by Janet Dawson
“You mean that child’s got AIDS?” Her face whitened, tight around the mouth. Her hands were on her hips now and she leaned forward, panic evident in her voice. “And she’s been living here with us for two months?” She glared at Rio and me over Dyese’s head. “You get her out of here. You get her out of here right now.”
Annie turned quickly and marched back toward the bedrooms. It didn’t seem like the time for a capsulated lesson in HIV transmission.
“She’s scared,” Rio said quietly. “Fear makes people ignorant. I’ll talk to her.”
“You need to be tested too.” I hung onto Dyese, who was wriggling in my arms and demanding to be let down.
“I know.” He took the little girl from me as his sister reappeared, carrying a shopping bag that contained a box of disposable diapers and the rest of Dyese’s pitifully small wardrobe. Lorrie was at her heels, curious at the commotion. The two boys now stood in the doorway watching.
“Here.” Annie shoved the shopping bag at me and I took the handles. “Now just leave.”
“Mama, isn’t Dyese staying for Christmas?” Lorrie asked. Annie shook her head. Lorrie scrunched up her face, looking sad and wondering why. So did her brothers. “But we made presents for her.”
“We’ll take them with us,” I said.
Annie’s children went into the living room and returned a moment later, all three of them carrying gifts which they carefully placed in the shopping bag I held. “I made her a top,” the youngest boy whispered to me as he tucked the oddly misshapen tissue-wrapped package down one side of the bag. The last box to go into the bag had a tag that read, “To Dyese from Annie.”
I looked up at her and the firm set of her mouth. “Thanks for looking after her. It was very kind of you.”
I thought I saw the faint glimmer of tears in Annie’s eyes and a quiver in the firm set of her mouth. She turned away and I saw her shoulders shake. Rio carried Dyese out to my car and strapped her into the passenger seat while I stashed the bag. He was still standing in the rain on the rutted gravel road as I drove away.
Forty-six
I STOOD UNDER MY UMBRELLA, WAITING ON THE corner of Ninth and Washington, watching people in their evening finery converge on the entrance of Ratto’s. Inside the turn-of-the-century building the utilitarian workaday dining room with its wooden floor, long tables, and service line had been spruced up for this New Year’s Eve pasta and opera shindig. When I’d looked through the front windows a few minutes ago, I’d seen white tablecloths instead of the usual red-and-white-checked oilcloth, and what looked like a sumptuous antipasto spread on a table in one corner.
I’d dressed up as well. Under my black wool coat I wore a long bright green sweater over glittery gold tights, all decked out for my date with Dr. Kazimir Pellegrino. Who was supposed to meet me at this very corner at a quarter to eight.
Just inside the dining room, one of the restaurant employees checked names off the reservations list and customers helped themselves to shiny paper crowns and hats. People were already blowing on horns and noisemakers, the wheezy bleat sounding over the chatter of conversation.
It had stopped raining. I lowered my umbrella, peered in all four directions, and checked my watch again. Five till eight. Still no sign of Kaz. I hadn’t talked with him since the day after Christmas, when he’d called to give me a report on Dyese Smith.
My mind went back a week, to Christmas Eve, and my drive from Monte Rio down Highway 116 to Graton Road. I’d stopped at Mother Earth Farms to let Aditi calm the increasingly upset and vocal Dyese. She and Viraj cajoled the two-year-old and plied her with homemade cookies and warm milk while I called Kaz to let him know I was on my way to Children’s Hospital with the child. The warm milk did the trick. The little girl became drowsy as I drove through Sebastopol. She fell asleep by the time I headed south on Highway 101, and didn’t wake up until I parked the Toyota in the garage across the street from the hospital.
“I’ll take her from here,” Kaz told me when he met us in the lobby. He lifted the drowsy child from my arms. I followed him upstairs and turned over Dyese’s shopping bag full of possessions to one of the nurses.
“Are you a relative?” she asked me. I shook my head and explained the situation. The bureaucracy kicked in. Dyese Smith was now out of my hands, literally and figuratively.
