Life Sentences

by Laura Lippman

  “You like being back?” Tisha asked now.

  “I miss New York. But the fact is, I live within walking distance of several good restaurants, a drugstore, a gym, and a Whole Foods, and that pretty much covers my needs. Plus, I can be at either parent’s home within thirty minutes. How are your folks?”

  “Still in the same house, still healthy enough to live on their own.” Tisha rapped the bar with her knuckles, although it wasn’t actually wood. “We’ll see how long that lasts. I’m grateful that Reg has the money to help them out, when that day comes. I’m not ashamed to say that. I’ve got two college tuitions.”

  “You know, I thought about living in Bolton Hill. It reminded me of my neighborhood back in Brooklyn. But…”

  “But you were worried about running into Reg and Donna.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s strange, how little fallout there was. Don’t you think?”

  Tisha shrugged. “It was a long time ago, Cassandra. What did you expect to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  When it came to Callie Jenkins, it turned out that Donna was the one with the true gift of prophecy. Callie had—with Cassandra’s advice and money—found a criminal attorney. The lawyer had set up an appointment with the state’s attorney, where Callie recounted everything she had told Cassandra. The state’s attorney thanked Callie for her “confession” and said it had been determined that it was counterproductive to prosecute her for her child’s death. She had spent seven years in jail, after all. Sudden infant death syndrome was not implausible and with no body to autopsy, a jury would be put in the position of deciding how credible Callie was. City juries were notoriously lenient; it would take only one skeptical citizen to deadlock the process.

  In short: The state’s attorney didn’t believe a word of it but didn’t want to waste resources on a trial.

  And what of Andre Howard, the money passed through his brother’s campaign? That information would be forwarded to federal authorities, Cassandra was told, but Julius Howard would bear the brunt of the investigation. Cassandra had pointed out to Callie that she could go to the newspapers, which would be happy for the information about the Howards. Or Callie could write her own book. Cassandra offered to set her up with a literary agent, ghostwrite the book if need be, for no fee.

  Callie wanted none of it. “I’m not much for telling,” she said. And that was that. Even with her income cut off, she didn’t want to leverage her power over the Howards. Her only concern was for her mother, but Myra Tippet’s nursing home accepted Medicaid, and given Myra’s complete lack of assets, it was no problem to get her qualified. Once the issue of her mother’s care was established, Callie was content. She would find a job, she told Cassandra. She didn’t need much. The house and car were paid for. The people at the school where she volunteered thought they could find her work.

  “But if you sold a book,” Cassandra had said, “you might not have to worry about money at all. You could go to culinary school—tuitions there are as high as any private college—really do something with your baking. You could—”

  Callie had cut her off. “I’m not much for telling,” she repeated. At the time, it had felt like a reproach. But Callie Jenkins, Cassandra had come to realize, would never prescribe how anyone should live. You have your way, I have mine, she was telling Cassandra. Neither way is right, neither way is wrong. There was mild consolation in the fact that the Howards had to live with the possibility that Callie might change her mind, but it was mild indeed. Besides, Andre Howard knew better than anyone how skilled Callie was at keeping quiet. Perhaps he had chosen her, all those years ago, for that quality. But perhaps he really had loved her. Both things could be true.

  And now that My Father’s Daughter was done, Cassandra wasn’t sure if she had anything more to tell. Maybe she would try fiction again. Why not? She had been writing fiction all along.

  “Are you working on anything?” Tisha asked. Could she follow Cassandra’s thoughts? But she was probably just being polite.

  “I’m going to take a year off, teach in the Hopkins writing sems, clear my head, make a community for myself. I don’t really know anyone in Baltimore except my parents. It would be nice if we could see each other sometimes, keep in touch.”

  “That would be…complicated,” Tisha said. “Donna wouldn’t like it, and Reg doesn’t like anything that Donna doesn’t like.”

  “Do they have to know?”

  “They’d end up knowing. Baltimore is small that way.”

  Cassandra smiled. “You make it sound almost as if it would be an affair. But I’m discreet. I have experience in those things.”

  Tisha covered her ears. “I really don’t want to think about that, okay?” But she was smiling, too.

  Cassandra looked at her old book, the page marked by a magenta Post-it. Tisha had bought this new, many years ago. Tisha had remembered her, despite what she said. “I probably should have asked you about what I got wrong, from your perspective, in my memoir. And it’s true, I’ve sent the revisions in and I can’t make wholesale changes. But I will have opportunities to make small fixes. So if there’s something that really bothers you—”

  “I don’t care about the party,” Tisha said. “It’s not that important.”

  “But what about the fight?”

  “The fight?”

  “That day in ninth grade, when that girl, Martha, attacked me on the softball field. You and Donna and Fatima just watched. I mean, you were standing off in the distance, but you didn’t do…anything. I had the impression that anecdote bothered you most of all.”

  Tisha caught the bartender’s eyes, signaled that she wanted another glass of wine, ordered one for Cassandra, too.

  “Well?” Cassandra pressed.

  “Okay, since you asked. First of all—did you ever know Donna to get into a fight with anyone?”

