“Are you quite sure, Moe? I have sharpened some of the—”
“Forget it, I’m moving on. Just bag the stuff up and I’ll return it.”
“Okay.”
Carmella was in her office and was standing by a file cabinet when she told me to come in. I couldn’t help but stare. She followed my eyes.
“You’re showing a little,” I said.
“You’re grinning like an idiot, Moe.”
I didn’t say anything, but walked up to her and reached out my hand to feel her little belly. I stopped myself. People often don’t realize what an incredibly intimate and loaded gesture it is to place your hand on a pregnant woman’s abdomen. It’s reaffirming, connective, even sexual. I remembered complete strangers touching Katy without a thought of asking permission when she was pregnant with Sarah. It’s almost instinctive, tribal, at least.
“It’s okay for you to touch me.”
And I did. She placed her hand on top of mine. “You’re keeping it,” I said.
“I am. It’s a pretty amazing thing to have someone growing inside you.”
“Now you’re grinning like an idiot.”
“Am I?” She blushed.
“We are going to have to rearrange things around here, if this little girl’s go—”
“—boy. Little boy. I know it.”
“If this little boy’s going to get a healthy start.”
She removed her hand from mine. “We’ll talk about it when the time comes.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
Her grin faded as suddenly as it had appeared and her mood darkened. “Moe, I guess I should tell you that the baby is—”
“—Dukelsky’s. I know. I knew the minute he showed up at the Six-One. It was a guilty favor he was doing. It all fit together. I think he tried to talk to me about you two, but I stopped him.”
“Some of the things I said about him, they were … not fair. He just doesn’t want a baby now or to get married. He’s been married and divorced and has two kids. I don’t want to marry him anyway. This was my fault. I chased him, Moe. I have for years.”
“Why?” There was that question again. “You could have any man you want.”
She brushed the back of her hand against my cheek. “No, I can’t.”
“Come on, Carmella, let’s not do this again.”
“That’s right.” Her eyes burned. “We can’t be together because it makes too much sense. We can’t be together because of your rules. Because some man raped me as a little girl, because it was you who saved my life, because my parents changed my name, because I lied to you about who I was, because I got my shield and you didn’t, because your wife tossed you to the curb, be—”
“Stop it!”
“Get out of my office!” she hissed. “Get out of here. At least Paul was honest with himself and me. Get out!”
Down on Court Street, the air was thick enough to swim through. Truck fumes coagulated around bits of dust, falling to the asphalt like volcanic ash. People on the sidewalk were defeated. A city bus stopped in front of me. A pair of brown eyes much like Carmella’s stared out at me from an ad on the side of the bus. The eyes were set in the face of a watch. The copy read: Timing isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Harmony Watches.
“Kiss my ass,” I heard myself mutter. So too, apparently, did the woman standing next to me. She just shook her head no.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE HEAT BROKE while I slept, massive thunderstorms washing away the haze and defeat. I bought a cup of coffee, walked across the street, and watched the fishing boats set out for blues or porgies or whatever else was foolish enough to bite at the thousands of tangled lines dropped into the Atlantic off the coast of New Jersey or Montauk. The decks were packed with beer-for-breakfast buddies full of good cheer and anticipation. A little chop on the water would wipe away those smiles in an instant, but for now the world was perfect. The boats’ throaty motors revved up and one by one they headed directly into the rising sun. One hour down, the rest of my life to go.
As tired of the wine business as I was, I didn’t do well with spare time. I’d made sure to never really have a lot of it. Between the wine stores and the agency and Katy and Sarah, I managed to keep myself pretty much occupied. But now with Sarah staying in Ann Arbor most of the year and with my more recent exile from Katy-ville, spare time seemed like it was going to be a bigger part of my life. I had at least the next two weeks off and I was bored silly an hour into my day. In the short term, my date with Connie couldn’t get here soon enough. In the long term, Carmella getting fat with child would mean more work for me at the agency. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
I bought every newspaper I could find, another cup of coffee, and headed back upstairs to read myself blind. The phone machine came to my rescue. I was halfway hoping it was Aaron or Klaus needing me to fill in at one of the stores, but it was a confused and impatient Marlon Rhodes wondering why I hadn’t taken him up on his offer. This time I called him back. I got his machine.
“Mr. Rhodes, this is Moe Prager returning your—”
“Yo, yo, yo! Marlon here, man.” He referred to himself in the third person.
“Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.”
“So, y’all still interested in Mr. White’s crazy-ass sista?”
“Depends.”
“Man, don’t play me like dat.”
“How should I play you?”
“I play for pay, man.”
“Yeah, I figured that out already. I got no problem with paying if I get a taste of what it is I’m paying for. But I have to warn you, Marlon, I’m not nearly as interested as I was that first time we spoke.”
He thought about that a second. “Fair ’nough.”
“I’m listening.”
“Mr. White, he was a good man. He really gave a shit ’bout his students and all. Helped me out with money sometimes too. Got me into treatment and everything, f’all the good dat did. When he died, his sista tried to make us into like some fucked up little family, havin’ us over for dinners and shit, but she wasn’t like Mr. White. She was all spooky Jesus and shit. She be playin’ us like old cassette tapes of Mr. White wishing her Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas. It was weird, man, hearin’ his voice and all. Then she get judgmental and shit, tryin’ to tell us all how to act. Mr. White, he wasn’t never dat way.”