She was out of her grandmother’s hands too. Just as well, I suppose.
I hadn’t really expected the glass of vodka Naomi Smith hurled at me later that afternoon when I showed up at her house on Hillside Avenue. Words, yes. She threw plenty of those too, most of them slurred by the effect of the alcohol she’d been consuming all day.
“I didn’t want you to find her,” she shouted at me as she stood by the fireplace in her elegant living room. She was wearing red silk pants and a matching tunic, dressed as though she were going to a party. The expensive clothing hung on her emaciated frame. Her sallow skin was chalky under her black-dyed hair, and it appeared she’d applied her makeup with a trowel. Rings glittered on her fingers, clamped around the glass full of clear liquid that I knew wasn’t water. The portrait of the younger Naomi hanging above the mantel was a cruel contrast to the reality that wove unsteadily in front of the fireplace screen.
“I suppose you didn’t,” I told her, pushed past politeness by the events of the past twenty-four hours. “I don’t even know why you wanted to find out if that unidentified body was Maureen. You never gave a damn about your daughter when she was alive.”
That’s when Naomi threw the glass. It glanced off my right shoulder, splashing me with its contents, and rolled across the plush carpet to the foyer, where Ramona Clark stood listening. Earlier she’d let me in, with a poisonous look and a warning not to bother Patrick anymore. Then she’d remained standing in the doorway, listening without any expression as I told Naomi where to find her granddaughter. That was fine with me. Ramona was Dyese’s great-aunt, but her reaction to the news was about the same as Naomi’s, without the glass.
“Maureen’s dead,” I continued, directing my words to Naomi. “But Dyese is alive. She’s your granddaughter.” I stopped and gave Ramona a sidelong glance. The housekeeper met my gaze with no emotion other than dislike, then turned away, her heart as hard as her eyes. “She’s over at Children’s Hospital, in case you sober up enough to do anything about it. In case either of you care.”
Naomi didn’t sober up and I don’t suppose she cared. Neither did Ramona Clark. They weren’t interested in waiting for the test results. “Why should we waste our time with some kid who’s going to die?” Ramona Clark said coldly before she hung up on me.
I knew she’d gotten to Patrick. When I called to tell him I’d located Dyese, his phone number had been changed, the new number now unlisted. It was pointless anyway. When I’d told the Alameda County social worker I thought I knew who Dyese’s father was, she gave me a world-weary look and a lesson about meeting immediate needs.
“If his name isn’t on the birth certificate, he might as well not exist,” she said. “We don’t have the resources to track him down. The mother never designated a legal guardian. If the grandmother is unwilling or unable...” She shrugged. “It’s in our lap now.”
It made me angrier than I already was, and I told myself the little girl was better off without either of those women. I sent Naomi Smith’s retainer back to her the day after Christmas, along with a terse letter telling her why I didn’t want her money.
“It’s okay,” Kaz told me when I spoke with him later that afternoon. “Dyese’s in a terrific foster home. Santa Claus brought her lots of toys and she’s getting plenty of hugs. She’s got a cold, but other than that, she’s doing great. It will be a few days before we get any test results. The county lab’s backed up, what with the holidays. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
“You and your staff go a long way toward making up for the Naomi Smiths and Ramona Clarks of the world,” I told him.
I meant every word. The world i
s full of ordinary heroes, not the ones who are ballyhooed in the media, but people like Aditi and Viraj, and Nell Carlton and Kaz, who just give of themselves because that’s the way they are.
Even Maureen, I thought. Even with a whole deck of cards stacked against her, she tried to make a life for herself and her daughter.
I spent Christmas with my father, as planned, a comfortable low-key sort of a holiday. I went over to his town house in Castro Valley that morning. He’d already put the turkey in the oven, and he and I unwrapped our presents at a leisurely pace, consuming coffee and bagels. He was delighted with the raku pot I’d bought from Serena. After he had admired it the weekend before, I’d wrapped it up to put under his tree. We called Monterey and talked to Mother, Brian, and his family. Then Dad’s friend Isabel Kovaleski came over to join us for our Christmas feast.
