The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

  Hallie walked Julia to the door when she was leaving. “I hope Luanne didn’t wear you out, or ruin your opinion of the opposite sex.”

  “I liked her. She kind of reminded me of my mother.” Then, looking as though she’d revealed too much, Julia quickly added. “So it would be okay if I come back in a couple of weeks? You don’t have to give me dinner or anything. Just a quick visit with the dogs will be fine.”

  Hallie rubbed her forehead. “Maybe you should make it next week, honey. You probably noticed Jane isn’t eating—and there are some other things going on with her, too. Bring Jack along. Linda Soares, who used to be the librarian in town, is making her famous cod with tomatoes and beans.”

  “Really?” Julia said, her eyes filling. “You mean you . . . have you made an appointment?”

  Hallie looked over at Jane, who was watching them from her bed in the corner as if she understood. “Not yet, but soon. We both know how much Gus loves those dogs, Julia. I’ve got to do right by her.”

  Julia nodded solemnly. “Next week, then. I’ll ask my—” she began, and then corrected herself. “I’ll ask Jack.”

  “Your dad.” Hallie finished the sentence as Julia clearly intended.

  Finally, Julia smiled. “Yes, my dad. One of them, anyway.”

  She was off the steps when she turned around and called back: “Medical research!”

  “Excuse me?” Hallie said.

  “That’s what I want to do when I get out of school. Medical research.”

  Chapter 30

  It was on a particularly busy Wednesday afternoon when Paolo knocked sharply at the door of the examining room and announced an emergency. A man had shown up complaining of chest pains.

  Hallie excused herself and stepped into the hallway. “Someone we know?”

  “Oh, you know him all right.” Paolo hesitated. “It’s the guy who left the dogs, Hallie.” Since his partner was a native, Paolo knew the old stories as if he’d lived through them himself.

  “Has Felicia called the ambulance?”

  “As we speak.”

  In spite of herself, Hallie was taken aback when she opened the door to Room 1 and saw that Alvaro had removed his shirt. He was standing in the center of the room with the military straightness characteristic of the Silvas, his chest and arms as toned as Gus’s had been in high school.

  “Open your mouth,” she ordered sternly. When he did, she popped in an uncoated aspirin she’d brought from the chest in the office. “Chew.”

  Alvaro grimaced. “A friggin’ aspirin? That’s all you’ve got? Pretty primitive medicine, Doc. Don’t I even get a glass of water?”

  “Chew,” Hallie repeated, ignoring both his questions and his sarcasm. “It could save your life. And don’t talk so much, either.”

  When she applied the cold stethoscope to his skin, Alvaro shivered. “Jesus Christ! If I wasn’t already having a heart attack, that thing would give me one.”

  “You shouldn’t have removed your shirt; it wasn’t necessary.” As Hallie tuned in to the even rhythm of his heart, she felt calmer. “Tell me about the pain. Where is it? What does it feel like?”

  “It’s right beneath your hand. And it hurts like hell. Shit, what’s pain supposed to feel like?”

  “Well, your heart sounds fine. I’d give you an EKG, but the ambulance will be here before I have time. They have everything they need to treat you till you get to Hyannis.” It was the same reassuring spiel she gave to the emergency patients worried about the long drive to the nearest hospital.

  “What the fuck, Hallie? You called an ambulance?”

  “This is a medical office, Alvaro. When people come in presenting with symptoms of a heart attack, that’s what we do,” Hallie said brusquely. “And put on your shirt while you’re at it.”

  “What’s the matter? The sight of a man make you nervous? Or maybe I just remind you too much of someone—”

  “Nothing you could do would make me nervous, Alvaro Silva—unless you tried to drop off another animal.”

  Alvaro grinned. “I knew you’d take them in. Neither you or Nick could ever say no to a stray.”

  “Well, it would have been nice if you had at least told me the old one had bladder cancer. The poor thing was nothing but a sack of bones, and she bled all over my good rug the first night.”

  “She’s not just the old one, you know. The name was on her tag.”

  “Well, excuse me,” Hallie said, galled that he refused to apologize for leaving a sick geriatric dog and an overactive Jack Russell at her door. “Jane bled all over my best rug.”

