Mother Love

by L. R. Wright

  “No, you didn’t,” said Alberg. “How?”

  “Taking pieces of my collection and selling them. He thinks I haven’t noticed. Harry isn’t too bright, among other things.”

  “Why didn’t you call him on it?” said Alberg.

  Isabella Harbud appeared in Alberg’s doorway, worry scrawled in the frown above her tiger’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” said Stewart. “It felt like too much trouble.”

  “Are you afraid of him?” Alberg raised his eyebrows questioningly at Isabella, who had sat down on the black leather chair opposite his desk.

  “Of Harry?” said Stewart incredulously. “Of course not.”

  “What do you know about his friends?” said Alberg. He heard slow, heavy footsteps in the hallway. Isabella heard them, too, and got out of the chair. Sokolowski loomed into sight. Isabella gestured to him to come in, and when he did, she left.

  “I don’t know much about Harry’s life, Staff Sergeant,” Stewart was saying. “He hangs around in bowling alleys. He’s got a friend who acts in TV commercials. That’s about all I know.”

  Sokolowski had assumed his customary position on the leather chair: back straight, knees apart, hands on thighs.

  “I’ll just be a minute, Sid,” said Alberg. “Can you tell me, Mr. Stewart, who’s the major beneficiary, if it isn’t Harry?”

  “I was going to leave something to Maria,” said Stewart, “although I hadn’t decided how much. But then she disappeared. So even though I hate dogs and don’t care for cats, either, the SPCA gets pretty well everything, because they’re about the only damn group in town who didn’t ask for it.”

  “One more question and then I’ll let you go for now. Does Harry know all this?”

  “Nope.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I don’t keep important documents lying around. Harry’s a snoop. Everything’s with my lawyer.”

  “What does he think he’s going to get?

  Stewart cackled. “Everything, probably.”

  Alberg hung up and turned to Sokolowski. “I don’t know what the hell to think,” he began.

  “I’m okay,” Sokolowski reassured him. His face was flushed, and Alberg thought he looked curiously fragile. His reading glasses stuck out from his shirt pocket at an awkward angle.

  “That’s good,” said Alberg.

  “I see you’re looking at real estate,” said Sokolowski, nodding at the paper on Alberg’s desk.

  “Yeah, that’s the plan.” Alberg folded the paper closed and tossed it on top of his filing cabinet, next to the pot of ivy that was Isabella’s most recent contribution to his office decor.

  “I’m thinking of selling my place,” the sergeant went on. “I mean, what’s the point. But I’m okay with it, Karl.”

  “Sid—what are you talking about?”

  Sokolowski pushed himself out of the chair. “That vandalism thing; I got my eye on Frank Garroway’s grandson, by the way. He’s been coming over here on weekends since the beginning of summer.”

  “Sid, are you okay?”

  “See, it’s what I said all along. It’s stable families that we need.” He was at the door now. “The kid’s parents split up. His mother works weekends. And the boy starts getting in trouble in Vancouver, where they live, and so he has to come to his granddad, and now I think he’s getting into trouble over here,” he said, his voice fading as he disappeared down the hall.

  A minute later Isabella slipped back in.

  “What the hell?” said Alberg.

  “It’s Elsie.” Isabella’s long graying hair was pulled away from her face and anchored firmly in a bun. It made her look exotic, Alberg decided. Now there was nothing to distract from her golden eyes.

  “What about Elsie?” he said. “I’m getting fed up with Elsie,” he added.

  “She’s been out on a date.”

  “Oh, great. And who the hell told Sid?”

  “One of his kids let it slip, on the phone.”

  “Shit,” said Alberg, gazing out his office door. “He looks like somebody hit him on the head.”

  Isabella sighed. “I guess somebody did, sort of.”

  1987

  Chapter 40

  EVERETT WAS RIGHT, thought Harry, pushing open the door to the bookstore, which caused a bell to jangle. His old man wouldn’t disinherit him completely. But Harry didn’t want even to share his inheritance. He didn’t want this Maria person to get a single damn penny. There was only enough money to allow one person to live in total luxury for the rest of his life, and that person was going to be Harry.