Sid and his daughter Vicki spent Christmas in Sacramento with Sid’s sister Doreen, so I didn’t get a chance to talk with him until the next week, after Emory Marland had been arraigned for the murder of Maureen Smith.
There seemed to be no doubt that he had killed her. Several of the carpet fibers found on her body matched the wall-to-wall in his apartment The carpet cleaning service told the police that the stains they’d removed from a corner of the living room carpet last October looked a lot like blood. The carpet cleaner had asked Emory about it. His story had been that he’d spilled some paint. Based on the autopsy report, Sid theorized that Emory had strangled Maureen and that at some point she’d hit her head and bled. The only explanation that Emory offered was that he didn’t want Maureen to leave. I assumed she had gone to Oakland to tell him just that.
Given the unexpected size of Maureen’s bank account, I wondered if she’d been blackmailing Stuart, threatening to make public the rape that had occurred at the party at Kara’s house. Emory danced to his older brother’s tune, at least he had the day he’d pushed me off the BART platform after I’d visited Stuart’s office. Maybe Stuart had expressed the desire to be rid of the inconvenience represented by Maureen. But Stuart denied this and there was no way I could prove it, short of digging into his financial records. The police were satisfied that Emory was the killer. If Stuart had some complicity in her death, it appeared he was going to get away with it, as he had gotten away with rape.
I went to an open house at the Burkes’ Tudor style home on Monticello Avenue in Piedmont, the evening of December 30. When I arrived, Vee took my arm and steered me toward the rear of the house, to the sunporch.
“There’s something I want to show you,” she said, flashing a secretive smile. From the other side of the closed door I heard something that sounded suspiciously like barks. When Vee opened the door, we were overwhelmed by a medium-sized puppy who appeared to have many different antecedents. It had big feet, a coat of many colors, huge brown eyes, floppy ears, and a constantly wagging tail.
“What’s this?” I said. “I thought there wasn’t another dog who could replace Ziggy.”
“My Christmas present from Charles,” Vee said. “He found her on the street near the hospital and said he couldn’t very well leave her there to get run over by a car. Besides, he couldn’t resist that face. And neither could I. We’re calling her Baby, until something else occurs to us.”
I got down on the floor, heedless of my clothes, and the ecstatic Baby rewarded me with wet dog kisses as she tried to get into my lap. I thought of my own little stray. As I was getting ready to come to this party, applying makeup in the bathroom, Black Bart came tearing down the hallway from the bedroom to the living room, with Abigail in pursuit.
Here we go again. I set down the eye shadow and went to break up what I figured was a fight. But when I reached the doorway to the living room, Abigail thundered toward the bedroom, this time with Black Bart at her heels.
They’re playing, I thought. A grin spread over my face. Abigail crouched near the bed, tail twitching. Black Bart pounced. They were off again, racing through the hall to the living room. After two weeks of hissing and growling at one another, they were playing. Maybe this would work out after all.
I didn’t see Denny again. In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I went to Berkeley several times, making the rounds, looking for him so I could thank him for his help. But no one had seen him in any of his usual haunts. I wondered if he was off on one of the benders he’d alluded to earlier. Or if he’d been knocked over the head for the contents of his duffel and whatever money he’d made panhandling.
Then, in this morning’s Tribune, I saw a brief news item indicating that an unidentified homeless man had been struck and killed by a freight train, down at the Berkeley tracks. The description of the white male in his forties or fifties was uncomfortably like Denny. I remembered what he’d told me, about hanging out down there to get away from street predators.
I hoped it wasn’t him. Somehow I couldn’t make myself go down to the coroner’s office to find out.
I looked at my watch again. It was now eight o’clock this New Year’s Eve and I was chilly, standing here in front of Ratto’s, alone with my umbrella and my thoughts. Then I saw Kaz, walking slowly toward me along Washington Street. His head was down and he had his hands stuck into the pockets of the black topcoat he wore. He stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change, standing apart from several other people, straggling toward the restaurant. When the light flashed green, they crossed the street, Kaz bringing up the rear.