  “So how’s she doing?”Alvaro asked in a low voice.

  “About a week ago, we had to put her down. I was with her, stroking her ears as she went to sleep. Then we buried her in Maria’s old garden.”

  The euthanasia at the vet’s office had been peaceful. Beautiful even. But the burial was a dark comedy. Partly out of spite and partly just to get Alvaro’s attention, she’d dragged a very inebriated Hugo out of the Pilgrims Club to help. Things had gone downhill from there. But if Gus’s cousin had been home since the burial, he apparently hadn’t noticed the grave.

  “You buried her at my house? What the—?” He stopped mid-sentence, apparently having a change of heart. “I guess Gus would have liked that.”

  Before Hallie could respond, they heard the paramedics enter the building. There was a knock on the door to the examining room. “Provincetown Emergency.”

  Alvaro stepped aside and allowed the paramedic to enter. “How you doin’, Eric?” He flashed a smile, as if he were encountering him on the street or in a bar.

  A second man followed with a stretcher.

  “Listen, I came in with a little indigestion—probably from the calzone I had over at Provincetown Pizza,” He rubbed his stomach. “I thought the doctor here might hook me up with a script or something. But it looks like she overreacted.”

  Eric looked from Hallie to Alvaro. “It may well be heartburn, but we should probably bring you to the hospital anyway. Just to check it out; you know, bro?”

  Hallie agreed emphatically, but she could already sense she would lose this fight.

  “Any family history?” the second man asked, looking at Hallie. She had never seen him before.

  “Family history?” Alvaro laughed bitterly. “Lots of it, right, Hallie? But none involving heart problems. Men in my family got hearts like lions. We’re more likely to die by suicide or electric chair than a heart attack.”

  The new guy glanced at his coworker, obviously wondering if this was a joke, or if they were dealing with a psych case.

  Hallie had folded her arms across her chest, and looked down. Though she was seething inwardly, she exuded calm. “The patient is right; I overreacted. Sorry I called you out, but don’t worry. Mr. Silva will be happy to pay all the charges incurred. Won’t you, Alvaro?”

  “The hell I will. You’re the one who called nine-one-one.”

  Eric looked from one to the other. “Listen, Alvaro, you get any other chest pains, indigestion, whatever, and Dr. Costa here’s not available, don’t hesitate to call. Heart attacks fool a lot of people.”

  Hallie nodded. “Thanks again for coming out, guys.”

  However, as soon as they’d left the room, she regarded Alvaro coldly. “Put your shirt on and get out.”

  “What? I thought you were giving me an EKG. You heard Eric. Better to be safe than—”

  “Yeah, I heard him. And I think we’ll both be a lot safer when you’re out of my office. You’ve wasted enough of my time, Alvaro.” She spoke firmly, refusing to show how shaken she was by his theatrics, and by the way his scent reminded her of Gus.

  But as she was exiting the examining room, Alvaro reached out and seized her by the arm. “Meet me at Cantelli’s at five—before the place fills up. There’s something I need to say to you, and it’s been a long time coming.”

  At first she thought Alvaro had stood her up, but then she saw him at a small table i
n the corner, his eyes flaming over the small votive candle. There were two martinis before him.

  “What’s this?” Hallie said, feeling annoyed as she slipped into a seat that faced the window. “You ordered for me?”

  He lifted his glass in a mock elegance as if to toast her. “I figured this was something a lady like you would drink. You and Wolfman’s son.”

  “Leave Sam out of it, okay? You know nothing about my ex-husband.” She put up a finger and signaled the waitress. “What’ve you got on tap, Julie?”

  Alvaro guzzled his martini as Hallie waited for her beer. He pushed the empty glass to the edge of the table before he reached for Hallie’s.

  “They’re supposed to be sipped,” she said. “And do you have to look at me like that? It’s unnerving.”