  In the bookstore he saw that Everett, who had summoned him here, was engaged in conversation with a customer near the shelves of paperback fiction.

  There was a big bulletin board on one wall of the bookstore, covered with announcements from people who had things for sale or rent, people looking for work, people announcing swap meets or garage sales or lost pets. Harry wondered if he ought to put up an ad here for a woman who’d marry him and bear his child. It might be worth doing, he thought, if he could be sure she’d have a boy, thereby providing his father with his only grandson. And he was mulling this over, wondering how it might be possible to make it happen, when Everett emerged from a puddle of shadow: there were lights in each of the shop’s several sections, but none that illuminated the whole place.

  “I’ve been telling Hamilton about your situation,” said Everett, dispensing with a greeting as he did with most formalities, and over there by the cash register Harry saw Hamilton Gleitman sitting on a stool.

  “What? Why the hell did you do that?” said Harry, dismayed. He didn’t know Hamilton well, but the guy made him uneasy.

  “He might be able to help you out,” said Everett. “He’s a together guy, Harry. Got lots of smarts, lots of ideas.”

  “Shit,” said Harry gloomily, staring over at Hamilton, who lifted his hand in a salute and started getting off the stool. Harry heard a jingling sound, made by all the crap that hung off Hamilton’s belt loops.

  It was really a collection of physical things about him that made Harry uncomfortable. First of all, he had gray hair, despite his youngish age; it was thick and wavy and totally gray. And under it there was this blank face, no lines on it at all, and these small eyes, gray they must be, though they looked silver—but that had to be the reflection of the hair or something. And then there was the body. Hamilton had these wide shoulders, and you could see the strength of his upper arms and his thighs right through the denim clothes he always wore. Yet he insisted that he didn’t exercise. “It’s all in the genes, Harry,” he’d explained, grinning, when Harry asked how often he worked out. And he’d said it in a light, soft voice that went with the hair, but not with the eyes or the body.

  “It’s a great story, Harry,” he said now, “about your long-lost sister.” He took a pair of sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on, though why he needed to wear sunglasses in a bookstore, Harry couldn’t figure.

  “She’s not my sister,” he replied sullenly.

  Harry had seen Hamilton’s work in various magazines, local and national, and he was reluctantly impressed by the fact that Hamilton’s byline had appeared in some of these publications. He wasn’t impressed with the stories, though. They were a lot blander than you’d expect from a guy like Hamilton.

  “Half sister, then,” said Hamilton. “It’s still a great story.”

  “Not to me it’s not,” Harry said grumpily. “To me it’s a pain in the ass.”

  A woman and a child, probably her daughter, came into the store. They slowed down when they came through the door, as everybody did; it was as if there were a sign that said, “No Hurrying.”

  Everett smiled at the woman, who smiled back and drifted over to the bulletin board, while the kid plopped down on the floor in the children’s section.

  “Let’s go get a coffee,” said Hamilton, a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “and talk about it.”

  *** />
  Ten days later, Hamilton cut the motor and remained in his car, looking through the windshield at a house across the street. A strong voice was telling him to be very, very careful. He took this to mean that he must be alert and agile in all his senses and above all to make sure that when he left here, it would be possible for him to return. In other words, don’t screw up, this voice was saying. Since it wasn’t in Hamilton’s nature to screw up, he concluded that his instincts had confirmed that Harry Stewart’s half sister was—potentially—an extremely rich vein of exploration.

  He wouldn’t have believed, from the look of him, that Harry came from a family with money. But oh yes, Everett had insisted that his old man was rolling in it. And Hamilton’s subsequent research had confirmed this.

  Hamilton peered over at the house she lived in, which was big and messy and needed painting. It wasn’t a falling-down kind of place, it just needed some work; it was untended, but not neglected. People had been careless with it, as if they’d lately been too busy, but one day they’d march out on a Saturday morning to mow the lawns, prop up the fence, paint the doors and the window frames, and by the end of the day it would look almost spick-and-span.