“Sorry I’m late.” He greeted me with a lopsided smile, unbuttoning his coat. He was all in black, the only notes of color a bright red woolen scarf around his neck and the electric blue of his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, knowing immediately that something was.
He waited until the others had gone into Ratto’s. “I lost a patient today. It always gets me.”
“I’d hate to have a doctor who didn’t care when one of his patients died.”
Inside the restaurant people were laughing and blowing their noisemakers. I glanced through the plate-glass windows at the New Year’s revelers bathed in bright overhead light. No one as yet had moved toward the antipasto table.
I took Kaz’s arm. “Come on, we’ve got time. We don’t have to go in right away. Let’s walk around the block.” He nodded. We strolled slowly past Ratto’s, both dining room and grocery, walking toward Eighth Street. “Tell me about your patient”
“It was Mary,” Kaz said when we reached the intersection and started across Washington toward Broadway. “The little girl you saw in ICU the day you came to the hospital.” I nodded, recalling the frail child on the gurney, clutching her teddy bear.
“She went home, a couple of days after that,” Kaz continued. “Mary was almost six. We’ve been following her since she was born. Her mother is infected with the virus.” He shook his head. “I have a feeling her condition will start to deteriorate now that her daughter’s dead. She was holding it together just for Mary.”
He paused and took a deep breath. His hand sought mine and held it tightly. “Mary appeared to be okay until she was almost two, then she started showing some arrested development She never talked much, but she seemed to understand what was going on.”
We walked in silence until we came to the corner of Broadway and Eighth. There was a lot of traffic on Oakland’s main downtown artery this New Year’s Eve, the headlights of cars joining the street lamps to brighten the night. I heard honking horns, boisterous shouts, and the wheezing sound of those noisemakers. On the other side of Broadway, at the edge of Oakland’s Chinatown, it looked like the Jade Villa was packed with customers. Kaz and I turned left and walked along the sidewalk in front of the rehabbed Victorians of the Old Oakland development.
“We’ve known for weeks that Mary was going to die soon,” Kaz said. “She hung on because she wanted to make it to Christmas.” He stopped in front of the window of a toy store, the display full of stuffed animals, all marching in ranks, colorful plush toys shaped like cats and dogs, dinosaurs
and donkeys, birds and fish. Kaz leaned over and tapped the glass, as though trying to attract the attention of a brown monkey wearing a vest and a fez, holding a pair of cymbals.
“So she made it to Christmas,” I said. We turned away from the window and started walking again, arms and hands linked as we turned left on Washington, heading back toward Ratio’s. He was talking about Mary and I couldn’t help thinking about Dyese Smith. Kaz hadn’t called. That must mean he hadn’t received Dyese’s test results.
“Yeah. It was some Christmas, too.” He grinned at me. “Her parents gave her parties, bunches of them, so all her friends and relatives could come say good-bye. I went to one, on Christmas Eve. And I went to see her Christmas Day. Santa Claus had been there, big-time. Then two days ago, her condition had deteriorated to the point where we hospitalized her again.”
We stopped in front of one of the darkened galleries in the middle of the block and he put his arms around my waist, drawing me close in an embrace. I hugged him back, resting my cheek on his shoulder.
“Mary had her mother make a list. She wanted to give her toys away to the other kids in the program and the staff at the hospital. I got a pink bear. Damn fine bear too.” He paused. “Mary died this afternoon, about three o’clock.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, not knowing what else to say. There wasn’t anything else to say. I felt despair at the fact that I live in a world where people kill each other and little children die of AIDS.
Kaz tilted my head and our eyes met. “She was ready to go. And she knew how she wanted to go, even at that age. The kid had class. And guts.” He sighed again. “When it’s my turn, I hope I have that much courage.”
He held me tightly for a moment, then released me and smiled. “I meant to call you this morning, but I got sidetracked with Mary. Dyese’s test results were negative, both the antibody and the PCR. She doesn’t have the virus.”