  “Unnerving,” Alvaro repeated. “Good word. I bet you and Wolfman’s son used it a lot when you sat around drinking beer in your penthouse, pretending you were regular people. Unnerving that your old boyfriend was charged with murder. So unnerving that you had to go into that courtroom and talk about how he tried to kill you, too. Unnerving to watch the best guy you or I or anyone else ever met sit there and forgive you. Even as you were sending him to hell. And then when he was sentenced to life, my, my—I bet that was unnerving as hell. You and Junior probably had two martinis that night.”

  His voice rose a little higher every time he pronounced the word: unnerving. Hallie felt people watching them, though she refused to look back.

  “You know what I don’t understand? Why you hate me so much. We always got along when we were kids, didn’t we?”

  “I don’t hate you, Hallie. I just love my cousin.”

  “And you think I don’t?” Hallie whispered. It was the first time she’d admitted the truth out loud—or even in the privacy of her heart—in years. Maybe not since she ran away from Gus on the beach.

  “If you loved him, you would have believed him.”

  “What are you talking about? You know I believed him. I got on the stand and—”

  “You got on the stand and finished him, is what you did.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Alvaro. I—” Hallie began, but the blaze of anger in Alvaro’s eyes stopped her.

  “They had a lot of evidence against him, but they had no body. He might have got off—until the tall, blond doctor walked to the stand in her red suit. So sincere. So reluctant. So fucking sorry. If you looked at the jury when you were testifying, you would have seen the turn. Something hardened in them then and there. There was no coming back from that, Hallie. Gus knew it; I knew it; and if you were honest with yourself, you’d know it, too.”

  “How can you say that? You were there. You know what I did. I practically perjured myself trying to help him.”

  The infamous Silva rage flared, and Alvaro slammed the table so hard that his martini glass toppled and shattered. When the waitress made a tentative step toward them, he stopped her with a look. “Shit, Hallie, it wasn’t what you said. It was you. Anyone watching you on that stand could tell you didn’t believe him. You loved him—I suppose even your idiot husband could see that—but you’d seen his other side; you knew what he was capable of.”

  “I didn’t think he was guilty. Jesus, Alvaro, I didn’t,” Hallie said weakly. But then the image of Gus heaving Neil’s body against the Jeep rose to her mind. The memory of Neil’s blank eyes, his flaccid body. It was the same memory that had rattled her when she was on the stand. She covered her face with her hands and started to cry.

  “I didn’t want to believe it. God, I would have given anything to be sure he didn’t do it. But I wasn’t. I just wasn’t,” she said when she looked up. The restaurant was beginning to fill, and again she felt the other customers watching her. Hallie Costa, drinking with Gus’s cousin and weeping openly. But she didn’t care.

  “No crying, okay,” Alvaro said, softening. “You’re making a fucking scene. And besides, I can’t deal with a woman bawling.”

  “There was so much evidence, Alvaro. And I couldn’t help but remember that night—how crazy he got. How could you be so sure?”

  “Because I asked him, that’s how. Gus may be a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. And besides, he’s blood. If he was bullshitting me, I would have known.”

  “If I could have talked to him like you did, if I saw him even once . . .” Hallie said. “I would have fought to get him a new trial. I would’ve hired private detectives. I would never have given up. You must know that, Alvaro. But I was afraid if we dug too deeply, we might find something—I don’t know—even more incriminating.”

  “So what if you did? He’s doing life, no parole, Hallie. Were you afraid they’d add another hundred years onto his sentence?”

  “It couldn’t get any worse for Gus, but there are so many people who believe in him. People who love him, Alvaro. They would be shattered if it turned out he was guilty.”

  Again, Alvaro pounded the table. “For Christ sake, admit it, Hallie. You’re the one who would have been shattered. The people who are sure of his innocence—people like me and Gallagher, Jack and that kid who seems to think she’s his stepdaughter or something—we got nothing to fear. We been saying ‘bring it on’ since the trial. The only one who would be shattered is the one who wants to believe Gus is innocent, wants to with all her heart, but can’t shake her doubts.” Alvaro reached out and covered her hand with his own.

  “Come on, Hallie,” he said more gently. “What did I tell you about this crying shit?”

  “The way he turned his back on everyone—I don’t know, Alvaro, it felt almost like he was hiding something. You’re right. I was afraid to know the truth. I was a coward.”