“These cassette tapes, were they only Jack’s voice?”
“Mostly, but sometimes there was this other man on there.”
“Patrick?”
“If you say so. He was young. I can say dat. Been a long time, man.”
My heart was racing and my mind was a blur.
“Yo, Five-O, y’all still there?”
“Sorry, Marlon. I got distracted there a second. What happened with these dinners?”
“Without Mr. White, most of us, we went our own ways. Some of us went farther then others, if y’all hear what I’m sayin’.”
I read between the lines. “How long a stretch did you do?”
“Ten year bid in Kentucky for movin’ a little rock.”
“That’s a long time inside.”
“Man, when y’all doin’ nigga time in Kentucky, ten minutes a long time inside.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.”
Touché. “So what happened?
“I don’t hear from his sista again until like eight weeks ago. I guess she heard I sometimes still went out to the cemetery. Dat’s how she got my number, from one of the others.”
“What did she say?”
“She all nice and shit now, sayin’ how she appreciates me still visitin’ her brother and all.”
“But …”
“But dat she askin’ everybody not to go out to the cemetery for a few weeks. She say some shit about them doin’ some ground work.”
“That’s weird.”
“I told you, man. She crazy.”
“Marlon, I gotta ask. Why didn’t
you talk to me when I first called you and why’d you wait until now to call back?”
He didn’t answer. It was price-setting time, but I didn’t feel like haggling.
“How much?” I said.
“Five hundred.”
“Sold. Now let’s hear it.”
“Y’ail think I’m some kinda fool nigga? Dat was way too easy. My price goin’ up.”
“Don’t mistake my impatience with stupidity, Marlon. I’ll throw you another hundred, but then the bank’s closing forever. There’s a limit to how much I’m willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity.”
“Okay, cool. Six hundred.”
“Six hundred,” I repeated. “So what took you so long to call me back?”
“She call me last Friday, all apologetic and religious and shit. Kept sayin’ she was sorry and dat the Lord will be with me. Hell, man, the next time the Lord is with me, dat’ll be the first time. But I didn’t disrespect her or nothin’. I guess she jus’ a crazy old lady after all.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. Did she say what she was sorry for?”
“I didn’t ask. Jus’ wanted to get off the phone.”
“Hey, Marlon, how’d you like me to hand deliver that money tomorrow?”
“Tonight would be better, but I s’pose I can wait.”
“I suppose you’ll have to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I KNEW SOMETHING wasn’t right the minute I turned the corner onto Mary White’s street. There was a local agent’s For Sale sign up at the edge of the meticulous little yard in front of her house. Hung beneath the larger sign was a smaller one. “Priced to Sell,” it read. Both signs swung gently in the early afternoon breeze. A blue jay perched on the mailbox, cocked its head at the signs and flew away. He wasn’t buying.
Marlon Rhodes had wanted to tag along and though I could’ve used the company, I decided to part ways with him and my money back in Cincinnati. Showing up on Mary White’s doorstep with Marlon in tow would have been tough to explain away. Never mind Marlon, I couldn’t think of what the hell I was going to tell her about my being there. I guess I needn’t have worried.
There was no answer when I knocked or pressed the front doorbell. I called her number on my cell. The phone rang and rang and … That was funny. I knew she had an answering machine. I’d left messages on it. I could hear her old fashioned phone ringing out in the street. My belly tied itself in knots. I remembered what happened the last time I listened to an unanswered telephone. I walked around the house, cupping my hands against side and back windows. I knocked on the rear door. Mary White was gone. Coming back around the front of the house, a young, chubby-faced woman with dull brown hair and a lazy eye called to me from the adjoining yard.
“She ain’t around,” Lazy Eye said, a little boy crying from inside her house.
“I can see that.”
“You interested in the house?”
“Might be,” I lied. “Do you know where the owner is?”
“Traveling.”
“Traveling?”
“Yup, that’s—” She was interrupted by the boy’s crying. “Shut up! I’ll be right in. Eat your cereal.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Nah. My neighbor and me, we don’t get along so well. But you can try the real estate agent. He’s nice. Name’s Stan Herbstreet. Sold me and Larry our house. Stan’s office number’s on the sign. You a family man?” she asked, with a suspicious twist of her mouth.
“Sure am. Got a grown daughter and a little boy about three from my second marriage,” I lied some more. “Gonna do some work at the Air Force base.”
She stepped toward me and whispered conspiratorially, “Please take the house. The old lady’s a nasty bitch who hates my kid.” On cue, the kid wailed. She turned over her shoulder. “Shut up! Mommy’s talking to the nice man who’s going to buy Mary’s house.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll make that call to the real estate agent. Thanks for—”
“Listen, if you are really interested …” Lazy Eye stepped even closer, looking this way and that. “I know how you can have a peek around inside without bothering Stan. The old biddy keeps a key in the wood planter on the patio. This way when you call Stan, you’ll have a better idea of what you should offer.”
