone that suggested he was trying to cram much meaning into those three words. At least it wasn’t “I love you.” That would be disastrous.

  “I miss you, too,” she assured him. In some ways, she did. She would be happy to have him in bed with her right now. He was a thoughtful lover and excited by the fact of the affair, which he claimed was his first. Cassandra didn’t quite believe him, but she understood that he had convinced himself of this fact. Her hunch was that Bernard was a serial monogamist on parallel tracks—he was faithful to Tilda, he was faithful to his lovers. Sort of like a subway line with an express track and a local track. On the local, he trod through life with Tilda, a sweet-faced blonde who sometimes got her picture in the Sunday Styles section of the Times, an old-fashioned New York wife with a conscience and lots of dutiful charity work. Then, on the express, he sped through affairs with women with whom he could never form a bond. Cassandra was his first creative type, and he probably would have tired of her by now if she had the good sense to pretend to be in love with him. She simply didn’t have the energy.

  “I—” he began, and she rushed to interrupt, to block the verb she could not afford to hear.

  “I’ll come back week after next, on Monday or Tuesday, to meet with my editor. You can usually get free in the evenings, right?”

  “With notice, yes.”

  “I’ll give you plenty of notice.” And cancel at the last minute. Which, in the short run, would not achieve anything. If she continued to be this aloof, he might decide to leave Tilda. “Good-bye, my love,” she added, hoping the use of the word as a noun would be sufficient.

  Only now she was awake, on what looked to be a bright if chilly March day. It really was strange how much the weather affected mood. Gray sky or blue, her circumstances were the same day to day. Was she happy? She knew she should be. She had money and health and even health care. She lived as she wanted. She didn’t have children or a husband, but those things were overrated. She had Bernard, although he represented a regression. Her second book had ended with the claim that she had moved beyond meaningless affairs, that she was content on her own.

  Was she happy? Was she even content? She had to think that a truly happy, content person wouldn’t battle her aging body with such intensity, would let the gray hairs grow in, forgo facials, and, most of all, fuck the gym, that Sisyphean battle against gravity. But Cassandra also worried that her life was too soft, that small things became magnified in the midst of all this comfort, and the gym was the only place where she encountered active opposition. Or had been, until the publication of her novel.

  Hadn’t someone written a poem about how it was the small things, the fraying of a shoelace, that broke a man’s spirit? She walked over to her laptop and typed the fraying of a shoelace into Google and got back nine entries, and half of those were about the Nicholson Baker book The Mezzanine. But there was some blog crediting it to Charles Bukowski, so she started over, with just Bukowski and shoelace. And here was the poem, called, in fact, “The Shoelace.” Ah, it was snapping, not fraying, and it sends a man (or a woman, as Bukowski adds in a moment of preternatural political correctness) to the madhouse.

  She read on, impressed by a poet she had never much considered. Her father, for all his progressiveness, hated the “new” voices, as he called them—Bukowski, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs. Anyone who announced himself as a revolutionary could not be one, said Ric Fallows, and, in that way, managed to announce that he was a revolutionary because he was not announcing himself. Cassandra, a contrarian in so many ways, did not defy her father on this. She was too busy reading Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz and this one really shocking book—Laurel Canyon?—in which a girl with a pronounced masochistic streak volunteered for a gang rape that another man witnessed for sexual pleasure. What teenage girl had time for Bukowski when there were books like that in the world?

  But now she read on, interested in Bukowski’s list of things that led to insanity. Car troubles, dental problems, a fifty-cent avocado. (How quaint, she thought.) These were, for the most part, the very things she had dreaded in her twenties and thirties. Car repairs, dental work—never adequately covered, no matter how good the health care plan. Add to the list Bulgarian wine, which she and her first husband had started drinking because it cost only five dollars a bottle; stealing toilet paper from the Burger King, which she had done several times while trying to survive as an assistant in publishing; chipping the new pedicure you couldn’t actually afford or justify. Of course, Bukowski had his political litany, too, but she didn’t really see world events driving anyone crazy. Not directly.

  Which was the problem, she supposed. The burnt-out lightbulb in the hall might send you into screaming fits at the end of a long, frustrating day, but would your concern over global warming lead you to consider replacing it with a fluorescent bulb? She hated the coinage “blank nation,” but if she were to permit herself such a title, she would rant about how resigned people seemed, inured to their own powerlessness. Inert nation. Nowadays, your shoelace snapped, so you sat down at your computer and read about the latest insane starlet, then zipped over to Zappos and ordered new shoes, because who had time to find shoelaces.