  Alvaro squeezed her hand and then released it. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? For one thing, Gus was hiding something. And after all these years, everyone stopped writing to him. I mean, you can only carry on a one-way conversation for so long. As far as that crap about you being a coward, everyone in this town knows—

  But Hallie had stopped listening. “What do you mean he’s hiding something? Something about the crime?”

  “Yeah, something about the crime all right. But not the one Gus committed. The one that was committed against him the day they locked him up for something he didn’t do. He didn’t want you to see what living in that place did to him, Hallie. He couldn’t stand for anyone else he loves to know who he had become.”

  Finally, the rage in Alvaro’s eyes was quieted. “If we talked before, we might have cleared this up a long time ago . . . but like my girlfriend says, maybe things happen for a reason.”

  “Gus would call it God’s will,” Hallie said bitterly.

  “And I’d call it timing. The last time I visited Gus, a little over a week ago, we were just sittin’ there, not talking much—we don’t usually—when all of a sudden, he looks over and asks about you.”

  “He did?” When Hallie looked down, her hands were shaking.

  “He didn’t say much. Just asked if I ever saw you, or how you were doing, something like that. But anyway, I’ve been thinkin’ about it. I don’t know if you’d even want to after all these years, but maybe you could write to him one more time.”

  “Did he say he wanted to hear from me?”

  “Nope. Nothin’ like that. But it was the first time since my dad died that he actually asked about someone from town. I don’t want to get your hopes up, because he’ll probably blow you off just like he does with everyone else. But then again, he might not.”

  When she rose to go, Alvaro stood and embraced her. “You don’t have to run off, you know. You didn’t even finish your beer.”

  “Some other time maybe?”

  Alvaro smiled. “I’d like that. And next time I promise I won’t break any glasses.”

  Chapter 31

  Two Sundays later, Hallie walked up the familiar hill to St. Peter’s and entered the church after the last mass. The hush, the shadows, the scent of burning candles all brought back the intrepid girl s
he had once been, the girl who had followed Gus here after hearing of his father’s suicide. Almost expecting to see him hunched over a cigarette in the third row from the front, she slid into the empty pew.

  When she heard footsteps, she closed her eyes and pretended she was praying, hoping to remain unnoticed. A young man with thinning hair, his skin dotted with pockmarks, glided past her toward the altar, where he appeared to tidy up. He wore no collar but he was dressed all in black down to his shoes. She was grateful that the few times she’d seen Gus after he entered the seminary, he had been wearing his usual jeans and sweatshirts—not this funereal outfit.

  “Dr. Costa?” he said warily when their eyes met. “It’s, um, good to see you here.”

  “Hallie,” she said, extending her hand. He wasn’t a patient, and she didn’t see him around town much, but she’d noticed him a couple of times at Lucy’s Market. “And you must be the priest who replaced Father D’Souza.”

  “I wouldn’t use the word replaced. From what I understand, Father D’Souza was one of a kind. I’m Matt,” he said, extending his hand.

  “No Father or anything? Just Matt?”

  “Matt’s fine. In any case, I’m sorry to interrupt your meditation.”

  “I wasn’t—I mean, I don’t—” Hallie began, and then when the priest grinned, she smiled back. “Thank you, Matt. You’re very kind.”

  She left when he retreated to the sacristy. The wind was always particularly fierce in the cemetery, but she welcomed the cold. She sat down on the stone marked MARIA BOTELHO and folded her long legs to her chest. Then she pulled a spiral notebook from the messenger bag she used as Nick had once carried his backpack—a combination of old-fashioned doctor’s bag and general catchall.

  Since she’d met Alvaro at Cantelli’s, she’d written at least a dozen letters to Gus. She told him about the people they knew, and her days in the office, about the changing color of the bay outside her window and how much she loved winter when the village belonged entirely to those who called themselves town people. But the letters always felt like a taunt—the brightness and productivity of her days, held up against his gray surroundings, his wasted years, an existence she could not even imagine. Particularly not for Gus. Other letters were extended apologies, crammed with guilt and regret—as if it were possible to put a stamp on it and be done. She never mailed any of them.