  It was of no interest to him at first, Harry’s moneyed background; not until Everett described Harry’s predicament. Then a tiny flutter of interest had occurred, causing Hamilton’s nerve ends to shiver. He began to see faint possibilities. So he had agreed to talk to Harry.

  The city directory said three people lived in this house: the woman, Maria, who was supposed to have a job with a PR firm, although for an employed person she spent a lot of time at home; her husband, Richard, who taught high school; and a fourteen-year-old daughter.

  As Harry had reluctantly laid out the situation, Hamilton had found it increasingly difficult to control his excitement. He had feigned disinterest, at first; pretended to listen more as a favor to Everett than for any other reason. Gradually Harry had loosened up, let his complaints flow more freely. And Hamilton had allowed himself to be persuaded to a sympathetic point of view.

  “So whaddya think?” Harry said finally, peering at him with those eyes that made Hamilton think of some kind of rodent. “You got any ideas?”

  Hamilton, who had plenty of ideas, smiled. “How much money are we talking about here, Harry?”

  It was early afternoon on a Friday in late September, a pretty hot day, and some idiot across the street had the sprinklers on, watering a brown lawn. The green-and-white house that was the object of Hamilton’s attention sat slumbering in the heat, blinds pulled against it. A rake leaned against the maple tree in the middle of the front yard, and he could see a skateboard on the porch. There was a wicker chair on the porch, too, but Hamilton figured it didn’t get sat on much: this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where you sat in your front yard and watched the world go by. Here, you’d huddle in the backyard around your barbecue, behind your fence. He patted his inside jacket pocket, making sure the notebook was there, and climbed out of the car, carrying the jacket over his arm.

  All Hamilton wanted up front was enough money to live on for a year. What he wanted was what he should have gotten from the fucking Canada Council.

  Hamilton had dressed carefully for this occasion, in khaki pants and a short-sleeved shirt with narrow stripes of khaki, blue and white. Nothing hung from his belt loops today. He had brushed and polished his expensive brown loafers and removed his earrings, and there was an expensive gold watch on his left wrist. He crossed the street and strolled up the driveway and along the walk in front of the house to the porch.

  The screen door was closed, but the inner door stood open. Hamilton looked inside. He could see all the way to the back of the house, where there was a room with big windows and lots of plants and some ironwork furniture. Between the porch where he stood and that room, which was quite bright—though not as bright as it would be later, when the sun was lower in the sky—the house was shadowy. Hamilton knocked on the edge of the screen door and waited.

  There was no sound inside. Behind him a car passed, slowly. A breeze stirred the maple tree and sent some of its fallen leaves skittering across the lawn. Hamilton pulled open the screen door and reached inside to rap smartly at the inner door, then stepped back behind the screen again.

  For a long time the house remained silent, and he began to wonder whether anyone was home. But she wouldn’t have left the front door standing open. Maybe she was in the backyard. Then he heard somebody—it sounded like someone treading slowly down a flight of stairs—and she emerged from around a corner into the heart of the house. For a moment she was a faceless silhouette against the brightness behind her; then she moved toward him, and the softer light from the front door fell upon her.

  She was smaller than Hamilton had imagined, and there was a less angular cast to her features, and he realized that he had unconsciously expected a resemblance between her and Harry. He was smiling as she approached the door, but she didn’t return his smile. She looked as if she hadn’t smiled in weeks. And she said nothing, just looked at him through the screen.

  “Are you Maria Buscombe?” asked Hamilton, still smiling.

  She didn’t reply.

  “My name is Hamilton Gleitman, Mrs. Buscombe. I’m a writer with City Magazine, doing a piece on adopted children.”

  She stepped back and reached for the inner door handle.

  “I have the honor,” said Hamilton quickly, “of being acquainted with Alan Stewart.” He looked down, scraping the toe of his loafer against the flaking paint on the porch floor. Then he looked up and smiled again, warmly, appreciatively. “Who has made, if I may say so, an immeasurable contribution to his community.” What a lot of horseshit, said the small, dry voice within him.