  “Not with her fists,” Cassandra admitted. “But then, neither did I, in part because you and Fatima had my back in elementary school. You did know it was me on the ground, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I knew it was you. Even in your gym suit. And it was three on one, which was pretty cowardly. But you know what else we saw, from where we stood?”

  Cassandra shook her head.

  “Four white girls. If we had run over there, the teachers who came to break up the fight would have assumed that it was the black girls against the white ones and we started it. Cassandra, those three cracker girls could have been beating the shit out of a nun and I wouldn’t have gone over there. That’s just how it was.”

  “But we were friends.”

  “We were,” Tisha agreed. “When we were younger. We grew apart when we went to different junior high schools. It was that simple. And then, when you never came back to Western after freshman year—well, until I read your book, I didn’t know what had happened.”

  “Really?” This had never occurred to Cassandra, that there was any mystery to her side of the story. But then, she had the advantage of her own perspective. For thirty-five years, she and Tisha had been separated by nothing more than fifty yards or so. Standing on the same softball field, on the same day, seeing the same thing, yet not. Okay, they grew apart. But couldn’t they grow back together?

  “Are you sure,” she said, “that we can’t see each other from time to time? Or at least talk on the phone? I like talking to you. You know me, Tisha, in a way new people in my life never will. And you’re honest in a way that almost no one is.”

  The restaurant around them was busy and hectic, but Cassandra didn’t register any of the sounds. She was looking at Tisha, watching her think, her eyebrows drawn down tightly, her lips compressed.

  “Oh, hell,” Tisha said at last, tipping her glass toward her for a toast. “We can get together like this, from time to time. It’s not like Reg and Donna would be caught dead in the suburbs.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  CALLIE DROVE ACROSS THE BRIDGE—in broad daylight, o
n a Saturday afternoon, well after the weekend traffic had thinned. Now that she was free to go where she wanted, no longer bound by restrictions, said or unsaid, she had discovered she felt no urgency to return to Baltimore.

  But, although she wasn’t much for telling, she did have some things to say, one thing to say. Might as well say it now and be done with it. With gas almost four dollars a gallon, she sure wasn’t going to waste a trip. She had a job now, down at the school, sort of an all-around helper position for not much more than minimum wage and no benefits. Money was tight, even with her house and car covered. But the people at the school were the kind of folks who would step in and help a person out if she ran into big trouble, sickness or catastrophe. They had turned out to be the kind of Christians who were pretty forgiving after all. She would make it work somehow.

  The house on Clifton Road looked different and she wondered if she was mistaken. Then she realized that she had never visited here during such bright daylight hours, that she had sneaked her peeks at dawn or sunset. Even the graduation party had begun late in the afternoon, the light already fading. The house didn’t look quite as put-together in this hot September light. She realized it was probably about the same age as her, more or less.

  She parked her car directly in front—“Bold as you please,” as her mother might have said—and walked up the sidewalk and rang the doorbell as if she had a right. A woman answered, Mrs. Howard. She took one look at Callie and called out, “Andre, it’s for you.”

  “What do you want?” he asked Callie.

  You, she almost said.

  Looking into his face, closer to him than she had been for twenty years, she saw the man she remembered, not the old man that he was now. It was almost as if he had kept those promises and they had had a life together after all, and they had grown old together, so she didn’t notice how he had changed. She did not see an old man. She saw the man she loved.

  Him, he probably saw a middle-aged lady where a sweet young woman once stood.

  “I wanted you to know that I signed up for that registry. So if our son signs up, too—”

  “We have no son,” he said. “I don’t care what lies you put on a birth certificate.”

  “So if our son,” she repeated, firm yet respectful, “should sign up, I will meet with him and tell him why he was put up for adoption. If he wants an explanation, he’s entitled to it.”

  “That poor boy was entitled to a life. Would that you had done the same for your other son.”

  That hurt, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he still had the power to wound her. She pitied him in a way. She had been his heart’s desire and he had denied himself because the price, by his estimation, was too high. He would have been happy with her, whether he admitted it or not. And whatever she was, she was not unhappy. Not happy, exactly, but not unhappy. She at least had the consolation of knowing she had given herself wholly to a cause, to her love for him. If the cause had turned out to be less than worthy—well, so be it, that didn’t tarnish her commitment to it.

  “I forgive you,” she said. “I can’t promise he’ll do the same, but I’ll try to help him. If I ever meet him.”

  “Forgive me for what?”

  She patted his cheek, a gesture more like a daughter’s than a lover’s. “It’s okay that you weren’t strong. I was. I was strong for you.”

  For all the words she had practiced, all the things she had imagined saying, these were not among them. Yet she realized she was right. She was strong, he wasn’t. It had been weak of him to pursue her, weaker still for him to try to erase the evidence that she had been in his life. She had heard that men often felt humble watching what women went through in childbirth. What had Andre felt, as she sat in jail, knowing it was all for the love of him, that she could bear what she had borne all for the promise of his love.