“Gee, thanks a ton …” I offered her my hand.
She took it. “Roweena. Roweena with a double-e.”
“Thanks, Roweena double-e. I hope I like the house.”
“For our sake, I hope so too.”
The key was right where she said it would be. I smiled and waved that I had found it. I walked very slowly to the back door, praying Roweena would go attend to her screaming kid. She did, finally. The key slid into the cranky old lock and turned with a little help. Stepping in, I held my breath. Finding the kid dead affected me more than I was willing to let on … even to myself. When, at last, I inhaled, there was a bit of mustiness in the air, but nothing more.
The museum piece house was as neat and clean as I remembered it. All of it except for Mary’s bedroom. Understandably, this room hadn’t been part of the original tour. It smelled of camphor, cloves and orange peel; of lilacs and roses; of dried flowers from a dried-up life tied in a sack and tucked away in a corner somewhere amongst her unrealized dreams. Mary had packed in a hurry. Her ancient dresser drawers were all open and askew, the closet door ajar. Empty hangers were strewn about the room: on the bed, on the floor, at the foot of the full-length mirror. Her jewelry box was empty too, dumped upside down on the bed on a pile of hangers.
I searched the dresser drawers, remembering how my dad had grown odd at the end, obsessed with making lists of the inconsequential aspects of his life. He wrote reams and reams of lists on foolscap. When he died, we knew where his hankies and t-shirts, his pens and broken watches, his rings and school yearbooks could be found, but we could never find where his happiness had got to. We wondered if he had ever truly been happy at all. There are some things it’s better for kids not to wonder about their parents.
There wasn’t anything to be found in the dresser drawers or in the closet or beneath the bed, but in the nightstand drawer were old letters from Jack, all with New York postmarks. Behind the family Bible and photo albums on the nightstand shelf were twenty neatly stacked cassette boxes. Each box was labeled with Jack’s name, an event, and or a corresponding date. Jack, Christmas 1976. There were tapes in nineteen of the twenty boxes. It did not take me long to figure out where that missing tape had gone. Questions filled my head. How had Ray Martello gotten to Mary White? What could he have told her? How much could he have paid her? What had Katy or I ever done to her except treat her with respect?
I shook my head, thinking Mary mustn’t have understood what was going on. But in my bones I knew that was wrong. Not only had Mary White known, she was an active participant. Now I understood Mary’s discomfort around me, her strange affect on the phone, the weirdness in the cemetery. There were never any roses on her brother’s grave or, if there had been, Mary White placed them there herself. No one painted on Jack’s headstone. Mary simply scrubbed the stone for my benefit: the missing dirt from where she’d washed it had been enough to convince me of the vandalism.
I slid a few of the cassettes into my pocket and headed toward the back door, but decided to take a second, more careful look around. In the kitchen, I found some flight information, two phone numbers, and an address in Kentucky scribbled onto a pad. Next to the address was the notation, #12. I ripped off the sheet and tucked it into my pocket with the cassettes. There was nothing else to see. I tiptoed out the back, replacing the key in the planter. Unfortunately, Roweena—double e, one lazy eye—had been keeping watch.
“Well?”
“Nice,” I said, “but a bit claustrophobic.”
She didn’t look pleased. I fairly ran to my rental car. Her kid was still crying.
LOCATING THE CEMETERY proved more challenging than expected. With some help from a trucker
, I found my way. Once through the gates, I was confident I’d be able to find Jack’s resting place. Wrong. I thought I retraced the route Mary had taken—around the huge stone crucifix, two lefts, straight ahead twelve rows, a right and a left—but I just couldn’t find the small chunk of stone adorning Jack’s grave. I tried it three more times with some minor variations before admitting defeat and heading into the administrative offices.
The woman at the desk checked the book.
“You weren’t wrong, sir. Mr. White is indeed interred there, but your confusion is understandable.” She made a sour face. “The headstone has been recently replaced.”
Had it ever. No wonder I hadn’t recognized the site. In place of the tasteful block of beveled granite which had stood vigil at the head of Jack White’s grave was a massive black tombstone vaguely reminiscent of the monolith in 2001. I couldn’t quite believe the scale of it: a sequoia among the shrubbery. Carved into the rich black stone were prayerful hands, crosses, scrolls, angels, and a rendering of Jack’s face. There was a bible quotation, lines from a favorite poem. With all that, there was still enough empty space on the stone to have added the entire text of War and Peace or to list the names of America’s war dead. All of them, ever. A mourners’ bench had been added as well. It was constructed of the same black stone, tasteful only by comparison to the monolith. I suppose Mary could have tried to buy Cleopatra’s Needle or Stonehenge, but she’d done okay on her own. Looking past the hideousness of the new monuments, I realized just how much they must have set Mary back. Ray Martello had paid her a pretty penny for her betrayal.
Without his sister around to scowl at me, I considered placing a rock atop Jack’s new headstone. Unfortunately, Mary hadn’t thought to include an elevator or build steps into the side of the headstone. I placed a pebble at the base of the black giant and walked away. Poor Jack. If anything ever cried out for a sledgehammer, it was that thing in my rearview mirror.
Empty Ever After Page 20