  She clicked back to Google’s rectangular robot mouth, always ready to be filled. So what if it was Saturday morning? She was in Baltimore, she had nothing to do and nowhere to go. She could work, after all, make the lie true. She started with Leticia Barr. Nothing. She tried Tisha, but that came up empty, too. Donna Howard. Too much came up; the name was shared by a Texas state representative and a psychic. Fatima, larger-than-life Fatima. Certainly she had made a mark on the world. Again, nothing. Had they all married, taken their husbands’ names? Many women did, even good feminists, especially once there were children. Cassandra realized she knew one name that would kick back results: Reginald “Candy” Barr, although without the nickname. Immediately, she had the official page for his law firm, Howard, Howard & Barr.

  Wow—he was gorgeous. That hadn’t been apparent in the newspaper photo. Perhaps this one had been sweetened in some way? Photoshop covered a multitude of sins, as her own author photo would attest.

  She started to hit the contact button, but—no. E-mail was too businesslike. The form would be shunted off to some administrative assistant, and its very existence would indicate that she wanted something, would cement her status as a supplicant. Phone? Who would be in the office on a Saturday? She checked the address, a downtown tower with multiple offices, a place where a chance encounter would be credible. Yes, that’s how she would begin.

  Would he recognize her? People often did, claiming her face was remarkably like the one they remembered from ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years ago. Cassandra was never sure how to feel about that, if it was
a compliment or a lie or an insult. A face should change over the years, and she thought hers somewhat improved from her childhood days of chipmunk roundness. More important—was it plausible that she would recognize him, was there any trace of the little Candy Barr she had known? Yes, the dimples still glinted, even in this professional portrait meant to convey seriousness, accomplishment, I-will-get-you-what-you-deserve.

  Her plan was plausible, just. The only downside was that she would have to wait until Monday. Sighing, she checked the schedule for the movie theater in the neighborhood, wondered if there was something ambitious to cook, wished she had someone for whom to cook. If the fraying—snapping—of a shoelace led to the madhouse, what was the destination for those who never had to worry about shoelaces and fifty-cent avocados? Here, nine floors above a city that had once been her home, Cassandra felt wrapped in cotton, too far removed from everyday concerns. The gym could keep her body hard, but what would keep her spirit tough? She knew how she didn’t want to define her life—through a man, or even by her work—but had no idea what else could define a person. She would never yearn to be twenty-three again, broke and scraping by. But she missed the adventure of unearthing Bulgarian wine from the bargain bins at the local liquor store, laughing at its label, its price. Laughing at herself, a skill that was at risk of atrophying.

  CHAPTER

  9

  UNLIKE THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN NEW YORK, most Baltimore buildings do not deny the existence of the thirteenth story. Gloria had always liked that lack of superstition in her hometown, its refusal to pretend that leaving a number off an elevator panel could make the number disappear. Calling the thirteenth floor the fourteenth doesn’t accomplish anything—except for making a lie of every level from thirteen on.

  Still, it was simple serendipity that had landed her on the thirteenth floor of the thirteen-story Highfield House. For years she had stalked the building, a Mies van der Rohe from the early 1960s, waiting for the right apartment to open up, then waiting another year while it was gutted and updated by a local architect. The building had little in common with its neighbors, redbrick high-rises that aspired to a more obvious grandeur. Made of glass and white bricks, rising on stilts, it sought to complement the landscape. Gloria had attempted to re-create the same feeling in her apartment, in order to showcase her collection of abstract art and mid-twentieth-century furniture. If Gloria ever entertained, her guests would have been amazed by the immaculate, modern apartment, so at odds with its owner’s personal appearance.

  But Gloria never entertained. She was proprietary about her home, wanted it just for herself.

  Today, she had awakened to the anemic winter light, allowing herself the Saturday luxury of easing slowly into the day. A pot of coffee, toasted cheese bread from Eddie’s, the comforting tones of NPR’s Scott Simon rumbling in the background. She didn’t necessarily hear what he said, but she liked his voice, felt soothed by it. There was a page-one article on her Eagle Scout, Buddy Harrington, and Gloria was savvy enough about the press to realize this meant the Beacon-Light considered the story too weak to front the Sunday paper. It was what newspaper types called a thumb-sucker—it didn’t have any real news. Instead, the reporter had placed the murders within a national context, using statistics to demonstrate how rare it was for children to kill their parents. Ah well, that should make everyone feel better, sitting down to Saturday breakfast with their families. Statistically, patricide and matricide were rare. Let’s go to the mall and buy some stuff in celebration, then stop at McDonald’s on the way home.

  But what were children’s odds of being killed by their parents? Much better. Gloria had been researching those cases in the event she had to defend her Eagle Scout à la Menendez. Parents were more likely to kill children than the other way around, although there were admittedly few cases of them turning on their teenagers. No, it was young children who died at their parents’ hands. And when a child under a year old was murdered, the killer was almost always a mother, and the mother was almost certainly poor and probably mentally ill.