  He saw the pulse throbbing in her temple. Her hands will be cold and damp, he thought, and a thrill pierced his body from groin to throat.

  “I understand how sensitive these matters are,” he went on. “And believe me, I would never interview anyone for this story who was the slightest bit reluctant to participate.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  “Would you be kind enough,” said Hamilton, “to give me a few minutes to explain what I want to do in the article?”

  She began closing the door.

  “Please think it over,” he said quickly. She shook her head. “They’re very interesting stories.” He had stepped back. He was smiling at her again, his voice, his body, relaxed and unthreatening. “I’d like to tell you about them. The other people in the piece. They’re anonymous, of course.” There weren’t any others, actually. If she turned out to be the first woman ever to check him out, Hamilton was dead meat.

  She was looking at him intently, almost squinting, as if she weren’t altogether certain that anyone was actually standing there. Hamilton began to feel somewhat less confident.

  “Five minutes,” he said. “That’s all I ask.” He smiled again, winningly, but she was closing the door. “Excuse me,” said Hamilton. “Hey! Wait a minute. Hold it,” he said, grabbing at the screen door. But the inner door shut, and he heard her turn the bolt.

  “Damn,” said Hamilton, amazed. He threw his jacket over his shoulder and crossed the street to his car.

  “Shit,” he said, furious, staring back at the house.

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, driving away.

  ***

  Maria watched the reporter through one of the narrow vertical windows that edged the door. She watched until he’d driven away.

  Then she went into the living room and turned on the television. In the tranquillity of this cool, shadowy room, she shivered, rubbing her hands together, trying to find the voice inside her that could speak to her with wisdom.

  (...Belinda has just become a teenager; she has shed the softness of childhood and not yet gathered into her the roundedness of womanhood. Belinda is gawky and uncertain and doesn’t see that she is lithe, handsome. Belinda looks at Maria sometimes with a doe’s eyes. Maria stand
s up suddenly one day from the dinner table and moves quickly around to the stove, where something threatens to boil over, and as she passes behind Belinda, her daughter flinches—an instinctive reflex...and Maria erupts at the sight of her flinching. Maria has never been able to understand this—why Belinda’s fear should provoke Maria’s rage...)

  Maria found that she was standing up, clasping her hands, staring at the television screen, where a man ostensibly telling the world about a diet cola was actually speaking softly, intimately, persuasively, directly to Maria. She knew it was her own voice, her private inner voice, and hearing it, she bowed her head. Nodded. Hearing it, tears splashed upon her cheeks—the voice said yes. Finally. Solace.

  Chapter 41

  THREE DAYS LATER Hamilton and Harry were huddled in the back of the bookshop. Harry was in a squat, leaning against shelving that held self-help volumes, his briefcase by his side, while Hamilton sat on a stool, hands clasped between his knees. Everett was perched behind a circular counter with a hinged section that allowed him to go in and out: he was flipping the pages of a catalog from a stationery supplier. A mournful teenager was stationed at the till at the front of the store, leaning on the counter, his chin in his hand. Everett was sure that the kid’s sorrowful countenance was what was keeping the place empty. But the lack of business suited Everett, whose attention was not on the catalog he was thumbing through, but on Hamilton and Harry.

  “I told you it wouldn’t work,” Harry was saying bitterly. “What a stupid idea. I told you she’d never let you in.”

  “Shut up,” said Hamilton. He lifted his head and aimed his bleak gray gaze at Harry. “Stop your damned whining.” He continued to study Harry, thinking, while Harry snapped the suspenders that were holding up his jeans, and Everett chewed concentratedly at a hangnail.

  “I just wish I knew what’s her goddamn plan,” Harry complained. He snapped his suspenders, first the right one, then the left one, then the right one again. “She’s after his goddamn money. That’s obvious. She’s gotta be. What’s her goddamn plan, though, that’s what we gotta find out.”