  “Stay away from us,” he said. “I’ll get a restraining order if need be. And don’t even think about spreading those lies. There are laws against slander, against libel—”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “I’m done.” She was. You had to forgive in order to be forgiven. If she ever did meet her son—their son—she hoped he would grant her the same generosity. Callie had forgiven not only Andre but her mother. Her mother meant well. She wasn’t responsible for that restless, rootless anger, for her fear. Cassandra had tried to argue with Callie, said she shouldn’t make excuses for what Cassandra called abuse. She wasn’t. Accepting people for who they were was the furthest thing from making excuses.

  She drove east, the sun still high, paying the toll to cross the bridge that she might never cross again. Unless her son, now almost thirty, did in fact find her. Cassandra had said, “Let’s stay in touch,” and seemed sincere, but when had they ever been in touch, what was there to “stay”? She was grateful that Cassandra had found her—freed her, really—but Cassandra simply talked too much for Callie. Even Callie’s mother, chattering away in the nursing home, didn’t put so many words in the world. Cassandra would probably start nagging her about a book again. Callie had no use for that.

  Besides, how could she tell her story when she wasn’t sure that she trusted it? On bad days, she wondered—had she shook Donntay? Maybe fed him something she shouldn’t have? Put him down wrong and smothered him? She didn’t think any of those things were true, but these ideas came to her on her bad days, taunted her, messed with her head. If there had been a new trial, if they had put her on the stand, she would have had to admit she couldn’t really remember what happened, only that she believed what she believed, what she needed to believe: She woke up one morning and her son was dead. Once she told that much, she would have to tell the next part, how her only thought was, Now I can call Andre. That was the one thing she couldn’t forget, the memory she never questioned. She had looked at her little boy’s body, so still and stiff, and her heart had jumped with the thrill of knowing that she had an excuse to call Andre. He always took her calls in times of trouble, and she got in the habit of cultivating trouble. Bad men, bad decisions. That wasn’t natural, and it wouldn’t sit well with others, but it was true. It was the one thing she knew about that morning with absolute certainty. The split second after she registered the fact that her son was dead, she had thought, Now I can call Andre. Back then, any thought could lead to him, any moment. A bird is singing. Andre. The toast is burning. Andre. I have a paper cut. Andre. The baby is crying. Andre, Andre, Andre.

  She took the long way, going around town on the bypass to the Food Lion to buy butter. Peaches were still in season and she had a cobbler recipe she wanted to try, but Mr. Bittman was quite firm in his opinion that piecrusts should be all butter, no lard or shortening. She admired such firm opinions, the certainty that other people brought to things in their lives. She just was never going to be one of them. She doubled back to Bridgeville, coming up Main Street. IF YOU LIVED HERE, the sign promised, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW.

  She was.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As is often the case in my novels, there is a real-life Baltimore crime that forms the spine of this novel. Jackie Bouknight had a son, Maurice, who disappeared while she was being monitored (not very well) by the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. Asked to produce him, she refused and spent more than seven years in jail on a charge of contempt. To this day, it has never been learned what happened to Maurice Bouknight. And that is all I know of the original case, although a friend had a glancing courthouse encounter with Jackie Bouknight that got me thinking about her. This is wholly a work of fiction, about made-up people who happen to inhabit real places.

  The Enoch Pratt Central Library’s collection of newspapers on microfiche helped jog my memory about the decades in which I actually grew up. The University of Baltimore’s amazing online archive about the ’68 riots was essential. And the regulars at the Memory Project proved to be good sleuths, tracking down primary sources that established how Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was announced on nationa
l television.

  I’ve played with Baltimore’s architecture, a novelist’s prerogative. There were not five houses on Hillhouse Road in the 1960s and ’70s; the Fallows’s house is an invention, although I gave it the never-filled swimming pool of a house I remember there. I played similar tricks with Teena Murphy’s home, the Howards’ house, and Bridgeville, Delaware. However, there is a lovely wine bar on Route 108 in Columbia, the Iron Bridge, and I am told by reliable sources that teachers do like to go there. As do I.

  Thanks to the individuals who rally round every year for this insanity: Carrie Feron, Vicky Bijur, Joan Jacobson, David Simon. This year, Lizzie Skurnick and Lisa Respers also pitched in.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of a man who once burned a manuscript on impulse. I always thought that story was apocryphal, but he confirmed it for me a few years ago. And I have to admit, I understand the impulse now in a way I didn’t at the time. Still, I wish he hadn’t burned it. Asked about the incident, he said, “Who wants to read another fucking tender moment about a white-trash redneck kid discovering Joyce? Or, better yet, Raymond Chandler.” If you had written it, Jim, I would have wanted to read it.

  Laura Lippman

  November 2008

  About the Author

  LAURA LIPPMAN grew up in Baltimore and returned to her hometown in 1989 to work as a journalist. After writing seven books while still a full-time reporter, she left the Baltimore Sun to focus on fiction. The author of two New York Times bestsellers, What the Dead Know and Another Thing to Fall, she has won numerous awards for her work, including the Edgar, Quill, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Macavity.

  www.lauralippman.com

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