  Like Calliope Jenkins. Who, Gloria would be quick to remind a reporter—not that she ever spoke of Callie to anyone, much less reporters—officially was not a murderer. Nor was she officially insane. She had sat in jail for seven years, as much time as she might have been given for homicide, if not more, but she could not be called a murderer.

  Gloria had been an associate at Howard & Howard when the case was brought to the firm. Pro bono, which the Howards did occasionally. But homicide wasn’t the sort of thing that Andre Howard did and his brother, Julius, still thought he might be mayor or governor someday, although no one else did. So they had thrown this pro bono bone to a hungry associate.

  And Gloria, ambitious late bloomer that she was, had been silly enough to think she was being rewarded, or at the very least tested.

  She was already in her thirties, coming to the law after losing most of her twenties to Baltimore’s public school system. She had been a high school English teacher, and even that had seemed an amazing achievement for the illegitimate daughter of a janitress. Baltimore gossip had long held that Gloria’s father was a former mayor or city councilman, but that legend had been created in hindsight, an origin myth that sought to explain what had formed this tough-minded attorney. Gloria had no idea who her father was, but she knew this much: Her success as a lawyer wasn’t in her blood, it wasn’t something she was born to. It was something she had willed when she realized how much others doubted her.

  She still remembered the first time she met Calliope. She hadn’t been locked up, not yet, and although she had been stupid enough to agree to a police interview without a lawyer, she hadn’t been stupid enough to say anything. As Gloria understood it, the police had requested a warrant to search her home, and the judge who had signed the warrant had apparently tipped off someone who brought the case to the Howard brothers. Gloria had accepted the assignment happily. Billing at the rate allowed pro bono cases, she would no longer be one of the top earners among associates, but this was clearly important to the Howards. Could she possibly be on the partner track? No white woman had made partner at the firm in those days; it was hard enough for white men.

  She drove to the rowhouse on Lemmon Street, arriving long after the police had departed. Calliope’s eyes had raked over her—not quite suspicious, but certainly not trusting. It was an unsettling gaze. Crazy? Possibly. Gloria always sensed that Calliope at once saw more and less than what was in front of her.

  “I have nothing to say,” she said.

  “I’m your lawyer,” Gloria said. “I’m from Howard & Howard, and my firm will be representing you pro bono. Without cost.”

  “I know,” Calliope said with a twisted smile, but it was unclear to Gloria if she knew the definition of pro bono or if she simply assumed her lawyer would be provided for free.

  “As your lawyer, I want you to understand all the options in front of you. You have invoked the constitutional protection against self-incrimination”—why was she being so wordy, so grandiose? There was something unnerving about Calliope Jenkins. Not necessarily evil, like the Eagle Scout she was representing, but some quality that made Gloria eager, almost desperate to please, impress. “And that is a legitimate right. But a judge may hold you in contempt for this and could put you in jail to force you to reveal the whereabouts of your child. So if you can produce your son and demonstrate that he is safe, you should consider that option.”

  “The courts took my first son away.” Calliope’s words were flat and enervated. “They would take Donntay away, too.”

  “That’s a reasonable fear,” Gloria said, trying not to show that the mention of the first child caught her off guard. She had known only that this child, the one reported missing by social services, had been monitored by the system since birth. Calliope had lost a previous child? Gloria wondered if they would be able to keep that quiet. But, no, DSS would leak it, through some back channel. Or would they? Their fat was in the fire, no
doubt, for allowing a neglectful mother to go three months without a check. While the law was clear that previous instances of abuse and neglect could not be used to remove children preemptively, the public would be screaming for blood up the chain of command.

  “I do not have to talk.” A mantra, a litany, parroted to remind herself, not to challenge Gloria.

  “No, you don’t. No one can make you speak. But, again, a judge will not take your silence lightly. The judge—the judge will be your son’s representative, in a sense. And he will do whatever he thinks is in the best interest of your son—”

  “My son.” Calliope’s face crumpled; her voice was a low moan. She looked as if she had gone days without sleeping or eating. She definitely had not bathed. Calliope was rank. She smelled moldy, possibly piss soaked. Later, she would swear she wasn’t a drug addict, but Gloria never quite believed that. She cleaned up, though. Seven years in jail, how could she not?

  “If you can produce your son, if you can demonstrate that he is well”—being careful with her words, making sure to skirt anything that would invite a confession. Although it had not been made explicit, it was Gloria’s sense that the case was only interesting to Howard & Howard on constitutional grounds. Andre Howard wanted her to press forward on this front, make the firm look good. “If he is well, then you should prove it.”

  “Well, well, well,” Calliope said. She seemed unhinged. How had she withstood five hours of interrogation without revealing anything? “No, I will not produce him. I want to in—to in—”